Let's Get Lost (16 page)

“Gnarly,” Kurt said, nodding at the sight.

“But it turns out we don't have any money,” Leila chimed in.

“How much do you need?”

“Seven-fifty,” Elliot said, rising to his feet.

“Plus some gas money. If that's okay,” Leila added.

“Your performance tonight is worth at least that much,” Kurt said. He motioned for them to follow him inside and paid for Elliot's gauze, then gave Leila a twenty for gas. Elliot gave the manager what he hoped was a smug look.

When they were back outside, Elliot recalled what he could from health class to apply the fresh gauze. Despite the blood, the wound didn't look too bad. Only one of the stitches had come undone, and most of the blood had coagulated already. “Thank you so much,” Elliot said.

“Don't mention it,” Kurt replied, pulling out his keys from his pocket. “By the way, have you guys checked Ruby's Diner? There's a bunch of people over there sobering up with coffee and graveyard specials. I just drove past, and it looks like half the school is inside. I wouldn't be surprised if you find Maribel there.” Kurt shook Elliot's hand, then waved good-bye to Leila. “Good luck, man. Everyone's rooting for you.”

As they watched Kurt's van pull out of the lot, Elliot wondered if he'd misheard. Was it possible that everyone actually cared what happened between him and Maribel?

“What do you say?” Leila interrupted his thoughts. “Ruby's Diner?”

“At this point, I'm half expecting Ruby's Diner to be full of zombies or something.”

Leila smacked him across the chest. “I said, ‘Ruby's Diner?'”

“I've been in love with this girl for as long as I can remember. Of course I'm going to Ruby's Diner,” Elliot said. “But I'm allowed the occasional smart-ass comment, aren't I?”

“You have a very conservative definition of the word ‘occasional.'”

Elliot shrugged. “Whatever. At this point, I'd happily fight zombies to get to her.”

6

LIKE PRETTY MUCH
everything else in Burnsville, Ruby's was just a short drive away. Elliot barely had time to sort out what he was feeling: the hope and the hopelessness combined, the night's exhaustion and lingering adrenaline, Maribel's absence and how strong his desire was to just be near her again, to tell her in ways he'd failed to before how much he loved her.

Leila parked her car in front of the restaurant. Elliot could recognize some of the cars in the parking lot, and he could see through the large windows that the diner was packed—no small feat for 4:00 a.m. A few kids stood outside smoking, their shirts untucked and their bow ties undone. The girls' hairdos had started to sag and uncurl, hair spray finally losing the battle against gravity. Everyone looked tired but proud of their tiredness, as if the night's exhaustion stood for all four years of high school, and they wanted to show the world that they'd survived.

“Want me to wait out here?” Leila asked.

“No. Without you I wouldn't have made it this far.” He tried to spot Maribel inside, but there were people everywhere. A waitress carrying a tray loaded with pancakes and sausage hip-checked someone out of her way. “Plus, in the movies there's always someone who starts the slow clap. I'm entrusting you with that role.”

They got out of the car. Elliot brushed his good hand down his tux. He wished he hadn't thrown the boutonniere into the street; it would help make him look a little more presentable.

“How do I look?”

Leila stepped in front of him, straightened his jacket by the lapels, brushed imaginary dirt (or maybe not that imaginary) off his shoulder. “You look like you've been through hell. But that's what you're supposed to do. Go through hell to get the girl.” She looked up at him and smiled, her eyes lighting up, showing no trace of the distance he'd occasionally seen in them. “You look great.”

Inside the restaurant, it was even busier than Elliot had been able to tell from looking through the windows. So many tables had been pushed together that the diner resembled a German beer hall. Kids were packed into booths like clowns in a car. They had broken off into the usual cliques and shouted at each other from across the room. Some were sipping on coffee, some were wolfing down greasy breakfast food, and some had fallen asleep with their foreheads against the table. Strays—either drunkenly lost or drunkenly social—roamed the corridors between tables. The servers, mostly women in their fifties, looked focused and angry but mostly confused that their usually slow graveyard shift had been hijacked by rowdy teenagers. The only adult customers, two men in tank tops and trucker hats, were seated at the counter, clearly trying to shovel their scrambled eggs down and pay their bill as quickly as possible.

Before Elliot could start to move forward, someone came up from behind and put an arm around his shoulders.

“Elliot! You are my freakin' hero, man,” said the unknown voice. Elliot swiveled to get a look at the guy, who turned out to be a football player that Elliot had only had a couple of classes with throughout high school. The guy smelled like whiskey, and Elliot felt a flush of shame at the realization that he had smelled the same way earlier in the night. “What you did at prom?” The football player put a hand to the side of Elliot's head and made an exploding sound, complete with a spray of spit. “So cool.” He pulled his arm away and gave Elliot a light slap on the cheek. “So freakin' cool.” Then he walked away, stealing the toast off someone else's plate as he passed by.

