After Dakota (30 page)

“Is everything all right, Bryce?” Noel asks.

He grips the steering wheel so hard he might bend it in half. They’re on the way to the Coronado Club, the next port on the voyage of fun that is prom night.

“You haven’t said much since we left. I hope I didn’t do anything to make you mad.”

“You didn’t do anything, Noel. You’ve been awesome.” He hits the third red light in a row. And these damn shoes. He’s more than a little surprised when he turns to her and says, “I can’t go to this party. My sister’s missing and I have to look for her.” The car behind them honks. “I’m sorry. Believe me, you have no idea. I can take you home you want.”

“No, I want to go with you.”

Claire opens her eyes, cold, unsure where she is until she sits up in the middle of the cul-de-sac. Every house has been reduced to charred, smoldering rubble around her – the still-standing segments of frame look like bones stripped of their meat. Cars flipped on their sides or roofs, tires melted down to rims. The bushes are burned away to nothing. The trees no more than blackened trunks.

Instead of snow, grey ash swirls down on her; she covers her mouth and nose.

“Hello?” she calls out, knowing she won’t get an answer, knowing she’s the only survivor. The closer she gets to her house, the thicker the air gets with a smell like burnt toast and plastic.

She walks under the doorframe. No more front door, no more staircase, both levels of the house pressed together like a sandwich. “Mom? Daddy?” Sticking out from beneath a blackened plank of wood is a small animal skeleton: Baloo.

She has no sensation of moving through the ruins but must be, because Baloo is gone and here’s her bed, somehow intact and clean. She climbs onto it and presses her face into the pillows, inhaling the smell of Downy from the wash. If only she could sleep now and never wake up.

Claire opens her eyes again, cold, unsure where she is. Her mouth is so dry. She sits up, tries to stand but slips in the mud onto her butt.

“I’ll take one mud pie with extra grass, please.” Dakota walks up, wearing her jeans with the ripped knees, like two extra mouths. She’s barefoot. “This is Mudland, isn’t it?”

Mudland. Claire and Meredith’s backyard bakery, specializing in desserts that could be formed by hand and dried in the sun. But their enterprise was never this big – puddles of brown thickness all the way to the horizon. This would’ve been an
empire
.

Claire pushes her coat sleeves up and digs in, slapping at a patty that keeps falling apart even as she constructs it. “Grass costs extra,” she says.

“No prob. By the way, nice shoes, Claire.”

After all those months keeping them clean, look at them caked in brown. “Do you want ‘em back?”

Dakota waves a hand, various woven bracelets stacked thick on her wrist. “They’re yours now.”

“How did we get here?” Claire asks. “I was at this movie theater and there was an explosion.” She looks back in the direction of the car. Only more mud. “Are we in Heaven?”

“You don’t believe in Heaven anymore, remember?”

“So I must be seriously tripping, then.”

Dakota sits down next to her in the puddle. “That’s a rad coat you’re wearing.”

“Thanks. I got it for Christmas.” She starts over on the pie but it liquefies as soon as she presses it together, squirting between her fingers, under her nails.

“What’s your plan, Claire?”

“My life is so sucky now. Can you help me one more time? I know ‘Wild Horses’ has been you like showing me the way.”

“What horses?”

“You know, that song you always listened to in your room. I keep hearing it.”

“Oh yeah! That was after Rob Morelli broke up with me on the last day of freshman year. No one else understood what I was going through except Mick Jagger.”

“You mean you haven’t been telling me what to do?”

“Sorry, Claire, I never listened to the Stones again after that horrible summer.”

Claire works the mud as hard as she can, her hands cramping, her sleeves falling down; making pies was never this hard in the history of Mudland. “I’ve thought about, y’know, just keeping driving,” she says. “Somewhere they’d never find me. Texas maybe.”

“
Texas
? Gag me with a spoon. C’mon, you can dream up something better than that.”

“Or, uh…” Claire had other ideas but now they feel as insubstantial as the brown slime leaking onto her jeans.

“You were always a cool kid. I hope you haven’t turned into one of those types who wear black all the time and feel sorry for themselves.”

“I don’t know what I am.” She looks down at her hands, at the masterpiece of a pie, covered in a grass toupee, that she’s somehow assembled. She holds it toward Dakota.

“Claire, that is the best mud pie of all time.”

“Remember our secret? From that night in the car? I never told anyone, like I promised.”

“I know you didn’t. I always trusted you.” Dakota stands up. “I do need to get going now.”

“Already? But there are so many things I wanna ask you. What’s it like, y’know, being dead?”

