The Homecoming

~1~

“…that’s…it.”
I blinked. Once. Twice. I had a stinging in my eyes, and my throat felt raw from all the talking. I wondered what time it was. Five? Six? During my story, I somehow had completely lost track of time. I took a swig from the still almost full bottle of water and took in the scenery around me.
The sun over Central Park had started to set a while ago, painting the autumn leaves on the trees around us in bright colors. Overhead, crows flew all over the sky, on their way to the south to find a winter habitat. Their screams sounded shrill in my ears after the silence that had greeted me from the girl that sat next to me on the now cool grass. She had pulled her knees up to her chest with her arms crossed above them and her chin resting on her forearms, which made her look a lot younger than twenty-six.
“Uhm…” I started, turning to her and realizing for the first time that there was a sparkle in her eyes that did not seem to originate from the stars overhead.
“Are you okay?”
Despite the fact that I was way out of my High School years, even with twenty-seven I seemed incapable of acting accordingly to men-women-relationship-etiquette. I blamed Ben, my best friend.
For a moment, Riley just stared at me, her blue eyes slightly watering, but her mind obviously somewhere else. Then something snapped inside of her. She blinked and put on the kind of smile that got me every time I saw it.
“Of course I am, dumbo,” she said, punching my shoulder. I’d probably have a bruise there later, I gathered.
“Oh, well,” I said, flabbergasted. “I just thought…you know. You’ve let me talk for the past…what? Three hours? And now that I’m done, you’re still quiet. It kinda freaked me out.”
She laughed, throwing her head back. It was a full-on laugh, with her mouth wide open and the corners of it spread widely. Her long, dark blond her fell down on her back, swaying in the small breeze.
“You know I love to freak you out, Q,” Riley replied, and the mention of my old nickname stung for no apparent reason. Or maybe there was a reason. Only one girl had ever called me that nickname. And I hadn’t seen her for over eight years.
“Uhm…alright.”
Another one of her contagious laughs.
“Okay, I’ll stop teasing you now. It has gotten pretty late and I should head home soon anyways,” she said, looking straight at me, and this time, her entire attention was with me, with this time and this place right in this second. She unfolded her arms and spread out her legs so that our feet touched. Then she put a hand on my thigh.
“First of all, thanks for sharing that story with me. I get that it wasn’t easy remembering everything, or even thinking about it, and I feel honored you did it anyways, despite how hard it must’ve been for you.”
I stared at her, only one thought in my head. How easy it had been remembering everything I had just told her about my childhood in Florida, and especially, my senior year at High School. Some things you never forget. Some people you never forget, no matter how hard you try.
Like Margo Roth Spiegelman.
It had been nine years since that fatal night that changed my entire life forever. The night that she had pulled me into her mystery world in a Ninja suit and a crazy ride filled with revenge plans. The night that she disappeared and my journey to find her and bring her back into my life begun. I had found her, obviously, and with it, I had collected memories that would stay with me for the rest of my life – life-changing ones (you can never have enough bottles of beer in a fridge in the back of your car on a road trip for pee-emergencies) and useful ones (never go on a long road trip that includes a tight time-frame without a friend who’s able to plan even the tiniest stop on said trip – it’s a life saver to know how fast you have to rush through a gas station in search for cereal bars and fizzy drinks to keep you awake).
But despite all my hopes and wishes, I had come back empty-handed. Once me and my friends Ben, Radar and Lacey had found Margo at her hide-out near Agloe, New York, I had had to realize that the girl I had been secretly chasing since I first laid eyes on her nine years before wasn’t who I thought she was. And that my view of how my life was supposed to play out – with her in it – wasn’t even close to becoming real at any point. That day, I had said goodbye to the girl who danced in my dreams for as long as I could think, letting her go for good. With so many plans to stay in touch, no matter where life would lead her.
Well, some plans just don’t work out, I guess.
Riley’s voice pulled me out of my thoughts. “And second…well…how do I put this…” She crossed her legs at the ankles, staring up at the now almost dark sky with her arms resting on the grass behind her. A sight left her lips before she finally said something that would once again turn my world upside down.
“Quentin, that story is probably the saddest and most depressing one I’ve ever heard.”
For a moment, I was somewhere else. It was as if I was floating above everything, the colorful leaves and the green grass of Central Park below me looking as if Picasso himself had painted them. Nothing seemed real while I tried to process what Riley had just said. Then something inside of me snapped and…I started laughing. Not a small laugh, like the one I’d give Ben back in High School whenever he referred to one of our female classmates as “Honeybunnys” (which, honestly, had stopped being funny the tenth time in a row). It was that kind of laugh that starts in the deepest pit of your stomach, crawling up and tickling at your insides with all the power it can provide. I threw my face up into the star-lit sky and laughed as if the beautiful girl next to me had just told the funniest joke in the world. I laughed as if I had never been hurt.
“Okay, what exactly is so funny?”
I tried to pull myself together, but failed miserably. My laughter filled Central Park, and a few late-night joggers passed by, staring at me as if I was a lunatic. Maybe I was. I couldn’t help it.
“I…I’m sorry, Riley…” I started, trying to pull myself together before I choked. Tears started streaming down my face. I took a deep breath, and it almost worked – until, for no apparent reason, a picture of Ben in my car popped up in front of my eyes, trying to pee into an emptied bottle of beer through a tight bottleneck, and I gave up. I fell back on the grass and grabbed my chest to keep me from actually choking to death from uncontrollable laughter.
“Q? Q, could you please stop that and explain to me what the hell is wrong with you? You’re freaking me out,” Riley’s shaking voice cut through my laughter. The urgency in it somewhat finally made me stop. I slowly sat up, wiping the tears out of my eyes and suppressing the giggles that were still stuck in my throat. No one knows how hard it is to stop giggling or grinning even if there’s nothing funny to laugh about at all.
“I’m sorry,” I said again, slowly regaining composure. I took a deep breath and the evening air that filled my lungs finally killed all the ambitions of another laughing fit that I might have left.
“It’s just…what you said. I don’t understand what you’re talking about. I told you a story about a girl that was lost and found again by her friends when the entire world already gave up on her, filled with a Ninja night of sweet revenge, pee-emergencies in a minivan and seniors being totally naked under their robes. If anything, it’s a story about unconditional friendship and wonderful memories, nothing more.”
Truth is, I really believed what I said. In that moment, it couldn’t have been clearer to me. What my friends and I had experienced all these years ago where just that – memories. We all had moved on, grown up and learned to live with the mistakes and lessons life had thrown at us.
Or so I had thought.
Riley stared at me with those serious, blue eyes, and as she spoke again, I could hear the certainty in her voice, mixed with something I couldn’t exactly place. Worry maybe?
“Memories?” she asked, suppressing a snort. “Quentin, seriously. Your story was about a young boy who fell in love with a girl the second she moved in next door to him. They grow up living close to each other, and all the while, said boy secretly slobbers over the girl without ever telling her. Then one day, she barges into his life through his window, takes him on a crazy ride through their neighborhood, a business building and even Sea Life – then, the next day, she disappears without a word. And after a wild goose chase, trying to figure out clues and traces she left, the boy and his friends finally find the girl. And all he gets for his trouble – not to mention missing out on his own graduation! – is a short kiss, a farewell and the promise to somehow stay in touch? How is that not depressing?”
I stared at her, aghast. For a moment, my brain didn’t seem to be able to make the connection between the words I’ve just heard and the sound that was supposed to have reached my ears. It was like I was caught under a dive bell that made everything around me sound muffled. Then I finally understood. And I was even more taken aback, as I had never myself thought that way about my story with Margo.
Even after all those years, she still remained a mystery to me. It was true, I never got as close to her as I had always wished to be when I was a teenager. And as I was reminiscing about it, it came to me that she even teased me about my feelings more than once. It weren’t more than tiny things, like a flicker of her eyes in my direction, her throwing back her hair in the hallways of school, her barging into my bedroom at night, jumping onto my bed while I was half-naked under it, her face as close to me as she had always been in my dreams…and then came something else into my head.
The way Margo had looked at me the day I had finally found her after weeks of searching and following traces. The blank, angry stare in her eyes. The seemingly long laid-out explanation for her flight. The refuse to come back home with me. And suddenly, after all those years, I began to see her with different eyes, and from the way Riley looked at me, sympathetically, I knew she knew she had gotten through to me.
Margo hadn’t been the girl that had danced in my dreams. Well, technically, she had been, and more than one crumpled sheet in my bed back then proved that, but Riley was right. The story I had shared was depressing. For years, I had been chasing nothing but a dream, no matter the costs, and I sugarcoated it with a story about a road trip and pee-in-a-bottle jokes.
I suddenly felt extraordinarily tired.
“Look, Quentin,” Riley said and pushed herself closer towards me. I scented the perfume on her skin, a mixture of orange and vanilla that waved in the slight breeze. “I didn’t mean to upset you. Or offend you. God knows I’ve been in some very weird relationships myself.” I didn’t correct her that Margo and I had never actually been in a relationship of that kind; I felt like it was obsolete.
“It’s just….god. You’re such a good guy, you know. You have a steady job, a nice flat, you’re good-looking, quite popular around your colleagues and friends. And still, I can see the flicker of a love long hoped for and yet, lost, in your eyes. I can see something that just doesn’t let you give up on her. I always assumed it was about a girl, but this…” She stopped at looked at me with a shrug. “How long since you’ve last seen her?”
That question, I realized, I could answer without any hesitation. “Eight years,” I said.
“Eight years?” Riley asked, her eyes widening. “Wait, so…the story you just told me happened, what? Nine years ago? Does that mean you only stayed in touch for one more year? Despite your promise to each other?”
I shrugged. “Yeah.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. Life got in the way, I guess. She went off to Los Angeles and started at some kind of marketing firm. I went back to school, had my graduation after all, and we met twice a few months after she had settled. Then I got accepted into Emerson, started my degree and got a job with the Times. And somewhere along the way…we grew apart.”
“You grew apart? You and the girl you have loved and dreamed about since the second your eyes fell on her when you were just eight years old?”
I smiled. I couldn’t help it, really. I thought about what Ben would’ve said, would’ve he been here right in this second. “That honeybunny is sharp as a butcher’s knife, dude. Keep her.” And I knew how my words must have sounded, considering the story that I had been rambling about for the past few hours. But somewhere along the way, somewhere between the part where I had told Riley about the moment I had found Margo again and the one where she stated how depressing our history really was, I had finally come to peace with myself and whatever Margo and I had shared.
Which was – basically, now that it was clear for me to see, – nothing.
“Yes, very positively so.” And as if to do my words justice, I leaned forward, cupped Riley’s face in both of my hands and kissed her.
I hadn’t even known myself that I’d do it before I did. But in that moment, everything around us seemed to disappear in the dark night sky. The cold breeze embracing us felt like a warm summer wind, and in my head, I heard birds sing a song that I had long forgotten about. A song about love and the beauty of life.
I pulled away and looked at the girl across from me expectantly. We had never kissed before; in fact, I hadn’t even known I liked her in that kind of way, despite the obvious attraction she had developed towards me ever since we had started working together, with every lunch we shared and every joke I had told over the past couple of months. Apparently, she thought I was hilarious, and the teenage boy still inside of me thought it was out of pity. But that kiss…god. Even the best actress couldn’t fake that kind of response to an unexpected kiss under a starlit sky.
“Wow.”
“Wow indeed.” I grinned at her.
“I..uhm…” Under the light of the stars, I saw her blushing a bit, and it was like I could almost see the heart under her chest beating faster. I grinned even more. I felt good. Perfect.
Like home.
“It’s been getting late, and I…I should really head home. My best friend will kill me if I miss out on dinner again. We’ve been trying to find a date to have our girl’s night for ages. If I skip it again, I probably have to sleep under a bridge tomorrow.” She was clearly blabbering now, confused, and it was such a familiar behavior for me that I almost laughed out loud.
From the moment I had met Riley a few months ago when my boss had introduced us to each other, she had been a tough one. She never took “No” for an answer if she really wanted something, she knew exactly how to get her way with people around her, and she was ambitious. Fierce. But the girl in front of me who now brushed off the grass from the bottoms of her dark blue jeans was the exact opposite. To me, it was like seeing myself squirming away from a definitely embarrassing situation, like being kissed by a very attractive girl.
Not that that had happened often until my early twenties, though. Quentin Jacobsen had never been a heart breaker. Nope, sir.
“Yeah, I have to head off soon, too,” I replied, getting up myself. As soon as I stood, I almost felt myself collapse; my legs felt as if they were made of jelly from the hours of sitting cross-legged. I steadied myself, and when I looked up, I saw Riley grin at me.
“Easy there, mister. I know my kisses are good, but you have no idea what else is in stock.” And then she actually winked at me. And for the first time I felt like I could fall in love with her.
“Ha-ha, good one,” I said, laughing. “But seriously, I need to go. There’s a wedding I have to attend tomorrow, and I know that my best friend will kill me if I don’t make it to Florida in time. And then he’ll send the wrath of dozens of Black Santas upon me.”
Riley looked at me with a shy smile on her lips, clearly puzzled at that expression, thinking I had made some weird kind of joke. I didn’t offer her any more explanation, as it would’ve probably taken another three hours to explain why one of my friends’ parents had the world’s largest collection of Black Santas all over their place – and that they’re black, themselves.
I slightly punched her in the shoulder (the insecure teenage boy suddenly back, not knowing how to act around this beautiful, blue eyed girl now that he had so bravely kissed a few minutes before) and gave her my widest smile.
“When will you be back, Quentin?” she shouted after me as I headed down Central Park, and I turned around.
“One week. If I decide on another road trip with enough empty bottles to pee in, then probably just six days.” That made her laugh out loud, and I felt like the funniest person in the world. Although I’d have to do a lot of explaining to do towards Ben if he ever found out I told a girl – a honeybunny, – about his peeing incident.
“Alright, Mr. Roadtrip,” Riley said, still laughing. “Call me as soon as you’re back. Then we can take off where we just left.”
From afar, I grinned and gave her a thumbs-up. “You bet on it!”
Had I known how the upcoming events would turn my world upside down, I would’ve probably turned around and ran out of Central Park, out of New York and maybe even the US as fast as I could without ever looking back.

