The Lost & Found (18 page)

“T
hat's exactly what I was going to say,” I answered. “Really?” she asked, looking over me at hopefully.

I took her hand and squeezed it and then I had to look down and see our two hands together because it was almost too hard to believe: I was holding Frannie's hand and I had just eaten cactus tacos with her in a city we had never been to before and now we were trying to figure out a way to make time stand still because sometimes the world was too confusing to keep up with and you just needed more time to figure everything out.

“Really,” I said.

“What should we do?” she asked. “Where should we go?”

“Whatever. Wherever.”

She pulled me down the sidewalk, away from the taco stand and away from the main buzz of the city and back to the path along the water. There were less people here, and although it was hot, there was a slight breeze off the water.

“Do you know what you'll do? After high school?” I asked, because I realized that we'd talked about the University of Texas but I had no idea what Frannie's plans were.

“I don't know,” she said. “My mom spent time abroad. I think I'd like to do that.”

“Where?”

“In England. I've never been out of the United States.”

“I've just been to India.”

“Oh, just?” she said, laughing.

“Well I mean, I'd like to go someplace else too. I'd like to travel.”

“I guess that's a good thing. About the future, you know. We can do more of what we want to do. We're almost adults.”

“I don't really feel like an adult.”

“Me neither,” she said. “I think sometimes people—grown-ups—they put all this pressure on us to figure out
every single step of our lives, every single connected dot, but in reality people are figuring things out as they go.” She pulled the picture of her mother out of her pocket. “Like my mom,” she said. “I used to think she had a plan, but really she was just trying to hold on for as long as she could.”

“When do think that was taken?” I asked.

“I thought it was taken about nine months before I was born,” she replied, her voice darkening a little. We paused underneath a streetlight, and she held the picture higher so we both could see it.

“And now?” I asked.

“Now I have absolutely no idea. I'm not even sure if it matters anymore. It's just a moment now. A meaningless moment.”

“My mother would say that no moments are meaningless,” I said, and then I felt weird, like maybe I shouldn't have brought her up. She could be overbearing and oppressive and constantly present, but at least she was here. At least she was my mother, someone who constantly texted me to check in and was never dissuaded when I didn't respond (she'd sent me fourteen texts already that day, texts filled with emojis of sun and palm trees and an egg frying on a skillet next to a blue car—I think that was supposed to mean it was really hot in Los Angeles), and at least she had never left me. I couldn't imagine what it must feel like to
be Frannie. To not have parents.

“Your mother sounds very optimistic,” Frannie said.

“I think she means that you can find meaning in anything. Or you can find the meaninglessness in everything. It goes both ways.”

“Isn't that kind of like cheating?”

“Yeah, but life is kind of like cheating.”

Frannie smiled and put her hand on my arm. “I like you, Louis. You're different from anyone I've ever met.”

She pulled me along the path. I had no idea where we were or where we were going, where our cars were or how to get back to them. I let her lead us until we were away from the river and along a street lined with bars built in small converted houses.

“I read about this place,” she said.

We walked along the length of it and at the other end we found a small circle of food trucks. Frannie pulled me to an ice cream truck and bought us two small cups that we ate sitting on the curb, watching people hopping from one house to another like they weren't visiting bars but neighbors and friends.

“Does Willa know where she's going to college?” she asked.

“Some Ivy League, probably.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah, she's always been the smarter one. She'll end up a doctor or something. What about Arrow?”

“She wants to go to Boston or New York. Maybe I'll go with her, I don't know. It would be nice to have someone I know there.”

“That would be fun. I've never really been in the cold before. Los Angeles, India . . . now Texas. It seems to be hot wherever I go.”

