The Tragedy Paper (7 page)

“Okay, I think I’ll skip a shower since I took one last night,” she said. “Just give me a few minutes to get dressed.”

She took a step toward the bathroom and then came back and stood just inches away from me.

“What
do
they say about people who build igloos together?” she asked.

She was almost standing on her tippy-toes. She was totally flirting with me. I loved it. I pushed all the bad stuff out
of my mind. I was not going to let this moment go by. And then she turned again and disappeared into the bathroom. I heard the water running and a toothbrush being used and then, in what seemed like just seconds, she emerged looking as fresh as she had the day before. She was wearing jeans and a bright blue sweater. Her hair was braided and secured with a bright blue rubber band. She wasn’t a green and yellow girl. She changed colors each day. I liked that.

“Okay, I’m ready,” she said, checking her bed one more time and hoisting her bag over her shoulder.

“Do you have blue iPod buds?” I asked. I couldn’t resist.

“I do,” she said, smiling. “Are
you
going to make fun of me too?”

“Who else makes fun of you?” I asked, truly curious. She didn’t seem like the sort of girl who was made fun of.

“My friends,” she said.

“Oh,” I said.

“So, are you?”

“No, of course not,” I said. “Well, maybe a little.”

“Go ahead, you won’t bother me,” she said. “Actually, this started out as a bet—a friend at school challenged me to color-coordinate my outfits every day for a week, and I had fun. So now it’s sort of become my thing.”

I looked down at her toes. Yep, blue socks.

“You’re good at it,” I said.

She swatted my arm, but then her fingers wrapped around
my wrist gently and we stood like that for a minute. I was the first one to move, grabbing my clothes and stuffing them into my backpack.

“Okay,” I said. “I’m ready.”

I turned and looked at the room one last time. Something on the floor caught my eye and I walked toward it. It was her tiny monkey. I bent down and scooped it up in one hand. It was soft, and I could tell it was old: one of its legs was almost completely worn.

“Hey, you forgot this guy,” I said, holding it out to her. She smiled and reached for it. She held it to her chest for a second before stuffing it into her bag.

“Thanks,” she said. “That could have been a disaster.”

I think I heard the ding of her phone before she did. We were already outside the room. The door had closed behind us. She pulled her phone out of her pocket and fiddled with the buttons, pulling up a text message, probably from the boyfriend she mentioned the night before.

“What did he say?” I asked. I had nothing to lose. She was going to hate me in a few hours anyway.

She looked up, surprised. Then she looked at the floor and kicked one shoe with the other.

“That he misses me,” she said. “That he can’t wait to see me.”

“Oh, good,” I said, trying not to sound sarcastic. “You guys made up. Now, what kind of food do you want to get?”

“I was thinking that since we had breakfast for dinner,
maybe we could have lunch for breakfast,” she said. “I could eat a burger, or some pasta. What do you think?”

“I think it’s a great idea,” I said. Actually, I was thinking it continued the tradition of the rules not applying, but I didn’t want to say that.

She smiled, then took my arm and led me down the hall like we were off to see the wizard. I hated how much I liked it because I knew I couldn’t keep it.

The elevator came, we got in. Vanessa let her heavy bag drop to the floor. I watched the floors count down. Nine—then eight—then seven. She was looking right at me, expectantly, even. What did I have? An hour left, ninety minutes tops, before this would all go away. I dropped my bag to the floor next to hers. I took a step toward her and kissed her on the lips. Her lips were full and, I was surprised to feel, welcoming. For a few seconds it seemed like just the right thing. And then the elevator stopped, the doors opened. We both hurried to get our bags, but before we stepped out into the real world, Vanessa turned to me. I felt the claustrophobic urgency to get out, the doors might close again. But they didn’t. I forced myself to stand there.

“You have really nice eyes,” she said. And then that was that. She stepped out and I followed.

Down in the lobby, things seemed to be restored to normal. The couches and chairs were occupied by a few
people here and there, but there were no crowds, no sense of desperation.

“Can I help pay for the room?” Vanessa asked as we walked back into the airport, retracing our steps from the day before. “You saved me last night.”

