The Truth of Letting Go Read online

  I was begging Cece to flat iron the back of my head since I couldn’t do it myself and she was trying to convince me that my hair looked fine and that no one could see it in the movies anyway. It was right after she’d made her very astute point that no one sees the back of your head in a movie theater, and even if a cute boy was there and he did like me, he would like the front part of my head, not the back, that we got the news.

  My aunt and uncle wouldn’t be coming home. Not that night, not ever again.

  Mom held onto us while we cried and cried. I was devastated at the idea of losing my aunt and uncle, but mostly I think I cried for Cece. Dad went to get Thomas and I guess Ezra went home because I don’t remember him being in the picture that night. My parents were at a loss for words, and even though Mom would later find plenty of words in therapy, that night they hugged us and said they loved us, and then they left us alone.

  My two cousins and I stayed up in my bedroom, sitting on the air mattress Mom had brought out for Thomas to use. We talked into the night, sharing stories of their parents, trying to pick out the funny ones even though nothing at all was funny just then. I learned that you can cry so much your shirt gets soaked from wiping off the tears. By dawn, we’d fallen asleep sharing pillows and blankets, arms and legs all over the place just like when we were little kids taking a nap on the living room floor.

  In the morning, I thought we’d all had an allergic reaction to something on the sheets, but it turns out that spending an entire night crying makes your eyes swollen and puffy the next day. It took a long time to accept that I’d never see my aunt and uncle again. Besides a couple of elderly family members I didn’t really know, this was the first time I’d lost someone close to me. The only thing that got me through it was knowing I needed to stay strong for Cece.

  When Thomas died six months later, it still hurt like hell, but I processed it easier. I guess the death of my aunt and uncle had already conditioned me to live with a heart that’s been ripped open from loss. Or maybe it was easier because I didn’t have to be strong for Cece anymore. She didn’t ask to sleep in my bed for months after like she’d done when her parents died. She wasn’t sad at all, not really, because she wouldn’t allow herself to believe the truth about Thomas.

  As long as she’s had the hope that he’s still alive somewhere, she’s been able to fight back the pain of his loss. Her doctor said she would have been bipolar anyway; the death of her family merely kick-started her dormant mental illness. But I don’t know if that’s true.

  I’ve always been annoyed at her tenacious insistence that her brother is alive. At the start of this trip, I thought for sure that finding out he’s really dead will put a stop to her insanity. Now that we’re almost there, the summit of this journey within sight, I’m afraid of what will happen when she finally admits the truth to herself.

  What if everything has happened for a reason? Fate has colluded with destiny to bring us together again on this forbidden road trip so that when Cece finally comes to her senses about Thomas being dead, she’ll have me there to take care of her. I’ll be strong for her now like I was back then. That couldn’t have happened if she’d gone on this trip without me. We’d still be strangers, not former friends making amends.

  The baby on the laundromat floor starts crying, probably because even a baby is smart enough to know they shouldn’t be eating dirt off the floor. A few people shuffle out of the laundromat and climb onto the bus. A man with an unlit cigar hanging out of his mouth starts dumping his clothes into the dryer right next to us, despite the ten million empty dryers a more polite distance away. I glance at the time on my cell phone. I have thirteen minutes to convince Cece to get up and get on the bus before it leaves without us.

  “Did you find him, find him, or is this just another clue?”

  “I found him,” she says, looking away. “I found…his username.”

  I fold my arms across my chest and glance back at Ezra, but he’s staring at the overflowing bulletin board full of business cards and flyers of stuff for sale.

  “I’ll explain,” she says, her eyes once again pleading with me. “It won’t take long. We can still get home tonight. I swear.”

  My nostrils flare as I think through my options. “If I go along with this, you have to promise me two things.”

  “Anything,” she says.

  “One—you’ll get back on a bus with me tonight, no matter what, and we’ll go home. And two—you can never let my parents know about this trip. Not in therapy, not ten years from now. Never.”

