I’ll Meet You There

  chapter twenty-eight

  Chris left three days after Mom’s visit.

  “Soon this’ll be you, chica,” he said as he hugged me.

  He pulled away and looked down at me, inspecting my face as if I were on the witness stand. His brown eyes were bright with excitement, and it was only because I’d known him his whole life that I could see the sadness behind them.

  “Promise me you’re getting on that bus, Sky.”

  “Nine A.M. on August twenty-seventh,” I said. “Don’t worry.”

  Now that I knew I was leaving too, it felt like everything was happening at warp speed. I’d be gone before I knew it.

  “I’m gonna miss you,” Chris said.

  I kicked his shoe, keeping my eyes on the ground. It was weird how it felt like only yesterday that he was helping me with my math homework, using candy to show me how to add and subtract and divide. But the math we were doing today—the him being subtracted from us—wasn’t as easy for me to understand.

  “How was it saying good-bye to Dylan?” I asked.

  He sighed, and it made him sound older. “She’s never gonna be mine, you know? I mean, it’s not like I thought she ever would be, not after Sean.” He shrugged. “Time to move on. Uh, literally.”

  “Hot little math majors?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “Call me when you get there, okay?” I said.

  “Yeah. I’ll text you a pic of my room.”

  The heaviness I’d felt ever since my mom told me I could go to school was threatening to push me into the ground. It didn’t make sense—I should have felt lighter than air. Instead, it seemed like I was running out of time that I desperately needed. I didn’t know what I needed it for, though.

  Mrs. Garcia stuck her head out of the minivan. “Mi hijo—vamanos!”

  Chris waved at her and gave me one more hug.

  “I love you, gringa,” he said.

  I bit my lip. “I love you too.”

  He swung his backpack over his shoulder, and as he turned toward the van, I grabbed his hand and squeezed.

  “Chris.”

  I wanted to have the perfect words to tell him how he’d been family, how I wouldn’t be who I was without him and how my life was a collage of memories and he was in every one. But the words couldn’t get past the lump in my throat, and as his eyes became glassy, I knew that it was okay. He got it.

  Chris jogged to the van and jumped inside. Just as they started to drive off, he pulled open the door and yelled, “The pact!”

  I laughed and gave him a thumbs-up. Then he slid the door shut, and they were off. I stood alone on the Garcias’ front porch, waving long after they’d turned the corner. All his siblings had gone with him to the airport, so the house was quieter than I’d ever seen it. If Dylan had been there with me, we’d have tried to cheer each other up somehow, but she’d said her good-byes that morning, since she had to work the lunch shift at Ray’s.

  I sat on their steps and stared out at the empty street in front of me, thinking about all the hours I’d spent there dreaming and imagining and playing. After a while, I stood and took a picture of the house for Marge’s collage, this time with a disposable camera I’d bought since I’d been borrowing Chris’s.

  I wanted to call Josh. To share memories I had of Chris and me growing up that Dylan was tired of hearing about. I wanted him to wrap his arms around me, and I wanted to let myself sob about losing my best friend. I wanted the impossible.

  I couldn’t go back to the Paradise—it was only three in the afternoon, and Josh would be there, repainting one of the rooms or maybe fixing the filter in the pool. I got into my car and headed toward the trailer park. Now that Mom and I had reconnected, I was trying to pop in once a day to say hi, and I didn’t want to be alone with this emptiness that was seeping into every part of me until I felt like I was made of concrete.

  I spent the afternoon on our busted-ass couch, watching the Syfy channel because Chris loved it and it felt like as good a way as any to say good-bye. Every few minutes I would think of him, wondering at what stage in his journey he was. I pictured him arriving at the Fresno airport, going through security, browsing the magazines in one of the gift shops. I didn’t actually know what the inside of an airport looked like, but I’d seen enough movies to make a good guess.

  I carried our plates from lunch over to the kitchen sink and threw in the pan I’d used to make grilled cheese. Almost everything was packed in boxes. Mom and Billy were leaving a few days after me.

  “I miss him already.”

  “Yeah, he’s a good kid,” Mom said. “But you’ll see him at Christmas and then you can tell each other all about school and everything.”

  I washed the dishes, then put them in the draining rack and dried off my hands. I tried not to pay too much attention to the wineglasses in there or the bottles of beer I’d seen in the fridge. If I thought about it too much, I’d be begging her to stay.

  “I’ve gotta get to the Paradise.”

  Mom pulled her hair out of her ponytail and started braiding it. “No graveyard tonight?”

  “Amy wanted to switch, so I’m off at midnight. I’ll drop by tomorrow, okay?”

  “Sure.”

  The breeze on the drive to the Paradise felt good, but I was all out of sorts. Luckily, it was a strangely busy night, with a late checkout and then a new guest who insisted that they had to be in the Gilligan’s Island room that had just been vacated. So I got to play maid for twenty minutes, changing the sheets and cleaning up the room.

