A Million Miles Away (10 page)

“Yeah. When someone lives next to you, eats next to you, looks just like you, you think you know them.”

But you don’t. You didn’t know her, not really
, Kelsey told herself. This made her unexpectedly sad, sadder than the dull ache of absence. And desperate to know more.

She finished her drink and zipped up her coat.

“See you around, Kelsey.” Ian reached across for another hug, whispering into her ear, “And please don’t ever wear a basketball jersey as a dress again.”

MITCH>>PETER / USING BIG WORDS THAT MITCH WOULD USE (SECOND ATTEMPT)

1/7

Dearest Peter,

I must apologize for the delay in returning your letter. I was otherwise occupied with my academics, which as you know are of the uttermost importance. Let me paint a picture for you. I enter my home around three thirty and sit down to my studies at a rolltop desk, which I found at a nearby estate sale on Tennessee Street. My sister tells me the desk is not in fact antique but actually finds its origin at Target. She says the worn appearance is a result of the usual commercial wear and tear and not in fact a trusted platform for many generations of correspondence, poetic or otherwise. Despite my better judgment, I still choose to believe in its ancient magic nature.

Once my studies are through, I retire to the kitchen, where I will entertain my palate with all that my heart desires, including the good snacks, which I proceed to hoard in my room so that my sister cannot partake in them when she returns from dance practice.

When I have feasted I leave the house and go—

???

to a coffee shop?

to the porch to paint?

to a dirty street corner?

—find a book she would read. Jane Eyre?

—this is crazy

—copy parts of her journal

CHAPTER TWELVE

The next time Peter called, Kelsey would be ready. She had received a Skype message from him earlier that week, telling her that he’d call in two days, sometime that evening.

She daydreamed through classes, planning what to say.

She arrived home from dance practice to a house full of random mourners, trying to lose Gillian and Ingrid at her front door. They stood in the entryway with their backpacks, looking over Kelsey’s shoulder.

“You don’t want to see this,” she told them, gesturing to the circle.

“Is this the group you were telling us about?” Gillian asked. Her mouth turned down, and she shrugged. “I guess they gotta do what they gotta do.”

“It’s nice they have snacks, too,” Ingrid offered.

This month’s mantra, as they heard thrumming from the living room, was WE MUST EMBRACE PAIN AND USE IT AS FUEL FOR OUR JOURNEY. This month’s group leader was a woman named Patti who had lost her son to cancer. This month’s refreshments were ginger ale and banana bread.

The way Patti passed out cups of sodas to the support group reminded Kelsey of a Catholic mass she once saw. All the talk of the soul and the spirit, each person bowing their head in thanks as they received their bread, including her parents.

Finally, as the group started their personal testimonies, her friends left.

She headed upstairs and moved Michelle’s laptop to her room.

Now Kelsey was doing a handstand against her bedroom door. She could see herself in the reflection of the deck doors, belly exposed under black leggings, hair touching the floor. She hadn’t straightened her hair that day, or put on mascara. Her door was painted a light pink, her walls turquoise, the lamps on either side of her bed funneling light into orange-tinted triangles. It was supposed to be tropical, her room, but from that angle, it looked like a retro vision of a spacecraft.

When the beeping rang out from Michelle’s computer, Kelsey went upright, letting the blood rush from her face back down to her body. Peter. Kelsey moved with the laptop to a less conspicuous location, ran her fingers through her wavy hair, and pressed
ANSWER
. Her hands were shaking.

Peter’s cheeks were tinted bronze and his hair was lighter. The dark circles were still visible under his big blue eyes.

“I got your letter,” Kelsey said before he could speak.

His eyes opened wider, hopeful. “Did you write me back?”

She nodded in response.

He was smiling, and he looked natural, sitting in his uniform. Well, maybe not natural. As his smile faded, his eyes darted to either side of him, tense.

Kelsey took a closer look at the scene behind his shoulder, trying to determine if he was in the same place. “So, are you still in the—” she began.

“Guess what? My parents sent me a gift,” he continued.

“What?”

Kelsey watched him reach down to pull out an acoustic guitar with a black body and a blue patterned strap.

“Nice,” she said quietly. She knew nothing about guitars, but anyone could see it was a beautiful instrument. When Peter knocked on it, the sound was full of layers.

“I’ve been working on some Cicadas covers.”

“Oh, yeah?” Kelsey tried to lift her voice with recognition.

He strummed a few chords, looking at her. “‘The Sworn Secret,’” he said. “The English version, not the Portuguese.”

Kelsey nodded in encouragement.

And then he sang slow, tripping over the syllables as he found the chords. “Things I never told you / Listen and believe / They said it was never gonna work out / As long as we don’t tell them, just you and me.”

His voice was shaky but clear, and in tune with the guitar. He wasn’t afraid to hold the notes.

When he was done, Kelsey gave an awkward thumbs-up. She found her mouth had gotten stuck in a dumb smile, so she tried to reel it in a little, putting her face in her sleeve.

“Thank you. I’ve had plenty of time to practice,” Peter said. “So, any requests?”

“Uh—” Kelsey’s mouth went dry. She was hitting nothing but blanks. Something old. Something classic. “Uh. Elvis?”

Peter looked puzzled, but pleased. “Elvis? Really?”

Kelsey shrugged. “Sure!” Maybe Michelle would have asked for something more sweet and serious, something with a hard-to-pronounce name from a high shelf in the bowels of the record store. There were always people with guitars outside that record shop, at the corner of 9th and Massachusetts. Michelle would make the Maxfields stop on the sidewalk to hear them play, running through songs like a catalogue until she found one that the musicians knew, listening to them until the song was all the way through. Then she’d clap no matter how bad it was, like she was at a concert, and ask their parents for a dollar to toss in the case. Kelsey could have listened, too, but she always moved as far away down the sidewalk as she could, never appreciating the effort.