“You should visit Maryland in the winter,” she said quietly, and I couldn't tell if that was just something to say or something more, like an invitation. But that was stupid. Didn't we both know this was Austin and nothing further? Or maybe it didn't have to be. I didn't know anymore. The moonlight was confusing everything. The purple light was making everything more beautiful than it already was. Including Frannie, who had finished her ice cream and gone to throw it away in a trash can under the flickering streetlight, who pulled away and spun out into the night—spinning, spinning until she started laughing. She leaned up against the next streetlight to steady herself. Up top, near the bulb, a hundred insects swarmed and buzzed. The air around us vibrated as I threw away my ice cream cup and then stopped in front of her and this time took both her hands in both of mine.

“Are you better now?” she asked.

“What do you mean?”

“You know,” she said, and touched my forearm.

That wasn't where any of the scars were, but I recoiled a little anyway. I had told her about it, of course. I had told
Frannie everything that had ever happened to me, over years and years and behind the safety of a computer screen. But this—being in front of her—this was something new.

“I don't think so,” I said finally, and it felt like a secret. It felt like something I knew but couldn't admit until now.

No, it wasn't better.

No, it had never gotten better.

I was just better at hiding it. I was better at postponing it. I was tired of therapy and tired of feeling like Willa was the unlucky one but somehow, somehow the more stable one. I was tired of everything. I didn't know what else I could do.

“What does it feel like?” she asked.

“Like I have no other option.”

“But you do. You know that, right?”

“Sometimes I can't see it,” I said.

She bit her bottom lip and looked away. “I think we need to close our accounts.”

“TILT?”

“This Is Losing Time,” she said.

“This Is Lovelier, Though.”

“I don't know, it just feels like the right thing to do. I mean, it's always felt like a weird kind of crutch. I don't even do the sessions anymore. I was really just keeping it so I could talk to you.”

“I think I've kept it around so long just in case I need
it. But I don't need it anymore. I think I need something different now.”

“Different how?”

“I'm not sure. Maybe something . . . more real.”

“We'll still have each other,” she said softly, pulling me just a little closer toward her.

“I know.”

“Even if we're still far away.”

“I know.”

“Like even if—”

“I know,” I said again, and then leaned forward slowly, slowly enough that she could push me away if she wanted to, slowly enough that I could change my mind if I decided it was the stupidest thing I'd ever done, slowly, slowly, slowly. . . . The distance between two things so phenomenally far apart from each other crossed at the slowest possible rate. And when they collided, there was only buzzing and humming and the bone-deep vibration of a thousand light-seeking beasts. Which might have been gross, I guess, if we had looked up. But we didn't look up. We were seeking our own light, and we had just found it.

A
rrow and I packed up the motel room in silence early the next morning. The trip to Austin, the excitement from a few days ago, everything within us—it all felt deflated. Last night with Louis had been quiet and nice and wonderful and we'd done what we said we'd do, we'd stayed up all night, and I'd crawled into bed as dawn was stretching out over the city and the second I closed my eyes, pretending I'd be able to sleep, I felt whatever had been building up between us burst. Like a balloon going into the sky. Up and up and up and it looks so peaceful and pretty from the ground but up there, up
where the balloon floats, the pressure becomes too much. It explodes. All of the air leaks out of it. It falls back to earth and becomes just another thing littered on the sidewalk. Just another thing to pick up and throw away or else ignore and step on.

Arrow woke up when I got back. She rolled over, and we faced each other in the darkness. The blinds were pulled tightly over the windows and it was dark in the room; I could barely see her eyes, two white circles floating in space.

“Hi,” she whispered.

“Hi.”

“How was it?”

“It was perfect,” I said. “It was terrible. It was horrible.”

“Because it can never be,” Arrow guessed.

“Yeah, because of that.”

“There is something to be said for distance.”

“That it sucks?”

“That it sucks, yes. But that it is also sometimes romantic and good.”

“Romantic and good,” I echoed. “What else do they say?”

“They say everything looks better in the morning.”

“It
is
the morning.”

“They say everything looks better in the afternoon.”

“Or else everything looks worse.”

“They say no matter what things look like in the afternoon, a change of perspective is sometimes the best thing for it.”