As soon as that guy was gone, Elliot saw Anthony from his math class walking steadfastly toward him. He was pointing at Elliot with one hand, his other raised up for a high five. Elliot obliged, careful to remember to use his uninjured hand. The sound of their palms smacking against each other rang out through the diner. Anthony walked away without another word, but the high five had alerted others to Elliot's presence, and he was soon surrounded by a chorus of clamoring voices.

“Epic!” someone yelled out.

“I can't believe you did that,” a girl named Diana said, smacking him on the shoulder. “That made prom, like, memorable, you know?”

Several others approached for high fives, and among other things, Elliot's performance was referred to as “legit,” “pro,” “badass,” and, in a strange twist of anachronistic slang, “neat.” He had never known that people liked to express their congratulations in such a variety of unwelcome physical contact, either. Elliot hid his bandaged hand in his jacket pocket to keep it from getting hurt.

“You might not need me. Looks like there are plenty of people who want to start the slow clap for you,” Leila whispered into his ear.

He grinned at Leila and then realized that what she'd said was true. Never before had he felt so many eyes staring at him with approval. The hands kept coming at him for high fives, and each one he returned with growing enthusiasm, the smack of palms meeting sounding each time more satisfying, like deconstructed applause.

This was it, the turning point of his night. Any moment now, the crowd of smiling faces would part slowly for him, one by one stepping aside until they finally revealed Maribel looking on at him. She'd smile and say something sweet and charming and instantly classic, something quotable. This was how his night was supposed to go, and now it was happening. She was at the diner. Elliot could feel it in the air.

He stepped forward, scanning the booths on his left, the tables on his right. The white noise of so many chattering voices felt like silence to him, like the precursor to a pop song that would erupt only after he and Maribel finally kissed.

As he passed the table where all the drama geeks were sitting, someone grabbed Elliot's wrist and pulled him in. “Here you go,” the guy said, putting three pieces of bacon into Elliot's hand. “You deserve this.”

Confused but thankful, Elliot nodded and took the bacon. He felt a tap on his shoulder, and his heart quickened, thinking it was Maribel.

“I'm actually pretty hungry,” Leila said once he'd turned to face her. “Do you mind?”

He handed over the bacon, wiped the grease off against his pant leg, and continued down the aisle. The basketball players were all eating voraciously; the artsy kids were holding their empty coffee mugs up in the air, gesturing for a refill. Peter Jones, the MIT student-to-be, was looking around the diner forlornly, counting. “I just don't get it,” Elliot heard him say.

Then, like the sun breaking through on a cloudy day, a flash of purple shone from the far side of the crowd.

All he could definitively see of the girl was her dress hanging out the side of the booth, that unmistakable shade of purple. She was in the corner booth, her back turned toward Elliot. When a waitress passed by and moved someone out of the way, Elliot could see Maribel's hand resting on the table, the orchid corsage prominently displayed on her wrist.

Elliot spoke over his shoulder to Leila, not willing to lose sight of Maribel. “That's her.”

Without waiting for Leila's encouragement, he strode through the diner, sidestepping everyone who was obliviously standing in the middle of the aisle, the drunks sprawled with their legs poking out from the booths. He lost awareness of how hard his heart was beating, how many knots his stomach had twisted itself into, whether his hand still hurt. All he had in mind was Maribel.

Her name was on the tip of his tongue before he reached her; he felt so ready to speak it out loud, to tell her exactly how much she meant to him. But she wasn't alone.

In the booth with her was a guy. Some guy Elliot had never seen before, someone who, as far as Elliot knew, didn't even go to their school. He was in a tux, immaculate. Maribel was laughing at something the guy had said. They didn't even notice that Elliot was there.

Unable to avert his eyes, his feet seemingly unwilling to carry him away, Elliot could only look on as the girl he'd loved for the better part of a decade leaned forward and kissed the unknown guy.

Throughout their friendship, Maribel had on occasion given Elliot a peck on the cheek. Once, the peck had slipped from his cheek to a place that could almost be considered beneath the earlobe. This, however, was no peck. Maribel's hand, the one with the corsage on the wrist, went up to the guy's face and pulled him in closer.

Elliot's heart broke all over again before the act had even finished. Everything he'd gone through that night, only to find her like this. He wanted to disappear. He felt as if he
was
disappearing, like his body had finally had enough of tonight's shit and was hitting the self-destruct button. As if, any minute now, he would simply explode.

