The Truth of Letting Go Page 8

  “And what exactly would you do with a seventies model Winnebago?” I ask. I imagine Ezra sweeping his girlfriend off into the sunset in this old thing, setting off to live a life together like his parents did before him. It makes my stomach hurt, and I don’t even know if Ezra’s relationship is that serious, but the brain thinks what it wants.

  Ezra’s expression darkens. He keeps his eyes on the road. “I’d bring it to that trailer park off Garden Street. It’s only two hundred dollars a month rent with utilities included, so I could have my own place and still save money.”

  I study him carefully, wondering why his demeanor has a sudden shadow over it. “You wouldn’t miss living in a real house?”

  “I wouldn’t miss my house,” he says quickly. “Not for one second.”

  An awkwardness settles over us. He doesn’t volunteer any more information and we’re not close enough friends for me to ask for details. I’m not even sure we’re friends at all. He was only Thomas’s friend back in the day and he was always kind of mean to me. That we’re traveling together now is only for Cece’s benefit.

  I shift in my seat and turn to see what she’s doing, but she hasn’t changed since we pulled out of the driveway. She’s sitting at the little kitchen table, on the sunflower foam bench seat that folds out into a bed. Her notebook is open and she’s alternating between writing stuff and looking out the window.

  “You doing okay?” I ask her.

  She nods. “Two hours and twenty-eight minutes until we’re there,” she says, checking the GPS route on her phone.

  “Add ten minutes because we’ll have to stop for gas soon,” Ezra says.

  “Noted.” Cece goes back to her notebook, her hand flying across the page in her messy cursive.

  The sky is a dull blue, rimmed with a lighter sapphire blue on the horizon. There’s mostly eighteen wheelers on the road at six in the morning, but as we head south toward College Station, the road fills up with people heading to work. We settle into a comfortable silence. I tell myself it’s because we’re all a little tired that we’re not talking. It’s easier to accept than the truth, which is that none of us are really friends.

  After two and a half hours of driving, Ezra suggests we stop for gas and breakfast. We find a Buccee’s, which is like the Walmart of convenient stores. Seriously, the place has fifty gas pumps outside and everything you could imagine inside including the cleanest bathrooms known to mankind.

  Cece and I head inside while Ezra pumps gas and we stock up on drinks, breakfast burritos, and random snacks for the road. There’s something weird about Cece, but I’m not sure what. Instead of her usual bubbly self, she’s focused on the task at hand, counting out how hungry we’ll likely get in the two hours we have left to drive, and wondering aloud if Ezra still likes Hot Tamales candy like he used to. I think the weirdest part of this pit stop is that Cece is acting…normal. She’s no longer bouncing around ecstatically freaking out about finding her brother. Unlike all of the therapy advice, letting her take the reins on a crazy idea is actually calming her. Too bad I can never tell Mom about this.

  Once we’re back on the road, Cece settles into her kitchen nook and goes back to writing. I set the disposable cups of coffee for me and Ezra in each cup holder in the center console of the RV. “Do you like cream and sugar? I brought a bunch of each,” I say, holding up handfuls of sugar packets and French vanilla creamer.

  “Sure,” he says as we lurch out of the parking lot.

  “How much of each?” I ask.

  He shrugs. “Just whatever you do to yours is fine.”

  I put two sugars and two creamers in each of our coffees and hand him one. He takes a sip and nods. “That’s pretty good.”

  “How often do you drink coffee?” I ask, cupping mine in my hands, letting the warmth take the morning chill out of my fingers.

  “Never,” he says, giving me a quick sideways glance. “But you offered, so I wanted to look cool.”

  I roll my eyes. “You are such a nerd.”

  He smirks. “So my attempt to be cool didn’t work?”

  I shake my head, choosing to look at the road ahead because his one-dimpled smile is just too cute to deal with. “Not even a little.”

  From behind us, Cece says, “One hour and fifty-seven minutes if the traffic says light.”

  “You excited?” Ezra calls back to her. He watches her from the big bus driver mirror that’s mounted from the ceiling. I see her shrug in the reflection, her head tilted slightly while she doodles something in the margins of her paper. Her braid falls on the page and she just draws around it. “What do you think he’s been doing all these years?”

