The Leaving (24 page)

Authors: Tara Altebrando

An amusement park.

He sat with the idea for a moment, just looking out the windshield.

CAROUSEL. BEACH. WHITE FIRE. HORSE.

A gardener was trimming hedges along the circular driveway. Lucas hadn’t realized how rich Avery’s family was before, but now it made sense.

The reward.

The house.

All of it.

This was the other side of the tracks, but there weren’t tracks.

“I don’t think there’s a carousel,” she said. “If it matters.”

“Zoomers sounds perfect,” he said. “I’m good.”

They started on the Tilt-A-Whirl and the spinning was brutal, his gut surely disconnecting in there.

Round and round.

Looking for something each time.

Or someone?

To wave to?

No one there, of course.

No one who knew him.

No news vans thanks to Miranda’s car.

But on that carousel?

Who’d
been
there?

At first he worked hard to avoid touching her. But as the car spun and journeyed around the rails, the force of it threw them together hip-to-hip and there was no stopping it and he stopped caring.

Her hair blew into his face and the scent of honeysuckle conjured images of tangled vines and bobbing bees. He had a feeling of remembering her even if it was ridiculous to think he’d remember a girl from the park or playground of his youth.

He felt his stomach drop out of him with each whip of the car, thought at least twice that he might lose his lunch, was probably turning green, but when they got off, she was steady, unfazed.

“What next?” she asked.

She seemed, somehow, complete. In a way he didn’t feel and didn’t know he’d ever be able to feel. Fully formed. Confident. At ease. Powerful.

“I’m not loving the spinning,” he said, rubbing his stomach, though now that he was on the ground he felt perfectly fine again.

“I know just the thing,” she said, and she took off. He followed her to the Go Karts track. A short line had formed inside a corral and they joined it.

Lucas watched as drivers got into cars and were strapped in by ride attendants. Dirty lights at the track entrance turned from red to green, and a car tore out. Loudly.

“You come here a lot?” he asked.

She elbowed him. “Are you trying to pick me up?”

He smiled.

Was he?

“You may have noticed there isn’t exactly a lot to do around here.” Avery adjusted her ponytail. “There are only so many times in one’s life that one can play mini-golf.”

“How many?” He smiled.

She gave him a look.

“No, really.” Smiled wider. “What’s a lifetime’s worth of mini-golf, do you think?”

The line moved forward, so they did, too. This was nice. It felt normal. Hanging out with a friend. Just a few days ago, he’d never have imagined it possible he’d be having a day like this. “Wait. Shouldn’t you be in school or something?”

“Starts up again on Monday.”

“You probably had more fun plans for spring break than all this.”

She shrugged. They were two people away from getting in cars.

“It was probably for the best. At least I’ve been able to be around for my parents. Well, my mom. And also, well. I’ve had a chance to get to know you again at least a little bit, and that hasn’t been so awful.” She leaned into him.

Was she flirting?

He’d read it all wrong.

Her feelings.

His feelings?

“You ever do this before?” she asked then, curious not funny or cruel or wiseacre-y.

“I doubt it?”

They gave their tickets, then got into cars, and the whole place smelled of burning rubber and he liked it.

The wheel of his car was hot, stiff.

The pedals heavy under his sneakers.

The light turned green for Avery, then red again, then green for him, and he tapped the pedal and the car jerked; then he pressed it more solidly and the machine zipped to life and out he went into the sun, taking curves, whole body vibrating, smiling, chasing after, yes, Avery with her hair like the tail of a kite.

AVERY

“It’s always a tough call,” she said, getting into the car again, her right leg almost numb from go-karts. Still. “Do you like your mini-golf with a side of pirates or a healthy dose of jungle animals?”

“I wouldn’t know how to even begin to choose,” Lucas said, starting the engine.

“Whose car is this?” she asked then, pulling a Strawberry Shortcake T-shirt out from under her feet.

“Ryan’s girlfriend,” he said.

“Okay, I guess. Whatever?” She tossed the shirt into the backseat with the others. “So the water features at Jungle Golf are arguably more impressive. But the pirates do have a way with rope bridges.”

“What kind of water features we talking?” he asked.

“Fairly impressive waterfall thing that leads into a rocky river and then a large pool.”

“I’m sold,” he said. “Which way?”

“Left out of the lot,” she said, and they were off.

Their date—no, not that!—their hang had extended into the evening. After go-karts there’d been bumper boats—they both got soaked, which actually felt good in the high heat of the afternoon—then
some arcade games, most notably Ms. Pac-Man. Then they’d driven to a Chick-fil-A and eaten, and now mini-golf.

Being with him was just . . . easy.

And torturous. It would be
easier
if he knew how she felt and felt the same.

Studying his hands and arms as he drove and scanned through radio stations, she wondered what the hell she’d been thinking texting him in the first place. Did she think she could win him over? With go-karts and mini-golf? Did she think she could compete with Scarlett? With years of history and the bond of trauma?

