What Happens to Goodbye(74)
Deb had also created a Listserv for the model project, as well as a blog that documented the progress as we put it together. Her e-mails were just like Deb herself: cheerful, concise, and sort of relentless, landing in my inbox on an almost daily basis. There was one thing about the model, though, that I wanted to do on my own.
“Mclean? ”
I blinked, then looked over at the table beside me. Sitting there, in his parka with a book in his hands, was Jason, the prep cook from Luna Blu. “Hey,” I said, surprised. “When did you get here?”
“Actually, I’ve been here.” He smiled. “I was just being antisocial. I didn’t realize that was you who was talking to Lauren until I turned around a minute ago.”
“Lauren? ”
He nodded at the reference desk, where the librarian who’d helped me was now typing away at a computer, her eyes focused on the screen. “She’s the best when it comes to hunting down information. If she can’t help you find what you’re looking for, no one can.”
I onsidered this as he picked up his own book—a worn paperback of something called A Prayer for Owen Meany—opening it again to his place. “So you hang out here a lot?”
“I guess,” he replied. “I worked here for a while when I was in high school. You know, summers and after school.”
“Wow,” I said. “That must have been different from the kitchen at Luna Blu.”
“Nothing is like working at Luna Blu,” he agreed. “It’s like contained chaos. Probably why I like it so much.”
“Dave said you went to Harvard,” I said.
“Yep.” He coughed. “But it didn’t really work out, so I came back here and took up cooking for a living. Natural career progression, of course.”
“It sounds like it was a lot of pressure,” I said. He raised his eyebrows, not sure what I meant. “The school you and Dave went to, and the college courses you took, being so driven academically.”
“It wasn’t all bad,” he replied. “Just not what I wanted, eventually.”
I nodded. Then he went back to his book, and I turned my attention to the one open in front of me. After looking through some tiny-typefaced documents and a few sketches, I turned a page and there it was: a map from twenty years earlier of the area of downtown that included Luna Blu. I leaned in closer, scanning the pages until I found my street, and my own house, identified only by a parcel number and the label SS DOM: single-story domicile. I ran my finger over it, then over Dave’s next door, before moving back across the page to the square behind it. There it was, the shape familiar, and also listed with a parcel number. Above it, it said only HOTEL.
Weird. I’d been expecting something other than a house, but for some reason this was a surprise to me. I grabbed a pen and an old receipt from my purse and wrote the parcel number of the hotel on it, as well as the official address, then folded it away and stuffed it in my pocket. I was just stacking the books into a pile when my phone beeped. It was a text from Deb.
STOW REMINDER: YOU’RE SCHEDULED 4 TO 6 TODAY! ?
I looked at my watch. It was 3:50. Right on schedule. I picked up my bag, sliding the phone into it. As I got to my feet, Jason turned around again.
“You going to the restaurant?” I nodded. “Mind if I walk with you?”
“Not at all.”
We left through the reading room, passing Lauren, who was helping an older woman in a baseball cap at the computers. “Thanks for your help with the catalog system earlier,” she said. “You’re a genius!”
Jason shook his head, clearly embarrassed, as I followed him out the main doors and onto the street. We walked a little bit and then I said, “So it’s not just Tracey and Dave who think so. You are brilliant.”
“Three people does not make a consensus,” he said, pulling his hat down over his ears. “So. Did you find what you were looking for?”
“Sort of,” I told him. We kept walking, crossing the street. A few blocks ahead, I could see Luna Blu, its signature azure awning in the distance. “I’m closer than I was, at any rate.”
We walked another short block. The snow was still on the ground, but gray and dirty looking now, hard and slippery beneath our feet. “Well, that’s a start,” he said. “That’s good, right?”
I nodded. This was true. But anyone can begin. It was the part with all the promise, the potential, the things I loved. More and more, though, I was finding myself wanting to find out what happened in the end.
“There you are!” Deb said as I came up the stairs. “We were getting worried! I thought you were coming right at four.”
“It’s only five after,” I pointed out.
“Yes, but, Mclean,” Dave, who was sitting cross-legged on the floor, said, “you know that the STOW waits for no man. Or woman.”
“Sorry,” I said, flicking him as I passed. “I had something to do. I’ll make it up, I promise.”
“Yes, you will,” he said.
Deb, over at the table, began rummaging through some pieces, humming to herself as I bent down over my sector. For a long time, we worked in silence; the only sounds were distant voices from the kitchen downstairs. Hearing them, I kept thinking about Jason, what he’d said to me about Harvard and the choices he’d made. Amazing how you could get so far from where you’d planned, and yet find it was exactly where you needed to be.
About a half hour later, there was a loud knock from the bottom of the stairs—BANG! BANG! BANG!—and Deb and I both jumped. Dave, though, hardly looked fazed as he called out over one shoulder, “Yo. We’re up here.”
Sarah Dessen's Books
- Where Shadows Meet
- Destiny Mine (Tormentor Mine #3)
- A Covert Affair (Deadly Ops #5)
- Save the Date
- Part-Time Lover (Part-Time Lover #1)
- My Plain Jane (The Lady Janies #2)
- Getting Schooled (Getting Some #1)
- Midnight Wolf (Shifters Unbound #11)
- Speakeasy (True North #5)
- The Good Luck Sister (Wildstone #1.5)