The Leaving Part 33

"Well, then you'll become normal."

Avery closed her eyes and tried to picture normal.

Her and Lucas, girlfriend and boyfriend, kissing at the lockers between cla.s.ses.

Going to prom together.

Huddling in bleachers on cooler fall afternoons, watching football.

Making out in her room while trying to get homework done.

Going to movies.

Bowling.

The beach.

Her mother decorating for Halloween again, maybe even baking.

"Avery?" It was Sam standing beside her.

"I gotta go," she said into her phone. "Call you later."

"He needs like twenty minutes to fix a problem with the pants," Sam said. "Let's get lunch."

The IHOP was frigid and everyone was old and/or overweight. Their booth table held tented placards that announced SIGNATURE SPRING PANCAKES!-loaded up with whipped cream and more-and some new menu item, HAND-CRAFTED GRIDDLE MELTS!

A slow death between two slices of bread.

Everything looked and sounded and probably tasted fake.

They ordered and Avery looked out the window at the suit store, and imagined a platoon crossing the highway-Left! Right! Left! Right!-sending cars into tailspins and armed with enough ammunition to turn the IHOP into the international house of pain and take it down to the ground.

He dropped her back at home to get ready and drove off before she even hit the mailbox because now they were running late.

The pelican's mouth was open.

She looked in.

Another note:

WHATEVER YOU DO, DO NOT TRUST THEM !.

-MAX

Up the street Mrs. Gulden's yippy dogs were having a conniption.

Scarlett

On their way out of the bar, down a long flight of stairs, Scarlett skipped the bottom step landing hard on her right foot

on the ground level.

A moment later Lucas did, too.

"Why did you just do that?" she asked.

The entry foyer smelled like old beer and cigarettes. The smell had crept into her hair, her pores, her nostrils-would probably stay with her all day.

"I don't know," he said. "Why did you just do that?"

She shrugged.

Realized she'd done it before.

The steps from Tammy's back deck down to the patio in the yard. Had he done it that day, too, and they just hadn't noticed?

She said, "Habit?"

Then thinking out loud: "Maybe we were somewhere where that mattered? Where the bottom step was . . ." She looked at the stairs there in the hall . . .

"Squeaky?" he offered.

She pushed the door to the street open.

Rogue drops were falling from clouds the color of steel.

He reached out and took her hand and squeezed it and she squeezed back, ran a thumb along his thumb.

Which also felt like a habit.

They held hands the whole way to the car.

They had a new destination.

Because the bartender had shouted across the room. "Hey, Jimmy!"

And Jimmy, with a Guinness at a table in the corner, had said, "Yes, sir!"

"Whatever happened to Danny? You know, the one whose son died?"

"Same as happens to everybody."

Scarlett had braced for bad news. He was dead, too. The Wikipedia page was out of date.

But then Jimmy had said, "Whispering Pines, I think?"

"There you go." The bartender had knocked on the bar two times with his knuckles.

"Whispering Pines?" Scarlett had repeated.

"Nursing home up the road."

Relief had mixed with . . . something else.

"How did his son die?" Lucas had asked.

"Brain tumor." The bartender had put his hands on his hips. "Was dead a year after they found it." Some head shaking. "Just one of those things."

"He ever talk about his work?" Lucas had presented the book. "This book?"

The bartender had looked at it. "He wrote this?" A shrug. "Never mentioned it." Then he'd looked at them. "Hey, wait . . . you're . . ."

Scarlett didn't want to let go of Lucas's hand when they got to Tammy's car, but he let go for her. She unlocked the car and got in.

She didn't like the idea of trees being able to w h i s p e r.

Because what would they say?

I see you.

I see everything.

I remember everything.

I remember you.