  “I promise and I promise,” she says, exhaling. “I know I’ve been annoying, but I really did find him this time. Please, Lilah.” She taps her chest. “I can feel it in my heart.”

  With a sigh, I slide down to the floor and kneel next to her computer. “What did you find?”

  Ezra walks over, one eyebrow lifted. “Everything okay?”

  “Sit down and find out,” I tell him, moving over so we all have room to see her computer.

  “I found a message board for people who love Jeeps,” Cece explains, switching browser windows to show us the forum. Jeep Life has a dorky Comic Sans font logo, but it has hundreds of thousands of users and posts. Cece scrolls down to a user profile. “I searched ChellWheatley thinking he might use the same name somewhere else. And there’s a user here with that name.”

  “A lot of people play that video game,” I say.

  Cece nods, and clicks on a link. “But only one of them owns the Jeep.”

  Ezra and I lean in close as we look at the post, made in January of this year. The user ChellWheatley has posted pictures of his Jeep—the Jeep, talking about his upgraded suspension and added lights. In the comments, people give him pointers for fixing it up to be even cooler. Someone points out the gray panel and says it’s not very expensive to have it repainted.

  “Look at this,” Cece says, pointing to ChellWheatley’s reply.

  I know I’m spending a shit ton of money on upgrades, but I kind of like the gray panel. Gives her some character. She’s been scarred in the past, but she’ll be fine, ya know?

  The next several comments all question his sexuality for posting something so emotional and poetic. Ezra chuckles. “Thomas loved saying things had character. That was his excuse anytime something broke.”

  “I know,” Cece says, grinning up at him.

  A tingly sensation works its way up my spine. “This is definitely the same Jeep, but unless he posted his address on here, how are we supposed to find him?”

  “He did,” Cece says, lifting a shoulder. “Well, in a way, he did. I looked through all of his posts and none of them give out any personal information, except that he’s always wanted a Jeep. But you can tell these photos are in front of an apartment complex, right? Well, I searched the EXIF data of the photos he posted in January.”

  “EXIF?” I say. “Is that in English?”

  “Digital cameras leave information in every photo. The date, time, what type of camera took it, that kind of thing. Some even save the location of where the photo was taken.” She changes to another browser window; this one is pulled up on a map of the area. “The photo was taken at these GPS coordinates. Google Earth clearly shows it being an apartment complex.”

  She grins while we review this new revelation in pixels. “That’s him. That’s where he lives.”

  “It’s in the Woodlands,” Ezra says. “That’s about an hour and a half from here. The bus makes a stop there, actually.”

  “Are you serious?” I say.

  “It’s fate.” Cece grins. “Can we go?”

  “I—” I start to say hell no, but I can’t. I look at Ezra.

  “It’s your call,” Ezra says, but his eyes tell a different story. “Honestly, I’m in no hurry to get home.”

  This will be another dead end, and we’ll probably have to wait hours for the next bus to pick us up from The Woodlands. But taking this detour will help in repairing things with Cece. This entire trip has been
for her, after all.

  And although all I want is to get home and be able to breathe easily again, the only reason we even left in the first place was for her. Cece is annoying and spastic and she’s always screwing up plans. My entire perfectly organized life has been thrown into chaos for her.

  But she made a promise. And I’m going to make one too. “I’m with you,” I say with a sigh. “We didn’t come this far just to come this far.”

  Our bus is practically brand new. With shiny navy blue paint, on the outside it could pass for a rock star’s tour bus—well, except for the greyhound on the side. I wonder if the driver ever drove a real tour bus for someone famous; if they’re embarrassed to stop at the laundromat which isn’t even a real bus stop, but more like a kiosk in the crappy part of a small town.