Dakota mimes taking a bite of the pie and chewing, the way they used to, as she walks away. “Mmmmmm, delicious,” she calls over her shoulder.

“Wait!” Claire tries to stand again but can’t get her footing. “What am I supposed to do? I’m tired of being
angry
all the time.”

Dakota spins so she’s walking backwards. “Then don’t be.”

Claire opens her eyes. A blank movie screen towers above her. No mud, only the concrete hardness, the weeds in her hair and the fur of her coat. Images already dissolving in her mind even as she clutches at them.

If a date ends with a hug, how long should the hug be expected to last?

Noel shows no indication of letting go of Bryce here on her front porch. He figured at the start of the night that he wouldn’t be getting laid, but put making out in the realm of possibility. That’s going to be difficult with her mouth that much higher than his, her chin against his temple.

His mom stayed home, calling every one of Claire’s friends; his dad, Mr. Batson, and Mr. Swanson searched the roads. Bryce cruised all the spots he could think of where his sister might be hiding: their elementary school playground, the roof of the middle school cafeteria, even the gas station where Zaplin worked. The arroyo was nothing but impenetrable darkness this late at night, and no way was he stomping around in there while wearing a tux.

The search might have been effective had they been looking for Claire on her bike. With a car, who knew how far she’d gone?

All this while Cam and the others were having fun at Trevor’s party.

Noel suggested looking at church and while Bryce thought there was perhaps a one percent chance (if that high) of Claire being there, it seemed more appealing than being out of ideas altogether. They were still two or three miles away when Bryce pulled up next to his dad’s car at a stoplight.

He looked over, Claire looked over, she waved. Bryce saw only a lost little girl behind the wheel of a big car.

He hated her and loved her in equal measure at that intersection.

“You’re so strong,” Noel whispers to him on the porch. He doesn’t know what she means, but it sounds good.

Cameron walks up the driveway, tuxedo jacket over his shoulder, right as his mom gets out of her car in the open garage. The sky fades from charcoal to pink – 6:05 a.m. by his watch.

“How was prom?” she asks with a grin, flattening her wild hair. “Wait, where’s your car?”

He picks up the rolled morning newspaper. “Dead.”

“Oh no. What happened?”

“Well. Hm. Rosemary and I went out to the car to take a break from dancing, and we ended up smoking a joint I had in there. Then she was like super hungry, so we stopped at Circle K before this after-party at the Coronado Club. You remember Trevor, right? His party. So who do we run into at Circle K but Ricky Zaplin – I know you remember that name. Ricky Zaplin who’s apparently going out with Bryce’s sister now. Yeah, I had the same look on my face when I found out. Anyway, things got a little out of hand and I ended up having to race him. Drag racing, not running. The whole time leading up to it I’m thinking that if I lose, at least I won’t have to hear about it much longer before I never see that jackass again. I mean, I’d look lame in front of Rosemary but it wouldn’t be the first time. So we’ve got our cars lined up, ready to go, and I’m still like
it’ll be ok, it’ll be ok
. Then the weirdest thing: as soon as we started I knew I was gonna smoke him. I mean, I
knew
. And I did! Dad always said that car was a beast and he was totally right. It was like driving a missile! I didn’t even slow down to rub it in Zaplin’s face afterwards, just kept on going. Rosemary’s clapping and saying how cool I am, and we had to pull over and have sex right there in the front seat. I told myself I wouldn’t ever do that because who knows what Dad’s done in there in the past. I don’t know if you and he ever… Anyway, it was awesome and guess what she said afterwards?
I love you
. Couples at school say it all the time but trust me, it’s a big deal coming from her. You don’t even wanna know. Afterwards we went to Denny’s for pancakes and I swear those were the best pancakes of my entire life. Seriously. All these people were staring at us in our prom clothes, which was cool. By the way, I’ve found the person who loves bacon as much as you do – you should see how many pieces she can eat. Well, when finished eating the car wouldn’t start. None of the tricks Dad showed me worked. I think it might be dead, dead. Like maybe the race was all it had left. I didn’t have enough money for a taxi so I walked her home and then here I am. Right now nothing sounds better than getting these shoes off – it feels like they’re made of fricking cement. By the way, I don’t like chocolate milk and I haven’t since I was little. Not even so much then. Please stop buying it. So how was your night?”

Bryce always thought he’d be excited to leave high school – he and Cam started a countdown in the middle of junior year – but walking the halls now he feels a strange pang of… sadness? No, it couldn’t be. He’s done with sadness.

