Let's Get Lost (9 page)

A few interminable seconds went by. Alexis sobbed openly. Bree wanted to ask where the hell the tears had been months ago but wasn't able to form the words. Leila shifted her weight from one foot to the other. When she managed to control herself for a second, Alexis met Bree's eyes. “I show up in Kansas City to bail you out of jail after I haven't heard from you in nine months, and you don't even apologize for what you did?”

Alexis stopped and harshly rubbed her eyes with the palm of one hand. “Forget about Matt. I thought you were dead, Bree. I called every hospital within a hundred miles. I paid for online newspaper subscriptions in every major city just to check the obituaries, to read about missing people found dead, hoping no one matched your description. You were a brat for months after Mom and Dad died, never once remembering that I lost my parents, too. And all you could do was act out like I was somehow responsible. After everything we went through, you left me alone to worry about you. You didn't give a shit about how it would feel for me.

“Then, nine months later, the worst nine months of a life that's included many, many bad months, I get a phone call from a jail on the other side of the country, and it's not even your voice on the other end. It's a stranger's. You didn't even have the decency to pick up the phone yourself? How can you be so selfish and thoughtless?”

Leila crossed her arms in front of her chest as if to protect herself. Her eyes were fixed on Bree, her gaze steadfast if not for the little dents of worry between her eyebrows. It was quiet outside the police station, but Bree imagined she could hear the sound of things tearing apart.

“Do you really have nothing to say to me?” Alexis said, the car keys in her hand clicking against the window as she leaned on the open door. “Is that how far gone you are?”

The muscles in Bree's chest tightened further. She could still feel Leila's eyes fixed on her, so she craned her neck up and looked for the darkest spot in the night sky. “What the hell are you talking about? You should be the one apologizing. For months after Mom and Dad died, all I heard out of you was complaining. You didn't once say you missed them; you didn't once act like it hurt you that they were gone. All you cared about was spending time with Matt. As if you didn't have any family left at all. This is the first time I've even seen you cry.”

Alexis exhaled out her mouth and shook her head. “I cried every night, Bree. As soon as I got to bed, I'd turn on the TV to hide the noise and bury my face in the pillow and weep. It's a wonder Matt and I stayed together as long as we did, considering how much of our time together I spent in tears.”

The memory came back to Bree, how she'd hear the television through the wall and curse her sister for being able to move on so quickly. “If that's true, how come you never told me?”

“I was trying to be strong in front of you. I was miserable. I'm still miserable,” she sighed, or gasped, or maybe some mix of the two. “My parents died, and then my kid sister started showing up drunk, hanging out with junkies, and always looking for a fight. How could I have possibly felt any other way?”

She sniffed and, judging by the sound of it, pulled something out of her bag to blow her nose into, though Bree couldn't bring herself to look.

“So you know, to get you out of this mess, I had to call Matt,” Alexis added, saying his name as if she were throwing it at Bree. “The last person I wanted to talk to, thanks to you. He called the guy whose car you stole and managed to convince him to drop the charges.” She'd said the last bit slowly, as if waiting for Bree to interrupt her. “So you're free to do whatever you want again.”

Before Bree could say anything else, Alexis's car door was closing shut. The engine shuddered to life, and the interior light of the car flicked on as Alexis checked herself in the mirror, wiping at her eyes. Then the car started, and Alexis was headed down the road.

Bree waited until Alexis's car was no longer visible before she turned to Leila. She felt herself starting to tremble with oncoming tears, as if Alexis's crying was contagious. “That went well.”

She grabbed her duffel bag off the ground and lifted the strap over her shoulder. It scraped against her sunburned neck and sent a sting of pain down her back. Whenever she was faced with a situation she'd never been in before, Bree liked to take note of her surroundings, committed, as she was, to not let life pass by unnoticed. But she barely paid attention to the pleasantness of the Kansas air, or to the officers chatting with their hands on their utility belts in the parking lot; they were forgotten almost as soon as they were noticed, driven out of focus by Alexis's words. Bree felt as if there wasn't even anything around but her and the mess happening inside her stomach. She needed to sit down, but she was afraid that then the tears would come, and she wouldn't be able to stand back up for hours.

“You know,” Bree said, taking the stairs so slowly it looked as if she was limping, “I think I'm gonna keep going on my own.”

Leila stopped following her. “Why?” She sounded hurt.

“I just need to be on my own for a little while,” Bree said. Speaking took an unreasonable amount of effort. She felt out of breath, dizzy, picturing Alexis weeping into a pillow, calling up hospitals, worried sick while Bree herself hitchhiked and shoplifted and blocked out whatever thoughts clashed with her professed love of life.

Leila bit her lip and furrowed her brow. “I don't understand.”

“Thanks for a good day,” Bree muttered, nearly breathless. “Sorry I got you arrested.” She adjusted the duffel bag strap one more time and then turned away from Leila, heading down the road without glancing back, the entire world fading away and leaving her alone with her thoughts.

