The Lost & Found (15 page)

A
fter the public tour of the grounds and private tour of the tennis courts, Willa and I headed back to the tower and went up to the observation deck. We leaned over the balcony and Willa took a hundred panoramic iPhone photos of the view. It really was a beautiful campus.

I walked the length of the balcony and then turned to walk along the next side when I saw it, a stack of letters wrapped in brown twine, placed carefully on the floor in a corner no one was paying much attention to.

I looked around but nobody was watching—it was only Willa and me up there, which was maybe strange or maybe not. I gathered the letters carefully, reading the
return address even though I already knew what it would say: Easton Valley Rest and Recuperation Center for the Permanently Unwell.

And then I looked at the addressee. Instead of “Frances” it said “Heph,” but I knew what that meant because I knew her middle name. And I knew her mother always called her Heph. And I found myself feeling incredibly sorry for her because she had lost these letters and even though I was supposed to meet her in an hour, I didn't feel right holding them. I didn't want to have them for a minute more than I was supposed to.

I couldn't even enjoy the view.

The letters burned into my hands.

They were hot, and I tried to tell myself that was only because they were sitting directly in a shaft of early evening sun and they had probably been sitting there for hours with nothing to do other than soak up the warmth of the Austin day.

But it was a different kind of heat. Or at least it felt different to me. I held the letters in my hand and then put them into the University of Texas tote bag Mary had given me after she'd shown me the tennis courts. They settled against a University of Texas T-shirt and a University of Texas pen and a University of Texas brochure.

“Damn,” Willa had said when she'd peeked inside. “Really pushing the old Longhorns on you, eh? Eh? And the color orange? Orange doesn't look good on us, anyway.
You're screwed. Screwed and tattooed. Ohh, we should get tattoos!”

I kept the tote bag pressed against the side of my rib cage, letting the warmth from the letters burn through the canvas and into my skin. I was worried it might catch on fire.

“What are you doing, nerd? You're missing the sunset,” Willa said.

“The sun is nowhere near setting,” I answered.

“Right, whatever, but the sky is beautiful and you're missing it. Why are you missing it?”

“I was just thinking. We have to leave soon anyway. We're meeting Frances and Arrow for lunch.”

“You mean for dinner?”

“For dinner.”

“Ohhh, you're nervous. Only nervous people say lunch instead of dinner.”

“I'm not nervous, I'm just contemplative.”

“Oh, you're
contemplative
. My bad.”

“It's like you try to make things harder for me.”

“Not harder. Just more honest. I think everyone should be more honest.”

“Oh, is that why you broke up with Benson instead of telling him you weren't ready to have sex? Because you're so committed to an honest lifestyle?”

I knew it was the wrong thing to say even before I said it, and I could have stopped but I didn't; I forged onward
just to see the look on her face, because honestly I was just a little sick of her self-righteousness and her needling me about Frances over and over again. Willa preached a lot, but she was just as confused as I was, especially when it came to relationships—even though I knew I couldn't call what Frances and I had a relationship, at least not in the same way as Willa and Benson.

Willa smiled.

It was a confusing smile. It wasn't happy, obviously, but it also wasn't overly dangerous. She put her elbow on the railing and leaned against it.

“Touché, brother,” she said.

“What, that's it?”

“I mean, I can't really argue with you, if that's what you were expecting.”

“Not expecting. Just. I don't know. I'm sorry I said that.”

“Well I'm not sorry I made fun of you for saying
contemplative.
And I'm not sorry you said that either. It's the truth. I'm telling you to be honest with no intention of being honest myself. That makes me a hypocrite, and hypocrites suck.”

“You don't suck, Willa.”

“Oh, I know. Just that small part of me,” she said. “Come on, let's go. We have a dinner to make.”

