The Geography of You and Me

  After school, he walked home with his head still buzzing, his thoughts several time zones away. He crossed the lobby and hurried through the mailroom, eager to get downstairs and see what other plans his dad might have come up with while he was at school, pausing only to unlock the little cubby that belonged to the basement apartment. He threw the two catalogs and the envelope full of coupons directly into the bin, and was just about to slam the door when he noticed something in the back.

  Even before he reached for it, he knew what it was. He had no idea where it was from, or what it would say, but he knew it was from her. He just knew.

  The scene on the front was an overhead view of the city of London, and he stared at it, stunned that she could be an ocean away without him even knowing. He was still puzzling over this as he flipped it over, and his heart began to beat quick as a hummingbird.

  There, on the back of the postcard, were the exact same words he’d written just yesterday.

  I actually do.

  He blinked at it, stunned, and he felt his mouth stretch into a slow smile.

  She’d sent him a postcard, too, and with the very same message he’d sent her. It seemed impossible, yet here it was, and as he stood there gaping at it, his mouth hanging open, he sensed someone in the doorway.

  “It’s because of what it says on the front,” she said, and it took Owen a moment to wrench his eyes from the message in his hand. When he finally looked up, there she was, leaning on the handle of her suitcase, her cheeks flushed and her eyes bright. “The whole ‘wish you were here’ thing.” She shook her head, and a few strands came loose from her ponytail. “It’s stupid. I didn’t expect—I didn’t think I’d be here when you got it.…”

  “No,” he said, holding it up like an idiot. “It’s great. Really. Thank you.”

  “I’m just getting back, actually,” she said, pointing at the bag. “My parents flew me over there a few days after the blackout.”

  “I looked for you,” he said, then shook his head, wishing he could think of something better to say, wishing his mind would keep up with his heart, which was thundering in his chest. “I guess that’s why.”

  She nodded. “Guess so.”

  “Listen, I’m sorry about—about the roof that day,” he said in a rush. “I was coming back, but then—”

  “No, it’s fine,” she said. “I wasn’t expecting—”

  “It was just that my dad—”

  “It’s okay,” she said as their words crossed like swords in the air between them.

  Owen glanced down at the postcard, the small blocky letters on the back. Then he flipped it over again, and the words went tumbling around in his head: wish you were here.

  He had. And he did. And now he was leaving.

  He raised his eyes to meet hers, pulling in a breath. “There’s actually something—” he began, but once again, she had started to speak as well.

  “I need to tell you something,” she was saying, and he nodded. Her mouth twisted to one side. “I think,” she said, then paused and began again. “I think we’re probably moving.”

  Owen stared at her. “You are?”

  “It’s still not completely for sure, but it looks that way, yeah.”

  “Where?”

  “To London, actually. My parents are still over there, working out the details.”

  “Wow,” he said, shaking his head back and forth. “That’s… wow.”

  “I know,” she said. “It’s crazy. And really fast.”

  “How fast?”

  “Next month, probably,” she said, and he must have looked surprised, because she hurried on. “But we’d be keeping the apartment here, and my dad promised we could still come back for the summer, or at least some of it. So maybe…”

  Owen forced a smile. “Yeah,” he said. “Maybe.”

  Lucy sighed. “I’m still not sure how I feel about all this.”

  He nodded numbly; he wasn’t sure why this news should be hitting him so hard—why he should be feeling left behind—when he was leaving, too. “Well,” he said, “it’s a lot closer to Paris.”

  “And Rome.”

  “And Prague.”

  She grinned. “So you’re saying I shouldn’t play the sullen new girl card.”

  “Not at all,” he said, twisting the postcard around in his hands like a pinwheel. “You can complain to me anytime you want.”

  “I might just take you up on that,” she said, and he took a deep breath, trying to work up to his own news, to explain that he would be leaving, too, that they’d been brought together again only to go pinballing off in opposite directions.

  But he couldn’t find the words. And so instead, they just stood there, regarding each other silently, the room suddenly as quiet as the elevator had been, as comfortable as the kitchen floor, as remote as the roof. Because that’s what happened when you were with someone like that: the world shrank to just the right size. It molded itself to fit only the two of you, and nothing more.

  Eventually, a woman with a baby on her hip inched her way around Lucy’s suitcase, scraping her key against the lock of her mailbox, and they stepped aside to give her room. When she left, the spell had been broken.

  “So,” Lucy said, turning her suitcase around so that it was facing the other direction. “I should probably go unpack.” She nodded at the postcard he was still clutching. “I know it’s kind of cheesy.…”

  “No, it’s great,” Owen said, and a laugh escaped him. “Actually, you should keep an eye on your mailbox, too.”

  She tilted her head, eyeing him like she didn’t quite believe it. “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “Okay, then,” she said with a smile.

  He nodded. “Okay, then.”

  He watched as she wheeled the suitcase back through the lobby and over to the elevators, the place where they’d first met. As soon as she punched the button, the door opened with a bright ding, but just as she was about to step inside, he called out to her.

