Here. Look up.
I see.
“It’s beautiful,” Culler whispers.
But how could my dad have known we’d find this place in the dark and see that? That anyone who found his last words would? I get another cold feeling in my stomach, something that tells me this is not what my father meant.
Or what if it was?
We go back to the car, and Culler shows me the photograph of the gazebo. The one my dad took. Even in the dim glow of the flashlight, my father’s vision turned the gazebo a dark and unfriendly place, and the trees around it are sinister things. I feel heavy just looking at it. And I think, no, that’s not what my father meant. It couldn’t have been.
Because I can’t convince myself the man who took this photograph looked up and ever really saw the stars.
Valleyview is smaller than Haverfield and bigger than Branford, but all of these places manage to look the same in certain ways. The people feel and look the same, like they’ve settled here even though they know there’s something more—something better—just beyond where they are.
Small-town life.
Culler and I find a diner that’s open twenty-four hours. We drink coffee and have eggs and bacon. I turn my phone back on and Milo calls immediately, but I don’t answer and Culler says we can go straight to Labelle. It’s only three hours away. The early traffic wouldn’t be so bad. We could get there three hours on the nose. But I see how tired he is—his eyelids are drooping—and I suggest a motel.
“Not for the night,” I add hastily, because even though we both knew this was coming, I’m sort of embarrassed about it now. “I mean—just for some of the morning. And you can sleep and recharge and I can take a shower … we can leave at like one and get there by four and then we can find the house…”
“Okay,” Culler says. His voice is thick, exhausted. “That … yeah.”
“You remember where the house is?”
“It took a while for your dad to find it … I remember where it is.”
“Good.”
We check into a little motel just outside of Valleyview. It’s cheap but I guess you get what you pay for. I stand aside while Culler uses my money to pay for the room because I don’t really want to deal with picking double or single beds and it’s probably sad that whatever Culler picks, I’ll go along with.
Also I want to see what he picks.
“Excuse me, miss?” The desk clerk asks. Culler and I turn. I point to myself and she nods. She’s an elderly woman. “Can I have a word with you?”
I make my way over to her, looking back at Culler, who shrugs.
“Yes?” I ask politely.
She leans forward like she’s going to tell me a secret. This close up, she’s really creepy-looking, which just makes this whole place creepy by association. I have visions of Psycho.
Getting stabbed to death in the shower.
“Are you okay?” she asks.
I’m so confused about it. I have this really stupid moment where I think she knows my dad died. That suddenly, my grief is visible, radiating off me and telling the world I am a very, very sad girl. And then I realize she’s looking very pointedly at Culler, and in this light, with his unshaven face, the bags under his eyes, he looks older than he is.
And I always look as young as I am.
“Oh!” I force a smile. And a laugh. “Yeah, it’s fine. He’s just my brother…”
“Oh,” the woman says skeptically. “I see.”
“But thank you.” I try to sound gracious, like thanks for caring.
She nods again and I go back to Culler and I think I’m going to die laughing, which is a nice change of pace. He mouths, what? And I shake my head. When we get outside, I tell him what happened and he laughs about it, but not quite as hard as I do.
“Like, I think she thinks you’re dangerous,” I say. “Like you’re kidnapping me or something. I think that’s hilarious.”
“Yeah,” he says, but he’s less amused.
“What?” I ask.
“Tired.” He opens up the door to our room. I try not to get overwhelmed by the motel-ness of it. It’s tidy and it’s neat but I have the feeling this is the type of place that can never be clean. There are two beds and I’m not sure how I feel about that and before I can decide how I feel about it, Culler’s saying, “I just wonder how much trouble I could get in for this.”
“What do you mean?”
But I know what he means. I think.
He shakes his head.
“Forget it,” he says. “It’d be worth it, anyway…”
I’m going to remember he said that forever. He flops down on the nearest bed, feet dangling over the side, and he’s asleep within minutes. I brush my teeth and take a shower and change into some of the clothes I bought, but I’m awake. Totally awake.