What if what she was feeling for Lucas was some twisted thing where she was treating him like a stand-in for Max? Like a brother? Did the way she felt so excited to be around him have more to do with The Leaving than with real feelings?

They paid and picked out clubs and stood in front of a tub of balls.

“What color?” she asked him.

“Doesn’t matter.”

“Doesn’t matter?” Why had he even come? Boredom, maybe. Lack of anything else to do. “Where’s the fun in that? Pick a color.”

He laughed. “I honestly don’t care. Just pick one for me.”

“Fine,” she said, and she picked out a pink ball and a black one. They walked to the first hole, a straightaway beside a large gorilla. She tossed Lucas the pink ball.

“Seriously?” he said.

“You said it didn’t matter.” She wrote their names on the scorecard. “You first.”

He put the ball in one of the little holes on the rubber mat, then looked up at the course and tapped the ball. Sure enough, hole in one.

“So you’re a ringer,” she said.

“Beginner’s luck?” he offered.

It took Avery two strokes to get the black ball in and, though she knew she shouldn’t be, she was annoyed about it.

“Are you going to, like, go to school?” she asked on the next hole.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Nobody’s really pushing the issue but . . . I guess? I have no idea.”

He took his first stroke; the ball stopped about six inches short of the hole. She stepped up.

“What’s it like,” he asked. “Your school?”

“It’s school. With all the usual BS. But I do all right.”

“What are you into?”

“Yearbook. I did cheer for a few years but couldn’t handle the practices. So many practices. I played soccer. Briefly. I’m thinking of trying out for the school play next week, but probably not.”

They each took their turns hitting the balls into the cup and moved on, over a bridge. The waterfall below flowed an unnatural shade, like Gatorade. Electric-looking and saccharine.

The next hole had a sizable canyon between two sections of green. Avery knew the trick was to hit hard, to fly.

“What do you think you’d do?” she asked. “At school?”

“I can’t imagine it. Like I hear people saying stuff about getting back to normal, but I don’t have a normal. Or whatever my normal was blew up and got decimated into tiny pieces. So.”

Avery’s ball leaped over the canyon, practically shimmering from the lights lighting the course, but then it hit the rock border of the hole too hard and bounced back. “No, no, no,” she said. “Slow down.”

And off toward Frozen Slushy Falls the black ball went.

Lucas gave chase, but it was too fast—gone, bouncing down the rocky falls and landing in the pool below with a
ploop
.

“Black ball, I hardly knew ye,” she said.

Lucas laughed and said, “You’re funny.”

“It’s a coping mechanism,” she said.

“Does it work?”

“Most of the time, yeah.” She nudged him. “You should try it.”

They stood there—the air still dense with heat—and she thought to say, “I broke up with my boyfriend yesterday.”

He looked up, nodded. “Didn’t know you had one.”

She’d been leaning on a fence and now pushed off. “Well, now I don’t.”

She nodded toward the front desk. “So do I go get another ball or not?”

“Do you have anything better to do?”

Nothing she could think of that she could tell him.

“Friend” is a horrible cover story.

She beat him in the end.

By a lot.

S
c
a
r
l
et
t

They had wanted to spend the afternoon on the beach. It was what you did when you lived in a beach town and had nothing else to do. And it was a decent way to kill time while waiting for a body to be identified.

But they had had to go shopping first.

For swimsuits.

Scarlett had stood in the fitting room, staring at her body for a long minute in between two suits she was trying on.

She still felt like a stranger to herself in some ways.

These are my hands
.

These are my breasts
.

My breasts are sore
.

After she picked a suit—simple, navy—she went back out to pay. Kristen had chosen a black bikini and on their way out of the store, Scarlett said, “Have you gotten your period?”

Kristen had grabbed her breasts. “No, but I feel like it’s coming.”

“Me, too.”

So they’d gone to a drugstore, and after that they were hungry, so they’d eaten—late—and then they’d gone back to Scarlett’s house
and found one of the old Leaving movies on some cable channel and couldn’t resist. It was as bad as Tammy had said.

Finally, pretty confident they hadn’t spent their lives in underground bunkers controlled by a madman with a tattooed face, they changed into their new suits and hit the beach. It was pretty much evening.

Kristen had brought magazines, so Scarlett had gone back up to the house for a book—
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
.

But in the end, she didn’t feel like reading.

She felt like staring at the water.

She still hadn’t seen a dolphin, and it was starting to annoy her.

Kristen said, “I think I had a breakthrough with the hypnotist last night.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I haven’t known how to bring it up all day. But we were talking about emotions. Could I remember a moment when I was feeling sad? Or afraid? Could I describe where I was and who I was with when I was feeling each of those things?”

“Okay,” Scarlett said.

“I talked about you.”

“When you were feeling which emotion?”

“Betrayed. Sad.”