Read Ask the Passengers Online
Authors: A. S. King
Ask the Passengers (11 page)
Kristina yells for me to hurry and I kiss him on the ear, say good-bye and squeeze out from under him right before he squishes me that tiny bit too hard. Which is creepy and makes me promise myself never to fake-date him again.
WE HEAR THINGS.
“DO YOU HAVE ANYTHING
you want to tell us?” Kristina asks from the front seat as we drive to Atlantis the long way because we have some time to kill.
“No.”
“We hear things,” Justin says.
“Will you guys stop saying that? If we all believed what we hear, then you two would be screwing each other in the backseat right now. And there’d be barking. But that’s not true, is it?”
“You seem so distracted lately,” Kristina says. “We just want to help.”
I sigh. I’m sick of lying, so I pick something true to say. “I
hate that I’m lying to Jeff like this. It feels wrong. I think Claire would be fine with you guys covering for me. You could tell her that you’re trying to find me a soul mate at the movies or something. It would totally work.”
“We could do that,” Justin says. “But that’s not what we’re asking.”
“Yeah. I’d be happy to do that. I mean, that’s what friends do, right? And we’re best friends,” Kristina says.
“Which is why you should tell her,” Justin says.
“Because something is up, and we know it,” Kristina says.
Oh, God. I feel like this is the worst time ever to tell her anything. She’s been mad all week about it, and she doesn’t even know what
it
is yet.
She turns around in the passenger seat, and she looks at me. I look at her. She isn’t smiling. “Dude. What the hell? You know everything about me! You’re my best friend,” she says. “Aren’t you?”
I’m speechless, which makes me look more like something is up.
“Seriously. What the hell is up?”
“I—I can’t tell you.”
She gets concerned. “Are you okay? Did something bad happen?”
“God no. I’m just—oh, God. I don’t know. I’m—kinda seeing someone. So this whole Jeff thing isn’t going to work out.”
She tilts her head. The look on her face is a mix of girlish excitement and some sort of pain. “Who is it? That guy from your humanities class? What’s his name? Kyle? Ken?”
“Holy shit, no. Clay? Blerg. No. Not a guy. I mean—”
“Not a guy?” she says. “Not a guy.” She stops and looks more pained than excited. “Not a guy?”
“I don’t know,” I say. It’s only hitting me now how hurt she’s going to be about my keeping this a secret.
“Dude—you don’t know who you’re going out with?” She hits me nicely on my arm. “Oh, my God, Astrid! Just tell us!”
“I don’t know. I’m still not even sure, I don’t think. I mean, how do I know?”
“It’s not a guy?”
I shake my head.
Justin hoots. “Dude! You’re one of us!”
I keep shaking my head, and I add a shrug, but I’d be lying if I told you that his excitement and invitation into
one of them
isn’t making me cringe. Because I’m not in this to be a member of some club. I’m not going through this so I can lock myself in the
one of them
box.
“So, you’re questioning?” she says.
“I guess.”
“If she has a girlfriend, she’s not questioning,” Justin says.
“Shut up,” Kristina says. Then she turns back to me. “That’s completely normal. Especially with me and Justin around. Seriously. Totally normal.”
That’s not what they’d say.
They’d say:
I think she likes girls.
They’d say:
I bet one night with me would make her change her mind.
“So who is it?” I am so not ready to tell her this and I am
so afraid she will be pissed if I don’t. But I can’t. She sees my pain and says, “No rush. These things take time.”
Kristina is three beers into her night, and she says, “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me, dude.”
I feel guilty and make a face to show it.
“Were you scared?” Justin asks.
Chad says, “I remember being scared.” This makes me smile at him.
I pretend I want to dance to escape the conversation, but Kristina comes with me. Donna joins her and the two of them get all touchy-feely with each other and it makes me uncomfortable, so I dance my way over to the corner and then stand off to the edge and try not to watch them.
When Kristina sees I’ve escaped, she dances toward me, Donna right behind her.
“Why don’t you call your girlfriend?” Kristina yells. The music is really loud.
“Nah,” I say.
“Why not?”
“Just because,” I say. God. Life was a lot simpler a few hours ago when she thought I was just an asexual sea sponge.
“It’s me, isn’t it?” Kristina says in her nervous three-beers-in babbling. For all her pushy, ponytailed U. Valley girl confidence, she sure does have weak spots. “Why you won’t call her?” she says, pointing to her chest.
“You’re drunk.”
“No. Think about it, Astrid.”
She’s right. It’s her. How can I be myself around Dee and Kristina in the same room? I’m not ready for that yet. I only just told Kristina tonight.
I say, “What happened to ‘these things take time’?”
She stops at that and nods. “Yeah, but you should tell me who it is.”
“I’ll tell you later. It’s not the right time or place.”
“Is she from school? Do I know her?”
I give her an annoyed look.
“Come on. Just a hint,” she says. I look at her again and roll my eyes. “Okay, I’ll just guess then. Is it Briana? Lisa? That chick who homeschools but plays in the band—what’s her name? Kelly something?”
I cock my head and look even more annoyed than I looked a minute ago.
