Let's Get Lost (18 page)

“Anything I can do?” the girl asked. “Want some coffee?”

Sonia shook her head. “Thanks.”

Crumpling the used napkin in her hand, Sonia blurted out, “Actually, could you drive me somewhere? Anywhere will do. I just need to get away.”

The girl with the black hair nodded, her brow furrowed in concern. “Sure. Hop in.”

2

SONIA LOOKED AT
her reflection in the bathroom mirror. Her cheeks were puffy from crying, her hair knotted, her eyes red. Jeremiah's jacket hung loosely on her, her arms disappearing in its sleeves. She'd fastened all three buttons, but it didn't cover up the fact she was wearing only a bra beneath.

She rolled the sleeves back and splashed some water onto her face, then grabbed some lip gloss out of her purse and applied it halfheartedly. Her phone buzzed again, rattling on the dirty rest-stop bathroom counter. Jeremiah's name took up the screen. She couldn't imagine answering the phone without breaking down in tears again. Even if he was calling to tell her to come back to his room, she still wouldn't be able to tell him whether or not she was over Sam.

Sonia silenced the phone and shoved it into the tuxedo pocket. Then she splashed some more water onto her face and walked out of the bathroom. The girl—Sonia had learned about thirty minutes into their drive that her name was Leila—was sitting in the driver's seat with her feet out of the car, gazing at the landscape of tree-lined mountains made visible only by the full moon.

“I'm sorry for making you drive this far. You don't really have to drive me all the way back home,” she said, even though they'd already crossed the border back into the US and were about halfway to Tacoma. She plopped herself into the passenger seat, and Leila started the car back up, merging onto the freeway.

Leila shrugged. “I don't mind. Are you feeling better?”

“Not really.” Her phone rang again, and she pressed the button on the side to make the buzzing stop.

“What were you doing in Canada?” Leila asked, checking her side-view mirrors as a semi rumbled past them.

“Family wedding,” Sonia answered, to simplify. “You?”

“Just passing through, I guess.”

Not even a minute had passed before the buzzing started again. “I'm sorry,” Sonia said. “I'm gonna get this. He's never going to stop.”

She answered the call, though she didn't say anything at first.

“Sonia?”

“Yeah,” she said, her voice already starting to quaver. Just the way he'd said her name had felt off, the hurt dripping from his voice.

“My jacket. I need it back.”

Sonia hesitated, looking over at Leila, who was focused on driving. “I left town.” She couldn't actually hear anything coming from his end, just the dullest hum of static or wind or the air conditioner working in his hotel room. He was quiet for so long that she checked the phone to make sure the call was still connected.

“The weddings rings are in the jacket, Sonia.”

Another semitrailer roared past them, blinking red lights all around it, like those atop a building warding off planes. It made everything around rumble, even the air.

“What?” As soon as she said it, though, she could feel the excessive weight of the tuxedo jacket, and she became aware of a bulkiness pressing against her chest.

“Wherever you are, you have to come back.”

She patted at the inside breast pocket, feeling the box. She raised her hand up to her hair, tugging at the matted mess. She couldn't believe that she'd left the hotel wearing the jacket, that she hadn't felt the weight of the rings at any point on the drive. She knew she had to go back, but she didn't know if she could face that broken look in Jeremiah's eyes again. “Are we okay?” she said, almost in a whimper.

“We can talk about that later. But you need to bring those rings back.” Jeremiah had never been so short with her.

Sonia nodded to herself, looking over at Leila, who had been listening to Sonia's conversation with a concerned look on her face. “Okay,” she said, then hung up the phone, unable to bear the lack of sweetness in his tone.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Leila asked after a few moments.

Sonia crossed her arms and just shook her head. She didn't blame Leila for asking, but talking about it couldn't help. Talking was exactly what had made everything blow up so quickly in the first place. She couldn't even bring herself to ask Leila to turn the car around.

“Hey, look, we've all been there,” Leila said. “If I know anything, it's that keeping your problems to yourself only makes them harder to deal with.”

“Yeah? You go around telling your problems to everyone around?” Sonia said, immediately regretting her tone.