 

~2~

When I arrived at the house where I had grown up, lived, loved and laughed, I couldn’t help but smile. The well-kept, green lawn right in front of me with a lawnmower in the corner (my father must’ve been cutting the grass early this morning before the sun and heat would hit us), the flowers just under the living room windows that my mother without a doubt still looked out for in an impeccable manner, the van in front of our garage that reminded me of the legendary road trip on my graduation day. Thinking of it again, my mouth spread out into a wide grin, and I shook my head, laughing. Then the smile faded when my eyes wandered up to my old bedroom window.
It still looked exactly as on the day I had left it, although I knew my mother had turned it into a study, or better, a session room (she had started doing home sessions with her psychology students over the past few years, and apparently, my old bedroom with all the years of teenage sweat that had seeped into the walls was perfect for that. Not that we didn’t have enough other rooms for her purpose; but I guess that way it was easier to let her psychologically and mentally perfect son leave the house to start his own life, far away in Boston – talking about the psyche of therapists, huh?), but when I looked up to it, all I could think about was that one night.
The night of the dead fish, the naked Quarterback, Sea Life and the Paper Towns. For a moment, I felt way older than twenty-seven, and my heart grew heavy with all the memories that seem to be fading when you leave your teenage years and enter the crazy world of being a grown-up. Then a picture of Riley popped into my head, the girl that somehow liked me (a lot, hooray!) and who I could picture spending a lot of time with – months, even years…hell, maybe we would even be ending up pushing each other’s wheelchair when we were old and grey and the pension from both our journalist jobs was enough to settle down in a nice suburban place like the one I was just standing in.
The future was scary, but it was also worth keep going for.
A squeak pulled me out of my thoughts, and with a grin, I turned my attention to the front door, where my mother stood, her hands clasped in front of her chest, in a long yellow summer dress, her hair pulled up into an updo that I had never seen her wear before. My mother wasn’t someone who gave a lot of thought as to what to wear, what others thought of her; as a therapist, she had analyzed enough people in her life to know that when someone spruced themselves up, it was probably because they didn’t get too much attention as a child (it’s a cliché, but I swear, it was one of life’s lessons that you learned when growing up a Jacobsen). Next to her, my father stood, one hand on the small of my mother’s back, the other hand waving towards me. He looked sharp in his dark suit, way younger than he actually was. They say that life takes its toll, but if that was true, then my father had somehow found a way to outwit it. The smile on his lips reached the corners of his eyes, were small wrinkles built, and for the first time since I had stepped out of the airport, I really felt home again. Excitement to see my old friends later rushed through me.
“Quentin, honey!” My mother came rushing down the front porch, and when she reached me, she opened her arms and hugged me tight, the scent of her perfume finding its way into my nose. It was a blossom scent that somehow reminded me of Riley again, and I felt a rush of butterflies in my stomach.
“How was the flight? How’s New York? How handsome you look in that suit! Christopher, doesn’t he look like a successful young man in the prime of his life?”
“I’m great, thanks mom,” I said, hugging her back. “New York’s…well, cold and windy at that time of year, I guess, but give me a hot and sticky Orlando and I am as happy as one can get,” I continued, which made her laugh out loud. Whenever I came back home (which had been very rare recently, as my job at the Times took up a lot more time than when I was just an intern), my mother asked the same question, and for years, I had given her the same answer. It was our little inside joke.
“Connie, you should really let go of the boy. He’s one of the best men, you better not get his suit all wrinkled up before the ceremony,” I heard my father say as he came down the steps and joined us in the driveway. He smiled proudly as he pulled me into a short embrace himself and patted me on the back. That was as far as he’d ever go into showing emotions; if my mother was the therapist in our family who would always provide you with enough lessons and wise comments about the human psyche, my father was the one who took those lessons and implemented them into his actions (or lack thereof, in that case). They were weird at times, but I was glad they weren’t even half as weird as other people’s parents. At least they had never tried to talk to me through a sock with buttons as eyes and a squeaky voice. That had to count as something.
“Ready for your big day, buddy?”
“Dad, it’s not my wedding, you know? I’m just his best man, how hard can that be?” I replied, laughing. Though on the inside, I wasn’t even half as calm as I pretended to be. It had been a few years since I had seen Radar, and although we had stayed in touch and talked almost every week, it was different to see him again after everything that we had been through nine years back. And over all, this was his wedding day, the day he married his High School sweetheart, Angela. And he had chosen me and Ben to be his best men. It was a huge honor, and it made me nervous, and I wished I didn’t screw things up with the rings that I carried in the pocket of my suit.
“You’re right, darling,” my mother barged in, straightening my jacket. “But who knows? Marcus’ wedding day could be the day that you meet someone, too.” She winked at me, and I felt myself blushing slightly. My mother had never pushed me into dating girls when I was a teenager; she firmly believed that everything went at its own pace and that when the time was right, I would find someone and settle down the way she and my father had. But underneath it all, I knew she secretly hoped I would finally stop my bachelor life, though she would’ve never said anything. I smiled.
“Mom, actually, there’s…” I began, surprising myself by wanting to tell her about Riley, but before I could continue, my father looked at his watch and said: “We should get going, before the traffic’s getting to bad. The best man surely shouldn’t be the last one to arrive.”
And with that, we set off in the car that I had rented at the airport, me behind the wheel and my parents in the back, holding hands as if they were on the way to their own wedding. It pleased me to see how happy they still were after all these years, and once again, I thought of Riley and was surprised that I could easily picture her and me in a back of a car ourselves, me in a dark suit like the one I was wearing now, and her right next to me, her face hidden behind a veil that was part of a beautiful white wedding dress. It was ridiculous, I know; I didn’t even know her that long, and there had only been that one kiss in Central Park just before I had left for Florida, but in my heart I felt that there was something special between us. It felt absolutely right.
I couldn’t wait to tell my parents about the girl I was beginning to fall in love with.
As soon as we arrived at the wedding location and I stepped out of the car, squinting into the bright Orlando sunshine towards the rows and rows of chairs behind white decorated table that served as a small altar for the priest and the groom and bride and I caught sight of Radar and Ben talking to each other in the back row, Ben throwing his head back, laughing, I knew that all my nervousness about this day had been ridiculous and unnecessary. A few feet away from me, my two best friends stood, looking as if the past nine years hadn’t aged them for even a second.
Radar looked sharp in his black suit with a small bow tie and a red cummerbund, his curly black hair cropped close to his head, his hands inside the pockets of his trousers. He was talking vividly, but even from the distance, I could see that it was just a show; he was dead nervous himself. I almost laughed. The Radar I knew had always been the most contained and self-disciplined person one could ever come across. Not even mocking posts on his own website, Omnictionary, made by anyone who at the time liked to make fun of him could discompose him. Maybe growing up with hundreds of different kinds of Black Santas in his house prepared him for the hard life of a teenager.
Next to him, Ben looked no older than he had been when I had witnessed him pee into a bottleneck nine years ago. The boyish smile was the same, and even his blond hair looked as if he still went to the same hairdresser that he had had when we had been kids. He gestured around wildly, and I could almost hear him in my head, probably telling Radar of a “honeybunny” he was dating right now, talking about the nice curve of her butt and the way her hips swayed when she walked, just to tease him. Seeing him in the same suit that I was wearing myself suddenly made my heart ache a bit; despite how young he looked, in that moment, I felt that we had all grown-up and that past times were now only memories shared in the spur of a moment.
As if they had heard my thoughts, both of them suddenly turned their heads in my direction, and the massive grin that suddenly appeared on Ben’s face and the smirk on Radar’s lips pulled me in.
“Bro!” Ben shouted, coming down the aisle to where I was still standing next to the rental car. My parents had somehow disappeared without me noticing and were now talking to Radar’s parents down at the buffet. I put on the biggest grin myself and pulled both Radar and Ben into a brotherly embrace, and it all felt like we had never been apart. When we let go, I saw Radar step from one foot to another, hands back in his pockets.
“Please tell me you have the rings,” he said, his voice shaking slightly, and thinking again how composed he normally was, I couldn’t stop myself from grinning. “Angela’s brother is going insane that I gave them to someone living thousand miles away instead of him.”
I put on an innocent face. “Rings? What rings?” I saw all the color drain from Radar’s face for a second, his jaw dropping and sweat breaking out on his forehead. I looked over at Ben, who could barely stop himself from giggling, and burst out into laughter myself. “Calm down, dude, I have them right here.” And with that, I pulled the little blue box with the wedding rings out of my pocket.
Radar stared at me, aghast, then slapped me hard on my arm. “Asshole! I already thought I had to suddenly leave and find some random girl willing to marry me just to make good use of this suit after all.” But he laughed, and I knew I had taken away some of his tension.
“Speaking of which,” Ben said, bumping his fist into my shoulder. “Tell me you brought some honeybunny with you.” He looked around, then into the car, obviously waiting for a beautiful girl with the spirit of New York making her big entrance by stepping out of the vehicle behind me.
“Sorry, buddy, I’m afraid you and me will have to make out after the ceremony behind the barn.”
“Ha-ha,” Ben replied, rolling his eyes. “You know I love you, darling, but I’m afraid I’m still not ready to come out in public. Especially not on someone’s wedding day. We’d steal all the attention, you know.”
We all burst out into laughter, and it suddenly felt like old times, as if all the time away at colleges and our jobs didn’t happen.
“No, seriously, dude, don’t tell me that New York doesn’t provide its residents with loads of beautiful honeybunnies.” He looked at me in such a serious way that I couldn’t help but give in.
“Well,” I began, feeling those butterflies in my stomach again. “Actually, there is someone. Her name’s Riley.”
Radar and Ben both looked at each other, then stared at me for a moment. Then both of them patted my back.
“Ha, I knew it!” Ben shouted out, pushing his fist into the bright, blue sky. “I told you, man, he’d get over Margo as soon as he’s out in the real world! There’s just too many hot ladies out there who are in desperate need of the power of Q’s balls!” With that, he reached out to Radar and held open his hand. “You owe me ten bucks.”
I looked at my best friends, taken aback. I hadn’t expected to hear that name out of one of their mouths, although I gathered that her name had probably been dropped between them more than once over the past couple of years, considering that both of them had stayed close to their hometown, Radar even only a few miles down from his parents’ house when he went to college. Especially because ever since I had gone off to Emerson, we hadn’t even spoken of her personally. There had been mentions of the legendary road trip, the madness at each gas station when we stocked up on food and drinks, and of course, our old enemy, Chuck Parsons, passing us in the school hallways without eyebrows for weeks. But now, thinking about it, it felt like both Radar and Ben had purposely avoided mentioning Margo’s name in conversations with me, as if there had been an unspoken promise to not bring up the subject of the girl that had broken my heart when I was seventeen. It didn’t surprise me as much as one would think, and despite a small lump in my heart that made me realize that even years after school was over, my two best friends had cared so much for me that they had felt the need to protect me from everything that Margo reminded me of (especially Ben, who had always been someone who seemed to care more about when he’d find the next girl that would get him laid than about other people’s personal problems), I felt absolutely content and happy with myself. As I had told Riley just the day before, Margo’s and my lives had turned into a different direction, and we both had moved on. And for my part, my life was perfect the way it was.
“I can’t believe you two took bets on my broken heart,” I replied flatly. “That’s really sad, you know.”
Ben stared at me, then turned his attention to the floor. More than ever, he looked like the boy I had known in High School.
“I’m sorry, bro, seriously,” he stuttered, obviously trying to explain himself. “We just thought that…”
“No, no,” I interrupted him, grabbing his right shoulder, pulling him up and staring straight into his eyes. “It’s really sad that you only bet ten bucks. You could have become a rich man, bro.” Ben looked up, into my serious eyes, and I couldn’t hold it any longer. A loud laugh escaped my throat and shook my entire body; I had to grab the roof of the car behind me to steady myself.
For a moment, there was silence from my best friend, but then both he and Radar joined in and our laughter filled the blue sky above us. Birds flew over our heads, white pigeons, I noticed, the air smelled of the beginning of fall and friendships never lost and the bright future ahead of us.
Radar’s father came over and told us that the ceremony was about to start. We slowly managed to contain our laughter, and I was glad that at least for a bit, I had made him forget about his nervousness that in a few minutes, he would be going to get married to his High School sweetheart. We crossed the lawn towards the small altar, and Ben poked me into the side with his elbow.
“I want to hear every single detail about that New York honeybunny when this is done, Bro. EVERY. SINGLE. DIRTY. DETAIL.”
I laughed, feeling home more than ever. Life was wonderful.

