Finding Dell (34 page)

I pulled her close for a hug, not the loose-limbed, quick hug of acquaintances.

“I’ll miss my hip,” I said into her hair.

“Attached at the hip, two thousand miles apart,” she said.

We pulled apart. We both had watery eyes. Natalie looked up at the blue sky and blinked. She squeezed my hand and tried to wink, sending a single tear down her cheek.

“I’ll see you on Cherry Court,” she said.

CHAPTER 38

THE FRONT DOORS
to Cam’s building in Collier Loop were propped open as a swarm of students and parents moved their belongings out to waiting cars. It was Friday afternoon, but many would move out before the weekend arrived and the dorms officially closed for the summer.

I knocked on the open door of Cam’s room and stuck my head inside. Gus was on his computer and didn’t turn in my direction. He had massive headphones on and everything on his side of the room was packed except for his large desktop computer. His insistent typing made me remember nights spent in the room on much colder days, and my gaze wandered to Cam’s side of the room. It looked much the same as the last time I’d been there, several months ago. His bed was unmade, with just one lone sheet bunched up at the foot of it. DVDs were piled on every available surface, and his favorite pair of corduroys was carefully folded across the back of his desk chair. The posters hadn’t yet been removed.

“Dell? What are you doing here?”

Gus’s voice was scratchy with the sound of extended periods
without speaking. He coughed and reached for a can of Mountain Dew on his desk.

“Sweatshirt,” I managed to croak out, my voice an octave higher than I hoped it to be. I held up my hand, in it the faded sweatshirt that Cam loved so much.

Gus raised his eyebrows, waiting for me to continue. I took his look as an invitation to enter and I walked to Cam’s side of the room.

“I’m dropping off Cam’s sweatshirt. He left it with me by accident, and I just wanted to return it before he left for break.” I folded it neatly and placed it in the center of his bed. As I turned, I met Gus’s narrowed eyes.

“I didn’t know you guys were still hanging out,” he said.

“We’re not,” I replied quickly. “It’s just . . . we ran into each other at the library and Cam walked me home.”

Gus’s eyebrows raised another notch and I scrambled to correct myself.

“Not like that,” I said, reading his expression. “Nothing happened. Cam just walked me home to make sure I was safe.”

“I didn’t say anything,” Gus said, turning back to the computer screen. He took another gulp of the Mountain Dew that I guessed was lukewarm and possibly a day old. “It’s just that I’ve never seen him take that sweatshirt off long enough to loan it to anyone.”

“Don’t tell him I stopped by, okay?”

Gus was lifting his headphones back over his ears when he paused and frowned. “What am I supposed to say when he asks about his sweatshirt?”

I took one last long glance at Cam’s side of the room. “Tell him it wasn’t a perfect fit. Tell him that I wish we didn’t grow out of it so quickly.”

● ● ●

With the forgotten sweatshirt safely back in Collier Loop, I crossed the bridge from Cam’s dorm to the entrance of Whalen Stadium.

I could hear the faint strains of the processional march beginning. The bass tuba broke forth and joined the rest of the band in “Pomp and Circumstance” as I pushed through the turnstile into the stadium.

Signs at the entrance announced that it was the 138
^th
annual commencement at the university. Rows of folding chairs lined the field, a sea of school colors and unidentifiable students. The stage was filled with bouquets of flowering hyacinths, so many that I could smell them as I edged through the bleachers to find a seat.

The chancellor, the first of three graduation speakers, took the stage. His speech centered on the importance of donating money to the school after graduation.

After the valedictorian gave a trite inspirational speech, the band started up again to announce the beginning of commencement—the beginning of the end for the grads.

A crawling line of students in royal blue robes and graduation caps filed to the stage, where a line of university board members waited to shake their hands.

The grads’ faces were full of concentration as they shook each person’s hand and made careful eye contact. It wasn’t until they filed back to their seats and looked at the diploma in their hand that their faces erupted into a smile, as if they didn’t believe they’d graduated until now.

After every student there was a smattering of applause and cheers. Two hours and hundreds of students later, I spotted Dean. I tracked him to the stage, watching the concentration take over his features just as it had done to those before him.

“Dean Christopher Tedesco. Bachelor of science in management, specialization in entrepreneurship.”

I jumped to my feet and screamed as loud as I could, even though I knew that Dean wouldn’t be able to hear me on stage. Three rows down, a woman with tightly wound curls did the same, and I knew from her expression that she was Dean’s mom. When she sat down, she wiped a hand to her eye and clutched a teddy bear holding a diploma to its chest.

After Dean’s name had been called, the rest of the ceremony went by quickly. As the chancellor took the stage once again, the crowd was buzzing with an eager electricity, everyone from the grads to the parents ready to burst from their seats.

“Northern Kentucky, are you ready?” he bellowed into the loudspeaker. “I’m proud to introduce Seneca University’s newest graduates!”

Hundreds of arms ceremoniously moved the tassel from the left side of the mortarboard to the right before they heaved the caps into the air.

At the same time that the sky filled with spiraling hats, loud pops echoed in the stadium and royal blue and white streamers exploded onto the stadium’s AstroTurf, soaking the onlookers in the stands. The crowd screamed, shrilly, and as the hats tumbled back into the crowd of graduates, they continued to toss them in the air while the applause roared and the band started up again. When I looked at A.J’s mom, she was on her feet, waving the teddy bear.