  I checked in the new guest and then spent the rest of my shift walking around in circles, bugging Marge whenever I got so bored I couldn’t stand it. I tried to write a to-do list of the things I needed to get done before I left for school, but all I could think about was Chris being on the other side of the country, the wineglasses at Mom’s house, and Josh Mitchell being such a disappointment.

  When Amy came at midnight, I headed out to the pool, too keyed up to go to bed. I sat down on the lounge chair and leaned back. On the table next to the chair was a half-finished bottle of whiskey. Every now and then, guests left stuff out—suntan lotion, cups, magazines. I picked up the whiskey—Jack Daniels—and inspected the bottle by moonlight. I remembered that Josh had been drinking a bottle of whiskey when I’d seen him at the drive-in.

  What was it with this stuff? Dad and his beer, Mom and her wine, Josh and his whiskey. I unscrewed the cap and sniffed it—it smelled like a secret, the kind you held on to for dear life and prayed no one would ever find out.

  A plane passed overhead, and I imagined Chris inside it, looking down, even though I knew he was already in Boston. He’d sent me a picture of his room with his hand in the center of the photograph, doing a thumbs-up. I ran my palm along the side of the glass bottle, tracing the grooves with my fingertips.

  Chris and Dylan had always been cool with my decision not to drink. They’d understood because of Dad, but that didn’t keep either of them from having a good time. Sometimes I’d felt a little jealous or left out when they got a buzz—it was like they were in this warm, fun place that I was always on the outside of. It was just one more thing that made me feel like I never really belonged.

  When Mom drank, she didn’t drink to have fun—I knew that. She drank to forget.

  I swirled the amber liquid in the bottle, watching it splash up, like a tiny fountain. I closed my eyes, tilted my head back, and took a sip.

  Fire.

  Hot, hot, gross, burning, God-how-can-people-drink-this-shit fire fire fire.

  Warm.

  Liquid honey filling the cold places that had gotten bigger and bigger inside of me since Mom went off the deep end, since Josh said, It doesn’t feel right.

  Another sip—disgusting, what am I doing, I should throw this out and—

  Rubbery goodness.

  I wasn’t made of hard, unyielding concrete anymore. It took a little while, but the whiskey broke it up and turned me into warm sand. Creek s
and in the sun.

  Another sip—really not so bad, kinda nasty at first, but it wasn’t long before I was floating and the stars were so amazingly bright, like that night at the gas station.

  Fuck Josh Mitchell.

  Another sip. Oops, where’d that cap go? Fuck it. Another sip. Another.

  I don’t need him. Or Chris. Or anyone.

  Tears threatened, and I thought of Dad.

  Daddy.

  Suddenly, more than anything in the world, I wanted to go to the creek. I had to go. Had to be as close to him as possible. We’d scattered his ashes there, and now Mom and I were both ditching him. How could we do that? Maybe, if I went there, I could figure out—whoops! sat up too fast—I could figure out why everything felt wrong.

  JoshJoshJosh. I shook my head.

  Fuck. Him.

  I stood, swaying a little, clutching the bottle in one hand and digging in my pocket for my car keys with the other. The creek. The creek. That was where the answers were.

  I left the bottle on the table and stumbled to the back gate. Stubbed my toe on a rock.

  “Ouch!”

  Damn. That really hurt.

  It took me a minute to fit my key into the lock once I’d gotten to my car—duh, wrong key. I started giggling and got inside quick and shut the door before Amy could hear me.

  I turned on the car, and it was like a sign from God when the radio started playing this song that Maverick aka Tom Cruise listens to in Top Gun with the blond chick he’s into. “Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay.” In the movie, they’re on this porch swing, and he tells her it was a song his dad had listened to a lot, and I’d always loved it because my dad had liked it too. He used to sing it to me at night, like a lullaby, and he’d taught me to whistle by having me practice the whistling part of the song. I turned it up as I backed out and headed toward the highway.

  It took me a second to realize my headlights weren’t on, but I noticed before I got on the road. The Paradise sign blazed, and the neon angel winked at me. I waved to her, half tempted to flip her off, but I didn’t know why. The Paradise had been good to me, even if it had brought Josh into my life. I got on the 99, and somebody honked, and I did flip them off, which felt dangerous, like throwing beer bottles at a boarded-up gas station.

  I turned the radio up and sang at the top of my lungs. I didn’t realize I was crying until I pulled onto the dirt road that led to the creek. When the song ended, I shut off the radio and took a big breath, trying to concentrate on the road in front of me, which was sort of hazy and rolling, like I was driving on water. Empty fields were on either side of me, and there wasn’t any moon, so it was pitch-black except for my two yellowish headlights that were zigzagging all over the road.

  My cell started to ring, and I grabbed it out of the ashtray I never used, where it was lying on top of change and gum wrappers.

  The caller ID said Josh.

  “What the hell?”

  I stared at the phone, my insides turning to jelly, my hand shaking. What did it mean that he was calling me tonight, right now, when everything in me ached to be with him, but NO, no way was I going to answer.

