Don't Fail Me Now (24 page)

“What did he die of?” Leah asks. She's more composed now, but her nostrils are still flaring.

“Well, he had hep C,” Carly says. “But so do I. The difference is, he kept drinking. I told him he had to quit, but he couldn't. So his liver went. And once the liver goes . . .” She shakes her head and looks down at the shoebox. She takes off the lid, revealing a beat-up brown wallet, some car keys, a pair of aviator sunglasses, and a half-full pack of cigarettes. She puts the cigarettes and the car keys in her purse and then looks through the wallet for bills, finding none.

“Can I see that?” I ask. Carly shrugs and hands it to me, and I pull out Buck's driver's license from behind a scratched plastic window. The photo's not too sharp, but he looks pretty much the same as I remember him. Longish hair, handsome face, maybe a little thinner in the cheeks. There's an address listed for Venice Boulevard. “Does he have an apartment?” I ask.

“Please, that man had no credit,” Carly says. “That's an old girlfriend's place where he used to get mail. Since we hooked up, he's been staying with me.” Drinking, bouncing from place to place, making promises he couldn't keep—it seems like
Buck didn't change much. The thought is both depressing and oddly comforting.

“I'm Michelle,” I say, realizing I haven't introduced myself. Not that she seems to have been wondering.

“Nice to meet you, honey,” she says, extending a bony hand. “You look like him. All three of you girls.” She smiles at Tim. “You, not so much, but you're a cutie like Buck. Just don't be a jerk like him, okay?”

“I won't,” Tim says and puts a hand on the small of my back.

“Buck called,” I say, glancing at Leah. “He said he had something for us. Did he leave a will or anything?”

“There's nothing but a lot of debt that I know of,” Carly sighs. “Luckily his mother's taking care of that. She's living large out in Utah someplace. Stopped giving him any money a while back, though.” She frowns into the box. “Unless you count paying for the funeral.”

“What about the car?” I ask.

“He left that to me,” she says a little sharply, closing the shoebox with a possessive thump. “It was one of the last things he said.” She laughs bitterly. “It figures he'd spend his last living minutes yakking about a stupid car.”

I turn back to Leah and Tim. “He didn't say anything about what it was?” I ask. Leah bites her lip and shakes her head, and Tim frowns apologetically. “It was an heirloom,” I say to Carly. “Something from his family, maybe?” Hearing that “Grandma” Polly got rich gives me a sliver of hope. Maybe there was a piece of jewelry she gave him specifically for us. Maybe he didn't tell Carly because he knew she'd try to cheat us.

“
Oh
,” she says, smacking her thigh. “Of course. I remember
now. There's another car somewhere, one he got from his dad. That one's yours. Hope it's worth something.”

A hysterical giggle rips out of my throat. Goldie. The “heirloom” he left for us was Goldie. I don't know what's worse, that she's as dead as Buck is or that he had the nerve to leave us a piece of property that he already left behind eleven years ago and that we already owned by default.

“You okay?” Carly asks, and I nod mutely. I look back and see Cass and Leah whispering furiously. “Well,” she says, standing up, clutching her worthless box. “I have to get to work. The funeral's Friday, if you're sticking around. All of his Venice Beach buddies are coming. It's gonna be a good time, just like Buck would have wanted.” Her eyes are watery and unfocused, and for a second I'm afraid she'll burst into tears. But instead she just blinks a few times, gives us a limp wave, and bangs the door open with one bony hip. It slams shut behind her with a brittle clap.

“
Wow
,” Cass says.

“Who was that lady?” Denny asks.

“No one,” Leah says, clenching her jaw. Her eyes flash. “So that's it?” she asks, looking back and forth between Cass and me. “That's all we came for?” She sits down hard on a chair and bursts into tears.

“Hey.” I crouch down and rest my hands on her knees. It's kind of a relief to be able to snap into comforting mode instead of dealing with my own feelings, which still are shifting kaleidoscopically from guilt to disappointment to anger and back again. “I know it's not what we wanted, but if we had never come, we'd always wonder.” I look up at Cass; this is meant for her, too. “And now we know.”

“It just seems so unfair,” Leah cries.

