Beautiful Graves(5)

“I was trying to make sure he didn’t mess it up.”

“Oh, Pippa.”

“Don’t Oh, Pippa me. Run back in there and give him your number!”

“Just like that?” I blink, still rooted to the ground.

She hitches one shoulder up. “You can flash him your boobs for dramatic impact, I guess.”

I cut through the air like a bird of prey. I burst inside the pharmacy, whipping my head from side to side. If Smoker Dude asks why I’m here, I’m going to tell him I lost my wallet. I pace the aisles. I check the restrooms. Even the photo booth. Smoker Dude is nowhere to be seen.

Panic grows inside me. What if he left? It’s not like he really came here to buy a lip pencil. What if I’ve missed him? What if this is it? I’ll never find out his name. Where he lives. Whether he is Team Guns N’ Roses or Nirvana (he’d better be Team Guns N’ Roses, or he’ll have a lot to answer for).

“He go after you,” tsks the pharmacist over the counter in a thick Spanish accent.

I turn to him. “He did?”

“Yeah, he was fast.” He smiles apologetically. “But you, faster.”





TWO


For the next week and a half, we eat and drink and visit cathedrals and Camp Nou and Bershka. Pippa hooks up with guys in clubs, I shop till I drop, and Smoker Dude becomes almost a myth, someone I’m not sure even existed anywhere but in my head.

Four days before we’re scheduled to go back to the States, we even find a good deal to Gran Canaria and hop on a plane. Pippa makes fast friends with a group of American girls on the plane, and this is how we find ourselves at a beach party the night before we’ll board a flight back home.

The moon is fat and white. It hangs over my head like a lollipop. The sand, tan and cool between my toes, is different from the blond grains of San Francisco.

I sit in front of a bonfire, pop music blasting from the speakers. There are probably a hundred people here, all in different stages of undress, drinking and dancing.

Pippa is somewhere among them. She disappeared twenty minutes ago with three girls from Tallahassee for a game of flip cups.

I sip my bottled beer and think about Smoker Dude. More specifically, how brutally random life is. All that separates me from him in this day and age is his full name. I want to be Gwyneth Paltrow in Sliding Doors. I want to make it to the train. I want a do-over. To choose right this time.

Beside me, I notice a black canvas backpack. There’s a notebook spilling out of it. It looks abandoned. Thrown haphazardly, looking for a new owner. My fingers tingle to touch it. The girl hasn’t met a book she didn’t want to read, my mom often brags, and it’s true.

I’m aware that reading this thing without permission is wrong. Still, temptation crawls over my limbs like ivy.

I mean, it is strewn here, on a beach full of people, with the bag open. If it were private, its owner would carry it with them.

I decide to give the owner of the notebook ten minutes before I read it. If they went to the bathroom, they’ll have a chance to stop me. If they are somewhere else, well, then they don’t care so much about anyone reading it.

Ten minutes pass, then fifteen. I pick it up and open it at a random page. My heart is racing in my chest. I feel like a thief. It looks like some kind of journal . . . an essay? The words bleed into one another, like they were written in a great hurry.

It’s two in the morning and he thinks he is going to jump. Maybe jumping is all that’s left to do. And is it pathetic that a part of him doesn’t want to jump because he is afraid of what his boss would say when he doesn’t show up at work tomorrow?

But that’s exactly the problem. The reason why he is here, on this roof, in the first place. He worked so hard making a living, he forgot to live. Now this cliché that you can find on a cheap mug at a dollar store has brought him to the point of suicide.

He had his chance and he blew it.

He should’ve run after her faster.

And when he almost reached her, he should have yanked the back of her shirt without caring what it’d look like.

He should have told her she was perfect.

But he didn’t, so now he needs to jump.

Jump . . . or do something else. Even more ambitious. Pack a bag and go to New Orleans. To look for her.

My eyes sting. It looks like a short story. Or the beginning of a novel. I flip the pages, eager for more, but an array of blank pages stare back at me.

A hand presses against my shoulder, making my head jerk up.

“No reading, missy!”

Pippa is all drunken, swaying limbs. I sag with relief because it’s not the owner of the notebook. I also slump with disappointment—for the exact same reason.

“Come. Get shit faced. Live a little.” Pippa tosses the notebook to the sand, then pulls me up and dances her way to a cluster of people. A ring of bronzed bodies moves around us, trapping me in. I shift my feet from side to side, awkward like the skin I’m in has been newly sewn onto me. I try to guess who the journal belongs to. The girl with the locs? The guy with the chest tats?

I drift away from Pippa. She is dancing with her new friends, shouting all the lyrics to the songs in their faces.

I make my way toward the sea. By the shore is the only slice of sand that’s not populated. I stop. Take a closer look at the famous Neptuno de Melenara. It’s a four-meter-tall sculpture of Neptune rising from the sea, not too far away from the coastline. The water is metallic blue. It glimmers under the stars. I dip a toe into it. The temperature isn’t freezing. I could swim my way to the statue. I’m a strong swimmer. My brother and I grew up surfing. Renn (his name means “reborn” or “little prosperous one”) has even made a career out of it.