6

NOT A LOT
of people in Mission Hills, Kansas, Bree soon learned, needed to use the highway after midnight on a weekday. After leaving the police station, she'd walked for about half an hour to calm herself. And though she still couldn't think clearly, the ingrained habits of the road took over, and she found herself searching for rides. She'd been standing at the stoplight before the on-ramp for at least an hour now, and the driver of the only car that had passed hadn't even seen her.

She dropped her duffel bag and changed into the fluorescent-green tank top she'd used as a sun shade earlier in the day. Crumbs fell away like snow when she pulled it out. A pair of headlights started her way but turned left a few blocks before the highway. Bree usually found nighttime streets so beautiful, everything lit up in orange and acutely peaceful, the branches and streetlights and asphalt calm, as if sleeping. Now everything just looked lonely.

She spotted a scattering of rocks by the side of the road and picked up a handful of them. Feeling the urge to throw them at something, she decided on the post of the stoplight on the opposite side of the street. She was waiting for that clang of rock hitting metal but kept missing. With each pebble that flew past the post noiselessly, Bree grew angrier. At the pebbles, at the post, at herself. More than anything, though, she grew angrier at her inner monologue, at how her brain would not stop repeating the same words over and over again in Alexis's voice:
selfish and thoughtless
.

Finally, a pebble caught the stainless steel of the post, and the sound reverberated through the night. Bree raised her hands in the air and let out a triumphant scream. A car on the overhead highway pass sped by unseen. Then the night fell into silence again, and Alexis's voice returned.

Bree sat down on the curb, forearms on her legs, head buried in her lap, like someone too drunk to walk, or someone bracing for a plane crash.

Selfish and thoughtless.
Bree wanted to shove the words back into her sister's face. Who'd been selfish first? Long before Bree had left, Alexis had started spending the night at Matt's place, had started canceling lunch plans, acting like an authority figure, when all Bree wanted was an ally. And for who? A dull, barely attractive law student? A guy with aspirations to read through contracts the rest of his life?

Bree stared at the tiny pebbles on the asphalt, at a shimmering glass shard left behind from some long-since cleaned-up accident. She tried not to think about how many nights in the last nine months Alexis had spent alone in an empty house, tissues bunched up and torn all around her like fallen debris. Bree tried to tell herself that it was not because of her. She tried to convince herself that Alexis's insisting on being strong rather than compassionate was the root of the problem, but no matter how hard she tried, the argument didn't stick, pushed away again and again by Alexis's voice:
selfish and thoughtless.

Then she noticed that the glass shard was shimmering from headlights cutting through the dark. Bree stood up and stuck her thumb out in that classic hitchhiking pose, that cliché without a substitute. Her first thought was to grab some more pebbles and throw them at the car, to hear the rocks bounce off the exterior. But she suppressed the urge.

The car was the kind that Mission Hills residents seemed to prefer, large and luxurious, a black SUV with chrome trimmings. It almost drove by, but then the driver slammed on the brakes, swerving to a stop. The window rolled down, and Bree peered inside but kept one foot on the curb.

The driver had bags under his eyes that Bree at first thought were just shadows. His bald head nearly reached the ceiling, and the seat could barely hold him. The top two buttons on his shirt were undone, revealing an army of curly hairs slick with sweat. He didn't say anything at first, just stared in a way that made Bree unzip her duffel bag and feel around inside for the steak knife.

“I need to get to the bus station,” Bree said, trying to make out the object in the SUV's cup holder.

“How's it going?” he said, putting his arm up and resting a hand on the passenger seat's headrest. She got the impression that he could open the door on the other side of the car without having to move much.

Bree caught the sickly sweet smell of whiskey. “The nearest bus station,” Bree repeated, still groping through her clothes and leftover junk food for the blade. “Can you take me?”

“Oh, sure, I can do that for you.” Not bothering to hide the fact that he was trying to get a look down her tank top, he leaned toward her, knocking over the fifth of whiskey that had been resting in the cup holder. He didn't seem to notice.

Bree looked down the road, hoping maybe another car might come by. The road was empty, though, just the asphalt lit up by streetlights, the silhouettes of trees on the side of the road, not even a house or closed business in sight. She pulled her hand out of her bag and checked the side pockets. “How far away is it?”

“Close,” he said. “Very close. We should go get a drink first, though.” As he said this, he seemed to remember the whiskey bottle. “Ah, shit,” he said, and he leaned over to search the floor for it.

Any other night, any other place, Bree would have walked away. She would have walked all night until she stumbled onto a bus station, if she had to. But she knew that Alexis's voice would be right alongside her. She just wanted movement again.

She sighed and grabbed the door handle but didn't open it yet. “Just the bus station would be fine.”

He pulled himself back up, muttering, the bottle in his hand. He unscrewed the cap and took a couple of swigs. “One drink,” he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “Come on, get in.”