Leila lowered her head. “No, I don't. Not enough. That's why I know.”

“Sorry, I didn't mean that. You've been nothing but kind to me, I shouldn't be snapping at you.” Sonia looked out at the darkness of the highway. She'd gone up and down this highway plenty of times on road trips to Sam's family's cabin, but she couldn't recognize exactly which rest stop they'd stopped at, how far away from home she was.

“That's okay. You're upset,” Leila said. “You know that awful feeling you get in your stomach whenever you think about whatever's making you cry?”

Immediately, Sonia thought of the car ride to the hospital after Sam collapsed. She thought of the first time she'd kissed Jeremiah. Of how she hadn't been able to write a single word in months, the pages of her notebook painfully blank, as if there was nothing at all on her mind. She thought about Martha, who still talked to Sonia about Sam as if she expected him to come out of his room at any moment. Yes, she was quite familiar with that feeling. She'd been in its grips for a year, and the only person who could make it go away was now adding to it. “Yeah,” she managed to say.

“Well, right now it's feeling worse because the same thoughts are repeating themselves, bouncing around in there. You're like a teakettle begging to let out some steam. You need to let someone pull you off the stove and pour you into a cup.”

“You're saying you want to turn me into tea?”

“The metaphor's a little jumbled, maybe,” Leila said. “But I think you get what I'm saying. I just want to help.”

Sonia looked at a car passing by, trying to get a glimpse of the people inside but seeing just a blur of metal.

“Why? Why are you being so nice to a perfect stranger?”

“I don't know. Maybe I just really like tea.”

Surprising herself, Sonia managed to smile. She looked at Leila, for a second forgetting Sam and Jeremiah, wondering who, exactly, this girl was.

Leila shifted, bringing her left leg up onto the seat and tucking it beneath her.

Sonia pulled her phone out of her pocket, checking the time and subtracting the hours until the wedding. When the screen came to life, it showed the picture of her and Sam sitting on top of the troll statue in Seattle. Sonia had wondered if it bothered Jeremiah, seeing that picture, if she should change it. Even that was a betrayal she wasn't ready to commit.

Sonia was usually better at dealing with her emotions with paper and pen, but then, she'd apparently lost that ability. Maybe Leila was trustworthy, the way she talked about sadness as if she was familiar with it. Or maybe there's just a limit to how long we can hold something in before it comes spilling out involuntarily.

“About seven months ago,” Sonia began, “my boyfriend of two years, Sam, collapsed in the middle of a basketball game. They rushed him to the hospital, but he died within two hours. A heart abnormality. Something myocardia? I don't know. I can never remember the exact name.

“I know most teenagers think their first love is the one and only love of their lives, but we were special.” She paused to wipe at her eyes and, noticing that her phone was still lit up with Sam's picture, put it back in her pocket, knowing she couldn't handle talking about him and looking at him at the same time. “When he died, I felt that was it for me. That no one would ever come close to what we had. I didn't
want
anyone to come close. My soul mate was gone, and I was going to spend the rest of my life without him.”

A tear scurried down Sonia's cheek quickly, as if it were being sucked in by a drain. She shook her head at herself and wiped the trail the tear had left behind. “God, that's just the beginning. Are you sure you want to hear all this?”

“The tea's not ready. Keep pouring.”

“That metaphor is not working at all.” Sonia chuckled.

“Whatever! You're not done telling your story.”

Sonia rubbed her eyes, then ran a hand through her hair, gathering her thoughts. “His family was always great to me,” she continued. “And after he died, that didn't change at all. If anything, they got even better. They'd call to check how I was doing, they'd take me out to dinner, invite me to the movies. Hell, they treat me better than my own family does. I'd never really had that feeling of belonging until I met Sam.

“So anyway, I was over at their house a bunch, for family dinners and barbecues and all that. And that's where I met Jeremiah. His brother is marrying Sam's sister tomorrow,” she said, pulling her cell phone out of her pocket and motioning to show that this was who'd been calling her. She took a slow breath, feeling as if she were on a tightrope, and moving too quickly would send her plummeting down to another weeping session.