“That's because it is.” It's all unfair: what Buck did to us, what happened to Mom, the fact that we traveled this far, sacrificing so much, only for Buck to peace out for good while we sat on a Greyhound bus just hours away, leaving us with nothing but a broken-down car full of bad memories. There's nothing that's ever going to make that fair. I try to think of something to say to soften the blow, but instead I find a lump forming in my throat. “Excuse me,” I whisper and make a break for the bathroom. I know I need to stop crying in them—it's so pathetic and clichéd. But in order to break down I need a closed door, and that's the only one I see.

It's the size of a small closet, painted a buttery yellow, with one of those fans that turns on when you flip the light switch so it feels like you're emptying your bladder under a low-flying helicopter. But I'm grateful for the white noise. It pulls double duty, drowning out both my tears and the voices outside.

I don't know what to think about any of it. I think I'm still in shock that Buck's gone, not just gone like I'm used to, but
gone
gone. I thought it would feel more freeing. Isn't that what I told Cass back in the tent however many nights ago? That it would be a blessing? It doesn't feel like a blessing; I don't think any death can be a true blessing, even if the person was horrible. And now that he's gone, I won't ever know firsthand if he was so horrible.

So much of my hatred is rooted in what Buck
wasn't
, not what he was. He was selfish and unreliable, a bad husband and a bad father and a bad boyfriend till his dying day, if I take Carly's word for it. But I'll never know any of his redeeming qualities, beyond being able to make a five-year-old girl laugh until her
sides hurt, when he was in a good mood. I'm kidding myself if I try to pretend like I wasn't hoping I'd get here to find him changed, and maybe we could have connected, and I could have walked away knowing something—
anything
—about my father besides the fact that he left us.

I tear off a long sheet of toilet paper and blow my nose. It's weird, but I feel a lot sadder about not getting to see Buck than I do about not getting any money from him. The truth is, I stopped really caring about the supposed heirloom when Cass got sick. I guess that's when I realized we had more important things to worry about than money. And maybe, deep down, I knew the whole time that it would end up being nothing, just the last in an endless string of disappointments.

I peel myself off the toilet and move to wash my hands, which is when I see it.

There, on the sink, wedged between the hot-water faucet and a container of antibacterial wipes, is a small cylindrical soap dispenser. And inside the clear plastic, amid a viscous, cloudy sea dotted with air bubbles, floats a miniature Christmas tree. The secret icon I've coveted all these years of some perfect, unattainable life is here, in what has got to be in the running for one of the saddest places on earth. The fact that it's four months past New Year's is almost beside the point.

I slowly depress the nozzle and let the soap pool in my open palm. Maybe no one's life is what it looks like from the outside. Maybe Mom's right, and if we all threw our problems in the air and saw everyone else's, I'd grasp for mine (well, mine or Ivanka Trump's). Whatever this sad bottle of soap means—if it is a sign from the universe and not just a sign that there was a recent local discount on out-of-season cleaning
products—I need to stop wishing for an easier life, because no one's going to hand it to me. I just have to suck it up and work with what I've got.

When I come back out, what I've got—all four of them—are waiting patiently, sitting in a row.

“Did you fall in?” Denny asks with a smirk.

“No,” I say. “But I think I just successfully removed my head from my ass.” I sit down across from Cass and rest my elbows on my knees. “I'm sorry this has been so hard,” I say. “And I'm sorry for making all of you come so far for nothing.”

“It wasn't nothing,” Cass says. She takes Leah's hand.

“Nope, not nothing,” Leah says, taking Denny's.

“I got a cool pen,” Denny says, holding it up. We all bust out laughing, and Denny joins in.

As we file out the door, I double back to the desk to thank Gina. “Sorry about all the histrionics,” I say. “It's been a long week.”

“Believe me, I've seen worse.” She cocks her head and studies my face. “You do look like him,” she says. “But if you don't mind my asking, where are the other two?”

“Cass and Leah?” I ask, confused. “They're right over there.”

“No, Madison and Karen,” she says. “He had the names all in a strip down his left side. Used to tell me, ‘These are all my girls.'”

“Oh, right,” I say, like I knew all along I was in his skin, that we all were, side by side, a tribe of survivors. I back away from the desk and give her a shrug. “They couldn't make it.”

I push through the door to find Tim leaning against the railing, the searing California sun turning him into a human hologram. Denny's voice echoes in the stairwell—he's singing “Michelle” now, too. Soon we can form a band.

“Are you okay?” Tim asks. “That was intense, to say the least.”

“I think so,” I say. Although I have no way of knowing, really; right now my feelings are bobbing over my head like untethered balloons. It's all so surreal.

