Paper Towns(42)
I looked for evidence she had been there: footprints or something written in the dirt or some memento. But I seemed to be the first person to walk on these unnamed dirt streets in years. The ground was flat, and not much brush had grown back yet, so I could see for a ways in every direction. No tents. No campfires. No Margo.
I got back in RHAPAW and drove to I-4 and then went northeast of town, up to a place called Holly Meadows. I drove past Holly Meadows three times before I finally found it—everything in the area was oak trees and ranch land, and Holly Meadows—lacking a sign at its entrance—didn’t stand out much. But once I drove a few feet down a dirt road through the initial roadside stand of oak and pine trees, it was every bit as desolate as Grovepoint Acres. The main dirt road just slowly evaporated into a field of dirt. There were no other roads that I could make out, but as I walked around, I did find a few spray-painted wooden stakes lying on the ground; I guessed that they had once been lot line markers. I couldn’t smell or see anything suspicious, but even so I felt a fear standing on my chest, and at first I couldn’t understand why, but then I saw it: when they’d clear-cut the area to build, they’d left a solitary live oak tree near the back of the field. And the gnarled tree with its thick-barked branches looked so much like the one where we’d found Robert Joyner in Jefferson Park that I felt sure she was there, on the other side of the tree.
And for the first time, I had to picture it: Margo Roth Spiegelman, slumped against the tree, her eyes silent, the black blood pouring out of her mouth, everything bloated and distorted because I had taken so long to find her. She had trusted me to find her sooner. She had trusted me with her last night. And I had failed her. And even though the air tasted like nothing but it-might-rain-later, I was sure I’d found her.
But no. It was only a tree, alone in the empty silver dirt. I sat down against the tree and let my breath come back. I hated doing this alone. I hated it. If she thought Robert Joyner had prepared me for this, she was wrong. I didn’t know Robert Joyner. I didn’t love Robert Joyner.
I hit at the dirt with the heels of my fists, and then pounded it again and again, the sand scattering around my hands until I was hitting the bare roots of the tree, and I kept it up, the pain shooting up through my palms and wrists. I had not cried for Margo until then, but now finally I did, pounding against the ground and shouting because there was no one to hear: I missed her I missed her I missed her I miss her.
I stayed there even after my arms got tired and my eyes dried up, sitting there and thinking about her until the light got gray.
20.
The next morning at school, I found Ben standing beside the band door talking to Lacey, Radar, and Angela in the shade of a tree with low-hanging branches. It was hard for me to listen as they talked about prom, and about how Lacey was feuding with Becca or whatever. I was waiting for a chance to tell them what I’d seen, but then when I had the chance, when I finally said, “I took a pretty long look at the two pseudovisions but didn’t find much,” I realized that there was nothing new to say, really.
No one even seemed that concerned, except Lacey. She shook her head as I talked about the pseudovisions, and then said, “I was reading online last night that people who are suicidal end relationships with people they’re angry with. And they give away their stuff. Margo gave me like five pairs of jeans last week because she said I could wear them better, which isn’t even true because she’s so much more, like, curvy.” I liked Lacey, but I saw Margo’s point about the undermining.
Something about telling us that story made her start to cry, and Ben put an arm around her, and she tucked her head into his shoulder, which was hard to do, because in her heels she was actually taller than him.
“Lacey, we just have to find a location. I mean, talk to your friends. Did she ever mention paper towns? Did she ever talk about a specific place? Was there some subdivision somewhere that meant something to her?” She shrugged into Ben’s shoulder.
“Bro, don’t push her,” Ben said. I sighed, but shut up.
“I’m on the online stuff,” Radar said, “but her username hasn’t logged on to Omnictionary since she left.”
And then all at once they were back on the topic of prom. Lacey emerged from Ben’s shoulder still looking sad and distracted, but she tried to smile as Radar and Ben swapped tales of corsage purchasing.
The day passed as it always did—in slow motion, with a thousand plaintive glances at the clock. But now it was even more unbearable, because every minute I wasted in school was another minute in which I failed to find her.
My only vaguely interesting class that day was English, when Dr. Holden completely ruined Moby Dick for me by incorrectly assuming we’d all read it and talking about Captain Ahab and his obsession with finding and killing this white whale. But it was fun to watch her get more and more excited as she talked. “Ahab’s a madman railing against fate. You never see Ahab wanting anything else in this whole novel, do you? He has a singular obsession. And because he is the captain of his ship, no one can stop him. You can argue—indeed, you may argue, if you choose to write about him for your final reaction papers—that Ahab is a fool for being obsessed. But you could also argue that there is something tragically heroic about fighting this battle he is doomed to lose. Is Ahab’s hope a kind of insanity, or is it the very definition of humanness?” I wrote down as much as I could of what she said, realizing that I could probably pull off my final reaction paper without actually reading the book. As she talked, it occurred to me that Dr. Holden was unusually good at reading stuff. And she’d said she liked Whitman. So when the bell rang, I took Leaves of Grass from my bag and then zipped it back up slowly while everyone raced off either to home or to extracurriculars. I waited behind someone asking for an extension on an already late paper, and then he left.