Noggin (29 page)

“This is so . . . exciting,” Audrey said.

Hatton turned around from the front seat and looked at her. It seemed like he wanted to say something but was making sure it came out right. She made him nervous, which was kind of sweet and also pretty obvious to everyone.

“Thanks for coming,” he said. “I needed you. No, I mean,
we
needed you.”

She laughed at his fumble, along with Kyle, and I looked over to Cate to see that she was smiling pretty big.

“How much longer?” Hatton asked.

“About two hours,” Kyle said. “Are you gonna ask every five minutes?”

“Maybe.”

We stopped at a convenience store outside of Brookfield. Kyle was pumping gas, and Hatton and Audrey were inside using the restroom and getting some snacks. I was just standing beside the truck stretching my arms above my head as Cate walked up to me.

“How’s your hand?” she asked playfully.

“Sorry about that.”

“It was definitely surprising.”

“I can’t believe he didn’t hit me back.”

“I don’t think Turner’s ever been in a fight. He cried on the way to the ER.”

“The ER?”

“You broke his nose.”

“Oh my God.”

“He’ll be fine,” she said. “I think I’m angrier than he is.”

“He can’t be that nice, can he?”

“Yeah,” she said. “He kind of is.”

“Look, thanks for coming. I’m not sure why they’re making a big deal out of all this.”

“Because it is a big deal. I think so, anyway.”

“It’ll probably just be a letdown to everyone. Sprinkle some ashes, say a few words, then drive home. Done and done.”

“You know, for someone who got brought back to life, you sure are pessimistic.”

“I guess so,” I said.

“You should work on that.”

Back on the road no one was really talking, just listening to the barely audible music on the radio. Of the string of weird days that had made up my recent life, this one was shaping up to be the longest and most bizarre. Within a couple of hours we would illegally pour my ashes onto the grave of a stranger whose body happens to be holding up my head.

“I can’t believe we’re doing this,” I said. No one responded.

I must’ve fallen asleep because the next thing I knew, we were driving really slowly and Hatton was hanging halfway out the window looking at rows of headstones.

“Keep going,” he said. “These are all pretty old.”

“We should get out and walk,” Audrey suggested. “Split up and try to find it.”

“Teams. We should go in teams.” Hatton looked to Audrey, who rolled her eyes but also smiled.

“There’s no directory or anything?” I asked, yawning.

“I don’t think so,” Kyle said.

So we got out of the truck and split up to search the huge cemetery, hoping we could find the one grave with Jeremy Pratt’s name on it. Hatton followed Audrey, and Kyle walked off by himself, leaving Cate and me. We walked slowly down a row of headstones, looking at each one as we passed.

“This is going to take forever,” she said.

I nodded my head and kept looking. I was pretty warm in my sweater, so I started rolling up the sleeves haphazardly. Cate stopped in her tracks and watched me.

“Here,” she said.

She stepped closer and folded each of my sleeves up the way she always used to.

“So they won’t keep falling down. Drives me crazy.”

“Thanks.”

“You’re brave, you know that?” she asked. We continued grave hunting.

“Why’s that?”

“You want something, you go after it. It’s a little misguided, maybe. But brave.”

“Immature, you mean.”

“A little. Yeah.”

“I’m really sorry. I thought maybe you felt the same way.” I didn’t look at her, just kept my head hung low.

“It’s not all your fault, Travis. It’s not.”

“Oh yeah?”

“You know, when you died, my mom told me something really important. She said it’s too easy to get hung up on people the way we do. I mean, that we all get
one
person to be ours and that’s it. We should look at it differently. We all get lots of people. And maybe we don’t always get to have them the exact way we want them, but if we can figure out a way to compromise, you know, then we can keep them all.”

“I love you so much,” I said, stopping in my tracks and turning her way. “I don’t know how to let that go.”

“We’re soul mates,” she said. “I know that. And so are Turner and me. And you and Hatton and Kyle. We all get people that help us make sense of the world, right? We just have to figure out how to keep them however we can. You and me, we worked. But you had to leave and I had to let other people in or I’d die too. I knew you didn’t want that. Did you?”

“No. Never.”