“It’s a hockey player, isn’t it? That’s why you went to a few of Ellis’s hockey games this year,” she says. I stay poker-faced. “Is it Kira? Kelly? Michelle?” Multiple choice. Hmm. Maybe it’s not the worst way for this to come out. Not something Frank S. would be proud of me for, but it could work. “Am I getting warmer? Colder?” she asks.
“No,” is all I say. “All you’re getting is annoying.”
“Colder. I can read your mind. If it’s not one of our hockey players, then maybe…”
My face twitches. Darn it.
“Another school. Yes. How about—Dee Roberts?”
Shit. I try to give her a shut-the-hell-up look.
“Oh, my God! It’s Dee Roberts, isn’t it?”
I say nothing and try to keep looking annoyed.
“It
is
! Hah! No way!”
“Stop. Let me just tell you when I’m ready.”
“You don’t need to tell me. I already know. I totally should have figured that out. You’ve been working together for months. I’m slipping.”
I sigh.
“Oh, come on. It’s not a big deal that I know. Dee’s been out for years anyway. It’s not like you just outed her or anything.”
“I didn’t tell you it was Dee Roberts.”
“Yes, but you didn’t
not
tell me it was her, either,” she says. “You should call her and tell her to get her ass out here,” she says.
“Why? So you can gloat about how you guessed?”
“I don’t gloat.”
“Anyway, you’d have never known if I didn’t tell you in the first place. You’d think I was still an androgynous bookworm.”
“Hold on. You’re not an androgynous bookworm?” she asks, and pulls out her phone. “Shit. I need to update my files.”
The drive to the Superfine parking lot is fun. We blast a few songs they play at Atlantis, and we sing along out of tune. I watch the scenery go by—the occasional farmhouse and the
cornfields. Then the Legion diner, where I remember Jeff pressing me into his car too forcefully.
When Donna and Chad exit the car, Justin says, “I’m so happy for you, Astrid. I wish I would have known before so I could have helped you.”
“Me too,” Kristina says. Not completely convincingly. Almost like she might be a little mad or something.
“I guess I had to find my own time. I dunno. I’m still not really sure, you know?”
“That’ll change,” Kristina says. Which is warmer than the last thing she said.
I don’t say anything else the whole way up Main Street, and when Justin stops in front of my house to let me out, I say good-bye and close the car door quietly. I walk in the front door, lock up, turn off the lights and then walk out the back door and lie on my table. I don’t have any thoughts, because I’m not sure what thoughts to have. I know I just changed things, but I’m not sure if the change is for better or worse. So, I just send my love up. Away from here because love shouldn’t hang around confusion like this. It deserves a full commitment.
Then I wish it were as easy to send myself away from here as it is to send my love. I think I deserve a full commitment, too. From my family. From my friends. From my girlfriend. From myself. And for some reason, I think starting over somewhere else would be the best way to do it.
So I send my love, and I ask the passengers:
Where are you going? Can I come with you? Maybe where you’re going, I could finally feel at home.
PASSENGER #338790
BILL DERRINGER, SEAT 12F
FLIGHT #795
LOS ANGELES TO PHILADELPHIA
BUSINESS CLASS UPGRADE
Going home again isn’t something I thought I’d ever do. Not for their weddings or their babies or their graduations. Not even for their funerals. The idea was:
Get out and never go back.
But the idea changed when I heard Nuna got cancer.
Cancer. My little sister. I hadn’t even met her husband yet, and they’re married seventeen years. Three kids. A little house by the river, right down the road from where we grew up. Right down the road from all those assholes who gossiped me out of town.
I Googled them. Most of them still live there. Until cancer, I cared about this.
Until cancer, you care about a lot of bullshit that doesn’t really matter.
When I left, I called
them
cancer. I said their gossip was
like
cancer. I realized too late that gossip can’t kill you unless you let it. But cancer? Cancer doesn’t give a shit how much you want to live. If it wants to kill you, it will.
Cancer killed my father. I didn’t come back for his funeral because I’d made my mind up to never go home again… and because he never understood my need to move away, and took it as a personal affront. Then I missed my mother’s funeral because I was on business
in Japan, and I didn’t think she would want me there after the letter she sent after Dad’s funeral. She said I’d broken her heart. She said my alienating the family would one day seem foolish to me, as it did to her. She said:
One day it will hit you.
Last week. Last week it hit me. Cancer. Nuna. My final good-bye.
Now she’s gone. And I’ve packed my black suit, and Anne will meet me for the funeral in two days so I have someone to hold my hand.
I stare from seat 12F into the dark sky, and I see the moon. It’s not quite full, but it’s big. And then Nuna appears outside my window. She’s healthy. She has her hair. She has that smile. We stare at each other for a long time. She sends me this feeling—like she’s telling me she loves me. Like she’s telling me it’s okay that I left. Then she takes off and flies around the moon, and I get that feeling like I’ve just gone over one of those hills in a car, at just the right speed.
I laugh at her and feel like I did when we were kids and she’d show off doing handsprings in the backyard. I keep my eye on her and she keeps flying around the moon and I keep laughing.
This is how I want to remember her. Nuna flying around the moon, smiling.