~3~

The wedding ceremony had been absolutely perfect, and it must’ve been exactly what Radar and Angela had hoped for. The bride looked stunning in her long white dress with tiny, sparkling red diamonds around the chest piece that matched Radar’s cummerbund. When they both said their vows and breathed their “I Do” and at last kissed for the first time as husband and wife, even the last row was up on their feet, cheering and clapping, slapping the groom on the back, congratulating both of them and wishing them the best for their future together. I felt a pang of sadness inside of me as I saw the color in both of their cheeks, the big smiles and the way the held hands; one of my best friends that I knew since kindergarten was now officially a grown man, and it wouldn’t be long before their family would grow. Maybe the times we talked and saw each other would become longer, the subjects we talked about changed more and more to family stuff, and when the time came, would fade out completely. You never know, do you?
But generally, when I looked at them, hugged both of them and told Angela how sorry she would be once she realized she was now stuck with Radar and would soon share their home with dozen of creepy Black Santas for the rest of her life, invading even their future baby’s cot and the mobile above it (which made her giggle so hard that tears started running down her cheeks so that she screamed for the girl responsible for her make-up to renew it), I was beyond happy for them. They had found something that everybody reached for in their life, and once again, my thoughts wandered back to New York, and I wondered what Riley was doing right now. I wondered if she also had thought about us the way I had done just a few hours before. Or if she still thought about the story I had told her, fearing that despite my assertion being back home with my old school friends, with all the people of my past, Margo would pop back into my mind and invade it once again, throwing all the plans the future held in stock for me and Riley into disarray.
I shook my head. Riley wasn’t that kind of girl, I was sure of that. But I decided it couldn’t hurt to give her a call later, when the excitement and celebration had ebbed away a bit.
I walked away from the hustle and bustle and found myself slowly walking up a small hill that overlooked the party company to my feet. The sun had started to set and from the distance, it’s orange glow gave the scene underneath a romantic, silent atmosphere. I heard laughter coming up to me, I saw Ben dancing some weird kind of dance, everyone around him laughing and being infected by his crazy mood and beginning to dance themselves. Radar and Angela sat in the middle of their long table, Radar having his arm round his wife’s shoulders, a satisfied smile on his lips. The nervousness had fallen off him the moment he had seen her coming up the aisle to him, and he now seemed more relaxed than ever. I leaned forward on the fence that cut off part of the hill and stared at the happiness down there, smelled the scent of flowers and the salty air from the sea close by and closed my eyes for a moment, taking all of it in.
When I opened them again, I saw my parents coming toward me. They held hands, and as they reached me, my mother gave me a quick hug. I noticed that her eyes were glistening in the darkening sky.
“Hey darling,” she said, squeezing my hand. “What a beautiful ceremony, wasn’t it? It reminded me of the one we had back then.” She looked up at my father and smiled. “The seashore, the bright sun that almost burnt you in your suit…” My father laughed and nodded. “…and that gorgeous little beach house Sandra and Scott had prepared for us and where we disappeared after all the excitement was over and…”
“Urgh, mom,” I interrupted. “Gross.” Both my parents laughed and my father gave me a friendly slap on the shoulder.
“One day, you’ll be the one telling your kids all the vivid details of your wedding night, son,” he said, grinning. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of, really.”
“Dad, please. I’m trying very hard to not feel sick by having to look at my best friend and his wife slobbering each other the entire time like they’re grown together already.” But I was laughing myself. Looking at Radar and Angela was like looking into a mirror that showed my future, and the thought of experiencing what they had just experienced with a girl myself – maybe even Riley one day, – made me feel consonant with myself.
“What’s with the grinning, son?” I heard my dad and realized I had put on a foolish grin. I shook my head. The urge to call Riley was stronger than ever.
“Nothing,” I replied, smiling. “I just thought I better make a call to someone I promised to talk to before it’s getting too late.” That was a small lie, but knowing my parents, I knew they wouldn’t push it.
“Well,” my mother said, giving me another squeeze. “Then we better leave you to it, right, Christopher?” My father nodded. “Just don’t make it too long. You’re still one of the best men and the party down there looks like it’s waiting for you.”
I assured her that I would it make it a quick call and be right down. My mother kissed me on the cheek and they walked down side by side, looking like newlyweds themselves. I smiled.
I heard a sound behind me and turned around. The trees behind me swayed slightly in the wind, and the thick branch work of several bushes rustled along. But there was nobody to see. I shook my head and pulled out my phone. I thumbed through my contacts and when I reached Riley’s name, my heart started thumping. I realized it was probably the two glasses of champagne that made me feel jumpy right now, but I was determined to call her and tell her I couldn’t wait to pick up on where we had left off yesterday.
Before I could put my thumb down on her name to start the call, I heard another sound behind me, closer this time. I turned around again, brows furrowed. But still there was no other soul on the hill than me. Everybody was down there, having fun and enjoying the time of their lives. While I stood here and hear noises in the branch work. What was wrong with me? I shook my head and placed my thumb on my phone again. I stared at the green receiver on the screen and heard the faint ringing. I started to hold the phone to my ear, convinced that in the next few seconds, somebody on the other end would pick up and I would hear Riley’s sweet voice. But before my phone had even reached my ear, I heard a voice behind me.
“Look at them down there. Having fun in their paper gazebo with their paper dresses, drinking their champagne out of paper glasses and listening to songs coming out of paper speakers.”
My hand stopped short as the words spoken reached my ear. My thumb automatically pressed on the red earpiece just as I heard a faint “Hello?” on the other end. I knew that voice. I hadn’t heard it for years now, but there was no way I would ever mistake it for any other voice. I slowly turned around and felt the heart in my chest beating faster, the rush of adrenaline running through my veins.
When I faced the person that had interrupted my thoughts and the intended call to my soon-to-be girlfriend back in New York, the shaking of my hand became stronger and I felt the phone slip out of my and and drop to the grass, where it landed upside down right to my feet. I didn’t care. My tongue felt numb and I felt a tickling sensation on my entire body. I stared at the person in front of me and wasn’t sure if it was a dream or if I just had had too many glasses of champagne. I blinked. The person was still there. I blinked again. Still there. This was real. I swallowed hard as I saw a smile spread across the person’s small and perfect lips. I stared at it, hypnotized.
“Hey, paper boy,” Margo Roth Spiegelman said.

 

 

~4~

Whenever I had thought about Margo during the past 8 years since we had last seen each other, I had pictured her as someone standing on her own two feet, self-consciously, with the typical look of somebody living on the West Coast for years. Hip clothes, a Starbucks coffee in one hand and a phone in the other one, talking to whoever was on the other side she was working with, the expression of a well-established young woman who had built up a life of her own on her face.
But I was as far away from that as I could ever be.
The girl across from me looked no day older than on the day we had last said Goodbye to each other. That smirk that had always appeared in front of my inner eye whenever I thought about her was still there. Her style hadn’t changed at all. The blue jeans she wore were still slightly washed out, and the shirt that was cut out deeper around on shoulder hung loosely around her collarbone. Considering she was close to a wedding, she looked a tiny bit under dressed. Not that I would ever complain, I thought. She was Margo, and Margo always did whatever the hell she wanted. No one knew that better than me.
I realized I had been staring at her for minutes when she said “So, you’re going to stare at me forever, or am I going to get a hug?” Her head tilted slightly to the left side, hands on her hips.
I couldn’t move. I tried to remind myself how to use my legs, my arms, my damn voice. The air around me suddenly felt way too hot (which was probably just how Florida was in the early fall – hot and sticky. At least I tried to make myself believe that that was the reason I was suddenly sweating as if puberty had hit me again.) and the sound of cicadas mixed up with the laughter and music coming up towards us from the party down the hill.
I cleared my voice.
“What…what the hell are you doing here?” Great. I hadn’t seen the girl who had danced in my dreams since I was a kid for almost nine years and the first thing coming out of my mouth was a question sounding more like an accusation. Smart move, Quentin.
“Wow, you really improved your conversation-opener skills, Q,” Margo replied and let out a laugh. I flinched at the nickname she had given me back then. I still stared at her, and seeing her smirk, her entire posture, suddenly made me furious.
“What do you expect me to do, really?” I said, crossing my arms in front of my chest. “We haven’t been talking for the past eight years, you’ve practically disappeared from the face of the earth, and now you show up here, unannounced and, even more so, uninvited, and I’m supposed to jump up and down in joy?”
Suddenly, the air around us seemed even thicker. Margo looked at me, her smirk now interrupted by a look that I couldn’t quite pin down, because I had never seen it plastered on her face before: confusion. Nothing ever confused Margo Roth Spiegelman. She was a confusion herself. Seeing her like that startled me a bit, but I still felt rage boiling inside of me.
“What? You don’t get it?” I asked. “After all those years knowing me, you still don’t get what’s the deal with me? I thought you’d always be prepared for whatever life is throwing at you. Or probably don’t really care enough for other people to actually think about those things, for that matter.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, paper boy,” she said, raising her hands up in the air apologetically. “Slow down, will you? I thought you’d be happy to see your old buddy in crime.” She waited for me to say something, and as I stayed silent, she shrugged. “Or not. I probably should have gone with the idea of shaving off one of my eyebrows for old times’ sake, after all. I guess.” And the smirk reappeared. God.
“Stop calling me that.”
“What? Paper boy?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“You know why, Margo.”
“Enlighten me.”
“You said it yourself all those years back. It’s an expression for flat people living their flat lives. Neither my life nor myself is flat. But you wouldn’t know anything about it, would you? Because you weren’t there.”
Without needing to look at her, I knew I’d hit a nerve. I had been more rude than I had ever thought was possible, but now I couldn’t take it back anymore. And the truth was: I didn’t want to. What I had just said to Margo had been inside of me for the past eight years without me realizing it. Not even when Riley had mentioned how sad my story actually was. And I was finally able to let it out.
The only thing was: Margo wasn’t surprised. She wasn’t even shocked. She was just…Margo. Un-blinking, unnerving. Her hands let go of her hips and crossed in front of her chest. With both our postures, we were now a reflection of each other.
“Well,” she said, looking at me with a look that my mother would’ve probably given a baby bird that fell out of its nest. Yes, my mother did stuff like that. I won’t tell you she even analyzes those poor souls, but I won’t deny it, either.
“Who would’ve thought Quentin Jacobsen would be capable of such strong language? I guess hugging is now obsolete.”
I nodded and turned around when I heard a loud noise down the hill. The sun had started setting and I guess Radar’s and Angela’s families would soon start the legendary firecrackers.
“Where have you been, Margo?” I said, looking at her with what Ben would’ve called “puppy eyes”. I couldn’t help it. “I know the last time we met we didn’t make any promises to stay in touch, not the way we did back in Agloe, but…” I stopped, not able to continue. Margo stared at me and shortened the distance between us. There were now only a few centimeters between us, I realized.
“But what happened?” she asked. “Life happened, Q. I got wrapped up in the numerous jobs I tried to figure out what I wanted. And you went off to college, remember? Starting your journalism career and from what I can see, you are pretty damn good at what you do.” She grabbed behind her and pulled out a crumbled piece of paper. When she unfolded it, I saw it was an issue of the New York Times. She held it up, her finger tapping on a story on the front page with my name under it. My story.
A couple of months back, while I had still been an intern, a huge story had been coming up about a farm outside of New York where a case of probable animal hoarding took place. Nobody so far had been able to get any pictures or even reports from its neighbors – simply because said neighbors were more scared about the owner, who appeared to be a former boxer with a tiny alcohol problem. Somehow – I still don’t really know how it had happened, – a couple of weeks back, Riley and I had managed to climb the high security fence after we had overheard someone in town telling someone who lived close to said farm that its owner, Paul Clegg, was out of town for a couple of days to get some more cows at an auction near Aurora. We got inside the property and saw the horror for ourselves. It brought tears to our eyes and hearts, and I remember the emotions in Riley’s eyes as she grabbed my hand and almost crushed it while squeezing. I had taken more pictures than anyone had ever managed before, and when I brought them back to the Times, everyone was absolutely overwhelmed and shocked by our discoveries. The next day, my story and pictures made the front page and caused Paul Clegg to resign from his activities as a farmer for the foreseeable future.
And I had turned from a simple intern to one of the Times’ best paid reporters.
I stared at Margo, her hand holding the newspaper. The article was at least four weeks old. I couldn’t believe she had seen it and more, had kept it the entire time. She had never been a newspaper person, I recalled. I began to wonder how long she apparently had kept track of my life without my knowing.
“Thank you…I guess,” I slowly said, a smile forming in the corners of my mouth, and the defensive tone out of my voice for the first time since I had started talking to her.
Margo laughed. “Don’t get on a roll now, paper boy. All I’m saying is that we were both wrapped up in our new, exciting lives, trying to figure out who and what we wanted.” I noticed her staring at the newspaper, momentarily lost in her thoughts, and I knew what she was looking at. There was a tiny picture of Riley and me standing next to each other in front of the front gate of Paul Clegg’s farm.
Margo looked up at me again, smiling, and I thought there was something inside her eyes that I had never seen before. Jealousy, maybe?
Ridiculous, bro, Ben suddenly said inside my head. Margo Roth Spiegelman and jealous? That honeybunny probably doesn’t even know how to spell that word, man.
“And hell, to be honest, I still don’t really know which direction I want my life to go, or what I want,” Margo continued, once again shortening the distance between us, now standing right in front of me, looking up to me with that mysterious smile plastered on her face that I successfully had managed to forget in the past eight years.
“But what I do know, paper boy,” she said, grabbing my hands with hers, “is that I missed you and want you back into my life.”
And then she kissed me.

