Page 93 of My Own Kind of Person

Tony wrote, Love you, bro

I write back, Thanks/Sorry, and decide we’ll never speak of this again.

Elijah wrote, I hope you’re doing okay

I start a reply but I don’t know what to say. Sorry/Goodbye? Don’t worry, you don’t have to speak to me anymore?

I must make a sound, because Mom says, “Sweetheart.” She comes and sits beside me. “Is there anything I can do to help you?”

I tell myself not to say no.

“Can you hold me?”

Some part of me can’t let go of the fear that I won’t always be able to rely on her, that she won’t always be here, and I guess, at least one day, she really won’t be. But for now, she puts her arms around me and places my head on her shoulder. “I love you, beautiful,” she says. “I love you so much.”

I try to let myself hear it.

Chapter 33

Andi’s bedroom light is still on when I pull up.

Hi, friend, I text from my car.

I’ve been thinking of you and wondering how you are

I am, admittedly, parked outside yr house

No reply.

I walk across the lawn to their window. Andi isn’t inside but their face looks back at me from drawings and paintings, all self-portraits, taped to the walls. On their desk is a mirror and a sketchbook.

Mrs. Lucero calls from the front door, “Andi said they were meeting up with you.”

“How long ago?”

“Hours.”

My hands and feet know where to drive before my mind does. I go past Andi’s elementary school, the slide and jungle gym black against the dark sky. Past a gas station. Past the house that sells bears carved from tree trunks. I drive along Lake Ronkonkoma and I go east onto the Long Island Expressway, wind rattling the car.

I drive until the pine barrens spring up and the expressway ends, and I exit south onto a smaller road. The yellow bill of the Big Duck peeks out from behind the trees. I pull into the parking lot.

But Andi isn’t there.

I’m at the Big Duck, I message them. I thought you might be here

They don’t reply.

They said they knew the Big Duck but didn’t say they go here. They said they pass it.

I drive down the road past farm stands and rusted tractors. I look down dirt roads and empty fields for Andi’s brown pickup. I’ve entered a rural area that feels time zones away from our cookie-cutter suburbs. Soon, though, the strip malls with giant parking lots return. There’s a highway I’ve never heard of. I look at my phone’s map and that helps even less. There’s another fifty miles of little roads leading to Montauk Point at the far eastern end of Long Island. There’s no way I’ll find Andi. They might not even be out here.

I drive back to the Big Duck.

Andi is parked outside it, sitting on the hood of their truck.

My eyes are sleepy-bleary as I exit my car, but the cold air bites at my cheeks and wakes me up.

“I saw your text,” Andi says.