  When we climb aboard, it’s pretty obvious the driver doesn’t mind. She’s a short thin woman with ridiculously bright red hair, the kind of color that can only be obtained from a box. There’s a curly script tattoo on her forearm, but I can’t make out what it says without being overly nosy. She smiles at us as we board the bus, which smells like leather and that wondrous new car smell. Ezra, Cece, and I are the last ones to get on with five minutes to spare.

  “Welcome, welcome!” Our driver says, her voice booming through the bus. Cece takes the lead and walks us all the way to the back, where there’s three seats together in a row next to the bathroom. The rest of the bus is divided into two seats on each side of the aisle, so this is the only place we can all sit together.

  “I’m Tamara,” the bus driver says as we settle into the black leather seats. “I’ll be your driver today. My goal is to keep you safe and happy, so no I won’t speed because you’re running late, but yes I can adjust the temperature or music if everyone agrees. Sound good? Let’s get going. Everyone buckle up. If you need to use the restroom, do so with caution, as a sudden stop will have you flying to the floor and most likely emptying your bladder in the process.”

  People laugh at this. I tug my seatbelt on under my backpack, which I’m keeping safely in my lap instead of in the overhead bins. The seats are wide enough that I can be squished in the middle of Cece and Ezra without being too suffocated. Luckily, I don’t mind being pressed against these two. Some of the other people on the bus don’t seem to pleased at their seating arrangements.

  Ezra checks his phone three times before the bus drives away. Each time the screen is empty. There’s a different vibe around him now, an air of uncertainty and fear. This whole trip he’s been our sage companion, working magic between the rifts in my relationship with Cece and keeping us on track. Now he’s the lost one, when Cece and I are finally on our way to something worthwhile.

  I reach over and take his hand. His eyes are soft, his smile sad, but he lets me hold onto him.

  To my left, my cousin is quiet, her gaze darting around the bus as she takes in each passenger, thinking whatever it is she thinks about strangers. She’s always been one to notice the small details about things everyone else glosses over. After a few minutes, we’re out of town and pulling onto Interstate 45, the long highway that goes from the top of Texas down to the coast. We used to drive this road when we went to the beach in the summers as a family. Those trips stopped after Thomas died.

  Or went missing. I’m still not sure which one I believe. Maybe I don’t need to believe in theories right now. I just need to believe in Cece.

  The overhead speaker cracks and Tamara’s voice talks straight down from the ceiling. “Our next stop will be at The Woodlands. Arrival time is estimated at an hour and a half.”

  Cece presses her fingers to the window next to her. “I’m coming for you, Thomas.”

  “How are we going to get from the bus stop to the apartment complex?” I say.

  “Uber,” Cece wiggles her eyebrows. “It’s what all the cool kids are using. I downloaded the app at the laundromat.”

  “I guess that works,” I say. “I’ve had enough random walking for this week.”

  Cece gazes back out of her window. “I figure Thomas can just take us home. Or if he’s busy or something, he could take us back to the bus stop.”

  My chest tightens. This is the part in the conversation where I’m supposed to deflect and distract her. Prepare her for the inevitable heartbreak, not let her run away with these wild ideas in her head. But I’m along for the ride now. None of that distraction shit from therapy has really worked in the past, besides serving to make Cece hate me more. We’re on the mend now, Cece and I. I close my eyes and pretend to data dump everything I’ve ever learned in therapy.

  “Maybe he’ll let us stay with him for a while,” I suggest even though it’s completely irrational. I can feel Ezra’s questioning gaze boring into the side of my head, so I don’t look at him.

  Cece grins. “I wonder what he’s been up to all this time? I still like my amnesia theory. It could have made him forget certain things. That would explain why he didn’t remember to come home but he remembered he loved Jeeps.”

  “And that video game,” Ezra adds.

  And his old house, I think. That’s the one link that debunks the amnesia idea.

  Cece nods. Either she’s forgotten the visit to her old house that kicked off this journey, or she’s ignoring it. “Those are just weird things that can be embedded in the back of your mind and surface randomly. I bet he forgot who he really is, and those things came back to him. Eventually we’ll come back to him, too. He just hasn’t had enough time.”

