Let's Get Lost (23 page)

8

IT WAS A
pretty drive from the hotel to the church. Everything was green, the sky suddenly bereft of clouds. The road took them along the lake, and even though it was early August, everything seemed to be in bloom. Purple, white, and pink blossoms dotted the landscape. Bright yellow flowers grew right along the asphalt, leaning into the street, as if asking someone to take them away.

Sam's dad, Bill, was quiet as he drove, focused on the road. He hated speed and usually begged Martha to drive on their road trips. But Martha was in the back helping Sonia with her makeup. Sonia could see sweat forming on Bill's hairline in the rearview mirror.

“Other eye,” Martha said, turning Sonia's head toward her to apply the eyeliner.

“What'd you do all morning?” Martha asked. “You didn't go with everyone else to breakfast?”

“Nope,” Sonia said. “Just kind of stayed in bed, trying to catch up on sleep.” She kept her gaze out the window, enjoying the drive, going over in her head exactly what she wanted to say. “Liz picked a good date,” she said, admiring the prettiness of the day.

“It's funny, I could have sworn there were clouds earlier,” Martha said, tilting her head to look past the tops of the trees they were driving past. “Even if there were clouds, I wouldn't put it past Liz to find a way to get rid of them. That girl knows how to get her way.”

“Nothing like her mother,” Bill said, checking the rearview mirror to see if Sonia would laugh at his joke. She smiled at him and turned away, his eyes a little too much like Sam's for her to hold his gaze for very long.

When they arrived at the church, the ushers were not yet herding people toward the door. Wedding guests loitered around the entrance, seeking shade, posing for pictures with their arms around each other. The collective murmuring of the crowd was the only audible sound, and Sonia knew exactly what she would hear if she closed her eyes and listened for words. And because she felt as if she owed it to him, she did. She shut her eyes and felt the breeze on her skin and listened carefully until in the chorus of voices she could pick out Sam's name being spoken.

Opening her eyes, Sonia looked at the church, which was large and made of stone, with a tall, vaulted ceiling and stained-glass windows. Sonia spotted Jeremiah standing next to Roger at the curved entrance of the church. He was trying not to look at her. She waited until he gave in and motioned for him to come closer, then looked around the rest of the courtyard and the grassy surroundings for Liz's white dress. For a moment, she worried that Liz was hidden away somewhere, far from the prying, if unlucky, pre-wedding eyes of the groom. Then she remembered how Liz had professed a hatred for that particular tradition. “I'm not some prize waiting to be revealed behind the curtain,” she'd said. “It's dehumanizing. No, I get to mingle with my friends and family before the wedding, too. And if Roger isn't blown away by having me stand at the altar with him just because he saw me fifteen minutes earlier, then we're off to a bad start.”

Roger was coming along with Jeremiah, headed in Sonia's direction, presumably to say hi to Martha and Bill. When they got there, Sonia asked Roger to find Liz and bring her over, trying to make it sound natural, trying not to think that this would ruin the wedding, exactly what she had spent all night trying to
avoid
doing.

Meanwhile, Jeremiah greeted Sam's parents, shaking Bill's hand and kissing Martha on the cheek. He navigated through the parental small talk with ease, as if he weren't a college freshman but someone much older, someone who knew exactly his place in the world. It was one of the things she loved about him: his ability to be so well-spoken when she knew him to be such a goofball at heart.

Liz arrived beaming, whatever worries she might have about the wedding temporarily put aside to cheerfully greet her parents. After a round of hugs to everyone around, her hand went back to Roger's, her fingers finding the spaces between his as if that was exactly where they belonged. Sonia resisted the urge to do the same with Jeremiah.

“Martha, Bill, Liz, I have something I need to tell you.” Everyone turned to look at her, and she almost lost her resolve. She met Jeremiah's eyes, and he gave her a knowing smile, a slight nod.

“I know this is absolutely terrible timing. But I don't want to hide anything from you anymore. You guys have always treated me so well, like I'm actually part of the family.” She stopped, feeling her voice start to quaver. “Jeremiah and I are seeing each other.”

She tried to read the expressions on their faces, but after registering their surprise, she tore herself away, choosing instead to look at the grass and the six pairs of shoes gathered in a semicircle, their tips all pointed at her. She felt a tickle by her temple and realized only after wiping at the spot that she'd started to cry. “I'm so sorry that I didn't tell you sooner. I just didn't want it to seem like I'm forgetting about Sam. I'm not. I promise, I'm not.”