“Arrow, thanks for coming with me.”

“I didn't come with you. We went together. Forth into the great unknown like two modern-day adventurers, et cetera, et cetera.”

“What would I do without you?”

“You would have come alone, I expect. Don't sell yourself short. Now if you don't mind, I was in the middle of a very nice dream, and I'm going to try to get back to it.”

She fell asleep again for an hour or two, and I stayed awake flicking through pictures in my phone: a pair of black bean tacos, a blurry selfie of the two of us, the orange and pink of the sky just before dawn when we finally made it back to our cars.

“Why do I feel like I'll never sleep again?” I had said, smiling up at him and the lightening sky above his head.

“Let's run away together,” he had whispered into my ear, touching me gently on my right hip, just the lightest breeze before he moved his hand away again.

And I had whispered back, “We already have.”

Now Arrow was carefully rolling her shirts into neat cylinders (they didn't wrinkle as much that way, she claimed) and stacking them into her suitcase with delicate precision. When she noticed me watching her, she stopped and straightened up.

“What was your dream about?” I asked, struggling to pull myself out of a daydream that didn't seem like it could have been real.

She grinned at me. “The best dreams are not fit for public consumption.”

“I'm not the public.”

“That's a fair point. I guess I'll tell you, only if you promise to tell me everything that happened between you and Louis. No more of this secretive stuff.”

“Okay, I promise.”

“Give me something to work with. Consider it a down payment.”

“Well . . . ,” I started. I was going to tell her about the kiss beneath the streetlight but apparently she had already guessed it. She covered her face with her hands and squealed.

“Oh, I knew it,” she said. “I knew it. Was it nice?”

“Of course it was nice! It was the nicest.”

“Nicer than anything?”

“Nicer than most things, yes. Now what was your dream about?”

“Returning a certain handkerchief to its rightful owner.”

“Hank Whitney?” I guessed.

“Indeed. But until then, let me treat you to breakfast.”

“Because you want to go back to the weird knitting diner?”

“You know me so well, it's like I don't even have to speak.”

She finished packing her suitcase. I walked from the bedroom to the bathroom under the guise of making sure I hadn't left anything behind, but really I just felt like walking and didn't have many options. I was ready to leave Austin, and, having decided that, I wanted to be gone. I didn't want to wait any longer. I wanted to pull the Band-Aid off with one fluid yank.

But I knew it wasn't that simple. I found my phone in my purse and sent a text to Louis with the name and address of the restaurant.

   
Meet us here if you can. Would love to say good-bye.

That was a lie, of course. I wouldn't love to say good-bye. Not in the slightest. But I didn't think I'd be able to forgive myself if I didn't.

Arrow and I sat in the back of the station wagon, the hatchback shading us from the late morning sun, our feet dangling and swinging, my hands folded in my lap and gripping each other like they might fly away if I didn't hold them tight enough.

“I can't believe you stayed up all night,” Arrow said. I had told her everything, of course, or as much as I could
in the car ride from the motel to the diner. “It's like a fairy tale, Frannie. You're like a princess. You're Cinderella!”

“Cinderella only stayed out until midnight.”

“Right, but you know that girl would have kept dancing if her carriage didn't turn back into a pumpkin.”

Louis and Willa were on time; we were early. I watched their car pull into the parking lot, and I watched Louis get out first and wait around the back until Willa had emerged from the passenger seat. He said something to her that I couldn't hear, and she shook her head, smiling. Her smile took effort. It wasn't easy. But then it turned wider and more real and she squeezed her brother's elbow and laughed once. He pointed over at us, and they started walking together.

Willa wore a knee-length skirt and tennis shoes. She walked fluidly and I tried to imagine, if I couldn't see her prosthetic legs, if I didn't already know the exact spot on her thighs where her real legs ended, if I would have been able to tell. I don't think I would have, if only because her face provided such an immediate distraction. She was absolutely beautiful, makeupless and sleepy and slightly scowling. Even when she smiled she had lines in her face. I wanted to hug her because she looked at once so much like Louis but somehow also like she could be a perfect stranger.