He'd thought that unrequited love was torture. He thought he'd understood what the orchid had felt like being run into the ground like that. But he'd only been lying there all night, still whole, and now Maribel was the tire smashing him into the asphalt.

Finally, mercifully, the stranger sensed Elliot's presence and pulled away from Maribel. When she noticed his attention was elsewhere, she turned around. Her eyes instantly met Elliot's.

How unfair that the person breaking your heart could still be resoundingly beautiful, that her face was still the one you loved the most in the world. In those eyes of hers, Elliot spotted a look that must have been pity. He wondered if it had always been there and he'd just missed it all these years. Suddenly aware that he would rather be absolutely anywhere else on the planet, Elliot turned back the way he'd come. By the time he passed Leila, he was nearly in a sprint, wishing he could forget about the whole night.

7

ELLIOT WAS QUIET
on the drive to his house. He didn't want to talk about Maribel, didn't want Leila to feel sorry for him, didn't want to give in to that building pressure of tears behind his eyes. The sky over the horizon was starting to brighten into lighter shades of purple, the clouds that had been there all night starting to reveal themselves.

Leila parked the car. There was nothing Elliot wanted more than to shed the dirty tuxedo, crawl into his bed, and pray for sleep. However, the lights were on throughout his house, meaning his mom had stayed up waiting for him, her panicky imagination no doubt making her worry more than necessary, especially since he'd been avoiding her calls all night. So, instead, he and Leila walked around the corner to the small playground at the park. They seated themselves on the swing set, looking out at the clouds slowly turning pink and orange. The chains creaked under the strain of Elliot's weight.

He could feel Leila's gaze on him. “Please don't ask me if I'm okay.”

“I wasn't going to. I know you're not.”

Elliot leaned his head against the swing's chain. A tear rolled out of the corner of his eye, and he brushed it quickly away.

Fuck Molly Ringwald and her happy endings. Fuck Lloyd Dobler, who, if he had existed in real life, probably
would
have lain down in the middle of the road, and he wouldn't have waited for a rainy day to do it. They were the reasons that Elliot's chest felt like it had collapsed in on itself. It was because of them that he'd allowed himself to love Maribel for so long; it was their fault that he had deluded himself into thinking that a sweeping romantic gesture could convince someone to love you when they didn't.

“Life's not like those movies. It was stupid of me to think it ever could be.” He kicked at the ground, mud sticking to the tip of his shoe. “I should just stop watching them; they're messing with my head.”

Elliot wiped at his eyes again, trying to will away his tears. The chains of the swing creaked with the movement. He'd often sat with Maribel at the park, on those very swings, killing time on empty afternoons. It had felt as if they were living in a world made just for the two of them.

The first rays of the sun appeared, clearly delineated through the clouds like something out of a painting. The clouds were golden, the baby-blue sky tinted with bright orange hues. “Goddamnit, sky,” Elliot said. “Now's not the time to look so picturesque. I'm trying to make a point about life being crappy.”

Leila chuckled beside him. She was gently rocking herself on the swing, her feet pushing against the ground but never leaving it. Her sundress swished quietly with the movement. They looked on at the inappropriately majestic sky. “You know what would happen next in the movie, right?”

Elliot sighed, hoping she wouldn't try to keep his hope alive. He turned to look at her, surprised at the realization that he'd only known her a handful of hours. It felt much longer than that. She planted her feet firmly to stop her swaying and met his eyes. He was taken aback by how striking they were, as if it was the first time he'd really seen them. Then she leaned in and kissed him.

It took him a moment to register what was happening. Her mouth was on his, soft and warm and exhilarating. His eyes were still open, and he could swear he saw the world starting to change. The light around them turned golden, soft, as if filtered through a lens. He closed his eyes, hearing music in his head that easily could have been coming from everywhere all at once.

He was wrong; life could be like the movies. He kissed back, his heart swelling.

Then Leila pulled away from him, placing one hand flat against his chest. The sun was starting to show over the horizon, orange and blinding, making her eyes shine. “Don't get the wrong idea,” she said. “That was just to show you that it can happen to you. That you can get a happy ending, if you find the right person.” She removed her hand from his chest but kept her eyes on his. “I know you were hoping that person was Maribel. But just because things turned out differently with her, that doesn't mean you'll never get to experience movie love.”

Elliot unconsciously ran his tongue over his lips, the taste and feel of Leila's mouth lingering in his.