When the grads snaked out of the stadium and the crowd followed, I wandered through the parking lot and wondered how I was going to find Dean in the sea of identically dressed people.

Then I saw his mom hugging him and crying. The bear dangled from Dean’s hand, but he was too happy to be embarrassed.

“Dell! What are you doing here?” Dean called in surprise when I approached.

His mom took a step back but kept her arm around his shoulder. She beamed at me, her blue eyes matching Dean’s and glassy from the tears.

“I came to say congratulations,” I said. “I made your goodbye bonfire all about me, and this is all about you. Massey Avenue isn’t going to be the same without you next year.”

Dean smiled. “I might not be on campus anymore, but I’ll visit. You’re living with my girlfriend next year, after all.” He nudged my arm with his fist softly. “The storm ended, Dell. You survived.”

CHAPTER 39

WITH CURLED SHOULDERS
, I hunched toward the window. I traced the pane with red fingertips and eyed the wide expanse of pavement reaching out of view. I craned closer to the window until my forehead pressed against the cool glass, but my view didn’t get better and the man next to me took the opportunity to steal the armrest.

Only a few hours ago I’d been pressed up against a different window. The Chevy had been more cramped than it was on the way down to Seneca because my mom insisted on coming, too. I looked at the backseat with a skeptical eye and didn’t understand how we were going to make the seven-hour drive back to Chicago with three people and a bedroom crammed into a compact sedan.

Then, my dad, as if he were timing himself in a race for quickest move-out, set the TV on the hood of the car and stepped away to unlock the door, leaving it perched dangerously, laughably, on a down-sloping curve. When it predictably tumbled off moments later, he actually seemed surprised. The screen
cracked in a spidery web and it ended up in the big green dumpster in front of Paso Fino, giving me some appreciated space in the crammed backseat.

The rolled carpet settled into its home sticking through the center of the vehicle, between my parents and ending next to my head. It was more gray than lavender now, but smelled like overly clean laundry, thanks to a detergent spill that left a fresh scent and a bright blue stain that Natalie and I couldn’t seem to scrub out.

Now, wiry black hair on a pale arm crowded into my space. I’d have preferred to sit next to the carpet roll again, even if it shifted to knock me in the head each time my dad took the curve of an off-ramp too quickly.

“Ladies and gentleman, my name is Mariana and I’m your chief flight attendant. On behalf of Captain Lorowitz and the entire crew, welcome aboard U.S. Airways flight 1202, non-stop service to Miami, Florida, then continuing to São Paulo, Brazil after a one-hour layover.”

I felt my stomach turn over and I leaned away from the window and tightened my seatbelt. The plane started to roll slowly away from the terminal, edging its way onto the runway. The ground crew stood by an empty tractor dolly on the tarmac ignoring the giant jet as it rolled past. The plane pivoted slowly as it aligned itself to the runway and I gazed out the window at a ghostly set of mobile stairs now leading to nowhere.

“. . . We advise you that as of this moment, any electronic equipment must be powered off or in airplane mode. . .”

The man next to me huffed heavily as he leaned over his large belly to get his phone from the seatback pouch. When his arm lifted from the armrest, I placed my arm on it territorially and didn’t move, even when his bristly arm hair rested on top of mine for an agonizing moment. He gave me a wary sidelong look
but I smiled brightly, because I knew that Bernie would be proud of me for standing up for myself, even if it was in a petty in-flight game of chicken over the armrest.

In fact, she’d been thrilled to hear I spent my design contest prize money to visit—I couldn’t say the same for my mom’s reaction to the news—but she didn’t seem surprised.

“You won’t find me here if you visit,” Bernie said ominously when I called to tell her that I purchased a ticket.

I panicked, knowing it was just like her to be in Seychelles or Singapore already, even though our last conversation, when I sat on the library steps, was just days before.

“I resent that I have to speak in clichés and spell it out for you, stormy, but you’re not going to find me here. You’ll find you.”

She stayed on the line through my pleas for reassurance that she really would be there in Brazil to spend a week with me, but even then I knew she was right.

I’d spent months agonizing over lost love and boyfriends and never stopped to think about the real deficit I was compensating for—the loss of myself. Without knowing it, I’d stripped down to my rawest self, until I was vulnerable and authentic. Now, I needed to rebuild, just like Bernie promised to help me do so many months ago when we sat in the communications building.

The creeping pace of the plane started to gain speed, and the rushing sound of the jets dominated the cabin. With my head pressed against the headrest, I looked out the window and marveled at the rapid flicker of the dashed markings that defined the edge of the taxiway until they became a blurred line. Then we lifted out of sight.

The force pushed me back into my seat heavily, and I closed my eyes. Instinctively, I knew that I’d just left the bitter
uncertainty of Hurricane Dell on the ground, and though I had no idea what São Paulo might hold, I knew I’d never been more ready to find out.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

KATE DIERKES
lives in Chicago, where she enjoys cooking, reading, and shopping.
Finding Dell
is her debut novel. She is currently working on her second book.

To learn more about Kate and her work, visit her website at
www.kate.dierkes.com
.