“Is there anything I can do?”

“Just . . . keep being a good person,” I say, taking his hand and threading my fingers through his. “Open doors for old ladies. Lower your carbon footprint. Always tell the truth. That kind of thing.”

Tim nods solemnly. “Okay,” he says. “Then I should probably tell you, I'm falling in love with you.”

I close my eyes, not sure what to think. I'm still aching from the shock of losing Buck—or the idea of him, anyway—before I even had him, and now there's a sudden swell of euphoria crashing up against the pain, hitting all the keys in my heart at the same time, like a cat running across a piano. I start to get anxious, bracing for the tidal wave, but then I open my eyes and look at Tim and realize that I don't have to just wait for it to hit me this time. I have another option I've never considered. I can dive in.

“Me too,” I say. Tim grins, and we both lean forward, two atoms succumbing slowly to an electromagnetic force.

“Are you gonna kiss again?” Denny's yell is punctuated by barely concealed giggling, and Tim and I leap back, hanging our heads to conceal our self-conscious smiles.

“I don't know,” he says, letting his fingertips brush mine as we make our way to the stairs. “I think we can find someplace more romantic, don't you?”

“Definitely,” I say.

Wednesday Night

Los Angeles, CA
Baltimore, MD
?

“Please direct your attention to the front of the cabin for a safety demonstration.”

There's shuffling throughout the plane as a flight attendant with thick foundation and a bad case of bitchy resting face steps out into the aisle and begins miming buckling a seatbelt.

“Do they do this every time?” I whisper to Tim, who's sitting to my left, in the middle seat between Denny and me.

“Yup, there's even a video.” He points to the tiny screen on the back of the seat in front of me, where actors are inflating life vests and jumping onto emergency slides with the calm, blank faces of people who've recently been given heavy doses of sedatives.

“If this plane goes down, I will kill you,” I say, only half joking. I was all right until we got into the twisting, narrow jetway that led us from the terminal to the plane. Then I started feeling like Alice falling down the rabbit hole, my old, familiar panic winding around my ribcage and pulling tight. But Tim's been explaining everything—every ding and snap and a terrifying whooshing sound like we're about to be sucked through a wind tunnel to our untimely deaths (which apparently is just the flush of a chemical toilet). It also doesn't hurt that Denny thinks the inside of an airplane is the coolest thing he's ever seen and has been painstakingly illustrating a replica of our Boeing 737 ever since one of the flight crew brought him up to meet the pilot.

“Relax, everything's going to be fine,” Tim says. He means the plane. As for everything else, that's a big ellipsis with no end in sight. But I feel ready to take it one day at a time. We land in Baltimore at ten
P.M.
, which means first it's back home for a reunion with Mom and then back to school tomorrow to beg for makeup tests and extra-credit projects so I can finish out the semester without my grades tanking. After that it's time to run for the border to ask Yvonne for my job back. I'll need all the income I can get, since we're now without a reliable mode of transportation—although Mr. Harper did mention he has an old Volvo from the mid-'80s rusting in his spare garage and that if Tim and I can get it running, I can have it. I told him it's a deal, except I want to do it with Leah as my co-mechanic. Just the old two-long-lost-sister-princesses-fixing-a-car story, you know how it goes.

The Harpers seem great so far. They bought us dinner at the airport and listened to (an abridged version of) our story
and managed to be warm and open even when they were clearly pissed. They weren't mad at any one of us individually, just understandably freaked out by the whole thing. Tim's not allowed to drive without an escort until he graduates, and Tim and Leah are both grounded until their parents can devise what they called “a more original punishment.” But Tim and Leah didn't even seem upset. When they all got reunited in front of the JetBlue ticket desk, everyone cried a little bit, even Cass. Tim says he didn't, but I know what I saw.

Up front, the flight attendant demonstrates how to use a seat cushion as a flotation device, and Cass taps me from across the aisle.

“There's a whole empty row behind us,” she says. “I say we stockpile them to make a raft.” I nod, and we discreetly fist-bump. That's Devereaux thinking right there. That's why we pull through.

As the plane taxis away from the airport, all I can see is a lot of concrete and some far-off trees listing in the wind, as small as dandelion heads from here.

“Not much of a view,” Tim says, seeing me stare. “But every airport looks the same, anyway.” Strip malls, airports, hotels—all trying to make me feel like I could be anywhere. Walking down the hallways at school, trying not to stand out, like I could be anyone. It worked for a while, but I don't want that anymore. I want a place to belong. I finally want to land.

