Wherever Nina Lies (19 page)

I
shift in my seat and press my face against the glass, gazing out at the soft blue arc of the sky stretching for miles in every direction. We’re two hours closer to San Francisco on a mostly empty highway, driving fast.

Sean reaches down and takes his extra-large iced coffee out of the cupholder. His third of the trip so far. “I was supposed to go to San Francisco once, a long time ago,” he says. His voice is soft and gentle, like he’s telling me a bedtime story. “My mom was going to take me, but we never quite made it there.” He holds the straw up to my mouth, offering me a sip because my hands are duct taped behind my back. I shake my head. “It’s kind of a funny story actually.” He raises the straw to his own lips and sucks. “So we were staying at my family’s house in Big Sur. This was when it was just me and my dad and my actual mom. My mom didn’t like to ski but my dad was out skiing every day, and I guess my mom was getting bored and lonely or maybe she was just mad at my dad, I don’t know. But one night at like three in the
morning she just woke me up and told me we were going on vacation, just her and me. She told me to get in the car because she’d already packed and everything and we needed to leave before traffic got bad. So, I mean, I was five at the time so I didn’t think much of it, other than that it sounded fun, so I just got into the car in my pajamas with my pillow and my blanket. After she started driving, she told me she had friends in San Francisco and that we should go and visit them because she hadn’t seen them in twenty-five years and she wanted to show them how cute I was. So we drove along for a while, stopped at an all-night mini-mart for ice cream sandwiches and then kept driving. I don’t remember anything else after that except at some point later we were surrounded by about fifteen cop cars with their sirens and lights on. Turns out my mom had never mentioned her plan to my dad, so when he woke up the next morning and found the house empty, he freaked. She hadn’t been taking her medication for a couple of weeks so she ended up back in the hospital for a while after that, and then about nine months after
that
she went away for good. My favorite part of the story, though, is that later the maid was unpacking the bags my mom had put in the trunk and you’ll never guess what was in them.” He pauses. “Try and guess.”

“Clothes?” I say.

“For me she’d packed nothing but this tiny winter jacket that I’d worn when I was about two, a bunch of action
figures and a bunch of mini juice boxes. And for herself all she brought was,” Sean starts laughing then. Laughing so hard he has to stop and take a breath. “A bag of…floor-length…black-tie…gowns!” Tears are filling his eyes, he’s laughing so hard. “These custom-made designer gowns, probably worth a total of about a hundred thousand dollars.” He reaches down for his coffee and takes another sip, hiccups, and wipes the tears off his cheeks. He takes a deep breath. “In my dad’s version of the story, when the police finally found us, I was curled up in the backseat of the car, scared out of my mind, covered in ice cream. But that’s just not how I remember it. I think it’s probably my very favorite memory of my mom actually.” Sean turns toward me and smiles. “I guess we didn’t pack that well, either, come to think of it. But anything we need we can get while we’re there, since I figure we’ll want to go…Hey, you know what we should do? We should go on a big shopping trip after…” Sean stops then, reaches down for his coffee. He turns toward me and smiles this sweet sheepish smile, like he’s just slightly embarrassed by what we’re on the way to do.

The sun is high up in the sky now and the road is filled with other cars. We are not talking anymore, just driving. Sean has one hand on my knee, as though to make sure I’m still there, to keep me from floating away.

They say that no matter what life throws at you, there’s always a lesson to be learned, and I sure have learned some important things in the last eight hours while we’ve been on the road, such as exactly what it feels like to spend the better part of a day sitting in a Volvo with your wrists taped together, and that I am, as it turns out, capable of pulling my pants up and down that way, too, to go to the bathroom. Also, I learned that I am probably the most talented actress the world has ever known, too bad my best and only performance is taking place in a car in front of an audience of one.

The sun is setting now. Sean pulls over on a long stretch of highway surrounded on either side by giant fields of waist-high grass that no one has touched for years. “I’ll be right back,” he says. He gets out of the car, walks fifty feet into the middle of the field, and holds the gun straight up over his head. There’s a loud
CRACK.
It echoes. A delicate whisper of smoke curls from the barrel of the gun up toward the sky. Sean walks back to the car, gets in, and shuts the door.

“I just wanted to check,” he says, “that it would work.”

Sean starts the car again. We will be there soon.