Sonia unclasped her purse and pulled out one of the tissues she'd shoved inside, using it to wipe at her nose. A woman in an olive-green dress called out to Liz and started walking toward the group. Liz waved and then held up a finger, telling the woman to give her a minute.

Sonia went on. “It's too soon, I know.” She pressed the tissue against her nose again and sniffed. No cute sniffles here; this was a thick, dutiful sniff, aiming to keep back the snot in her nose so that she could finish her damn apology to this wonderful family.

“It's too soon. But here it is anyway.” She turned to Jeremiah, whose expression didn't give enough away. “I'm in love with you,” she said. “I'll always love Sam, but I'm in love with you now, and I'm sorry that I didn't have the guts to admit it before.” She turned back to Sam's family.

“And I'm sorry I didn't tell you guys sooner and that I'm telling you right now. But I had to tell you. And, Liz, I'd understand if you don't want me to be in the ceremony anymore, or”—she turned to Martha and Bill—“if you guys want me to go altogether. I'm only a part of this family because of Sam, and I'm just so sorry that I couldn't love him even more while he was here.”

She could tell that people were starting to glance in her direction. She turned her head back to the grass, the expressionless shoes on the ground. She felt a hand on her shoulder and assumed it was Jeremiah's, and she might have felt strange about taking it if she didn't need it so much. But when she reached for it, she felt rings, unfamiliarity.

“Darling, look at me.” Martha was smiling at her, not even an arm's length away. “It is okay to move on.” Over Martha's shoulder, Sonia could see Liz dabbing at the corner of one eye with the hand that still held Roger's. She, too, was smiling. “You joined this family because of Sam, yes. But you are always going to be a part of this family. And, like any member of this family, I want you to be happy.”

Around them, wedding guests started moving toward the entrance of the church. When Sonia tasted the saltiness of tears, she realized she was smiling. The sobs were under control, but the tears still flowed.

“It's a strange time for all of us, but I'm happy you told us,” Martha went on. “I might have the urge to try to keep Sam alive through you, but if I do that, please stop me. You are not just Sam's girlfriend to us. Or Sam's ex, or Sam's anything. You are Sonia. Our Sonia, as far as we're concerned.”

“And,” Liz interjected, “if you think for a second this is going to get you out of being my bridesmaid, you are dead wrong. No incredibly-in-poor-taste pun intended.” She wiped at her eyes again and hugged Sonia, Roger's arm dragged into the hug, since Liz refused to let go of him. “And you.” She turned to Jeremiah, sticking a menacing finger in his face. “Break her heart, and I'll chop off your—”

“Liz!” Martha and Bill both yelled, so on cue that Sonia could imagine Liz making the threat enough times before that her parents had learned exactly when to interrupt her.

“I mean it: You hurt her, and I will hurt you back,” Liz said, her finger still in Jeremiah's face.

“Y-yes,” Jeremiah stammered quickly. “Agreed. If I hurt her, I would
want
you to hurt me back.”

“Good,” Liz said, “holstering” her finger back to her side and turning over her shoulder to look at the crowd funneling its way into the church. “Now, would anyone mind if we get on with my wedding, please?”

“Don't be a brat,” Martha said. “We're having a moment here.”

“It's my wedding. I can brat if I want to,” Liz said, sticking out her tongue.

A breeze, by no means a perfect one—a little too warm and pollinated—blew past them. It made Sonia think of Leila, for some reason. When she felt the air rushing past her, cooling the tears on her cheeks, brushing past her skin, she got a clear image of Leila in her red car, with its red interior, with her hair flying in the breeze of an open window.

“Come on,” Martha said, holding her shawl close to her shoulders. “Let's go before my daughter threatens to cut off any more body parts.”

* * *

The dance floor was just starting to fill up. A little drunk off the four-course meal and the wine and the relief, Sonia grabbed Jeremiah's hand and pulled him from his chair.

“Are you ready to be amazed by my dancing moves?” he said, smirking but still looking somewhat nervous.

“I expect to be blown away.”

“If at any point that's not the case, I have a backup plan to distract you by making you laugh and/or making out with you.”

“I like that plan.”

She was only a little self-conscious leading him by the hand in a room full of people. The most public place they'd held hands in before this was the 7/11 down the road from his apartment. On the dance floor, she turned to face him, not letting go of his one hand, putting her other up on his shoulder. His free hand slipped to just above her waist, and they began to waltz, a little off rhythm from the song that was actually playing. Jeremiah didn't know at all what he was doing, but he didn't let that stop him. Sonia pulled herself closer, waiting for the squeeze of his fingers against her hip.