I knew Willa was tired after a day spent walking from one end of the campus to another. She walked slower than
usual back to the car, and she even looped her arm through mine for support. My phone buzzed in my pocket, and I knew it was probably Frances texting to see if we were still on, but I didn't check it until Willa was in the passenger seat. Then I reached into my pocket, but Willa put her hand on my wrist before I could pull my phone out.

“Would you hate me if I didn't want to go?” she asked.

“To dinner?”

“I'm just so tired. This campus is enormous. My legs are chafing,” she said. She fanned herself with a map of the United States that my mother had insisted we bring but that we hadn't once used, because paper maps didn't have voice guidance. “And I don't want to roll up in a wheelchair, you know? Literally roll up, by the way, that was very funny and I didn't even try. I don't know, would you hate me? I'll go if you really want me to go. I don't want you to hate me.”

At that point, I guessed what Frances's text said but just to confirm, I pulled my phone out of my pocket and read it.

   
Arrow wants to bail. Guess I'm meeting just you and your sister alone?

I felt pressure like it was a real thing with actual weight, a thing that settled itself on my shoulders and made my neck hurt. I hadn't wanted this to be a date. I'd wanted
this to be easy, uncomplicated. But now Willa was tired and Arrow, for whatever reason, had decided not to go and I couldn't cancel on Frances. I couldn't come all the way to Austin and not see her, not even find out if she'd met Wallace Green and if he was her real father or not. That was the shittiest thing I could imagine. I texted her back:

   
Willa doesn't want to go either. I'll see you in 30.

“The suspense is killing me,” Willa said. “Are you texting an executioner? Is that how much you hate me?”

“It's tempting, but no. I'll drive you back to the motel.”

“Oh,” she said, her face falling suddenly, clearly remembering that she'd packed up the entire motel room in a fit of semi-rage this morning. “Oh, shit. Well at least it was a dramatic exit. Ugh, I was super cranky this morning. I'm sorry, Louis. But yes, drive me back. Please and thanks.”

So I drove Willa back to the motel and helped her unpack again (“Not like I'll actually need any of my stuff because I intend to watch TV for five hours straight before falling asleep in my clothes.”) and then I set off to meet Frances at a place called Holdem.

Like Texas Hold'em, I guessed, although I hated poker and thought it was probably spelled Hold 'Em, anyway. Or Hold-em. Or—

I was panicking.

I could feel my heart beating much too quickly in my chest. I gripped the steering wheel until my knuckles turned white (that was always happening in books, and it was happening now, I had never seen the bone so clearly through my skin before). I tried to remember the last time I had been this nervous. I'd taken Tara Flower to the junior prom, and that had been nerve-wracking but not insurmountable. This, though. This felt insurmountable.

Even as I pulled into the parking lot of the restaurant and parked and shut off the engine and got out of my car and put one foot in front of the other until the door was right there, right within my reach, it still felt like an impossible journey. I paused with one hand outstretched, unable to find the doorknob. I could
see
it, I just couldn't make my fingers cross that last tiny hurdle, those last few inches of air. I watched my hand not moving and then I let it fall to my side and then I heard, in a voice that was at once soft and also a hundred times braver than I currently felt, “You're not gonna pass out or anything, are you?”

And I turned and it was her. Of course it was her. She wore jean shorts that were frayed and sunbleached and a baggy T-shirt and her hair was pulled into a ponytail. She was smiling a little hesitantly, like she was afraid I wouldn't smile back. Like she was afraid of me, or of something I might do.

“Because it's pretty hot,” she said after a minute. “I had to listen to Arrow's hydration speech three times today.
Oh—she's not coming. She said she needed to go for an actual run, without me slowing her down.”

I found my voice if only because I was acutely aware of how murdery I would appear if I didn't speak. “Oh. Hi.” It wasn't Shakespeare, but I thought it was a fairly appropriate response.

“Hi. It's nice to meet you.” And then she stuck her hand out a little too far and jabbed me in the stomach. And then she laughed and shook her head, like she could maybe physically shake awake her nerves—or maybe that was just wishful thinking on my part, so I shook my head too—and then I shook her hand. It felt exactly like I would have guessed her hand would feel. But I can't really explain it.