“No, it is my pleasure,” I said, having a hard time answering. Had my lips really just been touching hers? “Actually, my mom paid for it. So don’t worry.”

I knew I should call my mom. In fact, I was surprised she hadn’t called to check in on me. But I didn’t want to lie, and I certainly didn’t want to tell her I had spent the night in the hotel room she rented for me with a girl I had just met.

The airport, it seemed, was even more crowded than the day before. We quickly found a restaurant and settled in.

“This is my treat,” Vanessa said, smiling. “I owe you one. Actually, I owe you two since you found my monkey. Or should I say my lovey?” She looked around. “We’re the only people here. Do you think the food is really bad?”

“Hey—if it’s half as good as those pancakes last night, I’ll be happy,” I said, realizing with some surprise that I was hungry. “But it’s really expensive. Maybe you want to take back your offer, or maybe we should go to a different place.”

“No, I like it here,” Vanessa said. “I have an emergency credit card. I would say this is an emergency. Order whatever
you want. I’m thinking the cheddar burger, a Coke, and the truffle fries. What about you?”

I was distracted for a minute. I wanted to tell her about Irving—by then I felt like I was actually lying to her—but I was being unusually selfish. Once I told her, I was pretty sure our connection, which at the time I would have gone so far as to describe as miraculous, would evaporate. She reached across the table to get my attention, touching my hand. The energy that I had felt yesterday had grown. She might as well have shocked me with a defibrillator.

Just then the server came back to take our order. He smelled like cigarette smoke.

“What can I get you kids?” he asked. His teeth were yellow.

“I’ll have the cheddar burger, medium rare, and the truffle fries. No, make that regular fries, please,” Vanessa said. “The truffle might be a little too much for breakfast. Oh, and a Coke.”

“How about you?”

“I’ll have the steak,” I said. “Well done.”

The server nodded and then we were alone again.

I couldn’t waste any time. I got up and joined her on her side of the booth. She moved over a little to make room for me. And that was how we ate our lunch for breakfast. It was the best steak I ever had.

“Hey, I had an idea,” she said after we shared a huge piece of chocolate fudge cake. “I have extra points and I imagine the planes are going to be packed—I know they will be—so do you want me to see if you can sit with me in first class?”

Suddenly I wished I hadn’t eaten so much. The steak was heavy in my stomach. The cake was lying on top of that. I had not thought through to the plane and where we would sit and, most important, what we would do on the other end. But now I was starting to think, hope, that the crowds would work in my favor, that we would be forced to split up.

“No, I couldn’t, you should save your points,” I said.

She hesitated, leaning into me for a brief minute, but then I got up and moved back to the empty bench across the table.

“Are you sure?” she asked.

“I’m sure,” I said. My mood was changing. I was starting to feel trapped. Maybe it was for the best, I told myself. This had to end at some point.

She signaled to the server for the check, and he was there with it in an instant. Her phone started to ring, but she ignored it. Then it was quiet. She pulled out what I guessed was her emergency credit card and handed that and the bill back to him. Her phone jingled, and she jumped.

“Voice mail,” she said, typing in her code. I could see her face change as she listened.

“Patrick,” she said quietly, her eyes on the phone. “The guy I was telling you about. This is what I was afraid of.”

“What?” I asked.

“He’s been drinking. I can tell,” she said. “I mean, it’s, like, ten in the morning and I know classes haven’t started yet, but he is going to get into trouble. I just know it.”

“Is that usual?” I asked, alarmed. That was not the bucolic image I had in my mind of the Irving School.

“No. Well, I mean, kids drink. Especially at the beginning of a semester, people sneak alcohol from home. But Patrick doesn’t usually. He just hasn’t been himself since his mother died last year.”

“Oh,” I said.

We sat quietly for a minute.

“Are you going to call him back?” I asked.

“Maybe,” she said, sliding out of the booth. “But let’s go check on the flights first.”

“Thanks for that,” I said, gesturing toward the table.

“You’re welcome,” she said.