“It will happen to you,” Leila said, turning back to face the sunrise. “You're a great guy, and you're willing to fight for those you love. Someday, someone will see that. And she'll love you for it. One day, Elliot, you
will
get the girl.” Leila looked down at the ground and started rocking herself again until the chains squeaked. “Just not today.”

Elliot didn't know quite what to say. He joined Leila in staring at the sunrise and slowly rocking the swing. Birds chirped to greet the day. A cardinal perched on a nearby tree was looking in their direction, whistling a song in Morse code, one long note followed by three short ones. Then it took off, a red streak disappearing into the trees.

“This isn't going to be the last time you're in love,” Leila continued, “and it's probably not going to be the last time you're heartbroken. You can't go walking into traffic every time it happens.”

Taken aback, Elliot turned to Leila. “I was just a little...” he started to say, but Leila gave him a knowing look that kept him from trying to make up an excuse.

“You're too special a guy to do something as stupid as you almost did tonight.”

“Okay.” Elliot nodded, looking down at his feet.

“I want you to promise me that nothing like that will ever happen again.”

“I promise,” he said quickly. Squinting against the sun, he reached his hand out to her, pinky outstretched.

Leila looked at him, a little confused.

“You've never done a pinky promise?”

She shook her head.

“Put your pinky out like this.” When she did, he wrapped his pinky around hers. Anytime he'd made a pinky promise with Maribel, he'd thought of it as one-fifth of holding hands. “Pinky promises are even more serious than regular ones. So, I'm pinky-promising you that it'll never happen again.”

Squinting through the strengthening sun at their hands, Leila said, “Good. I know we just met, but if I find out you break this promise, I will hunt you down.”

“I believe you,” he said. They pumped their arms a couple of times like a handshake, and then Elliot let Leila's pinky go. “Where the hell are you from that you don't know about pinky promises?”

Leila shrugged and threw her legs out in front of her to get the swing going. “Wisconsin,” she said.

Elliot leaned against the chain, watching her. The wind rippled her dress and her hair; a smile spread her lips. Taking note of his exhaustion, Elliot realized how differently his night might have ended up if it hadn't been Leila's car that he'd stepped in front of.

After a couple of minutes, Leila stopped swinging. “I guess I should let you get to bed, huh? You've had a long night.”

“Ugh. I still have to deal with my mom,” Elliot said, getting up from the swing. “But I might as well face the music now while I can still get some sympathy points for my hand.”

Leila gave him a smile. “She'll get over it.”

“In three or four years, maybe.” He offered her his good hand to help her get up from the swing, and they started walking back to his house. “Thanks for helping tonight. Or at least trying to.”

“My pleasure. Don't feel shitty for too long. You tried your best.”

“Thanks to you.”

She smiled again. It was such a warm smile, it made Elliot jealous of her regular friends, whoever they were. “No thanks necessary. Just remember our pinky promise.”

“I will.” Yawning, he stretched his arms out over his head, feeling his back crack slightly. They'd reached his house and were standing behind the tree in his front yard in case his mom was peeking out. “Are you leaving now, hitting the road?”

Leila crossed her arms over her chest, then covered her mouth as his yawn spread to her. “Yup. The Northern Lights are calling.”

Elliot nodded as if he understood why she was going, as if he understood anything about her. “Is it okay if we hug? It just seems like a lesser good-bye won't do.”

Leila laughed and stepped to him, wrapping her arms around him uninhibitedly. She was a great hugger, firm and affectionate. She gave an extra squeeze at the end, which he took as one last act of cheerleading on her behalf.
You're going to be okay
, her hug seemed to say.

When they pulled apart, Leila gave him another smile, then raised her hand in a gentle wave. “Bye, Elliot.”

“Bye,” he replied. She turned to walk back to her car, so he headed across the yard to his front door. He forced out a sigh, hoping it would somehow help him prepare for his mom.

That's when he saw the note taped to his front door. It was a plain piece of notebook paper folded in half. His name was neatly written on the front, the handwriting instantly familiar. Elliot plucked the note from the door and opened it.

I'll be at the record store until nine. Please come. I need to see you again. Love, Maribel.

Elliot's heart started beating, a smile already forming on his lips even before he'd seen the last line she'd written at the bottom of the page.

I should have been kissing you.

Elliot turned around and saw Leila in her car, getting ready to go. He sprinted to her, clutching the note in his hand. Speechless, he handed her the note through her open window.

Leila read the note and gave it back to him, smiling as widely as he was. “I guess your movie's not over yet.”

He read the note again, running his finger over the fold, the ink that Maribel's pen had left behind. Then he slipped it into his pocket and looked at Leila. “Mind dropping me off somewhere?”