“It's nice to meet you, Frances.”

“Oh,” she said. “Call me Frannie. Do people call you Lou? These are the weird sorts of things that never come up if you only talk to someone under the moniker of a screen name.” Her smile was unfair. Like, too big to comprehend.

“Louis,” I said. “I had an uncle named Lou, and he smelled like a fish tank.”

“For any particular reason?”

“Well, he owned a pet store. I also just didn't like him.”

“So Louis.”

“Louis, yeah.”

“Well, are you hungry?”

“I'm starving. Are you hungry?”

“Yes. I picked this place because it's not a steakhouse. There are a lot of steakhouses around here.”

“It looks great.”

Frances turned to go inside, but I put my hand on her arm. “Oh, wait a second. I have this.” I was still carrying around the University of Texas tote bag. It was bright orange and featured the Longhorns logo on one side. I was carrying it so the logo was against my rib cage.

I reached into the tote and pulled out the apple drawing. She took it from me like it was a potentially dangerous thing. Like it might bite her. She held it in front of her and looked at it, and I had more things in the tote to give her but I waited.

“Charcoal,” she said after a minute.

“What?”

“I never draw with pens. It's all smudgy now.”

She touched the drawing and when she pulled her hand away, her fingers were dusted with black.

“I'm sorry,” I said. “I should have put it in something. Like a bag, or . . .”

“Oh, no, that's not what I meant. I just meant . . . I guess I should get over it. I guess I should draw with pens sometimes. They're more permanent.” She held the drawing down at her side like she couldn't look at it anymore but didn't want to let it go. “But I haven't really drawn anything for a while. So maybe it doesn't matter anyway.”

I dug around in the tote bag for the University of Texas
pen I'd gotten after the tour. I held it out to her and said, “I don't have anything to draw on.”

She smiled and took the pen, looking at it for a minute like she was trying to decide if it was okay, if she was okay with it. Then she turned the apple drawing over and laid it on the ground, clean side up. She knelt down in front of the restaurant door, and I bent down beside her.

“What should I draw?” she said.

“An apple,” I said, because it was the first thing that popped into my head, because the original drawing had smeared so badly.

And on the ground in front of the restaurant she started to draw, her hand moving so fast but so deliberately, a small blur as it curved around and around the page. I watched the still life emerge from nothing, from blank space to perfect apple in front of my eyes. It was just a quick sketch but it felt important, it felt like so much more.

When she was done, she held it up with a flourish and then laughed and signed her name and gave it back to me.

“Keep it,” she said. “It's my gift to you.”

“I have more for you,” I said, pulling the handkerchief out of the bag and handing it to her.

“HW,” she read.

“Is that the one?”

“This is the one.” She paused, smiling, looking at it, then remembered: “I have some things for you too. They're in the car.”

“Just one more,” I said before she could go and get them. I withdrew the stack of letters from the tote bag. I handed them to her, but it was a minute before she took them. She stared at them in my hand like she was trying to figure out what they were. But of course she knew. She had to know.

“You didn't—” she started.

“Of course not,” I said. “I would never.”

“I shouldn't have even asked.”

“It's okay. You can ask me anything.”

I hadn't meant to say that.

Frances took the stack of letters from me. Her hands were shaking. She thumbed through them quickly; I could see her mouth moving as she counted them.

“They're all here,” she said, her shoulders rising as she brought them to her stomach in something a little bit like a hug. She let out a sigh of relief. “Shit. I thought they were gone forever. And they're the only thing I really have of her.” She paused like she might elaborate, but then she just held the letters up and said, “Thank you. For these. I really appreciate it. And I'm not hungry anymore. Are you hungry? I don't know. Maybe we can go for a walk?”

“Actually, a walk sounds great. I'm not that hungry either.”