“Excuse me, sweetie,” an older, kinder-faced flight attendant says, stopping in front of our row and grinning forcibly at Denny. “I'm gonna have to ask you to lock your tray table for me.”

“But I have to finish my assignment,” Denny protests, and I do a double take. My brother has never once passed up an
excuse to avoid homework. One of us usually has to sit with him and physically force him to focus.

“Well, aren't we the model student?” she says. “Don't worry, you can pick up right where you left off once we're in the air.” Denny begrudgingly slides his paper and pen into his lap as Tim helps him get the tray table folded.

“What are you doing?” I ask once she moves on to her next victim.

Denny holds up his airplane drawing and flips it over. On the back, he's sketched out a copy of the family tree from the handout he showed me at the police station. Me, Cass, and Denny are the roots that anchor the tree, with our parents dangling perilously over our heads. I wonder if whoever designed the worksheet knows that it's supposed to be the other way around.

“Why didn't you just use the one your teacher gave you?” I ask.

“There weren't enough branches,” Denny says matter-of-factly. “I had to fix it.” He points to a new line emerging from Buck's branch, shooting over to Karen and then to Jeff, with lines for Tim and Leah curling down like improbable grape vines grafted onto a maple.

“That's perfect, meatball,” I say.

“Mrs. M will probably give me a check-minus, though,” he frowns. “She doesn't like it when we don't follow directions.”

“You know what?” I say, reaching across Tim's lap to tussle Denny's hair. “Who cares what she thinks?”

“Yeah,” he grins. As I sit back upright, Tim catches my hand and holds on tight.

“Listen,” he says to both of us. “Any minute now, we're
going to start to move really, really fast, and the plane will start to rattle, but that's just because the pilot has to pick up as much speed as he can to give us momentum for takeoff. It's normal.”

“Mmm hmmm.” I press my spine hard against my seatback and take a deep breath. I know he's just trying to help, but I wish Tim hadn't told me that. I had almost forgotten about the whole leaving-the-ground thing. And while I'm familiar with the physics of flight, lift and thrust and drag and all that, it's one thing to study it on a page in a textbook and another to actually be sitting in a four-hundred-ton machine about to wage a war with gravity. When there's such a strong force pulling you down, it's hard to imagine there could be an even greater one lifting you up. But it happens to millions of people every single day, so why not now? Why not me?

“Flight attendants, please be seated for takeoff.”

I look over at Cass, but she's engrossed in conversation with her new best friend, Leah. It's just as well. I don't want to make her nervous. I sit still and try to ignore the adrenaline flooding my veins, telling every bone in my body to get up and bolt.

“Are you okay?” Tim massages my hand with his thumb.

“Define ‘okay.'”

“Alive?”

“For now.” I concentrate on taking slow lungsful of air, in through my nose and out through my mouth. I've heard that keeps your heart rate in check, but judging from my skyrocketing pulse, it's not working yet.

“Remember, once we get in the air, it'll feel like we're not moving,” he says.

As the plane picks up speed, the overheard bins start to sway. “Uh-huh,” I say skeptically.

“This is the worst part. It'll be over in a minute. You'll see.”

“This. Is.
Awesome
,” Denny says, pressing his face against the window.

Suddenly we really accelerate, and I feel like I'm sucked back against my seat, helpless and lightheaded.

“I can't do this,” I whisper, squeezing my eyes shut. “I can't, I can't, I can't.”

“I thought you could do anything,” Tim says.

“I lied!” I say, almost laughing I'm so terrified. Everything's shaking violently now—the seats, the trays, the wings, my faith. We must be going a hundred and fifty miles an hour, hurtling through space toward an uncertain landing. I feel like I'm going to faint.

“Hey, I almost forgot, I owe you something,” Tim says. He leans over and takes my face in his hands and kisses me, long and deep, just as we lift off the ground, the g-force of the earth pulling us back as we fight, against all odds, to rise up.

“Michelle?” He pulls back. “Michelle, open your eyes. It's over.”

Just do it
, I tell myself.
Don't be scared. Just let go
.

“You can see the whole world from up here,” Cass marvels.

“You're missing it!” Denny cries.

“Just breathe,” Tim says.

And then my ears pop. The static breaks. I open my eyes.

I'm on my
way.