  “Lucy,” he said, and she whirled around, looking at him expectantly. Behind her, the doors eased shut again, and he jogged over with no plan at all, no words in mind, no brilliant speech, no idea at all what he might possibly say next. But something urgent had bubbled up inside him at the sight of her walking away, something desperate and true.

  “If you’re about to suggest the stairs instead…” she said, teasing him, but he only shook his head.

  “I was just going to say…” He trailed off, looking at her helplessly. He wanted to tell her that he was leaving, too, even sooner than she was, and that this might be good-bye. He wanted say let’s keep in touch or I hope we’ll see each other again or I’ll miss you. But none of it seemed quite right. Instead, he just stood there, tongue-tied and faltering, unable to say anything at all.

  But it didn’t matter. After a moment, she leaned forward and put a hand on his shoulder, and then, to his surprise, she rose onto her tiptoes and kissed him. His eyes widened as their lips met, and the nearness of her made the world go blurry, the lights hazy and the room muddled, until all at once, it wasn’t; all at once, it came into focus again, and the clearest thing of all—the truest thing of all—was the girl right in front of him. And so he closed his eyes and kissed her back.

  Too soon, she broke away, and when she stepped back again, he could see that she was smiling. “Don’t worry,” she said, just before stepping into the open elevator. “I’ll send you a postcard.”

  PART II

  There

  9

  There was only one square of pizza left on the table between them, and it was no great prize. The cheese had lost its battle with gravity, slumping off to one side, and the whole thing was shiny with grease. But still Owen refused to give in, his eyes watering as he stared down his father, whose face was twisted in concentration. A few more seconds went by, and finally—half-gasping and half-laughing—Dad closed his eyes and then opened them again.

  “Ha,” Owen said, reaching for
the slice, which he flopped onto his plate. He blinked a few times himself. “I don’t think you’ve ever beat me. You need a new game.”

  Dad sat back in his chair and rubbed his eyes. “How about arm wrestling?”

  “Not fair,” Owen said around a mouthful of pizza. Even though it had been months, his dad’s arms were still muscular from working construction sites. Owen’s were alarmingly scrawny by comparison.

  Dad grinned. “Then maybe we need a third game to decide what game we play to decide on things.”

  “The pizza would be cold by the time we figured it out.”

  “Maybe that would be an improvement,” he joked, letting his eyes rove around the room, which was filled with checkered tablecloths and lit by dozens of lopsided candles in wax-covered jars. Out the large windows that ran the length of the restaurant, the streets of Chicago were dusky and gray, the sidewalks still slick with rain from an afternoon shower.

  Owen finished the slice and licked his fingers, following Dad’s gaze to a table in the corner just beneath a vintage poster advertising romantic Italian getaways.

  “Is that where you sat?” he asked. “With Mom?”

  Dad nodded. “Looks the same.”

  “I bet she got the last piece, too,” Owen teased, trying to pull him back, and for once it worked. Dad laughed, turning around again.

  “You don’t think I could beat my own wife in a staring contest?”

  Owen shook his head. “I do not.”

  “Then you’d be correct,” he said with a smile.

  Afterward, they walked out into the chilly Chicago night, pulling up their collars against the wind coming off the lake. They’d been here since early afternoon, wandering around Michigan Avenue, their heads tipped back to take in the jagged skyline until it started to rain, and they’d huddled beneath some scaffolding to wait it out, eating bags of warm popcorn and watching the world grow soggy.

  It had been this way in the other cities, too, first Philadelphia, then Columbus and Indianapolis. They’d arrive in the afternoon and set off together through the city streets until night fell and they left the lights behind them, finding some remote motel on the outskirts that would better suit their meager budget.

  Tonight would only be their fourth since leaving New York, but it felt to Owen like it had been much longer. They were taking their time, inching their way across the country with only the concern over finding a school to propel them forward, though even that felt somewhat insubstantial. Owen had always been way ahead of his class, especially in math and science, and they both knew a couple of weeks wouldn’t make a difference in the long run. But it wasn’t just the pace that made them feel suspended, like they were doing little more than drifting. It was the odd feeling that they’d been set loose into the world with nothing—and no one—left to reel them back again.

  Owen now understood that the words on all those side-view mirrors were wrong. Objects behind them were not closer than they appeared. Not at all. So far, they’d put eight hundred miles between them and New York, but it might as well have been eight million.

  They walked back toward the car in silence, crossing over the brackish waters of the Chicago River beneath glassy buildings that threw back the city’s lights. They were still a few blocks away when they passed a gift shop, the windows crowded with the usual tokens—specific to Chicago but still somehow generic all the same—and before Owen even had a chance to pause, Dad wheeled around with a broad grin.

  “Let me guess.…”

  Owen bristled. “I’ll just be a minute,” he said, but Dad held up both hands in defense.

  “By all means,” he said. “Take your time, Romeo.”

  “It’s not like that,” Owen insisted, pulling open the door of the shop, but as he made his way over to the display of postcards, he realized he wasn’t so sure. Pretty much everything else in his rearview mirror had disappeared at this point. But somehow Lucy remained, the one sturdy thing in all that quicksand.

  He thought of her now as he flipped through the display of postcards: the chipped nail polish on her toes, the way her hair fell across her shoulders, the funny little slope of her nose, which seemed to catch the freckles before they could slide off.

