A Million Miles Away(5)

“What?”

Kelsey made a motion she had imitated many times on the dance floor, a motion one might see in a raunchy music video. It was one of Kelsey’s favorite moves.

Michelle held up her chin, drifting past to her room. “How presumptive of you.”

“Come on!”

“We’re waiting.”

“Waiting until what? He gets back?”

From below, Peter called, “You ready?”

Michelle gave Kelsey a look, expecting her to get even for the sucker punch. Kelsey had a good one, too, something about Michelle not sending him off to war properly. Then she thought of Peter standing in the kitchen, loving Michelle and meaning it. Kelsey threw up two peace signs. Michelle mouthed, Thank you. Last night was forgotten.

“Five minutes!” Michelle called, and disappeared behind her door.

“I’m going to miss my flight!”

Kelsey looked over the railing at Peter, who was now in his camo. “Wow, you’re going now, huh? You’re off to the airport?”

Peter rubbed his head nervously. “We’ll have to take breakfast with us.”

Briefly, Kelsey considered going down the stairs to give him a hug. He looked so alone down there. Scared.

She put as much cheer behind her voice as she could. “Good luck, Peter.”

He flashed a grateful smile toward her, drifting toward the front door.

Inside her room, Kelsey lay back down beside Davis, bringing him to her, smelling like sleep. She hoped this Peter thing would work out for her sister.

Michelle should be so lucky, Kelsey thought. She really should.





CHAPTER THREE


It was six. The house was spotless, perhaps suspiciously so. Davis had left; Kelsey’s parents had come back. Quiet banging sounded as her father set out plates for dinner and her mother cleared space on her desk for stacks of student papers and giant volumes of constitutional law. Kelsey was trying to subtly move the Buddha statues an inch to the left. Then, after looking at them, she moved them back to the right.

“Turkey burgers!” her dad yelled. “Turkey burgers or nothing.”

“No bun for me, please,” her mother called back, bouncing on the large exercise ball she used for a desk chair.

Kelsey checked her phone.


Me (12:03): How’d the drop-off go?



Still no word from Michelle. It took thirty minutes tops to drive to Kansas City International, forty-five if she got stuck in traffic. But it was Saturday. And it had been seven hours since she left.


Me (2:16): ??

Me (2:30): Don’t tell me he missed his flight…



She’s probably being bummed out in a coffee shop somewhere, Kelsey had thought. Then two more hours had passed. Kelsey was checking the driveway every fifteen minutes or so for the 1992 Volvo they shared. The car could have broken down, but she would have called. Even if her phone had died, she would have found a way to call.


Me (3:52): Pls call when you can, mom and dad are on their way.



Michelle might have lost her phone, Kelsey figured, but that didn’t explain why she hadn’t come home.

Kelsey laid it out again, to try to soothe herself through a weird panic that had set in: If—no, when—Michelle came home without her phone, she would have to make a PowerPoint presentation, stating her case for a new phone. Whenever either girl wanted anything expensive, a computer or a phone or a three-day camping pass to Wakarusa Music Festival, the Maxfields made them prove their need in a cost-benefit PowerPoint on the monitor in their mom’s office nook. Kelsey’s sophomore year presentation on the desire for a Coach duffel, which had included animated fonts and a conclusion set to John Mayer’s “Waiting on the World to Change” had really set the bar high, in her opinion.


Me (4:17): For real Mitch. Where are you?



Kelsey had cleaned up Hannah’s (or somebody’s) vomit from the basement sink, getting stink all over her cardigan and leggings. She and Davis had rolled the keg to the back of his Jeep, and returned it to Jensen’s Liquor. And finally, she had put the jade Buddhas back in their prized place. Still no Michelle.


Me (5:23): Not funny.



Kelsey took a step back, surveying her handiwork. The Buddhas were a relic from her parents’ trip to Cambodia, before they were married, back when trips to Cambodia were rare and cheap and disconnected from modern life, her mother had explained.

“Kelsey? Burger?” her dad shouted.

“I can hear you when you talk normally, Dad.”

“Burger?” he repeated. “Burger? Burger?”

Kelsey rolled her eyes. “Yes! But without the chives and crap.”

“And one for Mitch, or what?”

“Um…” Kelsey hesitated. Michelle should have been back hours ago. She was supposed to come straight home from the airport. She was going to help Kelsey clean. More importantly, she should have been there to tell her own goddamn story. Their parents didn’t know about Peter. What was Kelsey supposed to do? Say that Michelle was probably painting lovesick portraits of a member of the US Army somewhere? Kelsey was starting to get nervous again. “I think she’s at the library or something. Plus, she’s still a vegetarian, Dad.”

“When is she going to give that up?” Kelsey heard her father mutter. It had been a few months on and off. The family’s interest in meat was a matter of personal pride to Kelsey’s dad, whose restaurants were called Burger Stand and Local Burger.