“So let me go, Travis. You’re the best friend I ever had, and that’s what I need from you now. Let me be your best friend.”

“Over here!” Kyle shouted from across the way.

I had to squint in the sunlight to see him, and he was waving us over with both arms. Audrey and Hatton were walking quickly toward him from the far-west side of the cemetery. Cate started walking over to him and I followed after her. She let the tips of her fingers lightly graze the tops of tombstones as we passed.

Kyle, Hatton, and Audrey were standing around the grave forming a broken circle when we walked up to help them complete it. Hatton was holding the plastic bag full of my ashes. It still said “Binky” on the side.

“So how do we do this?” I asked.

“Up to you,” Kyle said. “But we were thinking maybe we could all help.”

“That would be nice,” I said.

I looked down at the inscription etched into the shiny, deep purple–stained concrete headstone.
Jeremy Lee Pratt: Beloved son and brother.

“Audrey,” Hatton said. “Would you maybe say a few words?”

I didn’t close my eyes, but I watched Cate as she held hers tightly shut. She was mouthing something as Audrey prayed. Cate said “Amen” with the rest of us, and she looked right at me when we were done. She held her hands clasped, one cupped over the other.

“Who wants to go first?” Kyle asked.

“I’ll go,” Hatton said.

Hatton held out the bag and looked around at us. He was moving his eyes like he was searching for something appropriate to say. As he let the ash start to trickle out of the top corner of the bag, he just sort of grinned and stared at me. The ashes floated a little in the air as they fell, but there was no wind, so they found the ground and couldn’t be seen anymore. Then he passed the bag over to Audrey.

Audrey did the same—only she closed her eyes and let her ashes fall out more slowly. She passed the bag to Kyle, and her now-free hand swung back to rest right against Hatton’s. His eyes widened.

“Ashes to ashes?” Kyle said as he let the gray cloud form in front of him.

“My turn?” Cate asked, reaching for the bag. “Okay.”

She held the ashes out and didn’t take her eyes off me the whole time. She tilted the bag slowly and gently as we all watched until there was only about a handful left inside.

“Thanks for this, guys,” I said.

I stepped forward and took the dusty, mostly empty bag from Cate. It was hard not to laugh, but the solemn looks on their faces kept me from it.

“If it weren’t for Jeremy Pratt, I guess I wouldn’t be here right now,” I said. “And I guess that’s something to be grateful for.”

I started tipping Binky’s bag toward the ground.

“I don’t really know much about Jeremy. I know he liked to skateboard. And I know he lived here in Quincy, which seems nice enough.”

“And he couldn’t play video games for shit,” Kyle said.

“And he was deceptively strong,” Cate added.

“Yeah. All those things. I know he had to leave his family and friends behind, and I think that’s probably what we have most in common.”

I paused for a second. I let every memory of the last day of my life flood in, and I imagined Jeremy’s last day too. I pictured his mother and father crying and his girlfriend kissing him good-bye.

“You okay?” Cate whispered.

“I’m fine.”

I finished pouring the ash out, holding the upside-down bag by both its bottom corners. When it was all gone, I folded it up and stuck it in my pocket.

“So, Jeremy. You gave me your body. Now we give you mine. It’s not a very good one, but I—”

“What are you doing?”

We all turned around at the same time to see a middle-aged woman and a young girl standing behind us. The girl was wearing a light blue bow in her hair, and she couldn’t have been any older than five or six. The woman looked confused and almost angry. Maybe she’d been crying because her eyes were bloodshot. None of us knew what to say.

“I asked you what you’re doing,” she said.

“Ma’am, we’re sorry,” Audrey began. “This is gonna sound crazy, but we were just—”

“You’re Travis Coates. Oh my God.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She paused and looked down at the ground. Her mouth was open a little bit like she had something to say but not enough air to say it.

“This is my son’s grave.”

“Oh,” I said.

“No way,” Hatton said slowly, his mouth hanging open.

“This is how we all go to jail,” Kyle added under his breath.

“We just thought . . . ,” I said. “We found out he was here and it felt like we needed to—”

“That’s okay,” she said. “You don’t have to say anything.”

“Hi,” the little girl blurted out, looking right at me.

“Hi,” I said.

“What’s your name?” Cate asked her.

