The Twelve Days of Dash & Lily(24)

I knew I was crossing the line, but I didn’t care. For once, I wanted to be the one making the lines.

“Watch your tone, Dash.”

“I got it from you, Dad,” I replied.

Then I hung up.

It should have felt good, but it didn’t feel good. It wasn’t going to end anything. It was only going to piss him off more.

My girlfriend is missing, I should have been able to tell him.

What can I do to help? he should have been able to ask.

But we were both so fundamentally incapable.

At least I’d learned the lesson that friends can make up for the failings of your family. Between third and fourth period, Sofia and Boomer stopped me in the halls, and I was grateful for it.

“We heard the news,” Sofia said. “Is there anything we can do?”

“If you want,” Boomer offered, “I can talk to that girl Amber in my chem class and see if she can put out an alert.”

“I don’t think it works that way,” Sofia said. “But it’s a nice thought.”

“It’s my pleasure,” Boomer said. Then he looked at me and his face fell. “Not that I’m taking any pleasure in this. I’m not, I swear.”

“I’m sure she’ll be back soon,” I assured him. “I think she just needed some space.”

“So maybe she’s at the planetarium!”

“I see your logic there, my friend. I’ll text her brother and ask him to check.”

This made Boomer happy. Then, worried again that he seemed too happy, he tried to get more serious again. It wasn’t a look he wore well. Finally he said, “It’s time for English—I better get going!” and hopped down the hall.

Sofia turned and watched him go. I begrudgingly admitted to myself that it was sweet, the way she did it.

I wondered if I did the same thing with Lily. And then I wondered if it was the kind of thing you’d even notice when you were doing it, or if it was one of those breathing-level things you did without realizing.

“She went to Staten Island,” I told Sofia. “I tried to find her, but I didn’t make it beyond the ferry.”

“Most people don’t,” Sofia consoled. “Unless they live in Staten Island.”

I had once been Sofia’s boyfriend. Now I wanted to ask her if I’d been a good one, if even though she and I hadn’t worked out, she believed that I could work out with someone. I just couldn’t find a way to ask the question.

But Sofia must have known anyway. Because she looked at me and said, “Wherever she is, whatever she’s doing—it’s not about you. It’s about her. And you have to let it be about her. Sometimes we don’t want to be found right away. If we step away, it’s because we need to be found on our own terms.”

“You didn’t disappear,” I pointed out.

“Maybe I did,” she replied. “Maybe I do.”

The bell rang then.

“She’s not leaving you,” Sofia told me before she went. “If she was leaving you, you’d know.”

But I wasn’t sure what I knew. Or what I noticed.

—

Finally, a little before noon, Langston texted.

Found her. Safe and sound.

I knew she didn’t have her phone yet, unless Langston had brought it with him. (I hadn’t thought to ask.) But I texted her right away anyway, figuring she’d get the message whenever she got back home.

Welcome back, I said. I missed you.

Then I waited for her reply.





Wednesday, December 17th

I don’t know why, but I wasn’t at all surprised when I stepped onto the boat and saw my brother already on it, waiting for me.

Langston pulled me to him for a hug, but it was equal parts throttle. “Don’t ever give us a scare like that again,” he said.

As the ferry pulled out from the dock, returning us to Manhattan, my brother got our parents on his phone for a FaceTime call.

“Where were you?” Mom shrieked. She looked like she hadn’t slept all night.

“I needed a time-out,” I said. I’m not proud to report I then went into full lying mode. I don’t know what it is about being a teenager, but lying seems to be necessitated with the hormonal territory. All these people in your life expecting you to act like an adult, and then getting mad when you take a stab at independence. “I went to Uncle Rocco’s panic room. I fell asleep and it was so dark in there, I didn’t wake up till half an hour ago. Sorry to have worried you.”

There was precedent for the lie. On many an annual trip to Staten Island to visit the family burial plots, I was known to take time-outs from family fights with Uncle Rocco and hide in the Cold War bunker built into a secret basement at his auto body shop, two blocks away from the cemetery.

What was I supposed to say? I’m feeling lost and confused and didn’t feel like going to school, so I went to Staten Island, and took on a new identity there. Still with me? Jahna—you’d like her, she’s much cooler than me—got lured into an enchanting gingerbread house–making operation that turned a little strange after eating a few Magic Mike cookies. Then Jahna became a naughty, Frozen-themed gingerbread-decorating machine who passed out from whatever secret ingredient made Mike’s cookies so magical, and she woke up as boring old Lily again less than an hour ago.