Chapter I
‘Someone’s happy,’ a man with a Delta badge says to me as he walks by.
If he knew how much I loved him it would terrify him.
I think of Willie in sixth grade, asking me out by the swing set.
He called me every night that week. We talked a lot about his hamsters, Sailor and Glory.
Glory stuffed her cheeks with seeds and you could press her neck and feel them all in there like a bean bag chair, he told me.
Sailor didn’t do that. Willie and I met at the mall that Saturday, walked around holding hands.
Before our parents came to pick us up, he kissed me outside the bathrooms by the food court.
He said I was a good kisser and I told him about my crush on him since the beginning of third grade.
I told him I remembered a pale blue shirt he used to wear that year, and the little drawings of rabbits he used to make at the back of his math workbook in fourth grade.
He called the next day and broke up with me.
Why, I asked before my throat closed and the tears started.
He said it was too much pressure. All that stuff I’d said about liking him for so long. He said it made him feel like Sailor.
‘Why?’ I whispered.
‘Because you have all these memories of me stuffed inside you and I don’t, and it makes me feel funny.’
I sit on my suitcase thinking about that phone conversation.
It was kind of a great comparison. And he was so honest. I haven’t told Yash that story.
I didn’t want him to see it as a cautionary tale.
When we’re in our walk-up I’ll tell him about Willie Sylvester.
He’ll like that name. Good name for a character, he’ll say.
Suitcases start emerging from a hole in the middle of the carousel, up and over they go, sliding down to the belt.
It happens fast, the way people grab them and disappear.
Soon there is only one silver suitcase going around and around.
It isn’t his. I go to look at the arrival board.
There’s another flight from Knoxville in two hours.
I go to the bathroom. I pass a bank of pay phones but I don’t use one.
I wait. After an hour, I go to the phones and call Carson to see if Yash has left a message for me.
He hasn’t. The next flight from Knoxville lands and Yash is not on that either.
I go back to the phones and dial his dad’s number. My heart is pounding.
I’m trying not to cry but I’m crying. His stepmother answers. A small blessing.
‘Oh, Jordan, we worried it would be you.’
‘What happened?’ I hear my voice ring against the three walls of phones.
‘Oh, sweetie. Calm yourself. He’s fine. He told me to tell you he’d be on the road till late and that he’d give you a call at Carson’s tomorrow.’
‘On the road? He’s driving here?’
She doesn’t answer.
‘He’s bringing his car to New York?’ He decided against that months ago.
‘He’s not driving to New York, hon. He’s gone to Atlanta. To Sam’s.’
Somehow I find a cab to Brooklyn. I howl the whole way. The driver never says a word. It’s New York. He’s seen it all.
I press her buzzer and Carson comes down in her old slippers.
My coat can’t button anymore so she sees the shape of me, the mess I’ve made.
‘Oh, honey.’
I wail in her arms.
‘Does he know?’
I shake my head.
‘Oh, my little chicken,’ she says.
She holds me for a long time, then she carries my heavy suitcase up the stairs.