East.
It feels different than west. It doesn’t matter the country, there’s an urgency to east. Life accelerates.
However, our journey started quietly. We drove through the night sharing few words. I didn’t want it this way. I wanted to speak to Elias, to hear his gentle voice as long as it remained. I wanted to know why he hadn’t shared this hunch about the search before. But Elias was lost in a different place, racking his brain, I think, for pieces of memory, anything connected to a Lightkeeper.
We soon crossed over the St. Croix River into Wisconsin.
“Rest area, please,” Elias said, and I eased off the road at the next stop. I pulled into a parking stall, and he exited without a word, slowly walking into the visitor’s building.
He was troubled, and I couldn’t imagine living his life. How could anyone bear the weight of not knowing when or where their mind, their entire existence, would suddenly vanish?
Through the glass walls, I saw him staring at the map. A long stare. Long enough for me to extract my laptop and pound out an entry.
A different type of entry:
Help Support Children of Incarcerated Parents
500 Days of Wandering, 500 Days of Hope
America. Wisconsin. I had not planned on this as an excursion. I confess that until yesterday, I had not heard of Wisconsin, but now I find myself passing through. I am not alone. For the first time in many months, I have a travel companion, and for the first time since my tour began, my destination is not my own.
I am driving to the East Coast, I think. Likely to another state of which I have not heard. I am looking for a Lightkeeper. Here I will attempt to explain the unexplainable. My companion, a big-hearted bloke, lives with a phrase imprinted on his heart. He does not remember where he heard it. He does not recall what it means. He only knows the words, and impressions tethered to them. The phrase? ‘And now it’s time to find the Lightkeeper.’ The impressions? A lighthouse. The salty air. The starry sky. That’s all he has. But those fragments poke him like slivers in his mind. He wakes with them and sleeps with them, and pictures of a lighthouse, of the stars, they fill his room, though he doesn’t know why. To his recollection, I am the first person with which he has shared them.
And so we go searching for his impressions. Faint and buried. I have gone many places during these days. But if I could help free him, if I could give him the gift of clarity . . . If we could find this Lightkeeper, I would consider my trip a success.
Send.
I peeked up at Elias, now tracing the map with his finger. It was entirely possible that the object of this search had no basis in reality. But even if the quest was for a myth, it had already taken effect, pulling from me my first heartfelt post.
I slammed shut my laptop. Nobody had ever questioned me before. FFA had to believe me. Of all people, he had to believe me. I couldn’t lose my confidant and the only decent boy I knew, other than Elias, of course. I slowly peeked at the screen.
| FFA: | I’m sorry, Clara. I didn’t mean that. Tell me about this companion. |
| FFA: | Clara? |
| FFA: | Clara???? |
| Me: | Here. |
| FFA: | I apologize. Please. Tell me about your companion. |
| Me: | Just a bloke. |
| FFA: | Anything more? |
I relaxed.
| Me: | Would that bother you? |
| FFA: | It might. |
Elias climbed into the car.
| Me: | Gotta go. |
For the second time, I shut my computer. Even though Elias couldn’t read a word on the screen, I needed FFA safely on the other side of the pond.
It felt an unusual variety of cheating, in which my steady consisted of an anonymous avatar, and the other guy was, well, half of Elias.
“Who was that?”
I stroked the top of my computer. “A mate.”
“Does he think you’re crazy?”
I slipped the computer back into my backseat bag. “You were staring at that map a long time. Did you find what you were looking for?”
Elias shrugged.
I exhaled long and slow. “I was beginning to wonder if you would ever come out.”
Still, silence.
“Fine. I don’t know what he thinks. He’s a boy from London. I’ve never met him. Yes, he probably thinks I’m crazy.” I lay my head on Elias’s shoulder. “Am I?”
He lay his head against mine. “I better get some sleep.”
We threw back our seats and soon drifted away.