Loud Awake and Lost

“Coney Island,” Kai said suddenly.

That was a bit out of left field. “Coney Island?” I repeated.

“Yeah. Why not? I always wanted to see Luna Park in winter.”

“Then sure. Great!” After all, it was a relatively simple destination. And I’d been to Coney Island once before, a long time ago, with my parents in the dead of August. The afternoon had ended in a massive summer thunderstorm. I’d listened to the ghostly sound of the wind whipping down the boardwalk, and I’d inhaled a corn dog from under a kiosk umbrella as we’d watched the storm sweep through, rain sluicing our legs and turning the cornmeal batter damp, which made it taste even better. It was one of those detachedly pleasurable memories of childhood, and it tumbled into my lap as true as if it had happened yesterday.

I could take the car. Flatbush, then cut across to Ocean Parkway. The possibility of this day was something to fight for. That scent of it, like Kai, was exactly what I craved.

The icy air of the cold-storage room was its own insistent counterforce. We had to get out of here soon. I yawned as I tucked my numb fingertips into my armpits. “Is this real, then? Coney Island? With me?”

“Ember, I don’t even know how to be more serious.”

Hearing my name gave me confidence. “Okay, cool. I can drive us there,” I offered. I wasn’t even sure if it was true—I hadn’t driven a car since that night. And yet I had to do it at some point. Despite all my anxieties, I had to put myself behind the wheel and strap myself in and make myself go. Here was my perfect initiation. I’d drive to Coney Island with Kai, and in the process I’d reclaim my driving skills, yet another part of a precious whole I’d lost that night.

But I could get that back, I knew I could. The risk was worth it.

“Want to say Saturday?” he suggested. “Then I’ll call you once I’m sure I can get the time off. But I better head upstairs, or I’ve got no job to get back to.” As he leaned forward to stand, his mouth grazed my ear. Kai was so effortlessly sure that everything he did would be everything I wanted him to do. And he was right.

“How should we handle this?”

“I’ll go first. You wait a minute.”

In the shadows he was hard to see. He wasn’t kidding about this, was he? “So…if you can get off, then I’ll pick you up?”

“Uh-huh, that works. I’m in the dorm residence at the St. George—you know where the St. George is, right?”

“I do.”

“Cool. We’ll pick a time.” He gave me another kiss that left my lips either heat- or ice-burned.

And then I was alone in the Arctic.

After a minute or so, surprise. The overhead light flipped on. It wasn’t Kai. I covered my eyes against the fluorescent flash. I listened as brisk footsteps approached the walk-in. It opened and something was slid out. Then came the smack of the sealed door shutting. A pause—I held my breath. The stranger left, and I hadn’t been caught. Whew. I looked down at my arms in wonderment. My skin was icy as a Popsicle, with a lacy formation of goose bumps making a purplish space-alien pattern on my flesh. I’d been down here a long time.

When I raced back up the stairs, I knew that Isabella, though she kept up her same waltzing pace, was also circumspectly watching me. So was the busboy. Not in the nicest of ways. Definitely with intensity.

“Your check is paid,” he told me formally as he served me a dish of custard that I hadn’t ordered. His voice wasn’t particularly friendly.

“Oh.” Kai comped my dinner? I hadn’t expected that. The general acceptance of my presence here was no small thing. I nodded my thanks to Isabella and tapped my fingertips to my heart in appreciation of her kindness. Then I looked the boy in the eye. “Thank you.”

But I’d seen all I could of Kai; he was probably too busy to come talk to me again, though after I finished my dessert and left, I stayed another minute outside the restaurant. There, I could see Kai only as a swiftly passing shadow.

I stood quietly for a while, anyway. Looking in.

Walking home, I let myself unwind and process it.

I couldn’t have told anyone, least of all myself, much about Kai. I didn’t know his favorite color or what kind of music he listened to or his religion, if he was a cat or dog person, if he liked sweet or spicy, if he was finicky or mellow. I didn’t know if he played sports or if he preferred M&M’s or Twizzlers at the movies.

And yet the connection was so firm and so true. I also knew that no matter how many details I ultimately coaxed from Kai, his favorite breakfast cereal or if he played basketball or soccer or liked to swim or fish or whatever, none of these things would add up to the extraordinary whole of what I liked about him, and why he was mine.

Because he was. More than Holden, more than Rachel, more than anyone else I’d ever met, I knew that this guy, in his essence, belonged to me.

It was as simple, it was as insane, as that.

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Travolo,

There are no words to express the pain of your loss, and I am writing to you with a heavy heart.

To the parents of Anthony Travolo:

I have been trying to write to you for many weeks now, but every time I sit down and attempt to communicate everything that is in my heart, I realize just how limited language can be.

For Anthony’s family,

I’m not even sure if you want to hear from me, but the longer I go without writing to you, the more disappointed I am in myself. And so I have vowed that as soon as I finish typing this letter, I am sending it.

I highlighted the next block of text and deleted it. None of this was coming easily. It wasn’t coming through for me at all. Maybe I was just deluding myself that I had the skill to create a letter that could capture the core truth of everything that I wanted the Travolos to know. But I was no closer to hitting send. It might be better to check into whether I could get hold of a phone number instead.

Condolences by phone. It seemed worse.

What I really needed to do was to visit them.

19

Exactly Their Person

It had been one year plus one month since I’d been over to the Wildes’ house. But when Thursday arrived, I was dragging my feet. Drew Wilde’s engagement party was going to be stiff and uncomfortable. That was a given. The problem was, I’d ended up promising Holden again on the phone, and now here it was Thursday, and my word was my bond. I couldn’t go back on it. Especially not to Holden, who lived by those honor codes.

But I’d prepared as best I could. I’d even bought an outfit for it, at a funky little consignment shop on Smith Street that was around the corner from where I did physical therapy. It was a plain black dress with cobwebby sleeves. Even on sale, it was a bit more than I’d wanted to spend, but nothing else in my closet made sense to me, style-wise.