“Sorry I disappeared last night,” she said, looking up at him. She would have loved to see his eyes looking back at her, but they were focused intently on his feet.

“Can I get the story now?”

Sonia considered, then rested her head against his chest, his chin fitting in snugly to one side of her bun. “I don't know if
I
believe the story quite yet. It can wait until the morning.”

“Okay,” he said.

She pressed him closer, then felt him suddenly stumble. Liz and Roger, dancing a little more proficiently, had purposely bumped into them.

“Stop being cute together!” Liz cried out over the music. “That's our job.”

Sonia laughed and then, feeling at once weird and thankful about it, kissed Jeremiah on the dance floor, in plain view of everyone. It was the kind of kiss that can propel a couple into a relationship, and it was not the only one of the kind she'd received from Jeremiah. He kept his eyes closed for an almost comical amount of time after the kiss was over, as if needing to recover from it. She put her head back against his chest, against the tuxedo jacket she'd spent all the previous night in.

A thought occurred to her, of her lost passport sitting in her stolen purse, and out of simple joy and tiredness, she mumbled it against his chest: “I have absolutely no idea how I'm going to get back home.”

 

 

 

 

Leila

 

1

LEILA GRABBED A
nearby log and tossed it into the fire. The hidden moisture within the bark made it crackle and smoke. It was dusk. Since yesterday's arrival at the campsite outside Fairbanks, Alaska, it had been dusk more often than she'd ever seen before, as if the world were spinning just fast enough to keep the sun right below the horizon at all times. In an hour or so, it would finally get dark. Sometime after that, in the stillness of the night, the Northern Lights would maybe, hopefully, streak across the sky.

Leila turned her head away from the plume of smoke stinging her eyes, covering her nose and mouth with a sleeve of her sweater. The smell of the campfire would be in her hair and on her clothes the rest of the night, she knew, and she did not yet know whether or not she liked that.

“Hi,” a little voice called to Leila. She looked up to see a tiny blonde approaching the campfire, waving. The preteen girl's smile was missing three teeth. Her parents walked behind her, the woman in a long, patterned skirt and her hair in braids, the man wearing linen pants and hemp bracelets and sporting a beard that reached his chest. “Do you want to have dinner with us?” the girl asked, not really waiting for an answer before taking a seat next to Leila.

“Dee here noticed you putting your tent up on your own,” the woman said, introducing herself as Harriet and her husband as Brendan. “She made us promise that we wouldn't let you eat alone.”

“Veggies on a stick okay?” Brendan asked, starting to skewer some cherry tomatoes on a twig that he'd brushed mostly clean.

Leila coughed some smoke away and then smiled at the sudden company. “I'd love to have dinner with you guys,” she said to Dee. “Thank you.”

“Tea sound good?” the woman asked, placing a kettle down near the fire and sitting cross-legged on the ground.

“It sounds wonderful.”

Brendan squatted, burying skewers a few inches away from the fire so the vegetables would roast. “How long are you camping for?”

“I booked a spot for a week. But I'm here to see the Northern Lights, so I'll stay longer if I have to.”

“First time?” Brendan clapped his hands together to brush the dirt off.

“Yup.” Leila turned to Dee. “Do you know the truth behind the Northern Lights?”

Little Dee shook her head no, her blond curls bouncing like springs.

Leila knew her father had told her the story, and she could remember how he would tell it out loud, the pauses and gestures he would make. But that memory stood alone. She had no other memories to accompany the story: how old she was the first time she'd heard it, how often it would be repeated back to her, how it had made her feel before.

“Throughout time, people have had different guesses. Some believed that the Northern Lights were great big fires in the sky, or that they were birds frozen in the air. Most people today think they're just the sun's light doing funny things it doesn't do anywhere else. But all of those are wrong.”

Dee was already leaning forward, rapt. Leila wondered if she'd reacted the same way the first time she'd heard the tale. It must have been when she was Dee's age or younger, for the story to stick in her memory when nothing else had.

“The real story about the Northern Lights is this,” Leila said, rubbing her hands together over the fire. “Thousands and thousands of years ago, they didn't exist at all. This was back when people all over the world lived really similar lives. They hunted for food, formed families and tribes. They woke up with the sun, went to bed when it set.

“Then came a girl,” Leila said, “who saw that the world was starting to get bigger, more complicated. Boats were built that could follow rivers to new places. People started painting, writing, making music.