These last days are a flurry of final exams and saying goodbye to past teachers. Each meal at the snack bar, each time opening his locker, assumes extra significance, because even if he walks these grounds again someday, he certainly won’t be doing either of those things.

As for college, Bryce called his grandpa for advice on the whole art school controversy. Grandpa listened patiently, not adding more than grunts and
hmm
’s, until saying at the end, “Hold on to your britches and we’ll figure it out when I see you for graduation.”

Bryce isn’t worried. He hasn’t been worried – about college, about anything – since finding Claire on prom night. Since leading her home, then hugging her in the driveway before their parents ran out of the house.

It’s a nice feeling.

The first thing Claire sees on the last day of school are the band and orchestra kids lined up outside the music building, waiting to have their instrument cases checked for contraband shaving cream.

Her first high school yearbook has more white space than writing on the autograph pages. All of her teachers put some variation of
Congratulations and good luck in tenth grade
. Even Mr. Hagen, whom Claire hoped would come up with something more creative. Beyond those, she has a scattering of
It’s been fun having ______ with you
. She exchanges scribblings of
H.A.G.S
. with girls she’s barely spoken to. A guy whose name she doesn’t even know writes
K.I.T
. to her.

The locker hall floor is snowed over with notebook paper and old dittos. Claire opens her locker for the last time this year, knowing there won’t be a poem inside.

But there is:

You did an excellent job of breaking my heart

I should’ve seen it coming but I’m not that smart

I thought you were different but you’re like all the rest

I feel like a fool for loving you best

BITCH!

When she finishes reading it for the second time is when two boys across from her open their lockers wide and toss pictures of naked women into the air, drawing the attention of all in the immediate area. A woman in black stockings and nothing else lands at Claire’s feet; one of the teachers is blowing a whistle, trying to disperse the crowd. Claire wads up the final piece of poetry and launches it into the commotion.

She walks from there to the photo room to collect her semester folder. Dr. Crumpler said he’d love to see her work, so she promised to bring them to her appointment this afternoon. After showing off the decent ones, she’ll pick a board game from his closet and he’ll ask her questions about her life while they play. He’s not so good at doing both things at once – he sucks the end of his glasses and furrows his brow – which is why Claire has an undefeated streak going in Monopoly. Maybe she’ll take pity on him today.

To look out at the football field bleachers – jammed to capacity with families – on the baking graduation evening is to see row after row of programs fanning in unison like a routine in some dance musical. Cameron watches this, sweating in his red cap and gown (the lucky girls get to wear white), and wishes he had a fan, or at least a companion to complain to.

Bryce, Geoff, and Rosemary all sit in the latter half of the alphabet He’s sandwiched between Erik Carter’s empty chair – its occupant currently on stage waiting to give one of the three speeches – and Lisa Castillo, whose cap surfs precariously atop a tidal wave of curly hair The ceremony unfolds as if no one has anywhere better to be: presentation of the school colors, the national anthem, members of the choir singing a medley of songs (ending for some reason with “Footloose”), Principal Rodriguez’s speech on the importance of high school athletics (during which Cameron turns off his hearing aid, just in case Bryce can see from the back), then Hannah Arnold and Erik talking about the great accomplishments, past and future, of the class of ’84

Har, har.

The amount of applause each student gets when their name is called is an instant popularity meter. The Eriks and the Hannahs get the most noise, while some others receive their diplomas accompanied by stony silence. Fortunately, Cameron’s given out enough free pizzas in his day to earn a respectable amount of clapping. He returns the favor for his friends, and is maybe too loud when Rosemary crosses the stage.

It’s in celebration and relief from the heat that he tosses his cap off after the final name – Richard Zaplin, who somehow graduated (costing Cameron a two dollar bet with Bryce) – is called.

A crush of people, a blur of faces on the field after the ceremony. Handshakes. Hugs. He finds his mom, who’d held out hope until a few days ago that Grandma Margaret could somehow make it out. He finds Rosemary and proceeds with the official introduction, ready to see the look on his mom’s face at the resemblance.

Molly says, “So nice to
finally
meet you, sweetie,” with no look other than a big smile. She hadn’t batted an eye after seeing the prom photos, either. Is everyone blind?

Cameron’s dad and Louise. Rosemary’s parents. Again that freaky baby stares at him the entire time.

Don’t look at Geoff’s mom’s glass eye. Don’t look, don’t look, don’t look.

Also, don’t be jealous of the tight hug between Rosemary and Mr. Hagen.

Cameron, Bryce, and Geoff put their arms around each other for a photo; at the last second, Trevor rushes up from behind and joins in.

Is F.T.E. now T.E.?