We walked back into the crowded airport and found our way to the main gate at the entrance to the terminal. There was a place for first-class passengers, a much shorter line, and then a line for the rest of us. She joined me in my line, but I was starting to act weird, I know I was. I was nervous, and more than anything I wanted to tuck in somewhere. I didn’t smile or nod; I paced in my tiny space. After a few minutes, my cell phone rang. It was my mom. I could have
not answered it. I could have called her back later, or even in a little while. But I didn’t.

“Hi, Mom,” I said into the phone. I could see Vanessa looking at me. I pretended I didn’t.

“Timmy,” my mother said. “How was your night?”

That was a loaded question.

“Hey, Mom?” I said. “I’m back at the airport about to check in, can I call—”

Vanessa was waving at me. I guessed she wanted me to tell my mom she said thank you. But that would have raised so many other questions I couldn’t answer.

After a second or two, Vanessa gave up. I can still remember the look on her face, a mixture of confusion and sadness. Maybe a little anger thrown in. She picked up her bag, threw it over her shoulder, and left the long line, joining the one for first-class passengers. She was agitated: she kept tapping her foot and making huge sighing sounds. I was pretty sure she wasn’t used to being treated that way. A minute later she came back to me. I still had the phone to my ear, even though I wasn’t talking. She leaned in.

“Thanks for the last eighteen hours,” she said. I could have told her then, I should have. But I didn’t. And then she turned her back toward me and walked away, and I knew she wasn’t going to come back.

“Tim, are you there?” my mother called into the phone.

“Yeah, I’m here,” I said.

“Do you want to call me back?” she asked. “I just wanted to make sure you were all right.”

“Okay, I’ll call you back when I figure things out,” I said. “Bye, Mom.”

Eighteen hours. Eighteen hours. That was almost a whole day. But more than that—and this is a question I still ask myself—when and why had she bothered to count the hours we had spent together?

The familiar notes of a guitar were suddenly playing in Duncan’s ears, and he was momentarily snapped back to his own time and place. What was that? Was it … John Denver? And then he heard the beginning words to “Leaving on a Jet Plane.” What the heck? Maybe Tim was crazy. He hated that song. He wasn’t going to waste his time listening to it when he could be playing cards with the guys. But then, before he had a chance to turn it off, Tim was back. And he was laughing.

I thought we could both use a little comic relief. My mother actually loves that song. She’s into corny folk music. Me? Not so much. You? I’m guessing not so much either. Sorry about that. It won’t happen again, though I promise I’ll leave
you with some of my favorite music of all time. But that’s a long way away.

In the end, we weren’t on the same flight, though I wouldn’t realize that for a while. She checked in at the first-class counter and then headed onto a short escalator and disappeared. By the time I wound my way to the beginning of my own line, almost two hours had passed. The first flight out that day was overbooked, so I wasn’t scheduled to leave until four that afternoon. As I walked to my gate, I hoped she would be there. I wasn’t sure what I would say, but I hoped. The gate was crowded, and after I saw that she was nowhere in sight, I found a chair facing a window and pulled out a graphic novel I was reading. That was when I started convincing myself that we were both better off for having cut our time together short.

I didn’t want to call my mother. I knew I should have and she ended up being pretty mad at me, but I just couldn’t pretend that I was the same person I had been the day before. If anyone would pick up on that, it would be my mom. But I did call Mr. Bowersox. He was my only contact at the school—anywhere in New York, really—and I suddenly worried he would wonder where I was.

He and my stepfather, Sid, had been at Irving together and then gone on to the same college. They stayed pretty close over the years. If Mr. Bowersox had not become the headmaster of Irving, then I would probably be telling a whole different story, but he did and so there I was. I had
his cell phone number. I wasn’t sure how acceptable it was to use it to call a headmaster, but I almost didn’t care at that point.

He answered on the first ring.

“Mr. Bowersox? This is Tim Macbeth, Sid’s—” I started to say.

“Yes, of course. I’m so glad to hear from you,” he said. He was so kind and sounded so truly happy to hear from me that for a minute I felt close to tears.

“How have your travels been, young Tim?” he asked when I was quiet for a minute too long.