~5~

I lay in my bed while the cicadas outside gave it their best chirping for a nightly concert. The air that came through the open window was rich with various smells that I had unknowingly missed the past couple of years as my life in New York had developed – freshly cut grass, sunflowers, and underneath it all, the never-fading smell of family barbecues in gardens.
I looked up at the dark, clear sky with its millions of stars gazing down on me, and I smiled when I thought of the day that lay behind me. Radar’s and Angela’s wedding had been absolutely beautiful and everything they had hoped for. The music was played by a band that both of them had seen live once a couple of years back, and their tunes made us all fall back into our teenage self. The newlyweds danced as if the world around them stood still or didn’t even exist, Angela in her bright white dress that made her look like a beautiful mermaid right out of one of the fairy tale books my dad used to read to me every night before I went to sleep when I was in preschool. And Radar, looking dapper and all grown-up, a constant grin planted firmly on his face, mouthing “I can’t believe this” to Angela over and over while they were lost in the music. I couldn’t have been happier for my best friend if I tried to.
Of course, part of me wasn’t as caught in the moment as it seemed.
Not after the kiss Margo gave me up on that hill.
Until now, I had successfully avoided the prospect of what had happened, being caught up in the hassle and buzz of two of my best friends’ special day. Margo had disappeared as quickly as she had shown up after she realized my reaction to her kiss hadn’t been the one she so apparently had expected to get. I had seen the disappointment in her eyes, the confusion about my reaction after years of chasing after her when we had still been in school. The shock that her magic somehow didn’t work on the poor Q anymore.
Or did it?
I shook my head and sighed. When I had flown over from New York, I had been so sure of myself; so sure that when I came back, all that I wanted was there to take. Riley and me. Me and Riley. It had made me shiver with butterflies in my stomach, and only when Ben had urged me to tell him everything about that “mystery girl from the Big Apple” earlier, I had realized how much she meant to me, and how, for the first time since leaving school 8 years ago, I had been truly happy and satisfied with the way my life had played out, and I couldn’t wait to tell everybody back home about her.
Until, once again, Margo Roth Spiegelman had turned my life upside down.
Suddenly, there was a gentle knock on the door. It pulled me out of my reverie, and at first, I thought I had imagined it, or that it had been some woodpecker in the trees outside my parents’ house. But then, another knock came and I sat up straight in bed, turning on the lamp on my bedside table. The clock on the nightstand read 3:27am.
“Yes?”
Slowly, the door opened, and first a mop of blond hair and then, the grinning face of Ben appeared in the door frame. Despite the late – or early – hour, I couldn’t help but grin back.
“If it isn’t the one and only Ben Starling. To what do I owe the honor of this visit at this godforsaken hour, my friend?”
The door opened wider, and there he was, all long legs and arms, as if the past 8 years hadn’t happened, as if Benjamin Jacob Starling had somehow decided to never grow up.
“It is an honor indeed, my weird friend,” Ben replied, coming in and slumping into a chair opposite my bed. “What’s up?”
I stared at him. “Uhm…you tell me. It’s almost half past three in the morning after a long wedding day, and you show up here unannounced instead of trying to get back together with Lacey.”
Ben snorted. “You wish, buddy,” he said, grinning. “That ship has sailed long ago. Though she’d still be the luckiest girl in the world if she’d be allowed to wallow in the glowing sunshine that is my life.”
I laughed, shaking my head. Ben would never change.
There was a silence between us, but it wasn’t an uncomfortable one; it was like the most normal thing in the world to sit in your old bedroom at your parents’ house with one of your best friends, all smiles, and letting the summer breeze flow between you two, as if the world was still as open to you as it had been when you were a kid.
After a few moments, though, I sensed that there was something on Ben’s mind that he struggled with.
“Hey, dude, you’re okay?”
“What? Oh yeah.”
“Yeah, alright. And I am having an affair with Margo Spiegelman.”
Too late I noticed my mistake, and I took a sharp breath, hoping Ben didn’t pick up on it. But it was futile. As I saw the glistening in my best friend’s blue eyes in the gloom of the bedside lamp, I knew that the safety of our comfortable banter had lulled me into a false sense of security. And as soon as I saw the expression in Ben’s eyes, I knew that he knew, that he had planned this.
“So…it’s true, man?”
I tried to play it cool. “What is?”
“Yeah, right. Play dumb, bro.” He smirked.
After a moment, I sighed, threw back the duvet and pulled my knees up to my chest, suddenly feeling sixteen again.
“You know, it’s funny how sometimes, people see something they can’t put into relation, then mention it to someone else, and before one knows it – boom. You thought you could keep your little dirty secret from me? Me? Dude, I’m the master of secret honeybunnies.”
“Ben…” I started, shaking my head. “There’s nothing to know, seriously. It’s not what you think. And actually…I don’t think even I know what it is.”
“Oooooookay…spill, then.”
And just like that, I did.
It felt easy and hard at the same time, just like it had back when I was still in High School and Margo had been everything there was to me in the world. While I talked and made sure I didn’t forget any details – I knew Ben would be able to tell when I tried to keep something about my encounter from
him -, I tried to come to terms with my own feelings. I had been so sure that seeing Margo up on that hill had been everything I did not want right at this time that I had even managed to maintain enough distance between us, to make sure she realized I had moved on since I had last heard from her. Now, while I repeated my story to someone who had basically lived through all stages of my unrequited High School love with me, I started to think whether I had fooled myself all these years.
When I finished, Ben nodded silently and put on what he called his “thinker pose” – shoulders hunched, brows furrowed, and his index finger resting on his lower lip. All the while I sat there and waited for the jokes that inevitably would come.
“So…the verdict, your honor?” I tried to sound casual, but instead, even I could hear the anxiety in my voice.
There was a long pause and I could almost hear the wheels in Ben’s brain whirring in a steady rhythm. We hadn’t seen much of each other ever since we went off to college, but I could tell that he and also Radar both still cared about me, and the feeling was mutual. We had kept each other in the loop about our studies, life, and love interests, and I knew it must’ve been confusing for Ben to hear about yet another Margo episode after I had made it pretty clear earlier that there was a different woman in the picture, waiting for me in New York.
It sure as hell confused me.
A moment later, a wide, boyish grin spread out on Ben’s face, building dimples in the corners of his mouth and letting his blue eyes shine with a spark of somebody who just got the puppy he so desperately wished for on Christmas. I instantly regretted saying anything.
“Duuuude…! Well done, you stallion!” Ben said, coming to the bed, slapping my back. “I didn’t think you still had it in you, that the old Big Apple has softened you and turned you into a monogamist like Radar, but…”
“I heard that, Ben.”
I was momentarily startled on hearing a male voice outside my door. Then Ben shouted “Yo, man, come in already, I told you I wasn’t making shit up!” and there was a sigh, just before my door opened and Radar’s head slowly appeared in the door frame, accompanied by the shy smile that still existed despite clearly having grown up – maybe more than Ben and me combined.
The morning before, a few hours before his big moment at the altar, Radar had been clean shaven, his face almost white with fear and nervousness – if that was even possible, what with him being African-American to the core.
Now, almost a day later, a slight stubble had already started to spread around his mouth and chin, and there was a glowing in his face that I had last seen when he and Angela – his high school sweetheart and now wife, – had first had sex on our crazy road trip to New York all those years ago.
I stared at Radar, taken aback. “What the hell are you doing here, buddy?” I asked. “You know this is supposed to be your wedding night, right? I mean, I’m honored, really, but I really think this should be the one for Angela, not me…” I grinned. Ben clapped his hands twice.
“As much as I am sure Radar would love to spent his special night with his second-best friend instead of his wife…”
“Second-best…?” I interrupted.
“…we have way more urgent matters at hand,” Ben concluded.
“Yeah, because what isn’t better than having sex with the woman of your dreams?” Radar asked, sarcasm thick in his voice, but a slight smile on his lips. He could never deny loving this banter between the three of us, no matter the many times of shaking his head in Ben’s direction.
Ben snorted. “Like your second-best friend having sex with the girl he used to chase down to New York the day before graduation?”
“Okay, stop,” I said, sitting up in bed. “First of all: again – second-best, Ben? And secondly – how exactly did Margo and I have sex? Because I don’t remember telling you anything else than her basically attacking and kissing me up on that hill.”
Ben dismissed this with a wave on his hand.
“I’m just stating the facts of what undoubtedly will happen in the future, dude.”
“Ah yeah, and what makes you say that? Recently came across a fortuneteller, have you?”
Ben snorted and shook his head. His hair swayed with the movement, and it suddenly made him look at least 10 years younger.
“Experience, Q, my buddy,” he said.
“Ah. Of course.”
Radar sighed and jumped in, his face now all serious and businesslike. “Look, man,” he began, “I know you said that it’s becoming pretty serious with that girl back in New York, and I really, really want to believe you – you’re my best friend, and I truly want only the best for you. But…”
He stopped, and I almost expected him to bite his lip, something he used to do when we were younger and there was a delicate subject to breach.
“Quentin….can you tell us in all honesty that Margo kissing you had absolutely no effect on you whatsoever?”
I grinned. “What, pinky swear and all that?” But when I saw my two best friends not go along with my joke, I knew I had to stop this charade and be honest. We had been friends since kindergarten, after all.
“Okay guys, listen,” I sighed. “I…I don’t actually know what that was. Or what it meant. Or what the hell I should think about it. The only thing I know is…I am still furious with Margo. She basically disappeared on me a second time almost 9 years ago, and now she comes back and jumps on me and I…I don’t know, I just have to accept that and live happily ever after with her, now that she’s suddenly decided she wants to settle down after all?”
Ben nodded sympathetically. “I hear ya, bro. That’s…audacious, to say the least.”
“Yeah, but all that aside,” Radar interrupted, “did it work? Even if only to consider it momentarily?”
I thought for a moment, suddenly aware of the entire, fucked-up situation. Of Riley, hundreds of miles away, waiting for me to come back and take off where we left it just a couple of days ago. Of that stupid scavenger hunt all these years ago, doomed to fail from the get go. Of the way Radar and Angela had looked at each other the moment they promised to love and care for each other for the rest of their lives. How sure I had been to one day have that exact thing with Margo, even if it meant waiting for her to find herself first.
“I…I guess…” I stuttered, feeling once again like a 12-year old who’s been caught stealing candy. I felt my two best friends brace themselves.
“I guess you’re right, Radar. Part of me never got over Margo, no matter how hard I tried. No matter how I feel about Riley now. I guess I just…have to face the fact that I have to clear things once and for all before I leave for New York in a couple of days.”
“It’s audacious,” Ben said again, shaking his head. It seemed to be his new favorite word.
Thank God honeybunny was finally off the table.

~6~

“What am I even doing here?”
I kept talking to myself while pacing back and forth, hands in my pockets to keep them from shaking, head bent down, shaking with the silliness of it all. And yet, it was all too real; I stood in front of a house I hadn’t seen since the day I moved to College, and the front lawn still looked exactly as it had all these years ago, with a shabby chic that didn’t look completely abandoned. The hedges were neatly trimmed, and I remembered the animals the man of the house had once tried to carve into them, before he had to admit that his artistic talent just didn’t go as far as gardening.
Suddenly, the front door opened, and I momentarily startled; because of my nervousness, I was way too early, and she had never been one to be punctual, because it somewhat went against her ethics or something. When I looked up, my heartbeat slowed down, and I grinned at the young woman who came down the pathway towards me, handbag slung over her right shoulder, and her gait sparkling with confidence.
I hadn’t seen Ruthie Spiegelman for as long as I hadn’t seen Margo’s childhood home, but in comparison to the front lawn, she had massively changed. Her once tomboy-like body had grown into that of a slim-built young woman. Her hair, which had always been a dirty shade of light blonde, had turned into a rich, dark brown, and she wore it long, strands of it falling into her face. I was almost taken aback by how she and Margo looked nothing alike now.
“Jacobsen? Quentin Jacobsen? Is that you?” Ruthie stopped in her tracks as she recognized me, and I grinned at her, suddenly feeling very self-conscious about how attractive the little sister of my former love interest had become.
“Hey Ruthie. How are things?”
She came towards me with a spring in her step, and, much to my surprise, threw her arms around me, hugging me in a tight embrace. The Ruthie I had known back then had been anything but social towards me.
“Look at you, Jacobsen, still trying to distract me from what really is going on,” she said, laughing. The laugh made her face lit up, and I could almost see every single boy in her High School fawning for her.
“You’re not interested in me or how a tomboy like me ended up this hell of an attractive young woman, are you?”
I shrugged. “Why not?”
Ruthie laughed again. “Because I know you have a date with my sister who suddenly showed up here a couple of days ago, only to jump onto you on Lincoln’s wedding day, kissing you out of the blue, telling you she’s grown-up and wants to spent the rest of her life with you?”
I stared at Ruthie disbelievingly, momentarily lost for words. Back when we were teenagers, Ruthie had hated everything Margo had been; she had always been the troublemaker of the two, and therefor, had always got more attention than Ruthie herself, the baby of the family. Margo herself, I knew, had always had a soft spot for her little sister, caring about her well-being more than anybody else’s, but as her reputation of the tough, aloof girl had to be kept up, she had never allowed anybody to see that side of her.
“She told you?” I replied when I found my speech again.
“Yeah. Took a while to get it out of her, though. Still, the glowing was as obvious as you being still in love with her.” Ruthie smirked, and all of a sudden, I didn’t know who was the older one of us anymore.
“What…what did she say?”
“Well, only what I just told you. Oh, and that it’ll only be a matter of time until you came around.” She shook her head. “I can’t believe she was right about that. I thought her fucking up prom for you back then and you becoming a man in one of the most exciting cities in the world with a hell of a great job would finally open your eyes about how bad she is for you.”
“I…I am not in love with her, Ruthie,” I explained. “In fact, I am currently seeing an amazing woman who seems to be just the right one. As in, you know…the one.”
Ruthie snorted. “Yeah, right. If that’s the truth, Jacobsen, then tell me one thing.”
“Sure, whatever you want to know.”
“Why the fuck are you standing on our front lawn looking like a lost boy waiting for his first date while Margo is currently blocking our bathroom, sprucing herself up?”
I stared at Ruthie, once again lost for words. And again, it struck me much she had grown up in the past couple of years.
“Yeah, thought so.” Ruthie passed me, walking down the Spiegelman’s driveway self-confidently, still smirking. Halfway down, she stopped and turned around, throwing me a truly concerned look that took me aback.
“Do yourself a favor, Jacobsen?” she said, crossing her arms in front of her, “Don’t let her fuck you up again, please? I always thought of you as a good catch. Don’t let my stupid sister take that away from you, yeah? You deserve to get that Happy End you dreamed of when you left Orlando.”
For a moment, we stared at each other silently, and I was surprised at how truly worried Ruthie seemed to be.
Then I nodded, and, satisfied, Ruthie nodded to, turned around and was on her way to whatever life had in store for that 17-year old girl who probably had more wisdom in her body than I had in the only wisdom teeth I had left in my mouth.