“This girl, she saw that her life might follow a few different paths, and she worried that she'd be sent off down the wrong one. What if she wanted to become an adventurer? What if she was supposed to be a painter, but no one ever gave her a brush? All day, she thought about these other lives she might be living.”

Leila paused for effect, the way she did even when she was retelling the story to herself, letting her mind linger on that last line. Dusk persisted, the sky an orange-hued purple, a few stars coming out of hiding. Leila knew it was too early, but she scanned the sky anyway, hoping she might catch the Lights trying to eavesdrop on her story. Dee seemed enthralled, too wrapped up to notice that her mom had started running her fingers through her blond curls.

“All the possibilities started filling up the girl, spreading through her insides. Her feet got so heavy, she could barely walk. She couldn't lift her arms up to feed herself. The possibilities started pressing down against her lungs, making it hard to breathe.

“Worried, her parents called the tribe's doctor. But he couldn't tell what was wrong with her. Everyone came to see her, but no one could figure out what was making her so heavy. The more people came to visit, the worse she got.

“The problem was that she could see it in everyone else, too. All the lives people weren't living. The teacher with the heart of a warrior. The farmer with the imagination of a writer. Time went by. With every visitor who came to see the girl, she just got worse. She wanted to tell them what was happening, but her tongue was too heavy to speak. Then one day, it was finally too much. There were too many lives for the girl to keep inside any longer.”

“What happened?” Dee asked, leaning forward on her mom's lap.

“There was a flash,” Leila said, opening her palm the way she knew her dad had done when telling the story. “The brightest flash that Earth has ever seen, and it took this girl and all the lives she'd been carrying inside her to the sky. That's what the Northern Lights are. All the lives that we're not living. Not just the girl's, but everyone's.

“According to the legend, the first time you see the Lights, your true path is revealed to you.”

Dee giggled and clapped, and her parents joined in on the applause. Brendan nodded and smiled in approval. Something in the fire popped, and Leila stared at the flames as if waiting for something to emerge. This was the first time she'd spoken the story out loud. She was exhilarated by sharing it with someone else but terrified that speaking it might make it leave her memory, the way confessions unburdened a sinner of his crimes.

Still allowing herself to be lazily combed, Dee, in that way that children have of bringing questions out of thin air, asked Leila, “Where's your family?”

Leila hesitated, grabbing a twig near her feet and picking at the bark. She looked at Dee, who'd asked so damn innocently that Leila couldn't even feel her usual urge to deflect the question.

“Actually, Dee, I don't really have a family anymore. About a year ago, I was in a bad car accident,” she said, waving away the smoke from her face. She could see the parents' expressions soften, eyebrows angled in sorrow. Harriet stopped combing Dee's hair.

“They're dead?” Dee asked, not stepping around the word.

“Yup. I have an aunt and an uncle who took care of me after the accident, but my parents and my sister all died.”

“That's sad.” Dee picked up a nearby twig, poking it into the dirt and not making eye contact.

Leila thought she saw a flash of color in the sky and turned to spot it, but there was nothing there. “Kind of. But, the truth is, I can't remember them at all.” Her hand unconsciously touched the scar that ran from just above her nape to the top of her ear. It still gave her chills to touch it, even through the hair that had grown over it. Each time she felt the scar tissue, she'd imagine the piece of glass that they'd removed. She pictured tons and tons of blood, even though she couldn't remember a single drop of it. “I couldn't recognize them in the pictures or remember the days that those pictures were taken on. It's all gone,” she said, trying to sound dismissive, not wanting to traumatize Dee.

“Amnesia?” Harriet breathed, holding Dee closer to her. “That actually happens, huh?” She twisted at the silver ring in her nose, adjusting it for comfort.

“The doctors said they can't tell how much of it is physical trauma and how much is caused by post-traumatic stress. Only time will tell how much of my memories I'll get back, or if they'll come back at all. The only thing I remember from before the accident is that story about the Northern Lights.”

“You don't remember anything?” Dee asked, scrunching her eyes, trying to imagine such a thing.

“Nope.” Leila shrugged.

“What about your birthday parties? I always remember birthday parties. Last year, I had a cake with strawberries inside, and Mommy and Daddy let me draw on the cake with the frosting, so I could put as much as I wanted, which was a lot. Then we went swimming, and I got three books.” Her eyes shimmered with the memory. “And that wasn't even my best one! Seven was a really good one. You can't remember your seventh birthday?”

“I can't remember any of them,” Leila said, “but I bet seven was a really good one for me, too.”

“What else can't you remember?”