  I have zero idea if that type of amnesia is a real thing. A year after we buried an empty casket at Thomas’s funeral, there was this news story that a man had appeared at a gas station in Phoenix not knowing who he was. He was all beat up, with dirty clothes like a homeless guy, and he had no wallet or identification. He couldn’t remember anything at all, so the police had searched all of the missing persons on file to see which one was him. Turns out there were no middle-aged men fitting his description that had gone missing within the last decade. His fingerprints didn’t match up anywhere and neither did his DNA. We only heard about it when the Phoenix police department made a nationwide plea to help identify the poor man.

  When the story came on the news, my mom had shaken her head and frowned. “What a sad life he must have if not a single person from his past recognizes him.”

  It was around that time that Cece started saying Thomas probably hit his head on that bridge and got amnesia. He probably fell over the railing and the river carried him into another town and he just didn’t know who he was.

  The thing is, sixteen-year-old guys with a sophomore education and no money at all simply can’t start over in a new town. Someone would have noticed him. Someone would have turned him in and his family would have been found, maybe by a news broadcast like they’d done for that anonymous man.

  Thomas wasn’t like that man. He wasn’t alone in this world. We would have recognized him and brought him home.

  “Will you be upset if Thomas sees you and doesn’t remember you?” I ask, because screw logical conversations. I’m just going with it now.

  “Of course not,” Cece says quickly. “He’s alive and that’s all I care about. We can take him home and show him pictures and he’ll remember who he was. I mean, he’s already remembering some of it because he went to our old house.” She looks back out the window. “I can’t wait to tell him I’m sorry we weren’t there. He probably thinks we all forgot about him. Maybe he’s happy he has a new life because he thinks we all suck.” A muscle in her jaw flexes. “I never gave up on him, and I hope he believes that.”

  “He will,” I say.

  Cece leans forward, peering past me. “Hey Ezra, what are you going to tell Thomas?”

  He startles, like he wasn’t expecting to need to make up any lies right now. “I guess I’d tell him I missed him.”

  “Lilah?” Cece says.

  I can’t meet her eyes right now. I loved Thomas like any eighth grader loves their annoying older cousin.
He was great at killing bugs but terrible at sharing the television. Sometimes I thought he and Ezra made it their life’s mission to torment Cece and me, which is exactly why we decided the boys had cooties back when we were little. But he was family and I loved him. When he died, I hurt most for Cece, who had lost everything.

  “I don’t know,” I tell her after a moment. I know full well that we won’t find Thomas at the end of this obstacle course, but I’m not about to admit it. “I guess I’ll just wing it.”

  An hour and fifteen minutes later, the bus pulls off the highway and into a wooded area that surrounds a mall. You can easily see why this town is called The Woodlands; it’s like they built a town with stores and roads and then planted a forest in every open space between them. There’s a covered bus stop area at the edge of a parking lot and that’s where the bus lets us off. Only one other person, a man in business attire that doesn’t quite fit him right, gets off at our stop. There’s a car waiting for him, but no one waiting for us.

  “Time to work your Uber magic,” I say, hitching my backpack up on my shoulders. “Unless you want to visit the mall for a little bit. I could use some normalcy right about now.”

  “Funny.” Cece laughs sarcastically while messing with her phone. “Zander in a black Ford Escort will be here in a few minutes. Keep an eye out.”

  We wait under the shaded awning of the bus stop. Ezra checks his phone again, but this time he doesn’t seem as jaded about it as the other million times he checked it. “It’ll be okay,” I tell him, hoping he doesn’t see my words as an empty promise. I bump into his shoulder with mine, and give him an encouraging smile. “Even if your dad is mad now, it’ll work out in the end.”

  He peers down at me and returns the shoulder bump. “Maybe I’ll ask Thomas for advice,” he says with a wink.