A couple of minutes after Ruthie left, and as I slowly but surely became nervous, asking myself even more whether this had been a good idea, the front door opened a second time and Margo stepped out, her usual self-confidence showing in the way she threw her hair back as she spotted me. Ruthie hadn’t exaggerated; Margo had definitely gone through a lot of effort to look presentable to me, and I suddenly felt under dressed for the occasion.
Stop this, you idiot, I chastised myself. This is just two old friends meeting up for a coffee to clear the air once and for all so you can back to your almost girlfriend in New York and live happily ever after.
I breathed in, more confidently, as another voice, more mocking and vicious, made itself heard inside my head.
Yeah, right, buddy. That’s why you came all the way to her house to pick her up instead of just meeting up at the coffee shop like two normal people who have absolutely no feelings for each other would do. Sure.
“Oh, shut up!” Too late I realized that I had that last thing out loud, and Margo, who had reached me standing in the driveway, looked at me curiously.
“Rude, Q! I haven’t even said anything yet!”
I knew she was joking by the way she tilted her head and smiled at me, but still, for a moment I felt like a teenager again, scolded by a teacher.
A damn fine looking teacher.
“What, no, sorry,” I stuttered, cursing to myself, hiding my shaking hands in my pockets still. “You…uhm…look nice.”
“Oh thank God you noticed, it took me throwing Ruthie out of the house to get this done.” When she saw my shocked expression, she laughed, and I had to admit, it was a sound I had missed in the past eight years. “Relax, Q, I was joking!”
I allowed myself a small smile, too, and silently told myself to get a fucking grip and behave like any normal 27-year-old, who knows exactly what – and more importantly, who, – he wants, would.
“Right, uhm…” I looked at Margo who herself looked at me expectantly. Clearly, so far, this was going exactly the way she had hoped it would. I cursed myself, taking control again.
“Still up for it? To…you know…talk about things?”
Margo stared at me. “Wow, you really don’t beat about the bush, do you?”
I fought the urge to redden, standing straighter, taking my hands out of the pockets of my jeans and crossing my arms in front of my chest.
“Well…I’m leaving for New York in a few days, and I would really like to spend them with my two best friends who I haven’t seen for almost 9 years before one of them goes on his honeymoon and the other one moves on to whatever crazy adventure he has planned next.” I paused, making it clear who would be calling the shots in this meeting. “So, yeah, if you don’t mind, Margo, I’d like to move things forward, if it’s not too much trouble for you.”
After a moment of stunned silence – this had to be the longest time I had known her to be able to keep quiet instead of her usual snotty comeback, – Margo shrugged and we went on our way.
As we walked aimlessly alongside each other, both of us caught in their own thoughts, I tried to not glance over to her every now and then. She really looked good, despite me trying to picture Riley’s face in front of my inner eye the entire time. It was clear that Margo had really made an effort today, and if I needed any more confirmation that the kiss she had planted on my lips yesterday had not been an accident, there it was. Maybe she really had changed; maybe all that soul-searching was really over, maybe during all her travels and our lack of communication over the past couple of years, she had realized what it was that she had been missing her entire life, and had finally allowed herself to give into it, after all.
God, stop it, Romeo, the vicious voice said. What about your determination to tell her to back off for good because you’ve found a perfectly good woman who does not play games with you?
That voice was right, of course, even if it was only in my head. In my heart, I knew that Riley was the right one, and that Margo would probably never grow up. Even her recent epiphany to stop running away and finally be with me wouldn’t change anything; Margo was who she was: a free spirit, come what may. I had to refuse to believe she had turned herself around and meant what she had said yesterday to protect myself.
After what seemed like an eternity, I was surprised that despite our original plan to go to a coffee shop, we reached a small hill, and I realized it was the same one Margo and I had kissed on yesterday, and to make matters worse, the sun had started to set, its light basking us in a soft orange-red glow. It would’ve been romantic, if that had been the thing we both had in mind while we unconsciously had walked up here; in truth, I fought with all I had to keep cool, to not let that cloud my judgement or destroy my resolve to let Margo down gently.
Clearly, the universe had something else in mind for me.
“I gotta say,” I heard Margo say next to me. Somehow, out of nowhere, a blanket had appeared and we were both sitting down, looking straight into the sunset and the world beneath us. “Under that sunlight…all these paper people down there only look half as bad as they normally do. Somehow reminds me of the office tower back then, remember? Right before we broke into Sea Life?”
I realized she was talking to me, and I caught her looking at me expectantly. There was a glint in her eyes that challenged me not to be touched by her remark of one of the best and most exhilarating nights of my entire life.
“Yeah.”
“Wow. Still monosyllabic,” Margo replied. “Well, I guess it’s a good thing, considering, you know, the alternative being shouted at by you.” I stared at her, and she bent her head, looking down, making scratch marks into the ground in front of her with her shoes. It was the first time I actually saw her somewhat serious and self-conscious in god knows how many years. Maybe in forever.
“Listen, Margo,” I began, knowing that my time to beat about the bush was coming to a close. “I don’t know what it is you want from me…”
“I told you, Q, didn’t I?”
“Yeah, well…” I stopped, wringing my hands in my lap, looking down at the grass. It seemed like an eternity since the wedding party and all the action down there.
“I think I made myself pretty clear yesterday,” Margo said, looking at me, taking my hands into hers and looking at me earnestly for the first time. “I have changed, Q. I don’t want to see the world anymore; I have basically seen all the paper towns that are to see out there.” She smiled. “And even if I didn’t…I’ve come to realize that all that doesn’t mean a thing if you can’t share it with the one person who means the most to you. The world doesn’t mean anything if the one person who is your world isn’t there to appreciate it with you.”
I looked at her, desperate to pull my hands back, but at the same time, incapable to move any muscle in my body. Her words had been the exact thing that I had waited for Margo to say to me ever since I found her in Agloe all these years back, and I couldn’t deny the tug in my heart at them. And the more I tried to force my feelings down, it slowly became impossible to resist her.
I looked up, and when my eyes met Margo’s, I felt her leaning in to me ever so slowly. A small, self-confident smile tug at her lips as she got closer, and that gave me the strength to break free.
I took back control of my hands, pulled my knees up and wrapped my arms around them, shaking my head.
“You almost made me believe you, Margo, really, you did,” I said, angry at myself to have let my defenses down so easily.
She stared at me, clearly hurt. That was a new one.
“You think I’m playing you, Quentin?” This was the first time she had called me by my entire name, and I knew she meant business. “You think I’m making a fool out of myself just to fuck with your mind?”
I snorted. “Wouldn’t be the first time now, would it? You always liked playing games.”
Now Margo pulled her knees up to her chest, wrapped her own skinny arms around them and rested her chin on top. She looked at least 10 years younger, almost the same age her sister Ruthie had been when I had started looking for Margo the day after she had disappeared.
“You’re right, Q, I did,” she said, her voice barely more than a whisper. “It was fun to screw with my own and other people’s feelings. Not to let anybody close enough to you so they can’t hurt you. Not admitting to have any kind of feelings towards somebody. But now, Q…” She paused, and when I turned my head to look at her, I saw her looking at me, too, her eyes glistening.
Was Margo Roth Spiegelman…crying?
“Now I…I do have feelings. Real feelings. Feelings that scare and excite me. Feelings that I have no idea what to do with. And those feelings…” Another pause, and when she spoke again, I think I saw the real Margo for the very first time since I knew her.
“…those feelings are for you, Quentin.”

~7~

On the day of my flight back home to New York, I woke up with a stiffness in my bones that was usually only reserved for when I was coming down with something. I would then take a long, hot shower, brew myself a coffee from a horribly expensive machine that my parents had got me when I got my internship, and then go back to bed; after a couple of hours of sleep it would all have passed and I was capable to conquer the world again.
The stiffness I felt this morning, though, was a different one, and when I realized that, I moaned and pulled my pillow over my head.
Margo.
The day before, we had talked long into the evening, and afterwards, when I had lie awake, she had bombarded me with text messages that were supposed to be brightening up the mood, to give me an impression of the “old Margo”, as she now called it. I knew she had tried to convince me of the sincerity of her words and feelings, and deep down, a part of me had wanted to give into it. To throw every risk that came with being with Margo overboard and give it a shot. If it could have, my seventeen-year-old self would’ve screamed at me for being so stupid to let her go. That even if she’d break my heart again, that at least I would’ve known what it felt like to really be part of her life, instead of only being an onlooker.
Damn, I had been very convincing back then.
But then, just before I wanted to say the words Margo so desperately wanted to hear from me, Riley’s face appeared in front of my inner eye. Sweet, innocent, Riley, who always smelled like a mixture of orange and vanilla, who was so patient and had never asked anything of me even though I had had a feeling that she expected more of our friendship, of me. I thought of that first and last kiss we had shared the day before I had left for Radar’s wedding; of the promise she had given me with it: that she would wait for me, no matter what.
In that moment I had known that I couldn’t give Margo what she wanted from me; that ship had well and truly sailed years ago when she had let any effort to keep me in her life slip away. It wasn’t even that I didn’t want my heart to be broken by her again, I thought. It was more that we had grown up, that I had grown up, and I was now ready to begin the rest of my life; and I knew that I had to play it safe, that with Riley, I would have the life I had always dreamed about having with Margo.
Of course, saying that Margo hadn’t been happy about my decision would’ve been the understatement of the year; but instead of ranting and raging, which I expected her to do, she just nodded and told me she understood. Never before had I seen anybody looking so exhausted and defeated.
And I grew up with Ben, to whom that used to be an everyday battle in High School when every girl he had asked out had turned him down eventually.
I stretched myself to get the stiffness out of my neck and back, and when I looked around, I saw that all my clothes had been washed, ironed and neatly stacked up at the end of my bed. I smiled. Despite me being twenty-seven, my mother still turned into a mother hen when she had the chance.
I stood up, quickly threw on a T-Shirt and Jeans and grabbed the big suitcase that rested under the windowsill. When I looked out of the window, my gaze naturally slipped to the house opposite; the Spiegelman’s house. I thought of Margo up in her old room, staring at the ceiling over her bed, fighting with her feelings. Then I realized how stupid that thought was; she probably was downstairs in the basement, repeatedly hitting a punching bag, with some old school rock music on her iPod.
I shook my head and turned around, starting to randomly throw my shirts, jeans and hoodies that my mother had so carefully folded into the suitcase, and just hoped she wouldn’t suddenly come in and see it.
Then there was a firm knock on the door, and I grinned as I said “Come in, Mom!”.
“Good morning, honey, today’s the big day, huh?”
I grinned at her, but as I saw her standing there, the grin slowly disappeared. I could see that my mother was fighting the urge to cry; she had only had me for a week, most of which I had either spent at the wedding, with Radar and Ben, or of course, Margo. I felt momentarily bad for not making more time for my parents; ever since I had moved to New York, we had barely seen each other save for the usual family gatherings on Thanksgiving or Christmas. I had never been an overly spoiled child, and what with my parents being psychotherapists, I had had a lot of freedom as to what to do with my spare time, as my mother had always stated how that would help shape my character.
But just as my grin disappeared from my face, a smile spread out on my mother’s face, as if she could somehow sense the turmoil inside of me.
“I should’ve known that all that ironing and folding was futile with you, Quentin,” she said, pointing to the heap of colors in the open suitcase.
“Oh, yeah, thanks for that, mom,” I replied, stepping over it to give her a hug. “You shouldn’t have, though…as you can see.” I squeezed her, a smile forming on my lips at how well she knew me.
“Oh, you know, it’s nice to do these things for somebody else than your dad for a change.”
“Yeah, I guess it’s easier to get fast food stains out than the weird collection of blotches on his overalls when he’s spent a day with his Oldtimer.”
“Amen, son.” Mom looked up and grinned, then letting go of me. “When’s your flight due?”
I looked up to the clock over the door. “Three hours. I have already checked in online last night, so I don’t have to be there too early. Ben and Radar will be coming to say Goodbye, too.”
As I turned around to start packing again, my mother started helping, folding shirts neatly and putting them back into the suitcase. I felt her tense as if she wanted to say something but didn’t really know how.
“And…have you sorted everything out?”
I cringed at her words, but of course I knew what she was getting at. She had seen me getting ready for my meeting with Margo a couple of days ago, and I would bet a month’s salary on Ben having let something slip about it, too. Of course, he would never admit to it if I asked him.
“Yeah…yeah.” I hesitated. “Margo and I have talked a lot, and we both have decided everything should stay the way it is. New York and L.A. are way too far away to work something out. Plus, Riley is really amazing, and I can’t wait to see her again.” I praised myself for at least one truth.
My mother smiled at me. “Yes, I can see that. I really can’t wait for the day we finally get to meet her. She sounds lovely.” I knew she avoided the part about Margo not for herself, but for my own sake, and at that moment, I loved her more than I could tell her.
For a while, we worked silently side by side, my mother refolding everything I had thrown inside the suitcase and me searching for stuff strewn about in my old room. When I couldn’t think of anything else I might’ve forgotten, I clapped my hands and my mother looked up from where she was just putting in the suit I had worn to the wedding.
“Alright,” I said, stretching my limbs. “I think that’s all there is.” I threw a look at the clock and realized how late it was; my flight was due in two hours. My mother followed my gaze and stood up.
“I’ll give your dad a call then and we can head off to the airport.” Before I could say anything, she was out the door and I heard her call out for my father, who supposedly had slept in the garage after working on the Oldtimer all night.
An hour and a half later, I stood at the gate my flight would leave at in a bit more than thirty minutes, my parents and my two best friends around me. I looked at them and felt a tug at my heart at leaving them behind once again for God knows how long; the look on my parents faces told me they felt the same.
“Okay, son, that’s it then,” my dad said, giving me a short hug. “Take care, and say Hi to the Big Apple from us, will you?”
“Of course, dad, though I’m not sure it’ll say Hi back to you.” I smiled at the running joke between us whenever I had went back.
Then my mom was next, and I saw her eyes glistening. No fighting back any tears now, I thought. She came to me and grabbed me tight, and I felt her limbs shaking while she hugged me.
“So good to see you, my gorgeous boy,” she whispered in my ear, and then she said something I didn’t expect at all.
“I hope you made the right decision.”
I knew she was referring to the Margo situation, and her words took me aback; my mother hadn’t been known as a big fan of the Spiegelman’s at all, their lack of upbringing and rules or the way they used to handle their daughter. I stretched my arms, letting her go, and as I stared into my mother’s tear-filled eyes, I saw the determination in them, and it seemed as if I had suddenly woken up from a bad dream. With horror, I realized she was right; that my heart was here, in Orlando, not in New York. That in all these years, it had belonged to one woman only, no matter how hard I had fought against it, no matter how much I had tried to tell myself that Riley was the right one. That I was letting my true love go for good now.
And that there was fuck all I could do about it now.
I swallowed hard as I gave my mother a last squeeze and turned around to say Goodbye to my best friends.
Ben was as cheery as ever; though I could detect some sort of sadness in his eyes, too, something he would never admit to.
“So long, Hoss!” he shouted over the roar of the engines outside the windows. “Ride up into the sunset with your missus, and take care of that gorgeous hair of yours!” He reached up and ruffled my hair, and as I pulled my best friend since kindergarten into a last hug, I had to fight back tears myself, while I laughed about his never-ending humor. I would miss this weird kid.
Then it was Radar’s turn, and maybe it was the newlywed air around him, but he seemed more sure of himself, stronger. Although deep down I knew that he was as sad about seeing me leave again as my parents or Ben.
“Yo, Mister Angela,” I said, grinning at him. “Enjoy that honeymoon in Hawaii, will you? That means loads of frozen margheritas, sunburns and most of all – keeping away from anybody while giving it the best husband performances in a hotel room any man has ever given.”
Radar shook his head, laughing out loud, while he pulled me into one of his very own, special hugs that seemed to crush your bones. Don’t be fooled by his lanky physique.
As I grabbed my suitcase from the floor and made to leave through the gate, I looked back at the four people who had been my family since I could think, and despite seeing them still standing there, I already missed them.
I also suddenly had the strong feeling that someone was watching me from far behind them, but my roaming eyes couldn’t make anything – or anybody – out in the crowd of leaving and oncoming passengers. I knew who it was that I was looking for, and despite feeling foolish, I couldn’t help it.
I probably had seen too many romantic comedies where the destined couple finally gets together just before one of them left for their flight. I shook my head and gave my family and friends a last, broad smile and a wave. Then I turned around and slowly walked through the gate with less than fifteen minutes to spare before take off.
Just as I turned the corner into the corridor, I heard someone shout my name, and I thought that maybe my mother wanted to give me one last wave or throw me a kiss or anything. I turned around, a smile on my lips, and that smile froze as I saw the person running through the crowds towards me, giving strewn suitcases and gift bags a wide berth.
Margo Roth Spiegelman.
I saw my parents turn around, and, in the last second, jump out of the way, and as they turned back to me, I saw a broad smile on my mother’s face. When she noticed, she simply nodded at me, and in that second, I knew what my seventeen-year-old self had known ever since I had first laid eyes on that girl 18 years ago.
I felt the suitcase slip out of my hand and land on the floor with a dull thud, and instead of turning the corner, I slowly made my way back to where my family stood, while I saw Margo breaking into a sprint, a grin on her lips and sweat breaking out on her forehead. I didn’t think I had ever seen her sweat before, and I began running towards her myself.
Just before our bodies crashed, we stopped in front of each other. Margo panted, looking up at me with that broad grin I had fallen in love with the day she had moved into the house opposite of mine.
“Hey.” I said, looking down at her, my heart suddenly full of butterflies. “You know I’m going to miss my flight, right?”
“Oh, paperboy,” she replied, tears glistening in her eyes.
Then I leaned into her, my lips almost crushing hers as I finally forfeited all the lies I had told myself over the past eight years and instead, accepted my fate.