I watch Culler for a long time. His chest rising and falling. I’m the age of consent. I think. It’s not something I’ve thought about before. Does it matter if you choose to be in a car with someone? If they’re just driving? If Milo decides to tell Beth that I’m not thinking straight since my dad died, and I can’t make decisions, I wonder if she’ll jump on that and have the police here in a second. And then all anyone will remember was that I “ran away” with a twenty-year-old student of my father’s. My phone rings. I glance at Culler. He doesn’t stir. I take the phone into the bathroom, closing the door behind me, and I answer it, but I don’t say anything. Milo knows I’m there. All these minutes pass.
“Hi,” I finally say.
“Hi,” he says.
“We found another one,” I say. “We’re in Valleyview, but we’ll be leaving soon.”
“Beth told me you told her you weren’t coming back.”
I roll my eyes. “I just said that…”
“But I told her you would and she believes me.”
“Okay.”
“You are, aren’t you?”
I don’t say anything. That is unbelievably cruel of me to do, I know. But he knows I’m coming back and I don’t want to say it. I just don’t.
Because I’ve started to like pretending I’m not.
“I’m sorry we fought,” I whisper. “Milo, you’re my best friend…”
Neither of us says anything for a while. I pick at my nails and hear cars rushing down the highway through the tiny square window in the bathroom.
“I thought you were dead,” he says.
“What?”
“When I found you.” He pauses. “You were so still … I thought … I don’t know. I thought you were both dead…”
I grip the phone tight, but I keep my mouth shut.
“If you come back,” he says, “I’ll tell you the rest.”
“Milo, I’m coming back.”
“I know. But I wish you wanted to, though.”
I’m crying. I don’t know when that happened. I brush the tears away and take a deep breath, and then I realize more tears are coming and I can’t talk to him anymore.
“I have to go,” I say, and I hang up.
I run the messages over in my head, like what we’ve found so far makes it totally possible to anticipate what we’re about to find next.
FIND ME
ALL OF THESE THINGS GONE COLD AND
NOW I’M HERE I LOOK UP I SEE
Culler and I don’t talk much on the way to Labelle. Maybe there’s no talking between me and Culler because I’m thinking of Milo. I can’t stop thinking of Milo and our conversation and coming to the same conclusion over and over again: maybe I was the constant that faltered.
I don’t know. It scares me if that’s true.
I need to stop thinking.
I roll down my window all the way. Culler turns on the radio, cranking the volume so it can be heard over the wind. I close my eyes. Sight gone, my other senses heighten. The smell of the car. The sound of Culler breathing—maybe I’m imagining that, but I swear I hear it. I feel the car accelerate. We’re going faster than we should.
The kind of speed that if we hit something, we would die.
Culler reaches over and presses his hand against my eyes. Just for a second. I keep my eyes closed and the only thing to do is take in the music, the sound around me. Every time I feel my mind drift back to the things that make me sad, I feel the music, the speed of the car, pull me back, like a temporary lifeline amidst all this other noise.
Eventually, the music stops, though.
Culler keeps driving and I listen to the road.
I open my eyes and he is looking at me in a way I can’t describe.
We get to Labelle at around five, which makes us late because Culler takes a wrong turn and we have to double back. Labelle is smaller than Branford. That combined with Culler’s memory means we find the abandoned house easily. At least we don’t lose a lot of time.
It’s in a rough-looking part of town. Every time I glimpse people wandering this street they all look sad, and I feel sad for them. I don’t know why that makes me homesick, but it does. Culler can’t get enough of photographing me walking it. He tries to explain it to me. He says something about the juxtaposition, how determined I look against this dying place, but I don’t get it. But I love how passionate he sounds about it, I think.
“You sound like you’re getting it back,” I tell him, nodding at his camera.
His face turns a shy red.
The house is at the very end of the street and God, it’s depressing. It could be the most depressing place yet. I studied the photograph my father took of it first and the photo is exactly what I’m seeing now, like he didn’t have to try at all to bring the bleakness through.
He just took the shot.
It’s sad when a place that has probably seen family, love, and death turns to nothing. It’s rotting and worn. It looks like something bad happened to it that it just couldn’t recover from.