I’m staring out the window at the early evening sky, at the swooping red cables of the Golden Gate Bridge lit by a thousand tiny lights and the sparkling ocean beyond it. It looks like a postcard that we just so happen to be a part of.

“It’s beautiful,” I say.

“Yeah,” Sean says, the tension is back in his voice. Maybe it’s the nine extra-large iced coffees. Maybe it’s just that what he’s about to do is finally sinking in. “Haight Street?” Sean says. “That’s where you said you think we’ll…” Sean stops, for the last twelve hours he hasn’t, not once, actually directly referred to what we’ve come here to do. “That’s where you think we should go?” He turns toward me.

My organs, my bones, everything inside me, has dissolved into a pool of molten hot liquid panic. But I smile calmly. “Oh yes,” I say. “Haight Street, I’m sure of it.”

Sean reaches into his pocket, then behind him into his seat, then leans down and sticks his hand between the seat and the door.

“Everything okay?”

“Yeaaaah,” Sean says slowly. “I’m just trying to find my phone and I’m not sure where it is.”

“How weird,” I say. “I hope you didn’t leave it back at the motel.”

“Me, too,” Sean says. “I wonder what happened to it?”

I shrug. “I guess it’s just a mystery.” I close my eyes and picture that phone, exactly where I left it. And I have to turn my face toward the window because at this moment it is impossible for me not to smile.

T
o everyone else out here we’re just another young couple enjoying an evening stroll on Haight Street. No one can see the loaded gun shoved down the front of Sean’s jeans. And the red marks on my wrists where the duct tape was ripped off. Or the fact that Sean is crushing my fingers with his own, as though to keep me from running, as though he never plans on letting go.

A girl in a tiny plaid skirt and fishnets walks past us and smiles at Sean. When she gets a few feet away she turns around and looks back. Is this…? Nope, just some girl who thinks he’s hot. She sees what most people see when they look at him, just a seventeen-year-old kid, with f loppy skateboarder hair and a heartbreakingly beautiful face. I used to see him like that, too.

“Whatcha looking at?” Sean asks. His hair falls over one eye and he pushes it away, anxiously.

“I’m just glad we’re here is all,” I say.

He tries to smile but he’s too nervous. His teeth are chattering. “Me, too,” he says.

We keep walking up the steep hill—we pass a fancy home goods store, a store that sells handblown glass bongs, a tapas restaurant, a place with psychedelic posters stuck up in the window.

We keep going. Sean squeezes my hand again. I can feel his heart beating through his fingers. Or maybe that’s my own.

Everything we pass seems somehow meaningful. A man in a pair of too-yellow pants walks by, struggling with grocery bags filled with too much fruit. A girl in a maroon hooded sweatshirt is very deliberately looking for something in her pocket. A man drops a bottle of water and the water splashes on his shoes. He looks up, we make eye contact for just a second. He looks away. Two men in tuxedos are walking arm in arm.

“Hey, dude, can you spare a cigarette?” We turn to the right, look down. There’s a girl and a guy sitting cross-legged on the sidewalk behind a cardboard box with a few coins inside, and
Why Lie? We Want Beer!
written on it in pencil. The girl has short bleach-blonde hair and a steel bull-ring through her nose. “Or some change?”

“Sorry,” I say. I look at her again…is she? No. She’s not even looking at us anymore. Sean and I keep walking.

Finally we reach the top of the hill, the street ends at the entrance to Golden Gate Park. There’s a grassy area in the front, and behind it a paved pathway winding back. A
young couple is leaning against a brick wall kissing. Three guys are kicking around a Hacky Sack. A half-dozen people are sitting in a circle, drinking out of paper bags, listening to a girl playing guitar. Sean gasps suddenly, he grabs my upper arm, squeezes it.

“Ellie,” he whispers. “Ellie.” I can feel his hand shaking. He motions toward a little group standing just a few feet away, a girl with long dark hair, a big guy with red hair, a smaller guy with blond hair, and a girl with a blonde pixie cut. They’re all looking around, like they’re waiting for someone. The girl with the long dark hair is smoking a cigarette. The big guy glances at his watch.

And all of them are wearing identical T-shirts, white V-necks with a graphic drawn in the center. A sweep of a jawline, the arch of an eyebrow, the crescent of a crooked smile.