~The End~

 

My 1st public story – Part One

I have been thinking alot about this recently, and although this was originally planned as only a theatre blog, I’ve decided to give it a go and post the first few lines / the first part of a Fanfiction I started to write a few years back.
It’s based on the New Zealand TV Series “The Tribe” that is set in a future where a violent virus has killed all grown-ups; kids are on their own, and for survival reasons, they gather together in crowds, so-called “Tribes”. My story is set at the end of Season 5, where the Main Tribe, called “Mallrats” is on a boat away from the city where a computer has just freed an even more violent virus that forced Amber, the Mallrats’ Leader, her baby son, her boyfriend Jay and all their friends to leave their beloved home and city. Now they are shipping into an unknown future. (For further informations on the characters – if you want to know – please check http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tribe_%28TV_series%29,  as apparently I can’t spread out all details on here :/)
As this is the first time I post one of my stories publicly, I hope people will be kind with me after reading it.

                                                                                

                                                                                     ~ Back from the Dead~

Amber woke up from a disturbing and confusing, yet wonderful dream. She and Bray were in one of those houses Alice had owned when she had lived outside the city on the farm of her parents with her sister Ellie. She had had Baby Bray on her arm, and Bray held her close to his right shoulder, sitting on a bench and staring into the sunset. Amber knew that this was far from bring real – Alice and Ellie were still missing since months ago the Chosen and then the Technos had taken over the city, and Bray…well.
Bray was officially confirmed dead.
Deleted, she thought to herself, not letting the bitter truth get to her. In her life, there would never be a proof of his death, neither was there any way she would ever forget the words written on one of Mega’s screens in the Techno headquarter back then. As the thought came into her mind, she remembered with whom she shared her life now, and reached beside her, to the other side of the bed.
It was empty.
Amber opened her eyes and looked around. She suddenly realized she wasn’t lieing in her own bed in the Mall. To her right was a small, round window, and through it, she saw nothing but the blue ocean. She propped herself up on her elbows and looked out of the small bullseye, and all the memories of the last days came back to her mind. The fight between Ram and Mega, Zoot twisted in their middle. The explosion. The release of the aggressive virus that would eat up the whole city within an instant. The flight on the boat, far away from all the danger, into an uncertain future for all of them.
Amber sighed, the she stood up and walked over to the small crib where her son lied, sleeping and breathing quietly. She touched his cheek, his nose, feeling her pain coming up again, because we would never be able to meet his father. She shook her head, holding her tears back. Bray was gone. Jay was her life now. It was time to stop looking behind.
She dressed herself, then went out of the cabin to look for him.

‘Since when are you up?’
Jay turned around, and when his eyes spotted Amber, he started smiling. His brown eyes were shining at the sight of her, yet there was some distance in them. His blond hair was standing up from his head, making clear that he wasn’t up that long. Amber smiled herself as she saw it. She just loved him more when it looked like that.
‘About an hour ago. Did I wake you?’
‘No, I had a dream, that’s it.’
‘Bray?’ Jay looked at her, and she knew that he didn’t need any answer. Since they got on the boat 8 days ago, Amber had dream after dream about him, and even if he wasn’t jealous at all, because he knew that Bray would always be a part of her life, he was worried about her. He knew she was feeling guilty of leaving the city, no matter whether it had been a life saving decision or not. He knew that day in, day out, she was thinking about all the possibilities of finding Bray that were gone now.
Jay knew exactly how she felt. He felt the same, although he refused to admit it, neither to Amber, nor to himself.
Amber nodded, and the sadness and the pain in her eyes made Jay’s heart ache. He opened his arms, letting her come to him to get the comfort she needed so much.
‘What was it about?’
‘Just the usual, you know.’
There was a silence while they were standing together, arm in arm, and no sound was there except the rush of the ocean around them. After a minute, Amber looked up to Jay, and she saw that his view was stuck in the distance.
‘What do you think, when will we hit solid ground? Last night, while you were on guard with Lex, Trudy and I tried to calm the others down. They’re getting nervous, Jay. They need a home.’
‘We’re getting closer.’
Amber followed his gaze, and what she saw made her heart jump in her chest. Far in the distance, she could see something. It was just some outlines, but still…
‘What is that?’
‘The coast. About 200 miles away.’ He looked down at her. ‘We almost made it.’
Amber was too dazzled to answer. She looked back at the coast the boat was slowly getting closer to. Now that she knew what it was, she could see the outlines of some trees, and she even thought she could see some roofs, although they weren’t close enough yet to really be sure about that.
‘I should wake the others’, Amber said and turned to walk back to the cabins, then stopped walking as Jay went on talking.
‘We don’t even know what’s out there, Amber. It could be a city. It could be a jungle. It could be a place of complete desaster. Or it could just be nothing.’
Amber looked at him, noticing the pain in his voice. She knew that leaving the city had been as hard for him as it had been for her and the others. As herself, he had left hope behind, hope to find his brother again one day. For all they knew, he had also been deleted as Ram had found out that he was working against him behind his back. And for all they knew, his destiny was the same as Bray’s. For a second, Amber looked back, her gaze into the distance, to the place they left ages ago, it seemed to her. Although it was impossible to even make out any outlines, she imagined to see columns of smoke rising up from what they used to call home. She felt her heart ache at the thought of all the bad but also good memories. The Mallrats had been celebrating a double-wedding. The antidote for the virus that had killed all grown-ups had been created by Tai-San, one of the now missing members of them. She and Bray had shared their first kiss back then after a journey to Hope Island…
Amber shook her head. She won’t allow her thoughts going there. It would just hurt too much. And it was past. What lay in front of them was important now. She had to be strong.
‘Whatever it is, Jay, it’s our only chance. There’s no other way we could turn to. I don’t believe our fuel will last that much longer, even if Lex and Slade manage to find a way to save some of it. It’s all or nothing. And who knows,’ she said, stepping closer to him, ‘we may find a new home there. Wherever ‘there’ is.’
Jay still looked at the outlines of the coast that were growing as the boat moved on. From behind them, somewhere deep down in the cabins, he could hear the sounds of the other Mallrats making rustling noises.
‘Alright, go wake the others. We need to get ready to go ashore.’ Jay felt Amber squeezing his hand behind his back, then he heard her opening the cabin doors, quietly waking their friends one after another. He even could hear Lex complaining that it was way too early to even think about getting up.
Jay concentrated his gaze onto the ocean. We’re getting closer, he thought again, then slowly closed his eyes.

Two weeks later.