Bree felt that with the knife in her hand, getting into the car might not end up being the stupidest thing she'd ever done. It wouldn't be smart, she admitted, but maybe this would just be one of those stories she told later in life about the recklessness of youth. She unzipped the bag all the way and looked as she moved aside the chips, the miniature sewing kit, and a pack of gum. But the knife wasn't there. The cops must have taken it.

And yet she found herself starting to pull the door handle. She caught a glimpse of herself in the SUV's door. She looked tired, worn, the orange glow from the streetlight up ahead surrounding her reflection like some ill-deserved halo.

The driver raised his eyebrows and smiled as Bree swung the door open. “That's what I'm talking about,” he said.

Just as she was about to climb in, Bree heard a familiar chirping and turned to see a car pulling up behind the SUV. The headlights shining in her face made it hard for Bree to make anything out.

Over the sound of the two engines idling, Bree could hear music coming from the car's speakers. The singer's voice was whinier than Bree usually liked, but she was already feeling the urge to turn up the volume. The music got a little louder as Leila opened her door and left her car, coming to Bree's side. She peered into the SUV, and the driver smiled. “Two of you? That's fine. Plenty of me to go around.”

Leila put a hand on Bree's shoulder. “I've been driving around in circles for an hour trying to find you,” Leila said quietly. “I figured you just needed some time to cool off.”

For a moment, Alexis's voice in her head quieted. Bree had never been happier to see someone before. “Good timing,” she said, slamming shut the SUV's door, prompting unintelligible yelling from the driver. “You saved me from the worst decision of my life.”

When Bree got into Leila's car, she saw the cardboard cutout in the backseat and wanted to laugh but couldn't find it within her and just exhaled through her nose, as if her body had lost the ability to laugh outright. She buckled her seat belt and turned up the volume, then closed her eyes and let the music drown out her thoughts. Leila pressed on the gas, and they turned onto the highway.

Selfish and thoughtless,
her brain whispered one more time. Bree thought about what might have happened if she'd gotten into the SUV, pictured how the crash might have occurred. She pictured Alexis getting another unexpected phone call, imagined that her sister might feel—somewhere beneath her sorrow—relief.

The sobs came all at once. They were in her throat before she could stop them, had her gasping for breath before the tears had even reached her cheeks. They dripped down onto the red upholstery of Leila's car, shimmering under passing streetlights for just a second before soaking into the fabric in dark, blood-colored circles.

Leila didn't say anything for a while, but she turned down the music and handed Bree some napkins from the bag of doughnuts that was still in the car. “I know you love your life on the road, Bree,” she said, reaching over and grabbing Bree's hand. “But maybe you love the
idea
of loving it more than you love the life itself.”

Bree wiped at her eyes, smearing some of the wetness across her eyelashes. A car passed them on the other side of the divider. Its headlights turned into radiant suns by the drops clinging to Bree's lashes. She blew her nose into one of the napkins Leila had given her. For a long time, she said nothing, just felt the tears refuse to stop coming, the knot in her stomach unwilling to come undone until Bree admitted what she knew was true. More cars passed by, lighting up Leila's car with their headlights for just a moment before disappearing down the road, oblivious and indifferent to what Bree was feeling. “She was right,” she said finally, gripping a used napkin so tightly that it kept the shape of her closed fist even after she dropped it into the plastic bag hanging from the gearshift. “I am selfish and thoughtless. I thought I was living the way you're supposed to, not taking things for granted. But I was mostly being an asshole, wasn't I?”

“I wouldn't say that.” Leila chuckled.

“No, I was an asshole. I kissed her fiancé and then disappeared. I let my sister think I was dead. And I never apologized to her. She was just trying to take care of me.” Bree's voice trailed off, the realization of what she'd done suffocating her words.

“People hurt each other,” Leila said without much inflection in her voice. “It happens to everyone. Intentionally, unintentionally, regretfully or not. It's a part of what we do as people. The beauty is that we have the ability to heal and forgive.”

Bree let Leila's words hang in the air. Throughout her trip, she'd looked at the night she'd kissed Matt as if it had been a clear example of a day seized. Kissing someone you wanted to kiss, heeding that spontaneous little voice inside of yourself and not looking back felt as if it should always be a victory.

But now it felt like nothing more than a selfish impulse. The tears started to come again. She felt them roll out on their own accord, unaccompanied by any sobbing this time, just like the way Alexis had cried at the jail.

Bree sat up, tugging at the seat belt that was pressing too tightly against her. “I'm such a screwup,” she said, grabbing another napkin and wiping her nose. “I don't know what I can say to make it okay, but I need to tell her I'm sorry. We need to find her.”

“Okay, we will.”

“How?” Bree said. “I don't know where she is. I don't remember her cell phone number. Do you have it?”

Leila shook her head. “They looked up your home phone number for me at the police station.”

“So, she's gone.” The surge of tears blurred Bree's vision, and she let them drip.

“I think I know where to go,” Leila said.

As the car picked up speed, Bree held on to Leila's comforting hand and allowed herself to cry.