Page 43 of Lost and Found

Minutes pass, and our breathing synchronizes. We let out a pair of vocal sighs at the same time and then chuckle lightly in acknowledgment. Just as I feel myself nodding off, a high-pitched squealing rips through the air, followed by the long thump of a bass system working past its capacity. We both sit up and look through the side window. Parked at the far end of the lot, groups of teenagers spill out of two beat-up sedans. They leave the doors flung open on one and their music volume on high, shouting and laughing over it.

By silent agreement, we watch them for a while. The broad range in their interactions over the course of a few minutes is wild to behold. There’s some dancing, flirtatious arm bumps, one boy hauling a girl over his shoulder and spinning her dizzy.That same boy pairing off with another girl and walking down to the beach. One girl cries, sitting in the passenger seat, friends gathering at her feet and trying to comfort her. Everything seems urgent for them. Everything sounds like a big deal with the way their voices rise and carry.

“They think they know it all, don’t they?” says Silas wistfully.

“We did when we were their age, that’s for sure,” I say, a memory shooting through my mind like one of the stars above us. “We can only hope they learn from the bleach-tipped generations of the past.”

He snorts, closer to me than I realized, his breath warming the shell of my ear. “First of all, I was in middle school when I had those. Secondly, do you want me to bring up the slouchy beanies and heavy side bangs era?”

“Low blow, sir.”

“Calling mesirwill only encourage me to fight dirty, Red, I can promise you that.”

It’s a combination of the nighttime and the mere inches between us, I think, but the way his deep tone gets textured . . . my thoughts do such an abrupt about-face that I gulp audibly.That’s exactly what he’d be like in bed now. Bossy. In control. I bet we’d fight for it and like it.

Stop it, Bea.

The bass and music do a great, harsh boom before they blow out, like a manifestation of my thought patterns. The teens’ collective groans ride over on the wind.

Silas lets out an involuntary laugh. “Do you remember when Ian and I had to drive out to Newport to zip-tie your bumper back onto the Corolla for you?”

An ugly cackle from me. “Oh god. Yeah, I do.” I had just gotten my license, and Merritt had convinced me to ditch school for the first time to meet some football player she liked and his buddies. The windows and sunroof were wide open, and“Wrecking Ball” was on blast and on repeat. We’d gotten a little too into the chorus, slamming our fists on the dashboard and scream-singing our hearts out, and I’d gone and slammed “Cori” into a curb. We were an hour and a half away at this point and Merritt’s guy wasn’t picking up, so I’d suggested the only other friends we were close enough to who might know how to fix the car so we could get home.

I’d shut down and gone into silent mode while we waited. I didn’t blame Merritt, exactly—I knew I’d been the one driving—but she’d worked so hard to convince me to ditch in the first place, and I was pissed at myself for caving.

“Come on, BB, it’s not that bad,”she’d said. I’d only given her a scathing look from my spot on the side of the road, while she’d paced back and forth in front of me. My bumper was hanging off at an angle and fully touching the ground, scuffed black and dented.

“I’m completely dead, Mer. You know I am fucking dead. I won’t be allowed to leave the house for a month.”

“Well, that’s just stupid. We didn’t even do anything that bad.”

“Jesus Christ, Merritt! We ditched school! To meet up with some guys. This was stupid!”

“It’s a rite of passage!”she’d screamed, foot stomping, hands in the air and flailing.“We were just being girls!”

We’d stared at each other for three seconds before folding in laughter. From then on, anytime something didn’t go our way, we’d go back to that. Whenever we remembered something embarrassing, we’d reframe it that way, too.“Well, I guess we were just being girls.”

First time we got drunk to the point of getting sick. The next morning, we groaned,“We were being girls.”

Looking at pictures from our senior trip to Cabo at a foam party. The sleazy, worryingly older man we let buy our drinks forthe night.“Well. At least we were being girls—together,”with a wince.

During her final week, talking about memory after memory this way. Her too-frail voice and her tremulous smile, my head on her bony shoulder.“I’m happy we were girls together,”she whispered.“I had the time of my life.”

I’m crying before I realize it’s coming, choking on the tears. I bury my face in my hands. Silas turns me and gathers me into his chest, and a sound creaks out of my rib cage. It’s the kind of ugly cry that seizes your whole body, that only allows you a thick breath before it bears down on you again.

“I’m sorry I—I’m getting snot all over you,” I cry.

“I don’t give a fuck,” he says, squeezing me tighter for emphasis. “Let it all out.”

I do for a few minutes. And as the jagged feelings soften up, I let myself settle back into the memory that brought it on. Silas and Ian working in tandem to get my bumper reattached and in good enough shape to drive back to Spunes. Merritt hopped in Ian’s car, and Silas drove mine so I could brood, except he spent the ride home cheering me up instead. I wonder if I went through more memories like that if I’d see him in that light more, too. More of a friend to me than I’d realized, all along.

I think we’re getting close to the time for the best Milky Way views, so I try to keep the conversation going to stay awake, parting from him in increments as we talk. I ask him about his friendship with Ian and if there was some sort of falling-out there. He denies it and tells me it was more that they naturally grew apart, even while Ian was dating his sister, but I can still tell that it hurt him in a way. He asks me if I remember an elementary school field trip to the tide pools not far from here. I’m surprised he remembers me at all from back then. I’d been shy and quiet in the extreme.

“It might’ve been the first time I really noticed you, but I definitely noticed you,” he says. “Some kid from your grade had taken a hermit crab out of its shell before a chaperone made him put it back in the water. You kept sneaking off and going back to that pool to bring it different-sized shells. It was something my mom would’ve done. I was worried about sticking with my cool, frosted-tipped buddies, but I spent the bus ride home wishing I’d helped you.”

“Fourth grade,” I say. “I remember that.” The year after is when I met Merritt. And even though he’d graduated to middle school by then, that was the same year she met him.

“Do you happen to remember the first time you met Merritt?” I ask.