From what Amber and Jay could see after the last days, they could hardly believe they had been so worried about their new place; it had turned out that the place they went ashore was almost exactly what they had been looking for.
It was a city, which everyone discovered with great relief. More, it seemed to have quite a similarity with the home they had to leave, and after an hour, they’ve already found what they had been looking for: a Mall. It wasn’t as big as their old home, but it had plenty of space for everyone. And after a week of exploring tours, everyone was sure: this was the place they would be staying. It was less touched by vandalism, and they’ve also found a storage of canned food, besides some fields where they could plant their own vegetables and fruits. It seemed like the perfect place to stay for the rest of their lives. They had met plenty of other kids out there, most of them suspicious, but different from what Jay, Amber and the other Mall Rats had been experiencing in their past, less aggressive and after a while, more than friendly.
For Ruby, who still was mourning about the loss of her beloved saloon in Liberty, it was like heaven as after a few days of looking around she had found the perfect place to reinvent her saloon here. It was a small liquor store, which, with the help of Slade, Lex and Jay, she restored and re-opened after only one week. Everyone could see that she was getting happier with every customer that stepped into her bar, praising her for the great work she had done there.
Cloe and Lottie had found some friends whom they were hanging out most of the time, so that the other Mall Rats didn’t see much of them during the day. Amber was glad that Cloe had found a way to get over the loss of Ved. After he had disappeared, she had buried herself into caring for Brady and Baby Bray, just to avoid thinking about him too much. Amber knew exactly what she had been going through.
Apart from that, everything was going as it had been going back at their old home. Lex, Slade and Darryl were out a lot, trying to find signs of rebellion against them, just to knock them down immediately. Amber couldn’t believe Lex was really thinking that this city needed some kind of sheriff. It seemed to be a complete difference to their old city, less violent and in no need for any order coming from the outside. Amber already started to see the world she had known back then, before the virus. A world without fighting for your life every single day. A world where her son could grow up safely.
Only Jay was the only one who didn’t seem to be happy that they’ve found a new home so fast. He had turned much more silent than he usually was, and often, Amber thought she saw some kind of pain in his eyes when he looked at her or talked to her. She began to wonder whether he – contrary to his assertions – was hurt by the dreams she had about Bray and that kept coming back almost every night. More, she had the feeling that he was mad at Bray for being such a big part in her life although there was no chance that he would ever step back into her life again.
It was ridiculous, Amber thought. She knew Jay well enough to know that he was honest with her when he said that everything was alright, had known it from the moment they had met back then when he had been a Techno general under Ram’s command. Maybe it was just their relocation. Or maybe he still mourned over the loss of Ved, whom he had promised to keep safe for the rest of his life; a promise that had been broken by Ram by deleting him, and that probably made him feel more guilty than he was willing to admit. Or, she thought, maybe it was a different guilt that made his gaze look so empty so many times she looked him in his eyes.
Ebony.
Thinking of her old enemy made Amber shiver. Since the attack on her sister Siva, where Java, her other sister, had jumped in on and died by being struck by one of the Technos’ zappers, Ebony had barely spoken a word. She was lethargic, and not even Siva, who had also to cope with Java’s death and who always had shared a much closer bond with Ebony was able to drag her out of this behavior. Jay had tried to talk to her a couple of times, but apart from a blink from time to time, she remained silent. Amber knew that he had to fight against the thought that it was his fault that Ebony was a mess, because he made the wrong choices when he had been a member of the Technos, starting with his forbidden relationship with Ebony over closing his eyes on the experiments Ram had practiced on citizens up to the point where it had been too late to control neither Ram nor Mega. Amber had tried to tell him that nothing of that had been his fault at all; he had been a loyal friend to both of them and that had made him shut his eyes to the truth. This circumstance was only aggravated by the fact that Slade, who distracted himself from the situation Ebony was caught in, kept telling Jay that without him, his girlfriend wouldn’t be an empty shell of pain and lethargy. Amber decided she had to talk to Jay about this as soon as he was back from his patrol. She couldn’t stand things not being out in the open.
‘Oh come on, get out of here, in case you don’t want to wake up in a cell tomorrow!’
A confused looking boy stumbled towards Amber as she approached the Liberty Bar. With him, he carried the strong smell of alcohol, and she instinctively stepped aside as he passed her, waving from side to side. When she looked in front of her again, she saw Ruby standing at the entrance of the bar, hair bound back into a ponytail braided strands on each side and both hands on her hips. The expression on her face was disbelieving and furious at the same time, but as her eyes caught sight of Amber, it faded and she started smiling from one ear to another.
‘As always, you’re arriving just as the big fun is over,’ she said, hugging Amber. Her smile faded when she saw the worried expression on her face. ‘What’s going on?’
Amber followed her inside the bar. Almost every table was occupied, and the sound of laughter filled the air. Ruby led her to the bar itself, pouring her a soda and waiting for her to sit down on one of the stools. One of the guests waved at her, asking for service, and Ruby looked around, searching for Darryl, who had promised to help her out today. She saw him standing at the back door and shouted: ‘Hey, Darryl! Could you take over here, please?’ He nodded, obviously annoyed, but stepped over to the table where the guest was still waving his hand. Ruby turned her attention back to Amber.
‘Busy today, huh?’ Amber asked, taking a sip of her soda.
‘Yes, but nothing I couldn’t handle. Anyway, what’s the matter?’
Amber looked at her and took a long sigh before telling Ruby everything that was going on in her head recently. They didn’t know each other for long, but Ruby had become a good friend of hers, and she was glad she could talk about her worries with someone who did not live inside their Mall and could analyze the situation in all objectivity. When she had finished, Ruby looked at her and asked, ‘Did you ever confront him with your thoughts? I mean, directly?’
‘I tried. We talked a lot about Mega and what happened back then, but he never mentioned Ved. And honestly, I understand it. The way he disappeared…Ruby, it was probably one of the hardest things ever for Jay. Being betrayed by a friend, who had always been kind of a mentor to both of them, a betrayal that led to the death of Ved…I just didn’t want to make things harder for him than they already are. He will talk about it when he’s ready.’ Contrary to the security that lay in her voice, Amber felt everything else but secure.
‘Alright. What about this stuff with Ebony? You don’t want to tell me you two never talked about it, do you? I mean, it’s practically the thing that’s most present at the Mall. Jay talked to Ebony himself a couple of times, as you said. And the tension between him and Slade must be exhausting. I mean, even for me it is annoying, although I barely see him for more than five minutes a day. But you can almost feel his anger, and I am not very sensitive at these kind of things, I can tell you.’
Amber nodded, as to indicate she understood what Ruby was up to. ‘Of course we did talk. But actually, everything’s evolving around how to make Ebony feel better, not how it all came together in the first place.’ She paused. ‘See, that’s why my gut tells me that my dreams about Bray are the reason for his behavior. Every time I wake up from a disturbing sleep, he asks me whether I am okay or not, and I can see the pain in his eyes. And I know he would never admit that these dreams leave him helpless, too. He’s hurt, Ruby.’
A long silence followed. Ruby wasn’t the kind of person that went out of words easily, Amber knew that. She always had a snappy comment on her lips, no matter how difficult a situation was. To see her so quiet now was enough confirmation that she really cared about what was going on.
Eventually, Ruby said, ‘You should talk to him. Seriously? What else can happen other than him being mad? You’re strong Amber, and during the last year, you have dealt with much more difficulties than any normal person would be able to handle. Moreover, you love each other, and love is a strong force.’ She shook her head, then took a wet rag and started wiping over the surface of the bar. ‘God, I sound like one of these old television psychiatrists!’

Later that evening.

Amber sat on her bed, Baby Bray in her arms. He pulled on her Zulu braids, squeaking with joy. She smiled at him, and her heart ached by the thought of how much he resembled his father. Then her eyes caught sight of a picture that showed Jay and her, arm in arm, and the pain was a little easier to take. Although Baby Bray wasn’t his child, Jay cared for him like a father. When he woke up at night and heard him screaming, he often was the one who took him out of his crib and walked him around until he felt asleep again. He made him laugh. And even if the pain of losing Bray would never fade away, Amber was glad that Jay was such a great substitute father for her son. And somehow, she thought, Bray was watching and very proud of her.
She heard a noise and winced. She already started to get up when Jay entered their room, a tired expression on his face. He kissed her, then sat beside her on the bed. His right hand stroked the baby’s forehead, who had finally fallen asleep.
‘Kept you awake the whole evening?’
‘Not more than usual. I couldn’t sleep, though. How was patrol?’
Jay shrugged. ‘Nothing out of the ordinary. It seems quite creepy that it’s much quieter than what we are used to. What about here?’
‘Everything’s okay, I guess. Siva brought Ebony some of her favorite fruits today. She looked around the whole city to find them, you know? And Ebony…well, she just ate them without any further notice. I don’t know how long we all will be able to cope with her not getting better.’
‘What are we supposed to do?’, Jay asked and looked at her, his face emotionless. ‘We can’t leave her alone right now. I don’t have the best memories about her, and neither have you, but she’s a Mallrat, Amber. She needs us.’
‘I know, that wasn’t what I was trying to say, it’s just…’ she sighed. ‘Jay, it’s Ebony. She used to be the strongest person I’ve ever seen. Even being rejected by Bray more than once never broke her, and she always claimed to hate Java for what she had done to her and Siva. It’s like who lies in her bed right now isn’t her anymore.’
Jay nodded. ‘That’s what’s keeping you up?’
Amber stood up and carefully put her son back in his crib. She pulled the sheet up his chest and stared at him for a moment.
‘Amber?’ Jay’s voice seemed to come from a different universe. ‘That’s what keeping you up?’, he repeated.
‘Look, I wasn’t gonna mention it, but with all that’s going on recently, I think it’s time we talk.’
Jay silently looked at her as she turned around and sat beside him on the bed again. Her hands began to play with the ring Bray had given her back then at the Ecos headquarter, and she stared at Jay.
‘I know, the last year hasn’t been easy for either of us. We both lost people we cared about, people we loved. Family. And I understand that this changes everyone. Every single one of us had to deal with stuff that, under normal circumstances, no one our age would’ve been able to get over with. And it also made us stronger.’ She paused. ‘But to be strong doesn’t mean you should keep all that’s troubling you for yourself, lock your thoughts behind a wall in your head.’
‘Yeah, I know that’, Jay replied, looking away. Somehow, it seemed that he was more far away now than before.
‘Then talk to me, Jay’, Amber said, ‘Tell me what’s going on with you. Since we got here, you’re not yourself anymore. You’re quieter than I’ve ever seen you. Most of the time, you’re all by your-self. Lottie even told me once that you screamed at her, just because she was looking for something in here. That’s so unlike you. What is it? Ebony? I told what happened wasn’t your fault. No one could have known what would happen.’
‘This has nothing to do with her.’
‘What is it, then? Ved?’ Amber took Jays hand into hers, squeezing it. ‘Look, I know how you feel. I lost my sister to the virus. And Dal, he…’ She swallowed. ‘He wasn’t my brother, but he was my best friend, and the closest thing I had to a brother. I loved him with every inch of my heart, and he was taken away from me just like Ved was taken away from you. I know how hard it is to keep going on, Jay, I really do. But you should stop blaming yourself for it. The promise you gave your mother before she died, to keep him safe, you kept it as long as you could.’ She stopped, looking at him, but he was still avoiding her gaze. Then she let out her biggest fear. ‘Or is it because of Bray? Look, Jay, I know I will never be able to forget him, no matter how much I try to. He’s part of my life, always will be. And to be honest, I don’t want to forget him. He gave me my beautiful son, and yes, I still love him. A part of me will always love him. We both talked about it, you said you were alright with it, that you’d understand. I’m sorry that I keep having these dreams, and I wish I could control them, make them stop, but I can’t. I just can’t. And of all people, I thought you would be the person who’s most understanding. And I love you not only for that, Jay.’ Amber made him look at her again, but what she saw, let her wince. There was an anger in his eyes she’d never seen before, and more. Endless pain.
‘It’s not about Ebony, or Ved, or Bray, or whoever you think this is about, alright? I don’t care about any of them right now. I’m trying to move on here, don’t you see that? I try my best to make this work.’ For a moment, Amber wasn’t sure whether he was still talking about their tribe or their relationship. ‘I’m trying, Amber, I really do. But everybody keeps questioning me about my past. I know I’m not flawless. I made mistakes, and I can’t change what happened. And that’s the worst thing. But at least, I am myself. I am me.’
Amber looked at him; she couldn’t believe what she was hearing. And she was thinking about when this conversation had turned into an argument. ‘What the hell is wrong with you, Jay?’ That’s not you.’
‘You have no idea who I am, Amber. No idea.’ He stood up and started pacing around the room.
‘Then tell me. Let me know you.’
Jay turned towards her, and when he saw how helpless she stared at him, all his anger disappeared. ‘I just…I just don’t know what to do anymore. It’s killing me inside.’
‘What is it?’, Amber asked and pulled him gently back onto the bed. Again, he avoided her gaze, like he’d be ashamed of what he had said before. ‘What’s killing you?’
‘I can’t get it out of my head. Her face. The way she looked at me, when she left.’
‘Who left?’
‘Rochelle’, he replied, his voice barely more than a whisper.
‘Who is she?’
Jay finally looked at her. Tears had started to well up in his eyes.
‘My girlfriend.’

The door slammed shut. Jay just stood there, his heart thumping in his chest, blood pumping through his veins. He felt like he’d never been that angry in his whole life, and he still couldn’t believe what had just happened. That she really had just walked out on him like that.
‘What the hell was that?’ Ved came from upstairs, suspiciously staring at him. He hadn’t slept for days, the rings under his eyes almost looked pitch black, and his skin had taken over a pale color. The sweater he was wearing looked like it had seen better days, and it didn’t really fit him as he had lost weight. He seemed to have aged about thirty years during the past few days. Since their mother had become a victim of the virus.
‘Nothing, Ved. Go back upstairs, everything’s fine.’
‘Yeah, of course. Is that why your face has the same purpur tone like uncle Marty’s, every time something got to him?’ Ved stared at him, a blank expression in his blue eyes. ‘Stop treating me like I’m made of glass, Jay.’
Jay looked at him. His brother kept his gaze, not even flinching. ‘Rochelle. She walked out on me.’
Ved asked, ‘What’s that supposed to mean? She dumped you?’
‘Looks like it. Actually, I don’t care. Maybe it’s better this way.’
‘Come on, you don’t want to tell me she just said that it’s over and left? What was this doorslamming about?’
‘Actually, Ved, it’s none of your business. We have much more important things to do. We run out of food. I need to get out and grab some as long as the shops are open. Who knows when…’ He stopped, not willing to say it out loud. To talk about how long it would last until there were no grown-ups left just made it too real.
‘Actually,‘ Ved said, ‘it is my business. I’m sick of you not wanting to tell me anything, just because mom died. You think I don’t get that you and Rochelle were fighting for days? Do you seriously think I didn’t hear you two arguing about some stupid decisions? I’m not retarded.’
Jay stared at him, realizing again how much Ved had aged. Finding their mother in her bedroom one week ago – or at least, what the virus had left of her, – had changed him forever. He wasn’t the little, annoying brother anymore who always seem to step in on him and Rochelle in the most inappropriate moments.
‘We had a fight. I told her we need to shift a course down. That I need to take care of you and our life now, and that I can’t be with her 24/7. Things have changed, and things will change from now on. Nothing’s gonna be like it used to. I tried to make her understand, but all she was saying was that for her things were clear, that I wouldn’t give a damn about our relationship. She accused me of only caring for my own good, to put everything over our relationship. I got mad, telling her that you were the only family I had left, and that I promised mom that I wouldn’t ever let anything come between that, and asked her if she was too cold-hearted to understand that family is the most important thing there is.’
‘Let me guess: she was quite pissed off.’
Jay nodded. ‘You know what she said? She said that her family was everything for her, but that her father and her mother both showed signs of the virus. They both told her to leave, because they didn’t want her to see them suffer. Rochelle didn’t want to, but she decided to let them both down, to live with me. She…she said it was my fault, because she thought I would be glad she wanted to be with me, leaving her parents to die alone. Then she said it obviously had been a bad idea because I wouldn’t feel the same about her, and that she should’ve known I would never let you down, that I put you over everything else.’ He laughed vacantly. ‘I mean, what was she thinking? That I would leave my brother for her? To go somewhere with her, abandon you? She should know me better. There’s no way I would ever do that, even without the promise I gave mom.’
‘So she dumped you because of me?’
As he heard the pain in Ved’s voice, Jay’s anger disappeared. He looked at his little brother, who was still standing at the staircase, looking like he was lost. And he was lost. All of them were lost now.
‘This has nothing to do with you, Ved. I don’t know what I was thinking. I don’t know why I thought Rochelle and I…that it was something good. She was just selfless and egoistical, and I am glad it’s over.’
‘Where’s she now? Back to her parents?’
Jay shook his head. ‘She said something about a train that is leaving town this evening. It’s supposed to bring all kids under eighteen out of here, to get them out of the danger zone. She asked me if I was really convinced I didn’t want to join her, and I just stared at her. Then she left.’