  He’d only seen her once more before he left, just two short days after their run-in by the mailboxes. After a morning spent packing—squeezing what they could into their ancient red Honda and then lugging the rest out to the curb—Dad went out to take care of some last-minute things with Sam, who didn’t seem particularly heartbroken about their quick departure. He’d already lined up a new building manager, who would be moving into the basement just as soon as they cleared out.

  But for the moment, it was still theirs, and as Owen stood alone amid the remaining boxes, he glanced at the microwave clock for what felt like the millionth time that day. When he saw that it was after three, he hurried up to the lobby.

  He didn’t have to wait long. He sat on the bench between the two elevators, ignoring Darrell’s inquiring looks from behind the front desk, and when she came whirling through the revolving doors in her school uniform, he shot to his feet.

  “Hey,” she said, drawing out the word long and slow, a look of confusion in her eyes as she approached him. There was a streak of blue pen near the collar of her white blouse, and he was momentarily distracted by it.

  “Hey,” he said, forcing his eyes up to hers.

  She shifted her backpack from one shoulder to the other. “What’s up?”

  “Nothing,” he said, then shook his head. “Well… something.”

  She raised her eyebrows.

  “So… it’s not just you.”

  “What’s not?” she asked with a frown.

  “I’m actually moving, too,” he said, and she hesitated a moment, then let out a short laugh. But when she saw that he wasn’t kidding, her mouth snapped back into a straight line.

  “Seriously?” she asked, her eyes wide.

  He nodded. “Seriously.”

  They sat there for a long time as he explained everything—about Sam and the water pipes, about their house in Pennsylvania that was still for sale, about wanting to move forward instead of backward. At some point—he couldn’t be sure when—they both sat down on the bench, while on either side of them, the elevators scissored open and closed, making the people inside appear and then disappear.

  After a while, Lucy reached for her backpack, which was slouched at her feet, then pulled out a pen and a scrap of notebook paper, holding them out for him.

  “I don’t know where we’ll end up,” he said, but she shook her head.

  “Just give me your e-mail address.”

  “I don’t have a smartphone,” he said, digging in his pocket to show her. “I have a very, very dumb phone. In fact, it’s kind of an idiot.”

  “Well, then there’s always your computer,” she said, handing him the pen and paper anyway. “Or, you know… postcards.”

  He couldn’t tell if she was joking, but he smiled at this anyway. “Who doesn’t like getting a piece of cardboard in the mail?”

  She laughed, then motioned at the mailroom behind her. “You know where to find me.”

  “And if you go to London?”

  “I’ll e-mail you my new address.”

  “And hopefully I’ll get it.”

  “Right,” she said. “Otherwise I’ll just keep sending e-mails into the void and hope maybe your dumb phone gets a little bit smarter.”

  “Doubtful,” he said, as he scribbled his address onto the scrap of paper. He’d never been much for instant communication or social networking. It was true that he’d need his computer for college applications, and he’d probably have to get in touch with his old guidance counselor by e-mail at some point, but beyond that, he couldn’t imagine being particularly plugged in on this trip.

  He’d never really had a reason to keep in touch with anyone before. Everyone he knew had always lived within shouting distance. But it was starting to become clear that t
his wasn’t a big strength of his, this whole communication thing. In the weeks since they left Pennsylvania, Casey and Josh had e-mailed him several times, but Owen hadn’t been able to bring himself to write back. And since there were no other places to find him online, no additional outposts in the endless maze of the Internet, that was pretty much it for them: radio silence—the line gone well and truly dead. He’d never been on Twitter and was one of the last people he knew who had managed to avoid Facebook. He was a firm believer in having more friends in real life than online, though he didn’t have very many of either at the moment.

  Even so, when he handed back the paper, his heart beat fast at the thought that he might hear from Lucy. She folded it carefully, then tucked it into the front pocket of her bag with a smile, the kind of perfectly ordinary smile he suspected would take a very long time to forget.

  So far on the trip, none of the motels they’d stayed at had any sort of Internet access, except for one that was charging way too much for it, so he’d checked his e-mail for the first time only yesterday, in a sandwich shop in Indianapolis that doubled as an Internet café. While his dad stood in line to get a couple of subs, Owen sat hunched beside a guy looking up instructions for how to make guacamole. There was only one e-mail from Lucy, who had written to say that they would no longer be going to London. Apparently, her father had missed out on the job there but was offered a different position instead. So they were now moving to Edinburgh.

  I’m looking forward to wearing a kilt and learning to play the bagpipes, she wrote. My very, very English mother is having a heart attack, but I think it’ll be a nice change of scenery. And I’m excited to finally be Somewhere. I hope your Somewhere is living up to expectations, too. Hope to hear from you soon. Otherwise, will send word when I have my new address. And in the meantime, I’ll be sure to give your regards to the Loch Ness Monster.

  Now, in the cramped souvenir shop in Chicago, Owen grabbed a photo of Lake Michigan—sweeping out from the skyline in a brilliant and seemingly endless blue—and thought for a moment before scrawling a few words on the back: Wish Nessie were here.