LATER THAT WEEK, SYDNEY ASKED SHANNON AT ROCK CAMP how you find someone’s phone number that isn’t on the Internet, and Shannon said you dial 411. So that’s what Lucia did, stowed away in their practice room at the back of the warehouse, after Tiny Spiny Hedgehogs practice and before Beatriz finished with her guitar lessons down the hall.
Lucia sent Sydney into the hallway and shut the door.
One wall of the practice room had a giant black-and-white poster of a girl with braces and a lot of eyeliner and curly bangs, singing hard into a microphone, labeled POLY STYRENE. Lucia looked at that poster every time they practiced. She dialed 411 and placed her hand on top of Poly Styrene’s hand clutching the mic.
A woman answered. “Cityandstateplease?”
Lucia didn’t know what she meant. “Hi, I need a phone number for someone?”
“What city and state?”
“I’m not sure.”
The woman said she had to give her something to work with, so Lucia thought she might as well try Bemidji, Minnesota.
They had no listing for the name Ryan Coates there.
Lucia traced her finger over Poly Styrene’s braces. Her mother had told her that his real name was John. “How about John Coates?”
“I have a J. R. Coates on Sumac Road.”
Lucia asked for that one.
“Do you want the number or do you want me to put you through?”
“The number,” Lucia said. Golden luck, there was a Sharpie lying in the cavernous back of an amp. But there was nothing to write on. She leaned against the amp and wrote the number on the brown sole of her sneaker. Then she dialed it.
Lucia was supposed to use her small red flip phone only to text and call her mom or Beatriz, or for emergencies. She hoped they wouldn’t notice. The phone rang six times, then went to voice mail.
In the few seconds of the robot greeting, Lucia wondered whether to leave a message, or what she’d even say, but then the beep hit and there she was, dumped into the dark empty room of voice mail. “Oh, um, hello. This is Lucia. I’m looking for Ryan Coates. So, um, if this is him, um . . . I think you might be my—never mind, don’t call me here, this isn’t my number, I’ll call you back later, bye.”
She clicked the phone off quickly. The feeling in her chest and head was like she’d sucked helium out of a balloon.
Sydney was waiting in the hall. “Did he answer? What did he say?”
“Nothing,” Lucia whispered. “It was a wrong number.”
“I bet if we get in touch with—”
Lucia shushed her. Beatriz was coming down the hall toward them, stickered guitar case in hand. “I’ll never find him. It’s okay.”
She didn’t know why she’d told Sydney that. Maybe it was because Sydney looked at her like a hungry dog and Lucia didn’t have enough to feed her. She still needed it all for herself.
“Olá, filhotas.” Beatriz gave them each a fist-bump and Sydney turned bashful. “Practice go okay?”
“Yeah,” they said.
“You looked so serious.”
“Like this?” Lucia crossed her eyes and pulled her chin back into her neck. Sydney dissolved. It always worked.
“You little monkey.” Beatriz dove a hand toward Lucia’s ribs and both kids shrieked and leaped back. “Okay, okay, let’s go home.”
In her room, Lucia flipped over her shoe and recited the phone number over and over. She made it into a little song to commit it to memory. Then she grabbed a black Magic Marker from the kitchen drawer and crossed the number out. An inky black rectangle that her steps on the pavement would rub right off.
Lucia lay down on her bed. She stretched out her arms and legs, and wrapped her hands and hooked her feet around the edges. This was her bed. This was her body reaching to all corners of her bed. This was her life. This was where she was born and where she lived, Portland, with her mom and her dog and her aunts and uncles and her friends and her bandmate; this was the whole world she knew. This was her planet. But here was this new moon in orbit, exerting strange gravity. Lucia held on tightly to the covers. She loved her life. She didn’t want to leave it. But what was on the moon? How could she not wonder?