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I hit send and shut my phone off before it can protest. The world doesn’t end. The cottonwood in front of me is tall and strong and unchanged. I peel a small patch of ragged bark from its side and slip it in my pocket.
Baltimore.
Bec shuffles back down the dirt trail, drawing a line behind her with the tip of a thick walking stick.
“We’re going on?” she says.
“Going on. Yeah.”
My legs are going boneless. I start to shake a little.
“Here.” She hands me the stick, and we start on the uphill path back to the Sunseeker.
CastieCon #6
Baltimore, Maryland
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Bec and I do our usual on the long drive east on I-80.
We put on the playlist we made together a couple years back and hum along with Fleet Foxes, Iron & Wine, Rufus Wainwright, Dylan. We argue over whether Scott Pilgrim is actually any good. We polish off the dregs of the snack bin: raisins, stale trail mix, packs of code-orange crackers with crumbly peanut butter filling. She props her polka-dot flip-flops on the dash and reads me ridiculous Cosmo quizzes on the right animal print for your body type and what your favorite martini says about you.
But sometimes I’ll catch her eye over a diner menu or glance at her while we’re stuck in bumper-to-bumper, and I know she knows that everything I say is just filling silence. That inside I’m secretly doing what Past-Tense Brandon does best: flailing wildly.
She’s right. Like right this minute, on the morning of July 4th, what we’re technically doing is listening to the Broken West and estimating how many crunches a day she’d have to do to get as ripped as Della Wolfe-Williams. But the whole time I’m rifling through a flipbook of options. I’ll go home, straight home, and apologize to my parents. I’ll call Abel, beg him for another chance. I’ll find a church and talk to a priest. I’ll pick up some random guy at the Baltimore con and drag him into a bathroom stall. I’ll swear off sex forever and join a monastery and spend the rest of my days meditating and making thimbleberry jam.
“You miss him,” Bec says, for the millionth time. We’re on 76 now, snipping the southwest corner of Pennsylvania. I’m wearing Abel’s white shirt from the Castaway Ball, the sleeves rolled up to fit me and the collar still tinged with blue.
“Yeah.”
“So call him.”
“I can’t.”
“That’s it.” She pulls out her phone. “I’m dialing.”
“No! Don’t.”
“Why?”
“It’ll just make things worse.”
“Like waiting too long won’t?”
“I need a sign.”
“Okay: STOP.”
“No no, listen. I have a feeling.”
She sighs. “Here we go.”
I can’t explain it. I try anyway. I tell her I feel like something’s going to happen at the Baltimore con, at the Q&A. Like I’ll absorb some of Lenny Bray’s storytelling genius on this subatomic level and I’ll have an epiphany, and all the confusion will dry up and I’ll know exactly what to do and where to go next.
Bec nods gravely. “That’s really kind of dumb.”
I grip the wheel tighter and kick it up to seventy. Let her think that; I don’t care. We merge onto 70 East, toward Baltimore. I direct the next part straight to God, if he’s up there. Please help me. Please find some way to speak through Leonard Bray today. Give me, once and for all, the sign I’ve been waiting for.
***
***WE’RE SORRY***
TODAY’S Q&A WITH LEONARD BRAY
IS CANCELLED DUE TO ILLNESS
MR. BRAY SINCERELY REGRETS ANY INCONVENIENCE
***NO REFUNDS***
For a long time I just stare at the sign—attached to the closed door of Meeting Room 1-C with cheery mismatched thumbtacks, as if it were announcing a shortage of strawberry ice cream instead of a cruel practical joke of the universe.
“Crap,” I whisper.
Bec squeezes my arm.
Outside the Q&A room in the Baltimore Dorchester, the CastieCon staff—a burly guy with a black goatee and a skinny lady with straggly brown hair—are getting absolutely jackhammered. The crowd around them gets bigger and angrier by the minute, the fans shooting out questions and threats and conspiracy theories.
“I drove my son all the way from New York! We’re missing fireworks for this.”
“I knew he’d pull this. He planned it, didn’t he?”
“He’s got stage fright, you guys. He said—”
“Bullshit! He hates us. Always has.”
“Refunds or revolt, people!”
“Refunds or revolt! Refunds or revolt!”
Bec pulls me away from the chanting crowd.
“Sorry,” she says. “This sucks.”
“Yeah.”
“What do you want to do?”
I scan the convention hall, hoping the answer will pop out. But it’s all the same CastieCon stuff—the vendors and the overpriced snack stand and the trivia games and costume contests—and none of it is fun without Abel. I can’t go, though. Not yet. I can’t just go home to my pissed-off parents and the St. Matt’s Funfair and my stupid room with the stupid solar system sheets, like the past six weeks never even happened.
“I need some time,” I tell Bec. “I think maybe a long walk or something…”
“Want company?”
“Not this time. That okay?”
She nods. “I’ll hang out here. I want to call Dave anyway.”
“Are you sure?”
“There’s a fanfic panel at 12. It might be fun and educational.”
“Really.”
“Plus there’s a pool. Take your time.”
She’s snapping a little blue plastic dragonfly barrette in her hair, the kind she used to wear when we were kids and spent whole afternoons in the woods around St. Matt’s with her dad’s metal detector. She used to save the bottle caps for me, even that awesome vintage Orange Crush cap she probably wanted to keep.
I crush her in a hug.
“Okay, freakshow,” she laughs. “Go find your epiphany.”
“Thanks.”
“Try the gift shop first. I think they’re on sale.”
I give her a raspberry and a wave.
“Bring me back a snow globe!”
***
I stick my earbuds in and call up a Sim playlist, scrolling right to the song Abel contributed (”Coin-Operated Boy” by the Dresden Dolls). I stalk the hotel lobby while the song tootles in my ears like a demented music box. I walk with purpose, even though I have none. I scan everything like there’s a clue inside: the concierge, the fountains, the sleek leather armchairs, the glass chandeliers shaped like upside-down birthday cakes.
Just past the elevator banks, I spot the nun.
She’s an old-school kind I’ve only seen in photos, with a long black veil and just a small window of face peeking through. Like a relic from Gram’s day, when it was okay to throw a five-pound Latin hymnal at someone for mispronouncing venite adoremus. She’s walking arm in arm with a young blonde woman who’s dressed way older than she probably is in a dark severe pantsuit and pearls, her hair swept up and sprayed stiff. She looks familiar, the way all churchy girls do. They’re probably off to some kind of youth convention, where Pantsuit Woman will pump them up with an abstinence-is-cool speech and the nun will make sure no one’s secretly making out in the coat closet.
Follow them.
The weird idea presses into me. Lightly at first, then hard as a fist; they vanish around a corner and my legs jerk to action, run to catch up. Cold sweat breaks out on my neck. When you’re trolling for a sign and your gut tells you follow that nun, you probably won’t like what you get.