I’m nervous as I get into the car. I put my hands on the steering wheel. They’re already sticky, even though the morning is still cool from the night air. I check the gas. It’s close to full. Enough to get me to Scottsdale and farther. I put the car into Drive. And I leave.
* * *
It’s six hours on Route 10 from Los Angeles to Scottsdale.
I drove this way before, must have, on my way to Lost, but I don’t remember it. The view out the window had been a blur. Now I watch each cactus and highway sign. I loop around Phoenix, ask for directions at a gas station, and find Laguna Elementary School in Scottsdale. I park on the street.
It’s a flat reddish-tan building, the same color as the dirt here. Two tall palm trees flank the entrance, next to two equally tall flagpoles. The playground is enclosed by a chain-link fence. Kids are swarming over it. I step out of the car and lean against the door.
The wind picks up crumpled paper in the street, bits of dirt from the grassless ground, and the shouts and laughter of the kids on the swings and slides. A group of girls is clustered on a stretch of black pavement. Hopscotch.
But I look for Claire to be one of the loners, like the boy on the swing or the girl curled with a notebook near a rock. I don’t see her.
My hands feel slick with sweat. I wipe them on my jeans. She might not be here. She might not exist, no matter what the articles said. I could have hallucinated them all—the articles, the rabbit, the puffer fish, the diner menu, the Missing Man.
I don’t believe that.
She’s here.
I know she is.
And then, I see her. My Claire. She’s in the middle of the group of girls. She’s broken from the pack to toss a rock onto the hopscotch squares. I watch her hop on one foot. Her blond hair bounces. Her hair looks longer. She looks taller. Older. I realize she must have been in Lost for several years, not aging except on the inside. Balancing on one foot, she leans over and scoops up her rock. She’s steady, as she would be after months of scrambling over rooftops and through alleyways. She smiles triumphantly at the other girls, and then she hops back and passes the rock to a curly haired girl. Her friends cluster around her again, and she disappears from view.
I don’t move from the car.
She’s real. She’s alive. She’s happy.
I watch until the bell rings. Claire runs with the pack, her legs stretching, her lope as smooth as a deer. The other girls jostle around her, some keeping up with her, some falling behind, and they gather in a pack in front of the teacher. They jostle into a single line, my Claire in the lead. She doesn’t look back. Doesn’t see me. Doesn’t hesitate as she marches into school—herschool.
I can’t take her from this.
This is where she’s supposed to be. And she’s well, and she’s happy.
I am crying as I climb back into the car and restart the engine. Mr. Rabbit watches me from the passenger seat as I pull away from the school and drive out of Scottsdale. I don’t watch the street signs as I leave. At the traffic light that leads back into a snarl of freeways, I don’t turn. I drive straight. And I don’t stop.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
I drive. And drive.
I turn on the radio and wait for it to turn to static.
When it does, I switch the station and hope for more static, but I find another set of commercials and songs, another DJ bantering about inane relationship issues or celebrity gossip. I turn it off. I eat some of the snacks that I brought, drink some of the bottled water, and think about Lost, imagining it house by house, junk pile by junk pile, person by person, as if, if I can picture it clearly enough, it will materialize in front of me. I watch the horizon for any sign of dust, but it remains sharp and clear in the distance.
I think of the character inLost Horizonwho is never able to return to his paradise, and I think how hard Peter would laugh if he heard me compare Lost to Shangri-La, though he’d probably follow it up with, “I told you so.” Or maybe he’d quote fromLost Horizon,orParadise Lost,and I wouldn’t know if he agreed with me or not.
I want to tell him that I made it back in time to see my mother and that Claire’s okay and home. I want to tell him about seeing the Missing Man at my mother’s funeral. I am trying not to think about what has happened to Lost while I’ve been gone, if the Missing Man returned, if people still cling to hope, or if the void has encroached again. I wonder if the ocean has claimed the little yellow house or if the attic room still waits for me to fill it with paints and easels.
I spend an hour or two worrying.
I spend an hour or two bored.
I cry for a while.
I scream.
I think about my mother.
I think about William. About Claire. About art. About the friends that showed up to the funeral who I’d barely acknowledged and the aunts and uncles who came that I barely knew. I think of my apartment and about the job waiting for me and about the art career that I could start. I’m tempted to turn around.
