The Night My Sister Went Missing (20 page)

And I prayed for Stacy, maybe half
to
her, and Casey heard me, and she started praying just as loud as Mr. Kearney and his two sons.

That was the first experience in my life that made me understand religion—as much as you can "understand" religion. I was sending out words that had little to do with sense but had everything to do with communicating, with
belonging. I was in a row with two slobs; their father, who was a pig; a girl ripped to shreds by barnacles; and a woman who was probably as embarrassed by her talents as she was proud of them. And we were praying our fool heads off. And it should have looked pathetic, and it probably would have if we hadn't been in the dead back row for no one to see.

Mr. Kearney's fifteen-hundredth reciting of the Lord's Prayer hadn't managed to save his daughter, and yet he was bothering to pray it again—and something behind his lawn mower voice was making all of us say it, and to feel something that is beyond understanding. But I didn't feel pathetic. I felt like I was exactly where I belonged ... surrounded by people who had been through the worst, the most embarrassing, the most mysterious of life's dealings, and were willing to not sell their souls to have friends.

After we said "Amen," Mr. Kearney wiped his eyes, but doing so was pointless, a major flood. He managed to say something directly to me, which I think had to do with how ridiculous we probably looked compared to people who seemed so stoically together, like the Marvels. He said with lawn mower force, "It ain't over till it's over."

I have never seen him again. I want to see him, but I'm a far cry from where he is. I think he and his sons are back in Connecticut. I'm in California now. I spend a lot of time watching an ocean where the sun sets over it instead of rising over it. But I watch every sunset that I can, and I think of Stacy every time.

I think of writing to the Kearney men, or calling, even,
but something stops me. We'd collected ourselves as best we could at the end of the service, and the oldest son, Richie, exchanged e-mail addresses with me and Casey. But some people you remember as bigger than they are, and you don't want to break that up into smaller human pieces. They haven't written to me, either, so I leave it alone.

Starting the first of August, I did a trek cross-country with nothing but a mountain bike and a thousand bucks in cashed-in college savings. I landed in Santa Monica sometime in early December. I've bused a lot of tables, learned to play the guitar, and kept blogging from my room in a little Santa Monica motel that backs up to the beach—the room I've called home all year.

Casey e-mails that my blogs have become famous on the island, along with pictures I send that she shows around. She says that I've stirred up a shit storm with former friends and wannabes, what with all my liberal hair-mess guitar playing, with motel living and my West Coast surfer-boy life. I've
wanted
to stir up storms. I want people to remember what they did to Stacy—because she was a little too flamboyant, a little too rich, a little too poor, a little too giving, a little too bratty. I love thinking of what hells people go through over someone who doesn't conform well, but who happens to be out of firing range.

Beyond that, I don't know what to say about what happened to Stacy. Would it help to run around high schools, giving speeches about not judging? Casey says that no mat
ter where you go, there will always be Mystic Marvels, lots of people who refuse to know the difference between "good" and "the appearance of good." To most people, she says, appearances are everything. Maybe I'm pulling a cop-out, but I believe my sister. I'm not up for speeches.

My dad came out in early May, to complete a second deal with Paramount. He's got major bucks all of a sudden, and he pays for this motel room. I've refused to go east and see their new digs in the beach block, but I'm happy for them.

I was glad he came. Not only did I miss his blather about many aspects of the human condition, but I had some news that I wanted to tell him to his face. We got back to my motel from the airport, and out on the balcony I gave him a glass of two-buck-a-bottle Boone's Farm, one type of alcohol I can hack without puking, if I limit myself to one glass. I toasted the Pacific, and then him.

"I'm going to school in the fall. I've even declared a major."

He clanged glasses with me, looking hopeful. "Uh ... med school?"

"Nuh-uh."

"Engineering?"

"Nuh-uh."

He knows me better than that. When I got scared to say, he plopped down on my beach chair, and I sat on the concrete beside him.

He drank fast, nervously. "Tell me no. Not my offspring"

I had never really thought until then how much pressure to go to the Naval Academy had come from him.

"Do you
like
peanut butter, Kurt?" he asked. "Do you want to spend fifteen years having your face smeared into the concrete? There's no politics in the writing world—I cannot pull strings for you. I cannot do it for you."

I told him I don't want to write any
bad
novels, so I needed his help.

"The only way around is through," he told me. "You'll write bad fiction for ten years. At least"

Well, I've been blogging all year, and I'm trying to sidestep the "bad fiction" route with a "true story." And maybe it is still bad ... maybe this reads like so many flashback blogs with bad transition statements and a poor attempt at cleanup. But my life on Mystic is finished, my years in high school are behind me—though I'll never stop thinking about Stacy. If nothing else, in all these words, I have a memorial to Stacy Kearney that tells as much as you can tell about somebody whose life was a mystery, an endless secret, and yet, you know you're right to love her forever.

And I guess when I'm a really good writer, I'll know how to end a story better. 'Cuz all I can think to say is, "Cheers to surf—she's another great and mysterious babe—and cheers to peace."

Peace is good, brothers and sisters.