“Hi,” she said, waving her hand at hip level when she was close enough to talk to us. “I'm Willa.”

“Willa, this is Frances,” Louis said. “You must be
Arrow. I've heard so much about you.” He shook Arrow's hand. We finished introductions and stood in silence in the parking lot, not awkwardly but somehow at ease. I'd spent a lot of time in parking lots the past few days.

Louis spoke first. It took me too long to process his words and he had to repeat them, blushing—he blushed so easily—raising his voice to call the group to attention. “Should we go inside?” he asked.

“I'm starving,” Willa said.

“I'm so hungry,” Arrow agreed. They walked together across the parking lot, and Louis and I followed. I thought he might take my hand and I couldn't decide whether I wanted him to or not, but then he did and I thought—
Of course. Of course I want you to. It's just that in a few hours I will want you to again, but you won't be here. I'll be on my way to Maryland and you'll be on your way to California and you can't really get two people farther away than that. The miles stack up on top of each other, and even if Arrow was right, even if distance is romantic, it is also impossible. It is too much to fathom. It is too much to overcome.

He let go of my hand when we got to the restaurant door, but he put his palm on my back and let me go in front of him. We sat down at a booth and our same waitress brought over mugs of coffee but didn't seem like she recognized us.

“It's so nice to finally meet you,” Willa said to us, and even though she wasn't smiling, it felt like such an honest
thing to say. She just shrugged and said it. And we started talking about Austin and our separate coastal towns and I watched a clock with golden retriever puppies count down the minutes much too quickly. It had to be broken. Somebody should fix it; somebody should put time in its proper place or else the whole world would end before we even left this table.

I wished we'd never leave this table.

But our pancakes came and our eggs came and our coffee cups were refilled, and Willa told a hysterical story of Louis as a preteen refusing to let go of his belief in Santa Claus. And then we had finished our food and the plates were cleared away, and we'd all drank too much coffee and paid our bill with jittery, messy hands. We stood in the parking lot for too long. I didn't think we wanted to say good-bye because something had clicked into place and nobody wanted to be responsible for disassembling it.

Finally it was Arrow.

Sometimes I thought she was the best at good-byes because she had been taught at such an early age that they were unavoidable and it was worthless to try to prolong them. But probably it was just because she knew I couldn't make myself say the words, and she always did what I couldn't do. And vice versa.

“It was so nice to meet you both,” Arrow said. “I know I'll see you again.”

She hugged Willa and Louis and then Willa hugged me
and kissed my cheek and then it was only Louis and me. He put the back of his hand against my cheek, and it felt so good I wanted to cry. But I didn't cry. I hugged him.

“It was so nice to see your face,” I said.

“You have the nicest face of anybody I've ever met,” he replied.

“We'll keep in touch, of course.”

“You make it sound like we're leaving summer camp.”

“Wear the friendship bracelet I made you, okay?”

“I'm sorry the lake water gave you a gastrointestinal infection.”

“We'll always have the campfires.”

“Kumbaya,” he said. “I really like you, Frannie.”

“I really like you, Louis.”

“I tried to close my TILT account on my phone,” he said. “But the app signed me out, and I've never been very good with passwords.”

“Bucker is now my password,” I said automatically. It just appeared in my brain, one more thing he'd lost and I'd found, one more thing I could give to him. I wanted to give him everything. He put his hand on the back of my neck, and I thought he was going to kiss me but he only hugged me, so tightly I almost lost my breath.

“You're amazing,” he whispered in my hair. “And you smell like pancakes.”

I wrapped my arms around his shoulders and said, “It was all worth it. Every mile.”

When he pulled away, minutes later, I could still feel him.

When I drove out of the parking lot, I could still feel him.

All the way back home, I could still feel him. It was like he had never left.