  “Fuck you, Josh. Fuck you!” I yelled at the phone. It kept ringing, and just when I was about to throw it onto the seat next to me, the car suddenly lurched, then dived off the road. I screamed, the phone flying, my hands gripping the wheel. My teeth slammed together, and my forehead hit the steering wheel. The air bag didn’t open, but it didn’t matter because the car suddenly stopped, the engine making a horrible, grating sound. I looked around me, at the headlights pointing into a wall of earth.

  A ditch.

  I’d driven into a deep ditch on the side of the road. Everything was close, too close, and I couldn’t breathe, and Dad, this was what Dad must have felt like, right when the big rig—

  I unbuckled my seat belt and tried to open the door, but it wouldn’t budge. I started panicking, feeling like the car was underwater and I was sinking. I had to get out, had to get out before the car blew up or the walls of earth caved in and buried me alive.

  I rolled down the window and turned off the ignition, leaving the headlights on. My body shaking, my head pounding, my stomach clenching.

  I felt something on my foot and reached down—my cell phone. I shoved it into my pocket.

  Spinning. Spinning. Oh, God, what’s happening?

  I gave up hope of ever opening the door and hoisted myself out the window, then reached up to brace my body against the side of the ditch. There was just enough space for me to crawl out. When I got onto the road and looked down, the tears came. There wasn’t a house around for miles, and unless there were some couples hooking up by the creek, there wasn’t anyone around who could help me. How the hell had I—

  Josh.

  I whipped the phone out of my pocket and nearly fell over from the effort. I swayed in the middle of the deserted road, looking down at my car. I’d been fine, almost to the creek, about to get some answers from the universe or God or my dad when he had to push his way back into my life, calling in the middle of the night. I went to my recent calls and pressed the number on top.

  I started screaming into the phone as soon as I heard his hopeful “Sky?”

  “You fucking asshole, why the fuck are you calling me? Now my car’s in a goddamn ditch—”

  “Sky, slow down,” Josh said, his voice instantly commanding.

  “No, I will not slow down. Fuck you. You don’t get to tell me what to do—”

  “Sky. Are you hurt?”

  “I’m not some soldier you can just order around to do whatever, and I’m not Jenna Swenson who’s just gonna suck your—”

  “SKY. What do you mean your car’s in a ditch?” He was yelling over me, his voice frantic.

  “Oh, like you care. I’m guessing you’re only calling me at one A.M. for one of two reasons: either you’re as drunk as I am or—”

  “You’re drunk?”

  Now he was really shouting and the whole world was spinning and I had to sit down, only when I tried to sit down, I ended up falling onto my back, which was hilarious and kind of painful.

  I started laughing and crying at the same time, and I could hear him start his truck in the background and then there was his voice, his voice I’d been missing so much for days and days and days, pleading with me, begging me, and SCREW HIM.

  “Where are you? I’m coming. Where are you?”

  “I don’t need your help. You’ve done enough, can’t you see that? God!”

  “Okay. I know you’re mad, but can you just—”

  “If you hadn’t called me, I’d already be at the creek with Dad, I mean not with Dad, but—”

  “The creek? You’re at the creek?”

  “Yes. I mean … no. I don’t know, I’m … It’s none of your business where I am!”

  “You called me! I’m just trying to help. Please—tell me where you are.”

  “I don’t know, I’m … it’s a ditch. I can’t describe a fucking ditch, Josh.”

  I heard him grunt in frustration, and I hated that my alcohol-poisoned brain thought that was cute. I could imagine the look on his face, how pissed he was, though why he suddenly cared I didn’t know.

  “Are you hurt? Is anything broken? Are you bleeding? I’m calling 9-1-1—”

  “No!” I yelled. “I’m not hurt. I’m pissed. Do you know how much money this is going to cost me? Why did you have to fucking call me—”

  “Sky. Please. Just stay where you are. I’m close. Are you on the highway or—”

  “Don’t ever call me again.”

  I threw the phone at my car, smiling at the satisfying thunk of it hitting the roof. I struggled to stand up, then dusted myself off. A wicked rush of vertigo made me lean over, hands on my knees. I closed my eyes, took a breath, and managed to stand. Belatedly, I realized it was a very bad idea to throw my phone into a pitch-black ditch with only my headlights to help me find it.

  I looked over the side, surveying th
e mess I’d made. The car didn’t look banged up so much as stuck.

  “Dammit.”

  The tears started again, and I couldn’t stop them, and I wanted my dad and Chris, and fuck, I’d been driving drunk, I could have killed someone, and what had I said to Josh? I couldn’t remember, just him yelling and me freaking out on him.

  “Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God,” I whispered, hugging my arms.

  I heard a roar behind me and jumped as Josh’s truck gunned down the dirt road. When he was about six feet from me, he screeched to a halt and jumped down from his truck—faster than I’d ever seen him—and literally ran over to me.

  “You can run?” I asked, dazed and squinting at his bright headlights.

  “Tell me what hurts,” he demanded.

  His hands roamed over my face and touched the back of my head. It didn’t matter how drunk I was—everywhere he touched made me shiver. My skin was a traitor.

  He looked into my eyes and held up three fingers. “How many fingers am I holding up?”