Whoever Dark is, he’s right.
After I help Grams finish her puzzle on the kitchen table, I dig out the internship letter from the trash and call Muse Records. The interview is the following week, with a complimentary plane ticket.
“I’m going to New York,” I call LD to tell her while I pack.
“OH MY GOD!” she cries. “You are not!”
“I am! Leaving Tuesday, coming back Wednesday!”
“What’s your flight?”
“I don’t know, I have to print out my ticket.” I look over at my laptop and read off the flight information. “Why?”
I hear a few clicks of the mouse and then she says, “Because I just booked a flight with you. There is no way in hell I’m letting you go to my favorite place in the world without me.”
A small curl of relief releases in my stomach. “Bless, I was so scared of flying alone—”
“We’ll have so much fun, it’ll be epic. A girl-cation.” She giggles.
“Well on this girl-cation, should I bring my cat taco sweater?” I hold it up, inspecting the purring cat heads poking out from delicious-looking tacos. “It’s been on this wild ride with me so far, it’d be a pity not to take it now.”
“Dress for every occasion!” she crows.
“Point.” I shove it into my duffel.
I don’t tell anyone else I’m going. Not Micah, not Bossman (as luck would have it, the interview is on a day when I’m off work), not Heather or her cohorts, not even Mick. It’s my secret, but more than that it feels like a dream I’ll wake up from. The only people I tell are LD’s parents, who Grams’ll be staying with while I’m gone that night.
On Tuesday morning, when I’m set to leave, my bags are packed and waiting by the door. I’m only taking a duffel and my backpack. I stand on the porch, shifting back and forth, rubbing my sweaty hands on my skinny jeans. I’ve never flown before. I’ve never even left the state of Nebraska.
Airplanes pass over the skies of Steadfast all the time, small pinpricks of white leaving trails like tractor tracks. I used to try to guess where they were heading with—with who? I frown, trying to remember.
Lying on a shingled rooftop, the soft murmur of Thirty Seconds to Mars and My Chemical Romance wafting from the open window below us. A boy with shaggy hair that hung in his eyes. He always swiped the hair out of his face and smiled a golden smile—oh.
Oh, it was Billie. Before his father passed. Did we hang out often? I can’t remember; only Micah, and I feel like such a jerk for that.
I wonder if I will ever see Billie again. I wonder if he’ll forgive me. I wonder whose forgiveness I really want: the boy with the shaggy blue hair or the young man with the sad green eyes?
“That one’s going to Hawaii,” he once said during a game. It was April—no, the middle of May, just before high school. “There’s a man on the plane with a secret mission to bust a mass smuggling ring.”
“Smuggling what?” I asked.
He tilted his head, deciding. “Coffee.”
“Oh, that’s scary.”
“But it’s what’s in the coffee that they’re smuggling,” he argued, turning to me. His eyes glittered in the afternoon sun. The airplane made a white streak across the clear blue sky. “Millions of dollars of diamonds.”
“Now that’s more interesting.”
Billie and I used to make up stories like that. A teenager going to Russia, only to find out she’s the great-great granddaughter of Grand Duchess Anastasia. An old man off to Australia to single-handedly wrestle a kangaroo. A couple jetting to Paris to BASE jump off the Eiffel Tower.
As I sit on the steps, I play the game again, but this time I don’t have to lie.
Billie, off to a wide, wonderful future outside of Nebraska.
And me, sailing across the skies to the city that never sleeps, all the years of abandoned dreams in tow.
I sling my duffel bag over my shoulder as a yellow cab pulls up. I breathe out through my mouth, trying to calm my fluttering heart. My bones feel all jittery. This is it—this is how you feel when you leave. So full of possibility you could burst.
The yellow cab idles in the driveway as I make my way down the steps and round over to the trunk to dump my crap inside.
I hear footsteps behind me. “Bless, LD, cutting it close, aren’t you?”
But it isn’t LD.
It’s Micah, looking from the taxi to me with a confused crinkle to his strong dark brow. “Heather . . . Heather says you quit the store. And . . . what’s this? What’s this for? Your grandma—”
“Is staying with the Darlings.” I turn away from him to shove my backpack into the trunk, too. “This taxi’s for me.”
