Not a light on in any of them. A concrete rabbit sits in a garden.
“Where are we?” I say.
“The loneliest place in the world.”
No, I think. The loneliest place in the world is my house.
We pass cul-de-sacs and side streets. It’s like a maze, everything identical. I almost tell her then, in spite of my dad and in spite of my mom, but suddenly Saz says, “I know where we are. We’re in purgatory. All of these unseen, sleeping people are waiting, just waiting, for proper deaths. Here in Nowhere.”
I shiver, and this is part of the fun. Trying to spook each other. And I think these are the kinds of moments I’ll miss most when I’m gone this summer and when I’m at college. I tell myself, Be here while you can.
Saz turns the headlights off and we creep up and down the streets, a great, rolling shadow. In a dead end, she turns the car around. My head buzzes. I hang out the window, and the air is cool on my face. The moon is bright and close.
We see it at the same time, up near the left. This house is as neat and tidy as the others, but there’s a light flickering inside, and I can see the blue of the television. At the edge of the driveway, trash waits to be picked up. A FOR SALE sign stands on the lawn.
Saz stops in the middle of the road, engine humming. “Look, Hen. They’re moving out of purgatory.” We sit, taking it in, letting the quiet settle around us, watching the flame of blue flicker and waver inside the house.
I say, “I bet they’re going as far away from here as they possibly can and never coming back.” And I feel a little blue flame of my own—hope, maybe—dancing in my chest. “We should do that. Start driving west.”
“Don’t I wish.”
“Why not?”
“Because we can’t. Where would we stay? How would we pay for it? And what about Wyatt?”
What she really means is, What about Yvonne?
She’s still talking. “It’s not that I don’t want to but…Hey, hello? Earth to Hen. Where’d you go?”
“What? I’m here.”
“Uh-uh. You’re here but not here. What’s up with you lately? And then today—passing out like that.”
“I’m good. It’s just a lot of change.” And then I tell her that my mom and I are leaving for Atlanta soon. Like, soon soon.
“What about our road trip?”
“I’ll be back in a few weeks.”
“A few weeks? It’s our last summer, Hen.”
“I know.”
“The hell?”
“Sorry.”
“Why don’t you stay here with your dad? Or you could stay with me?”
“Because I can’t.” And I could say it nicer but she won’t let it go, and I can’t tell her why, and now there’s Yvonne, which means that if I stay with Saz and her family, I will eventually be in the way.
I don’t know how long we sit there looking at each other, my heart beating so loud I can’t hear anything else. Finally her eyes go back to the road and she steers us away from the house. I stare into the side mirror at the blue light, at the FOR SALE sign, and feel the little flame in my chest flicker out.
4 DAYS BEFORE WE LEAVE
On Thursday, I walk a mile to the college where my dad works. Past Roosevelt Hall, with his office on the fourth floor and an executive assistant named Pamela and the window overlooking National Road and the patch of sunflowers—little spots of yellow—hugging the building. I walk through the student union out into the warm early-summer air and across the parking lot onto the grass that will lead me to the soccer field, where I see a blur of legs—long, strong legs attached to long, strong boys.
I walk until I can see the faces attached to these boys attached to these legs. I stand on the field, feet planted in the grass, and it’s hotter out here than I thought, but I’m too mad and numb to feel it, really feel it, so I stand there and stand there, and eventually one of the boys with long, strong legs yells “Hey!” at me. I don’t say anything. I keep standing there until he runs over, shirt wet through. He is blocking the sun so that all I see of him is this outline that is like a glow.
“Claude.”
“Wyatt.”
I knew he would be here because the first time I ever saw him was on this field, back when I thought he was