  “Well, there’s your amnesia theory,” I say because everything is calm and peaceful and I don’t need to ruin the moment by telling her Thomas is kicking it in heaven, chilling with millions of other dead people.

  “Nah,” Ezra says. “I mean, it’s a decent theory, but if a sixteen-year-old showed up somewhere with no memory of who he was, it would have been on the news. Plus, it’s not like he could have gone very far, and everyone in the country probably saw some kind of media exposure when your parents died. Someone would recognize him.”

  “I never even thought of it like that,” Cece says, frowning while she makes soft circles on her paper.

  I peel off the foil from a breakfast burrito and hand it to Ezra. “Thanks,” he says, taking a bite. Then he looks back in the mirror. “So if Thomas didn’t lose his memory, then he left for a reason. Which is kind of what I always thought he might have done. I don’t know why, though.”

  “Neither do I,” Cece says. “But he was your best friend so he might have told you things he wouldn’t tell me. You don’t remember anything?”

  “Nothing. Thomas had a decent life. He didn’t like the media attention, but who would?” Ezra finishes his burrito in a couple more bites and then crumples the foil, tossing it in a little trashcan on the floor by our feet. “We played a lot of video games back in those days. Maybe he met some girl on Xbox Live and ran off to be with her.”

  Cece scoffs. “There’s no way. He wouldn’t do that.”

  “Yeah, Thomas was obsessed with Xbox but not to that extent,” I chime in even though it makes me feel dirty, like I’m talking to a kid about Santa Claus when I should be telling them the truth about this harsh world and how magic doesn’t actually exist.

  Cece folds her notebook shut and clips her pen onto the spiral edge. “I wonder why he’d just leave me like that,” she says. She’s facing me, but her attention is on her own thoughts. “Ezra? Can I go lay down back there?”

  “Sure, just be careful walking.”

  She scoops up her notebook and clings it to her chest as she makes her way down the narrow aisle past the bathroom and to the bedroom at the back of the RV. I watch her lay down and pull a crocheted blanket over her legs. I know she hasn’t slept in a while so maybe that’s catching up with her now.

  The road noise is loud and this old clunker bangs around like crazy, so I lower my voice and lean a little closer to Ezra. “Do you really think Thomas is alive?”

  The hesitant look he gives me sets my mind at ease. His eyes dart to the rearview mirror and then he takes a long sip of his coffee. “I like the idea that he could be alive,” he says, choosing his words carefully.

  I really need him to agree with me on this one, to validate that of the three people in this vehicle, I’m not the crazy one. I’ve spent my entire life being the reasonable child in the family. Surely if my cousin had really cheated death, I’d know it. But there is no mystical sensation in my gut telling me Thomas is still alive. The very idea is a fantasy concocted wholly in Cece’s traumatized mind. I’m not the bad guy here. I just want her to be okay and to stop following delusions that will only get her heart broken.

  I turn until my legs are filling the aisle between our seats. “But do you really, seriously think there’s a chance he’s still alive?”

  Ezra glances in his side mirror and
switches to the slow lane. “There’s always a possibility,” he says, flashing me a grin. I exhale sharply and turn back to face the front. Maybe I am the odd one out in this equation.

  “Listen,” Ezra says quietly. He glances in the rear-view mirror, his teeth wearing at his bottom lip. When he turns to me, there’s a seriousness I haven’t yet seen in his expression. “Thomas was my best friend. And when his sister comes to me asking for help, I’m going to help her. Hands down, no matter what, I’ll be there. He would have done the same for me.”

  A screeching sound comes from the back of the RV. I spin around to find that Cece has closed the curtain that separates the bedroom from the rest of the vehicle. My blood runs cold. “Do you think she heard us?” I whisper.

  Ezra shakes his head. “You can’t hear anything back there when the engine is running.”

  “Are you sure?” I’m still whispering despite his assurance. He nods.

  Still, I glance back there, wondering if she’s okay. I think about going to comfort her, but I’m not sure there’s a point in saying reassuring words that she won’t even listen to. I decide to leave her alone for now.