“Julia,” she answered, smiling.

Cate walked over and kneeled down beside the little girl, telling her she liked her bow and asking where she got it. Cate was like that with kids, always had been.

“Jeremy gave it to me,” Julia said.

“She wears it every time we come see him,” her mom said.

“We can go. We should get out of your way.” I looked over at my friends.

“Can I see it?” Jeremy’s mom asked, stepping closer. “Your neck, can I see it?”

She walked up to me, and her eyes were so red that I was sure she hadn’t stopped crying since October, since she lost him. She stood to my side a bit and very carefully leaned in to see the scar. She took one quick deep breath like something had scared her. Everyone was just watching us. Cate was talking to Julia in the grass, but even she had her eyes pointed in our direction.

“You’re doing well?” she asked. “You’re healthy?”

“Yeah. Uhh . . . yes, ma’am.”

“My son never said ‘Yes, ma’am’ one day of his life.” She laughed a little.

“Missouri, I guess,” I said to her.

“Can you do something for me?” she asked quietly. She wasn’t crying, but I think that’s only because she was all tapped out of tears.

“Sure.”

“Jeremy, he used to be so protective of his sister. No matter where we went, he was always on guard like
something would happen to her. Shopping malls, supermarkets. He always had to be holding her hand. Can you just . . .”

“You want me to hold her hand?”

“I don’t know. I know that’s weird. It’s just . . . I was thinking maybe she misses it.”

Cate stepped away from Julia as I walked toward her like I was approaching a wild animal. She looked at her mom with her eyes squinting and her nose wrinkled.

“Okay, no. Maybe you don’t want to, huh?” I asked.

“Here,” Julia said, placing her little hand in mine. “Like this.”

Then her mother, Jeremy Pratt’s mother, started crying, holding her chin down to her chest, and Audrey walked over and put an arm around her.

And now Julia was looking at our hands with this smile on her face, and I stared down and noticed how hers fit perfectly in the center of mine. I looked over at her and I swear I felt something I’ve never felt before. I felt like I knew this little kid, like I’d heard her voice before and felt her little hand in mine and seen her smile in the sunlight like that. It was so familiar to me, and despite being completely absurd and illogical, I
knew
in that moment that I was not just Travis Coates who died and came back from the dead. I was the older brother who she lost. I was the past she couldn’t ever have back. All that time I’d spent worrying about why I’m here and how I’m supposed to live had kept me from remembering that Jeremy Pratt
will never be back. His people will never have him again. He is Jeremy Pratt who died and stayed dead and will never get a second chance. And even though that hand that spent the last five years holding hers was somehow doing it again, it wasn’t Jeremy Pratt’s anymore.

•  •  •

On our way home I stared down at the backside of a plumber’s business card where Mrs. Pratt had written down her phone number. Cate was sitting beside me, and I felt her stare on my face. I put the card in my front pocket and leaned back, closing my eyes.

“That was intense,” Hatton said.

“It was beautiful,” Audrey added.

We were back in Kansas City much faster than I expected, and as we pulled up to Cate’s house, she leaned over and asked if she could drive me home. I hugged Hatton and Kyle, and Audrey gave me a kiss on the cheek before I got out to follow Cate. I turned around to look at the three of them as they pulled out of the driveway and waved to me from the open windows of the truck.

“I just need to grab my other keys,” Cate said, unlocking her front door.

“Turner here?” I asked nervously.

“No.” She laughed. “He went out with some friends.”

She led the way inside, and I stood in the entryway with my hands in my pockets. I heard her fumbling around in some drawers in the kitchen and cursing
at herself. Cate always loses her keys. It’s the curse of someone who thinks they need to put things in a safe place and then never remembers which safe place they used.

“Ah! Found them!” she yelled, walking back out where I could see her.

“You ready?”

“Is it . . . here?” I asked, looking around. “The painting?”

“Oh yeah. In the bedroom. Wanna see it?”

“Can I?”

“For sure. This way.”

It was hanging right in the center of the wall above a bookshelf. I reached out and touched it, remembering the way those brushstrokes felt. I traced them until my finger fell off the edge of the canvas. I looked at us right there in the center of that movie theater and shook my head in amazement.