“At first I didn't even get that it was a crush. One day he offered me a ride home, and before I realized it, we were kissing. I felt sick to my stomach for days afterward. I mean, the last batch of flowers I'd put on Sam's grave hadn't even wilted yet, and I was jumping into someone else's arms.”

Leila opened her mouth to say something, then changed her mind and waited for Sonia to continue. They drove onto a bridge, a little brown sign letting them know they were passing over the Stillaguamish River.

“We've been secretly seeing each other for a couple of months now, and despite how happy he makes me, when we're not together, I feel even more miserable than I usually do. I can't stop feeling like I'm cheating on Sam, like being with Jeremiah means I never even loved him at all, and he died wrongly believing he'd found his soul mate.

“And now Jeremiah wants to go public, or he wants to break up—I don't even know which. But I can't have Sam's family knowing that I'm seeing someone else. I can barely even think about it myself, so how could I face telling them? What if they don't want anything to do with me after they find out? I can't risk losing them.”

They must have been going fairly slowly, because every now and then someone would pass them, headlights filling up Leila's car. Leila remained quiet, patient for Sonia to work through her story, as if she really expected to soak up Sonia's sadness by just listening.

Sonia's knee knocked against the plastic bag that hung off the gearshift. A half-full bottle of water sat in a cup holder, which Leila offered as soon as she saw Sonia eyeing it.

“When I ran into you,” Sonia said, “Jeremiah and I had just gotten into a fight, and I needed to get away from there. But I'm an idiot and left wearing his jacket, which has the wedding rings in it.” She looked over at Leila, whose serene face had taken on little hints of worry: a furrow in her brow, the slightest droop to her lips. “Do you think we could go back? I really need to bring him the rings. It'll ruin the wedding if I don't.”

Leila immediately turned her blinker on and pulled over onto the shoulder, the car rumbling as they passed over the divots in the road that warned drivers they were too close to the edge. “Why didn't you say so earlier?” Leila asked, angling the car for a U-turn.

“You didn't even think twice about it,” Sonia said, in awe.

“I think the last thing you need right now is to feel like no one is on your side. If all it takes is a little gas and time for me to help someone feel not alone, I'm more than happy to do it.” She glided onto the empty two-lane highway, going back the way they'd come.

“So, is the awful feeling gone?” Leila asked, smiling.

“Not really.” Sonia took another drink of water, her mind racing with gratitude. “But it helped. Thank you.”

“My pleasure.” Leila smiled.

For a second, it did seem that the awful feeling had gone away, or at least was less awful than before. But something was nagging at Sonia, a vague fear that there was something she'd forgotten. She checked the breast pocket of the jacket and found that the box with the rings was still there. Just to make sure, she pulled it out and saw the two upright rings, little silver soldiers standing at attention. Her phone was tucked safely against the waistband of her shorts.

To make sure she still had her wallet and passport, she reached down to the floor to grab her purse. As soon as her fingers felt the fibers of the mat at her feet, Sonia's hands scurried about the floor, searching for the touch of leather. She leaned over and slipped her hand as far below the seat as it could go.

“What's wrong?”

“Shit,” Sonia said, picturing clearly her purse sitting on a dirty bathroom counter. “I think I left my purse at the rest stop.” She unbuckled her seat belt and crawled down to get a look, her shoulder pressed hard against the faux-suede fabric of the car seat. But she knew it wasn't there.

“That's okay,” Leila said calmly. “We'll stop by on our way back.”

It only took them a couple of minutes to get there. There were no other cars in the lot, which Sonia took as a good sign that the purse would be untouched. She rushed out of the car and into the bathroom.

And yet the bathroom counter was completely bare, nothing on it except for puddles and the dried crust of soap that had leaked out from the dispenser. She sprinted from the door to the counter, as if she was just too far away to see the purse. But it was gone, and with it all its contents: her lip gloss; a picture of her and Sam taken at arm's length; her wallet, which contained an emergency credit card, a few Canadian bills, and her Washington State driver's license; her hotel room key; her notebook, the last few entries full of words scratched out almost as soon as they'd been written; and her US passport, the ink from her latest entry stamp not yet dry.