  Besides, if my gut instinct is right, there will be plenty of time to comfort her on the drive back home.

  Ezra has the kind of hair that always looks tussled on top, like he’s some kind of boy band member and his hair is in a perpetual state of brooding. He leans over the massive steering wheel and runs a hand through it, curling his fingers into a fist at the top of his head. The result is a more tussled, slightly sexier hairstyle. He looks over at me and sighs. “Which one of us has to break the bad news?”

  Big Al’s Used Cars is a narrow white building with red trim. I’m ninety-nine percent sure it used to be an old Sonic fast food restaurant. The slanted parking lot where people used to order their food at the drive in is now a showcase of cheap used cars with their prices written on the windshield in hot pink paint. BUY HERE PAY HERE the sign says, big and prominent in the center of the building.

  Below it, written in Sharpie on a piece of cardboard and taped to the door, as if an afterthought:

  CLOSED MONDAY AND TUESDAY

  Today is Tuesday.

  “I’m guessing the website didn’t have this pertinent information,” I say, climbing out of my seat. As much as I’d like to bury my head between my knees and wish to be transported back home, I know I can’t. “I’ll tell her.”

  Everything is so much quieter when the motor isn’t running. Each step I take creaks as I make my way through the narrow hallway. “Cece?” I say, pushing back the curtain. She’s asleep, curled up in the fetal position with that crocheted blanket pulled up to her chin. Carefully, I sit on the edge of bed and put a hand on her shoulder. “Cece? Wake up.”

  Her eyes flutter open. She looks in my general direction, but her thoughts are elsewhere. “I have some bad news,” I say, delivering the words as softly as possible.

  “Did we break down?” she asks.

  “No.”

  She sits up, shoving the blanket off her legs. “We’re here?”

  “Yeah, but… they’re closed today.”

  She seems to consider this for half a second and then she stands up and stretches her arms. “That’s not life-shattering, Lilah. Chill.”

  She pushes past me and leans over the kitchen table to see outside. There are about thirty cars in the parking lot, but none of them belong to an employee. “You know, this is for the best,” she says, pulling the hair tie out of her braid. She runs her fingers through it and then secures her hair into a tight bun at the base of her neck. “Now we can get the information we need and not worry about anyone calling Thomas and telling him we’re looking for him.”

  Ezra joins us in the tiny bedroom area. He’s only a few inches taller than I am, but he fills the room with his presence. He looks like a guy with a plan. “We’ll stay overnight and come back tomorrow. There are places to camp in an RV. It won’t be a problem.”

  Only that’s not exactly the plan I’d like to hear.

  “I’m not wasting another day,” Cece says. She reaches under the table and pulls out her backpack. “We’ll get the information we need right now.”

  I cross my arms. “And how exactly are you going to do that? You got a lock picking set in there?”

  With a coy smirk, she unzips her backpack. “I’ve got something better than that,” she says, pulling out a freaking crowbar.

  “Whoa.” I take a step back. “We are not breaking and entering, Cece. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but we’ll do Ezra’s idea. We’ll stay overnight.”

  “That’s a waste of time,” she says, tapping the end of the crowbar into her palm. “This way is easier.”

  She advances toward the door. Ezra steps in front of her path. “Give me the crowbar.”

  Her brows jerk together and she scrunches up her face. “Get out of my way.”

  “Crowbar,” he says, squaring his shoulders. He holds out his hand. “Now.”

  She stiffens, her nostrils flaring. “Move over. I’ll do it myself.”

  He doesn’t budge. “Sales records are kept on computers, computers with passwords that you don’t know. Your only chance of getting the information you want is by sweet talking the person who works here. I won’t let you break in. This is a business, Cece. It’ll have security cameras with your face on it. They’ll give the cops my license plate. How the hell will you feel when Lilah has to find Thomas by herself because the both of us are in jail?”

  Exhaling sharply, she drops the crowbar into his outstretched hand. He turns and puts it inside an overhead bin, then twists the lock and pockets the key. “We’ll come back tomorrow morning.”