It’s a face: mine.

Sean leans in close. “Bingo,” he whispers.

We walk forward. The girl with the long dark hair takes a final drag of her cigarette, tosses the butt on the ground, and grinds it out with the heel of her boot. She watches us approach.

“Hey,” Sean says. “I really like your shirt.”

“Yeah?” The girl tips her head to one side. She has giant eyes rimmed in gold eyeliner. Her friends are clumped together behind her. The blonde girl behind her is staring at me. Our eyes meet. She holds my gaze a second too long.

“Yeah,” Sean says. “It’s really fucking cool.”

“Thanks.” The dark-haired girl grins. “This local artist makes them.”

The big guy steps forward. He’s about six-five, with giant arm muscles bulging under the thin white fabric of his T-shirt, which is almost exactly the same as hers, except my face is a little distorted where it’s stretched across his massive chest. “We each got one.”

“Awesome,” Sean says, nodding. “Really cool.” He pauses. “You don’t happen to know where I might find the person who made the shirts, do you? We’re from out of town and these would be great to bring back home.”

“I do indeed,” the guy says. He turns around. He points to his back over his shoulder.

NINA WRIGLEY DESIGNS:

Custom-Made Hand-drawn T-shirts.

1414 Avery Square, San Francisco, CA

“She sells them out of her apartment,” the guy says. “You can just go there right now, I bet she’ll be there.”

“Thanks, man,” Sean says. He squeezes my hand. “Can you tell me how to get there?”

The guy glances at me, and then back to Sean. “I’ll do you one better, I’ll take you there myself.”

Sean starts shaking his head. “Nah, that’s okay, man. You don’t need to do that.”

“Oh, I don’t mind,” the guy says. “Let me!”

“No, seriously, you can’t,” Sean says. “I mean…we’re not going to go tonight. We’ll just probably go tomorrow or the next day or something.”

“Okay,” the guy says, slowly. “Okay. Okay.” He reaches into his pocket and takes out a little notepad and a pen. He starts scribbling down the directions. Sean is watching the guy. The girl behind him is still watching me. When our eyes meet again something flickers across her face. The guy hands the directions to Sean.

“Cool,” says Sean. “Thank you.”

“No problem,” the guy says.

“Good luck,” says the girl.

We turn, and start walking. Sean is holding on to my arm, his entire body shaking. “Let’s just get this over with,” he says. “We’ll just go now, no stopping, no thinking. We’ll go and then we’ll find somewhere to sleep and then when we wake up tomorrow morning, this will all be behind us.”

“Yes,” I say to Sean. I am walking beside him, breathing in and out and in and out, reminding myself to have faith in her. To keep walking. And when the time comes, to be ready. “By tomorrow morning everything will be different.”

W
e turn right and walk up a steep hill on a narrow street, surrounded by tall skinny houses on either side. It’s pretty and peaceful. Not the setting you’d expect for something like this. But really, what is?

Sean’s hand is on his stomach, holding on to the gun through his shirt. “This has already happened,” he whispers. “All of this has already happened.”

We’re both panting. We turn right, then left, then right again. I think I hear footsteps behind us, but I’m too scared to turn around. My heart is pounding.

Sean whispers, “I can’t wait until this is all over.” “Me, neither,” I whisper back. We keep walking. The sky is dark. Our only guides are the yellow light coming from the cracked street lamps and the faint white glow of the moon.

Finally Sean stops walking in front of a narrow gray house, with a heavy brass
1414
hung upon the blue front door. “This is it,” he says in a voice that no longer sounds like his own. Sean grabs the doorknob. He turns it. The door is unlocked. Sean whispers, “Fate.”

He opens the door. There’s a skinny staircase leading up with a yellow paper lantern dangling above it. Sean takes the gun out from under his shirt with shaking hands. He whispers, “Go.” And I start walking slowly up the stairs.

Right foot.

Left foot.

Right foot.

Left foot.

“Call her name now,” he whispers.

I take a deep breath. “Nina,” I call out.

“Louder,” he says.

Right foot.

Left foot.

Right foot.

“NINA,” I say again.

“That wasn’t loud enough,” Sean says.

Left foot.

Right foot.

“NINAAAAAA!” No answer. “NIIIIIINNNNNNN-AAAAAA!!!!!”

Left foot.

Right foot.