Amber looked at Jay, her mind still processing the story he had just told her.
‘Did you see her again after that?’
‘No. After my anger had disappeared, I decided it wasn’t a good idea to separate like that, with this fight between us. I went to her place to talk to her, because I thought she’d be there, telling her parents goodbye for the last time.’ He paused, and Amber felt tears welling up in her eyes when she thought about the moment she had left town back then. Her father had insisted that she would leave him before he died. He had insisted that she wouldn’t ever turn back. And Amber had followed his request. She had kissed and hugged him for the last time, then she and Dal had left Bellevue Heights.
‘But when I got there, I didn’t need to go inside the house to know it was over. I knew she hadn’t come back there. When she had left my parents’ house, she must had been going straight to the train station. I knew it was too late to catch it, so I went back home. I’ve never talked to her again.’
‘Do you know where she went to?’
Before Jay talked again, she felt that something was going on. The way his shoulders suddenly slumped. The tears that had disappeared during the middle of his story, suddenly came back into his eyes.
‘I don’t know where the train was supposed to bring them. Maybe if my mother would’ve made us go, too, I would know, but by the time the news announced that they were preparing trains to bring the kids out of town, she was too weak to make any decisions.’
‘I remember the train,’ Amber said, ‘Some of my friends were brought away. I never heard of them again. Dal and I went to look for a farm out of town, but as you know, we ended up in the Mall. I just hope they all made it out of the danger zone, far away from the virus.’
‘They didn’t.’
Jay’s voice wasn’t more than a whisper, and again, he avoided Amber’s gaze. He stared in front of him, his eyes finding some spot in the far past.
‘The night the train had started off, it had an accident. I don’t know exactly what happened, but some of the gas tanks must’ve gotten too hot. There was a huge explosion. No one survived. It was all over the news.’
‘Oh my god.’ Amber finally saw things clicking together. After her fight with Jay, Rochelle had gotten on the train as fast as she could. They’d never talked again, clearing things up. And she had died in the accident. Jay never had a chance to make it right again.
‘Jay, I…I am so sorry!’ She turned to him, holding him in her arms. She felt his tears falling down on her chest, heard his silent sobs. After a while, she let go of him, and he looked at her, his eyes red-rimmed.
‘I felt so guilty, Amber. When I found out what had happened, it was like I died again. First my father who got killed just before the virus broke out, through a bank-robbber’s bullet, then seeing my mother suffer from her disease, and then Rochelle. I wanted to die so badly, Amber. I felt like it was all my fault. For days, I didn’t eat anything, nothing made sense to me anymore. Even Ved didn’t mean anything to me. I didn’t care about him suffering over our parents’s death, or the situation in town that was going out of hand more and more. I wished that the virus would get a hold of me, too. Because I felt that it would’ve been the only punishment that would make it all right again.’ He paused, taking a long breath. ‘It was a week later, that I finally woke up from this lethargy. I was sitting in my room, staring at the walls and thinking about the possibilities to end my pain, when I heard a loud crash in our living room. I ran downstairs and saw Ved lying on the floor. He had collapsed out of sheer exhaustion. It was the moment I realized what he had been going through these past days. I saw his bones sticking out of his pale skin. It was the moment I knew I had to do something. Ved and I packed all of the things that we seemed to need and left the house. Two days after that, we met Ram and started our new life with the Technos, leaving everything else behind. But I never forgot the way Rochelle had looked at me that day. It was like she knew something would happen, that she was saying goodbye and just wanted to see me one last time. And I never forgot how guilty I felt since then. I keep having dreams about her every night. I can’t forget it, Amber. I moved on, but this whole last year, she never really disappeared, she was in my mind all the time. And when you told me about the dreams you had about Bray, the guilt you felt because you left the city and the possibility to maybe find him one day, no matter what you’ve seen at Mega’s place back then…’
‘It all came back to your mind,’ Amber finished his sentence, nodding. Now she knew why Jay had been so quiet all this time, and she felt stupid, thinking about why it never had occured to her that the reason for his recent behaviour lay in his past. She took Jay’s hands into hers, nothing’s coming to her mind that would make his pain go away. She knew how he felt; she had felt like that for the past months. When she looked at Jay, he took her into his arms. They sat like that for hours, until the sun went down and they finally went to bed, Baby Bray silently breathing in his crib right beside them.

‘I’m sorry, but we’re out of rooms at the moment,’ Ruby answered the young couple standing in front of her. They looked exhausted, like they’ve been walking around for days without proper hours of sleep and food. The girl’s blonde hair fell lose over her shoulders, and she seemed to have difficulties to keep her eyes open. The boy looked a bit more awake, but still, the way he looked around with his hazelnut brown eyes, his hair slightly flying with these movements, told Ruby that there was nothing he wanted more than a bed and a bowl of food. There was something about both of them that made Ruby feel uncomfortable for no particular reason.
‘Are you sure?’ Can’t you check again?’ It was almost breaking Ruby’s heart how desperate the two of them looked, although she had always told herself not to let personal feelings interfere with work issues.
‘I’m sorry,’ she repeated, noticing that except a small backpack, both of them had no luggage with them. The girl nodded, flashing a short smile at Ruby.
‘No problem at all. We’ll find something else. Thank you anyways.’ They both turned around, and Ruby could hear them whispering.
‘I told you we should’ve gone directly where we planned to go. Didn’t you say there’ll be enough place for sure, anyways?’
‘And I told you we can’t. I can’t. Not yet.’
The girl’s shoulders slumped, as she opened the door. Suddenly, an idea stroke in Ruby’s mind, and she shouted, ‘Hey, wait!’ Both of them stopped, turning back to Ruby. In the boy’s eyes, she noticed worry, but in the girl’s, there was something else. Hope.
‘I might know a place where you could stay for a while. Let me just talk to someone.’

‘So, where you’re from?’
Ruby put two glasses of soda in front of the young couple while they were waiting for Amber. She had used the wrist transmitter that the Technos had used back then and that Darryl still used sometimes to contact the Mall Rats. As usual, when she told everyone about the young couple needing a place to stay for a couple of days, Lex and Slade had refused to give them shelter.
‘We don’t even know what this place is, who they are! I’m not gonna let two strangers in here this time, Amber,’ Lex said, ‘this is not an animal shelter, you know?’
‘Lex’s right,’ Slade agreed, crossing both arms over his chest. ‘We still haven’t adjusted to this place, we barely know the people around and moreover, we have our own issues at the moment.’
Eventually, both of them were being overruled by the others. Everyone agreed that the way this city had given them shelter, a home, they should give something back to the two young people.
Now Ruby, the boy and the girl waited for Amber to pick them up. They both seemed relieved, and their exhaustion was almost tangible. But while the girl drank her soda like someone who had spent the last few weeks in the desert, the boy only stared into his glass, running his fingers over its edges.
‘So far away that sometimes I don’t even know if we’re still in the same country,’ the girl said, laughing dry.
‘We are,’ the boy said, and Ruby didn’t know if he was also trying to make a joke or wanted to remind his girlfriend not to be silly.
‘God, where are my manners,’ Ruby said, shaking her head and stretching out her hand. ‘Im Ruby. And you are…?’
Something weird was going on. The two young people in front her changed a fleeting glance, and suddenly, she was sure that the next thing they would say would be a lie.
‘I’m…Grace,’ the girl said, then pointing to her boyfriend. ‘That’s Lucas.’
Lucas looked at Ruby, and suddenly, she felt like she knew him from somewhere. His green eyes looked exhausted but had a determined expression n them that Ruby had only seen once: when Amber had told her back then that she would not ever give up until Mega had paid for what he had done to the city. She could see exactly the same expression in Lucas’ eyes as he stared at her intensively.
Grace must’ve felt the tension that had been built up between Ruby and her boyfriend, because she said, ‘Is it really okay that we stay at your friend’s place? I mean…we’re intruders. We don’t want anyone to have to bother for us, really.’
Ruby smiled at her, glad she could focus on something else than Lucas’ piercing green eyes.
‘Don’t worry,’ she said, ‘Amber is probably the kindest person I’ve ever met. She’ll be glad to help you.’
Something was going on with Lucas. His eyes widened, and his hands that were still playing with his glass, suddenly started shaking uncontrollably. He stood up, the stool he was sitting on falling to the floor with a loud bang. He stared at Grace, then bolted out of the saloon without further comment. For a second, Grace just stood there, staring at the door. Then she seemed to wake up, jumped over the stool and ran after him, shouting ‘Hey, wait!’
Ruby ran to the door, seeing both Grace and Lucas standing in front of a pile of old wheels. She heard Lucas saying ‘I can’t…I just can’t,’ over and over again. When he noticed her staring at them, he whispered something to Grace, and she turned around. Both girls stared at each other for a moment, then Grace mouthed ‘Sorry,’ and she and Lucas disappeared behind the saloon. Ruby just stood there, not able to realize what had just happened. A moment later, she shook her head and went back in as she heard a customer calling out for a new drink.

Amber listened to the story Ruby was telling her. She soaked in every information, because despite the fact that the young couple, Grace and Lucas, apparently didn’t want to be helped, she was determined to give them shelter. She didn’t even know why. Maybe it was the fact that Ruby had told her about their both medical condition: malnourished and as tired as someone who may not even know anymore what sleep felt like.
‘They just ran away? Without any word?’
Ruby shrugged and said, ‘Well, that girl, Grace, she said sorry, but I don’t even know if she was honest about that.’ She snorted.     ‘Anyways, I’m sorry to have bothered you to come out here for…this. I don’t know what got into me, playing the good samatarian for two runaway kids.’
‘Do you know where they were heading off to?’
‘Are you serious?’, Ruby answered, staring at her, blankly. ‘I just told you that they clearly don’t want any help, and you…what? You still want to go look for them?’
Amber didn’t know how to answer. In a way, Ruby was right, it was obvious that her help wasn’t needed anymore. She knew she should just get back to the Mall and take care of the ones that somehow depended on her. She had her own problems, the insomnia still kept her awake at night, even if Jay finally managed somehow to get rid of most of his nightmares. And there was still the unsolved situation with Ebony. She knew she should rather focus on the problems in her own life.
Instead, she said, ‘I just want to know if they’re okay. I know what it’s like, not to know where you belong, not having a place to go to.’
‘And what if they run away again?’
‘Well, at least I can say that I tried what I could.’
Ruby looked at her, then she sighed and said ´, ‘You’re way too good for this world, you know that, right?’

Amber slowly made her way through the forest behind Ruby’s bar. She was thankful that back then, when she was found by the Eco-Tribe, Pride had been determined to make her learn how to read tracks, whether it’s animal tracks or the ones that two pair of shoes leave behind when strolling through thick undergrowth. Branches were broken, separated in the middle. It hadn’t rained for about a week, but somehow, the floor was still slightly wet, and Amber saw two pairs of footsteps in a small puddle of mud right in front of her. She looked up and allowed her ears to be the only senses that took in impressions. Pride had been impressed when he had first seen Amber shot a bird with an arrow, without even seeing it, only by trusting her hearing. He had never seen anyone who was able to shut off all the other senses, and when he had first told her that, Amber had been more than proud on herself. And now, she knew, that all the long hunting lessons with Pride would pay off once again.
Suddenly, she heard a rustling noise coming right in front of her. She ducked, making her way through thick branches, covering her face so she wouldn’t get any scratches. Then she saw a movement, just a slight one, but enough to know that she had found the two kids that had left Ruby standing in front of her bar, startled. While she was rushing through the woods, she tried to remember their names. She knew Ruby had told her, but while the adrenalin was rushing through her veins, she had difficulties to concentrate.
‘Grace! Lucas!’, she yelled, when she finally remembered. ‘Wait! I’m here to help you!’ Amber could still see someone running away from her, and she tried to run a bit faster. ‘If you’re in trouble, we’ll help you! You can stay with us as long as you need to!’
Eventually, she thought she couldn’t run anymore. Her breath came in sharp gasps, when suddenly, first one pair of shoes appeared, then, another. She stopped, looking right into the eyes of the couple that had tried to get away from her so desperately.
For a moment, all Amber could do was staring at them, while she was trying to get her heartbeat to slow down.
Grace was…beautiful. Although her long blond her seemed out of order from the long run, it still had a shiny glance. Her face had a olive tone, which clearly came from being out in the open, but under her eyes, Amber could see dark rings. Her clothes looked surprisingly good, given the circumstances.