  Cece’s eyes fill with rage. “I’ll see you assholes in twenty-four hours.” Turning, she goes back to the bed and tugs the curtain back into place, hiding herself from the rest of the world.

  I drop into the bench seat at the table. The Formica countertop chills my forearms. “That went well,” I mutter as I stare at my nail polish.

  There’s a state park just twenty minutes outside of town and they have RV hookups and camping spots. Because Ezra is a state employee, we get to stay for free. Ezra hooks up the electricity, water, and sewer and we turn on the television to watch some DVDs. Staying overnight was definitely not in the plans, but since everything has gone wrong so far, it’s nice to be able to park here instead of at the back of a Walmart parking lot. I’m still freaked out by the whole situation, but being here in the woods with fellow campers and park rangers and stuff makes me feel moderately okay about this unexpected trip detour. If only we weren’t on a futile mission to find a dead person, it might even be fun.

  While Cece is asleep, Ezra folds down the kitchen table and props himself on the bench seat, lazily watching TV. He doesn’t talk much and I can’t seem to find anything to say. I wish we were friends. I’ve noticed he doesn’t check his cell phone very often. I wonder if his girlfriend knows what he’s doing. If she’s going to call him to say good night later on.

  I wish I could stop thinking about how cute he is and focus on how he can be annoying. Only, now that we’re all grown up, he’s not exactly annoying at all. My number one priority is still taking care of Cece, and she hasn’t woken up since she fell sleep this morning. Ezra falls asleep too, his long legs blocking the hallway while he uses his elbow as a pillow.

  Eventually, I also succumb to the exhaustion of waking up so early and spending all these hours on the road. When I wake up, my phone is ringing. It’s buried in the outer pocket of my backpack which is on the floorboard in the passenger seat. By the time I get to it, I’ve missed the call. Mom immediately calls back.

  I take a calming breath before I answer. “Hello?”

  “Jesus, Lilah, you had me scared to death! Answer the phone the first time I call you.”

  “Sorry, Mom. I was napping.” The yawn that escapes me isn’t even faked. I pull back the phone to check the time. It’s five—and dinner time accordin
g to my rumbling stomach.

  “How’s everything going?”

  “Fine,” I say. And it’s not really a lie. No one has lost a limb or came down with the flu.

  “And Cece?”

  “She’s sleeping, too.”

  “Did you girls stay up late?”

  “Something like that,” I say. Ezra adjusts his position on the bench seat, his sleepy eyes looking in my direction. I press a finger to my lips, signaling for him to stay quiet.

  “I’m glad to see you girls getting along,” Mom says, her voice softer. “You never seem to hang out anymore.”

  Ah, irony. “We’re hanging out now.”

  “Just make sure she doesn’t sleep too long, okay? Too much sleep always sends Cece into a depression.”

  I stare at the closed curtain at the back of the RV. “But that hasn’t happened in a while, right? I mean, she’s been pretty good for months now.”

  “Oh honey, it happens all the time,” Mom says, sounding somewhat offended. “I guess you’re just never here to see it. I almost took her into the doctor two weeks ago when she wouldn’t leave her bed for three days in a row. Promising to take her back to her parent’s house was the only thing that got her spirits up again.”

  I stare at the peeling duct tape on the dash while everything around me blurs. “Seriously?” My voice is faint, like all the air has been sucked out of my lungs.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Mom says. “Just keep her occupied and don’t let her sleep too long, okay? I gotta go. Dad just found us a table at the hotel restaurant. Love you.”

  Ezra sits up, fixing me with a concerned look. “What’s going on?”

  I try to swallow but my throat is too dry. “Cece’s been depressed more than I realized. We can’t let her sleep any longer. Apparently, that’s how it starts.”

  “Wake her up,” he says, standing and shaking out the wrinkles in his jeans. “I’ll look up places to eat around here and we can go get dinner.”

  I nod, but I don’t really hear the words he’s saying. My worst fears are manifesting in my chest as I make my way back there, and pull open the curtain, afraid of what I’ll find. Cece’s lying on her side, her eyes open, staring blankly at the wall.