The Geography of You and Me (11 page)

Sitting on the edge of the bed, he felt a great weariness wash over him, and rather than fight it, he let it carry him out to sea. He curled up and closed his eyes, and he knew then that he wouldn’t wake his father later, that he’d let him sleep, and that he’d sleep, too, and with any luck, tomorrow would be better.

In the morning, when the column of sun reached in through his tiny window, he hauled himself out of bed and back down the hallway, where he found his dad bent over a map at the kitchen counter. It was faded and curling at the corners, and there were small rips along the seams.

“How old is that thing?” Owen asked, stifling a yawn.

“Older than you,” Dad said without looking up. He was tracing a finger along a thread of highway, and when Owen leaned in, he could see the direction it was moving: west.

“Was California even a state then?” he joked, and Dad shot him a look, but there was something good-natured about it, something almost joyful, and Owen sensed that some curtain had been lifted since last night, some weight they’d both been carrying.

“I was thinking we might take a little drive.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah,” he said with a grin. “I was thinking we’d head out on the road, see how far we get.”

Owen tried to hide his smile but failed completely. “That sounds like a pretty good plan.”

“You’d be fine with it then?” Dad asked. “Not staying here, not going back?”

“Yes,” he said with a decisive nod, and the word echoed through his head:
Yes, yes, yes
. His chest felt light and expansive, his heart lifting at the thought, and it seemed so sensible, so obvious—that they would go west, that they would move forward, because where else was there to go?—that it almost felt like a trick, like at any moment, Dad might tell him it was all some terrible joke.

But he didn’t. Instead, he folded up the map, giving Owen a searching look. “You’d be missing some school.…”

“I’ll survive,” Owen said, nodding at the map. “You can use that thing to teach me geography.”

“Seriously,” he said. “I don’t want you falling behind because of this.”

“I have enough credits to graduate now, if I wanted to,” Owen said. “And I can do my applications on the road. It won’t be a problem. Really.”

Dad smiled, but it didn’t make it all the way up to his eyes, which remained solemn. “So we’re doing this.”

Owen nodded. “We’re doing this.”

“Okay,” Dad said, and he lifted his coffee mug, nudging another toward Owen. They raised them at the same time, the clink of the ceramic ringing out through the drab kitchen and along the halls of the little apartment.

Owen floated through the school day in a haze, daydreaming about the road ahead of them. They could end
up in Chicago or Colorado or California. It didn’t matter. It would be a new start. Not in the dungeon of some great city castle but out west, where there were more mountains than people and where the skies were lousy with stars.

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.”

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.