Kelsey tried to tell Michelle that the kids would just go back to their dorm and use the cash for beer money, but she never cared.

Kelsey always thought she just liked the attention. But as Peter played, she was starting to get how electric it was to hear someone play an instrument right in front of you.

Peter played snippets of “Hound Dog” and “Jailhouse Rock.” He lowered his voice and drawled from the back of his throat in his best Elvis impression. He had to stop when they were both laughing.

Kelsey thought of Michelle, and remembered to clap.

Once they were quiet, Kelsey heard the rumble of a truck, then yelling. It sounded as if two men were getting into a heated argument.

“How are things over there?” she asked, tentative.

Peter scrunched up his face. “I don’t want to take your time with all that. Okay?”

“Of course,” Kelsey said.

“Tell me about home. What did you do last night?” He set aside his guitar and leaned close to the screen. “By the way, I told my sister about us. She wants to know why she can’t find you on Facebook.”

“Because…” Kelsey licked her lips, buying time. “Because I deleted it. You inspired me, I guess.”

Peter held up his hands. “What can I say? It’s just a waste of time.”

“Yeah, it really is. And homework,” Kelsey said, in answer to his question. “That’s what I did last night.”

“What about the night before?”

“Homework,” she said, smiling. “And we ate at Dad’s restaurant.”

“Night before?”

“I went to a party.” Kelsey swallowed, aware she was answering as herself. She didn’t know if this was right or wrong. But Michelle went to parties, too.

“Oh, yeah? Was it fun?”

A loud boom sounded in the distance. Peter twitched slightly and clutched something in his lap. His gun. He turned his head, listening. They waited.

“A muffler,” he finally said. “So was it fun?”

Kelsey resisted the urge to cry out. Her hands were shaking again. “I left early.”

Peter was taking deep breaths. He nodded, egging her on.

She put on a smile. “I took a walk.”

“Then what?” They were both listening for another boom, Kelsey knew it. But they were pushing each other forward, lifting each other up.

She relaxed her voice. “It was freezing. The game was still going on, so the streets were pretty empty. I visited Ian at La Prima Tazza. We talked about Warhol.”

Peter flashed a smile, raising his eyebrows. “Your favorite subject.”

Kelsey had looked through Michelle’s Andy Warhol book, but she still didn’t understand why the multicolored prints had anything to do with her. One of them was a still from a film of a girl eating a hamburger. That was it. She shrugged. “What can I say?”

“Speaking of, did you see that sculpture I told you about? The one in the middle of the Flint Hills?”

“Remind me,” Kelsey said, and his eyes started to look more alive.

“It’s just a steel circle. Painted red. But it acts like a picture frame for the landscape, right? No matter how close to it you are, or how far away, the portion of the Flint Hills that you focus on is determined by the circle.”

“What if you decide to look outside the circle?” Kelsey asked.

“Then you’re still being influenced by the circle. Get it? Because you’re looking away from it on purpose, but whether you rebel against it or accept it, it’s still on your mind.”

“So that’s what modern art is.” Kelsey tried to sound sure of herself. “An interruption you can’t ignore.”

“An interruption!” He was thoughtful. “That’s good, Michelle.”

Her sister’s name aloud seemed to echo from his mouth, the way he looked at her. Goose bumps rose on her skin. It was strange, how easily she fell into this conversation with Peter, a conversation that would have seemed impossible if she wasn’t thinking of Michelle. Kelsey adjusted her position on the floor, her eyes locked on his through the screen.

Peter’s voice sounded, low and soft, less wired up than before. “We might have to move from the Province.”

“When?”

“I’m not sure. It depends. I might not get your letters right away, though.” He looked concerned.

“Oh, don’t worry about that. Just worry about staying safe.”

Peter shook his head. “No, they’ll get them to me. They have to. But no matter what, don’t stop writing. Because if the first one doesn’t come, then at least the second one will. And I never know when I’m going to get access to a computer.”

“Okay.” Kelsey swallowed, knowing what she was agreeing to, that she would have to imitate her sister’s handwriting again. She still hadn’t figured out Michelle’s email password, either. Of course, none of this would matter if she could just tell him the truth.

“Everything you say to me about home is, like, nourishing. You get it? It’s like each memory is a piece of food that I can eat—” He made a scooping motion with his hand. “It makes me stronger.”

Kelsey smiled in spite of nerves. “You want me to feed you another one?”

“Feed me another one.” He opened his mouth.

She laughed. “What are you in the mood for?”

“How about the Flint Hills? Oh, I know. You could paint them! Paint them.”

Kelsey cleared her throat again. “Nah,” she finally said. “That will take too long. Let me tell you about them, instead.”

This she could do. Her family had made the drive from Lawrence through the hills a million times, to Seneca, to Manhattan, to Wichita.

Michelle was always in the backseat next to her, watching out the window. The Flint Hills were one of the few things, their parents said, that would keep them from punching each other.

Kelsey settled into the rug on her floor, resting her chin in her hands.

Peter leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes.

“So you’re on 75,” Kelsey began, “heading west, and there’s nothing but overcast sky and fence and prairie. Until all of a sudden, you see this wrinkle in the flat lines. It’s almost a hallucination. Until you see another wrinkle, and another one, and the land is moving like the ocean. And each hill is spilling into the next. The grass is a color you’ve never seen before and you’ll never see again. It’s orange, gold, white, green, brown.…”