“Honey,” Brendan said, putting a hand on top of Dee's head, “maybe Leila doesn't want to talk about all this.”

“No, it's okay. It feels good to get this off my chest.” She thought about Sonia, Elliot, and Bree, how she'd pushed them to unload their troubles, and she couldn't help but smile. She made a mental note to check the campsite office for mail before heading out again. It was possible the letter from Hudson she'd been hoping for would be waiting for her.

“Since the accident, I've had no idea who I really am. There were bits and pieces: my old diary, the contact list on my phone, pictures. Friends came by the hospital in tears, hugging me, but I had no idea who any of them were. I went back to school after a couple of months, but it was just too weird. Like I'd been inserted into someone else's life. I couldn't even recognize myself in the mirror. It was bizarre to have strangers know who I was more than I did. And still, nothing came back. Just the story about the Lights.

“I can't remember any of my birthday parties,” Leila repeated, trying to make it sound just like another item on a list. “I don't remember when I learned to ride a bike, or if I even know how to. Although I do know that I once learned how to swim and that my body still remembers how to do it.” A pleasant shiver went down her spine as she thought about her swim in the Mississippi. She could feel the goose bumps forming on her arms.

“I can't even imagine what that would be like,” Harriet said softly, Dee's hair still laced around her fingers. “How do you go back to living your old life after something like that?”

“I don't know,” Leila said. “I didn't. I moved from my home in Austin to Louisiana, where my aunt and uncle live. But that didn't help at all. It just made things feel more foreign. When the insurance money came in from the accident, I decided there was nothing keeping me there. There was only one thing I wanted to do, one thing that I thought could actually help bring back my memories.” She looked up at the sky again, for the moment thinking not of the Northern Lights but of Hudson, the way the sky had looked that night, full of stars.

They fell quiet, even Dee, the crackling fire and a nearby creek the only sounds in the air. It was just now getting noticeably darker, the sky a deeper shade of purple, more stars revealing themselves. There were no clouds around to block out the sky. Leila felt a rush of adrenaline flow through her.

“I'm hoping things will change tonight,” Leila said. “There's got to be a reason why the only thing that stayed with me was that story about the Lights. That's why I'm on this trip.” She looked at Brendan and Harriet. They met Leila's eyes, compassion coming through in their expressions. Then they both looked down at Dee at the same time. “I'm hoping that seeing the Northern Lights in person will jog my memory, that it'll bring back some of the details of my life, maybe even bring them all back.

“I'm going to stay up for as long as it's dark and wait for them to show.”

Dee, who had been entertaining herself by tossing nearby things—leaves, twigs, pebbles—into the fire, rose to her feet and crossed to where Leila was sitting on a log. Without hesitating, Dee threw her arms around Leila's shoulders and hugged her tightly. “I hope you remember your birthday parties. Especially your seventh.”

* * *

Leila had been listening to the song on repeat for nearly an hour now. It was that one line that got to her, the relevance of it so striking, she could hardly believe it every time the singer sang it. “Chasing the only meaningful memory you thought you had left,” the singer of Neutral Milk Hotel nasally but beautifully whined through Leila's earphones. She'd discovered the song on the drive into Alaska, and though the rest of the lyrics had nothing to do with her, she'd flashed forward to the exact moment she was having now, lying on a blanket on the grass, looking up at the northern sky, waiting for the Lights to come up. It would have been a lot more satisfying if the Lights had actually shown up. But it'd been hours, and nothing. The sky was going to lighten up soon, and it made Leila feel helpless. She wanted to reach up to the night and dig her fingers into it, beg it to stay just a little bit longer.

The adrenaline was wearing off, sleepiness starting to set in. She couldn't decide which was more disappointing, this or the mailbox at the campsite office being completely empty. Somehow, it felt like different versions of the same thing: the Lights' refusal to make an appearance, Hudson's failure to respond. Clearly, Hudson wanted nothing to do with her.

It all felt so anticlimactic. At that very moment, her whole trip seemed useless. When she'd left her aunt and uncle in their little town outside of New Orleans, she'd felt like a nobody. Less than that, if such a thing was possible. A nonentity, negative space. Now what was she? A nonentity who had driven a few thousand miles and had a handful of good nights mixed in among all the lonely ones. The friends she'd made, if she could call them friends, barely knew anything about her, because there was nothing to know, nothing to tell them. Even that story she had told Hudson about the ants in her hometown: that wasn't her memory at all, just something that she'd read in her diary and repeated, pretending or hoping that, in saying the words out loud, they would feel like her own.