“You could’ve asked for a ride.” He motions back to his car in the driveway. “You didn’t have to call a taxi—no offense, man,” he adds to the driver, who finally dragged his lazy butt out of the cab after I’ve already put my things in the trunk. Perfect timing, dude. “I mean, I don’t mind . . . going to Omaha? I’m off today so . . .”
“No, I’m only flying out of Omaha.”
“Yeah it wouldn’t have been a—flying? You’re . . . you’re flying out of . . .”
“My plane’s in three hours.”
He recovers quickly and steps between me and the open door to the taxi. “I can still give you a ride—”
“No thanks, Micah,” I interject softly, closing the trunk. The cabbie lowers himself back into the driver’s seat stealthily, as if he isn’t even here. I wish I could, too.
Micah sighs and threads his hand through his hair. The curls hug his fingers like mattress springs. I used to dream of running my fingers through his hair when we sat watching the stars, his head in my lap. “I’m sorry, Igs. I didn’t mean to hurt you—I just can never say no to her. You understand. You have to understand.”
“I do, Micah,” I reply with a sigh.
“Then why are you leaving? Is it about the flowers?”
“It’s about more than the stupid flowers. It’s about everything else.”
“Last I thought, we were good.” He puts his hands on his hips. “You said we were good.”
With a sigh, I shake my head and murmur something under my breath.
“What?”
Our relationship will never go back to the way it was. I don’t think it can. I wish I could rip my heart out and tell it to fall out of love and shake it until all the bits of Micah fall out of it. I wish we could go back to the summer. Back to before.
But I think I’ve been in love with the thought of Micah for way too long.
I take a deep breath and jut my chin up. “I’m angry, Micah. I’m sad. I’m everything. Whenever I see you and Heather together, so freaking happy I think . . .” My heart is in my throat, and when I try to swallow it down it feels like a marshmallow. A wet, salty marshmallow. “I think why can’t it be me? Because I’m not pretty? Because I’m not interesting enough?”
He opens his mouth to respond, but nothing comes out. From down the road LD’s voice shatters the silence.
“Oh thank God you haven’t left yet!” she cries and comes to a stop between us, gasping for breath. She swings a backpack off her shoulder and pounds a manicured hand on the trunk. “Open up! This bag’s killing my arm.” When the driver pops the trunk, she shoves her bag in, and finally decides to acknowledge Micah. “Oh, hi there. Here to see us off?”
He purses his lips together and shoves his hands into his pockets. “No, I was just leaving. Have a good time, you two.” Then he walks quietly back across the lawn from where he came.
“We will!” LD shouts after him, wrapping an arm around my shoulder, and leads me toward the door. She lets me slide in first, and then comes in after. “To the airport, chauffeur!” she cries. “Our destiny awaits!”
As the cab backs out of the driveway, Micah watches from his porch until we disappear down the street. I turn back to face forward. He didn’t have an answer. He couldn’t answer me. His silence sits in my stomach like a lump of coal.
LD resituates herself in her jeans, and gives a sigh. “Sorry I ran late. I had to do some last-minute things.”
Her hair is a bright teal, the color of mermaid scales and violins. I rub at a splotch of color on the side of her neck. “I can tell. I’m glad you’re here.”
“Wouldn’t miss this for the world, Iggy-Pop.” She kisses my forehead and squeezes me into a tight side hug. “I love adventure games.”
The taxi bumps along the highway toward Omaha, but I can still smell Steadfast lingering in the car, a whiff of sunflowers and confectionary. After a while, I settle back to lean my forehead against the warm window. The soft pop from the taxi’s stereo fills the cab like an elevator hum.
“I’m sorry he wasn’t smart enough to tell you the truth,” LD says softly, like the words might break me.
“Nah, I heard him loud and clear.” I rest my head on her shoulder and listen to the taxi’s radio murmur out Roman Holiday’s hit, “Crush on You,” as the bright flowering fields pass in a blur of golden smiles.