Left foot.

“Belly?”
We hear a voice coming through the door at the top of the stairs, very quiet, barely more than a whisper.

My heart stops. “Belly? Is that you?”

Sean’s breath catches in his throat.

I squeeze my eyes shut and I inhale deeply. I smell sweetness and spice. Oranges and ginger. Nina. I’m not scared anymore.

We reach the top of the stairs and push through the door. We’re in a large living room—dark wood floors, big fluffy couches, framed drawings covering every last bit of wall space, and there, standing by herself in the center of the room, is my sister.

My sister.

Looking both exactly like and completely different from the person I remember.

Our eyes meet just for a moment, and I feel a warmth spreading outward from the middle of my chest. When she sees me she starts to smile, but then she looks behind me, at Sean, and stops. Her jaw drops, her lips pull back. It looks like she’s screaming only no sound is coming out. I have never in my life seen Nina afraid before. But now, she is terrified.

She is not supposed to be terrified.

My heart pounds painfully in my chest. Icy sweat springs out of every pore in my body.

She is not supposed to be fucking terrified!

That final call that came in on Sean’s cell phone back at the motel, the one that I answered with my feet,
I thought that was Nina.
I thought I heard her voice saying hello through the phone. And I thought she had been listening to
everything Sean and I were saying after I kicked the phone under the desk. I thought she knew we were coming to Haight Street. And I thought she was leading us to her. I thought she was going to save us.

But I was wrong.

Everything I thought was wrong.

“Nina,” I hear Sean’s voice over my shoulder. I turn. He’s staring at her, his nostrils flared, his eyes glowing. He barely even looks human.

“Sean,” she says. “What are you doing here?”

Sean reaches for the gun inside his shirt.

“I think you already know that,” he says. “This is for what you did to me…” He sounds like he’s reciting lines from a script he rehearsed in his head a thousand times over. “This is for what you made me do to him.”

He raises his arms, the gun clutched between his shaking hands.

Nina just stands there, frozen, staring.

The gun is pointing straight at her.

This is it.

This is it.

This.

Is.

It.

And then, an explosion. Not a bullet out of the gun, but something within me:

Nina is not the only one who can save us.

Suddenly I am flying through the air screaming, “LEAVE MY SISTER ALONE!!!”

I stretch out my arm, catching Sean right under his chin, snapping his head back, hard. And then I slam both my shoulders into the middle of his stomach with everything I’ve fucking got. We tumble down to the floor. Sean lands on his back, a wheezy whistling noise escapes from his lips. The gun is knocked from his hand and slides spinning across the wood.

And for a moment we are all silent and completely still. I don’t think a single one of us can quite believe what I’ve just done.

“FREEZE! PUT YOUR HANDS ABOVE YOUR HEAD!” I look up. Five uniformed police officers have materialize out of the shadows. They stand over us, their guns cocked and aimed at our heads. Sean turns to the side, the expression on his face one of such complete and utter bewilderment that for a second I actually feel sorry for him.

But just for a second.

“What’s going on!?” he says. “Ellie? Ellie?!”

All I can do is shake my head.

A police officer yanks his arms behind his back and cuffs him. Another one starts to read him his rights. Two others lift him up, his body limp like a doll’s, his head hanging down. His feet just barely brush against the ground as he is carried backward toward the door.

But right before he is pulled through, he looks up, and
there is a hint of something else on his face. Something that looks an awful lot like relief.

And then he is gone.

I look up. The wall behind Nina is covered in drawings, photo-realistic scenes from our lives growing up—the park where we used to play, our aunt’s house at the beach, even a little picture of the guy from the Covered Wagon Shipping commercial. And right in the center is a framed portrait of our mother. In the picture she looks different than I’ve seen her in a long time, soft and pleased and proud as though this is how Nina’s been remembering her.

I look back at Nina, standing right there in front of me. It took two years and two thousand miles, but I am finally here with her. Her bottom lip is shaking. Mine is shaking, too.

We run toward each other, Nina and I, crash together into a tight hug, a hug that feels like any of the thousands and thousands of other hugs we’ve shared in the last sixteen years, but also completely different because of all that it took to get here, because we almost didn’t get to have this one. Neither of us says anything because words just do not exist for this kind of moment. We just stand there hugging until the tears are pouring down both our faces.