38. Find Me
FIND ME
PRESENT
I fish through my gym bag beside the bed, pulling out some eye drops.
The contacts finally rehydrate after a couple minutes, and I ease them out in favor of my glasses.
Creeping across the warped floorboards, I make my way over to the closed bathroom door, expecting to hear the shower running.
I knock, only to get no answer, and opening the door confirms that the place truly is empty.
My heart involuntarily drops at the revelation, and an array of plaguing thoughts races through my head before I can insert any rationality.
All I can imagine is Jase waking up this morning and coming to terms with what we’d done. He banged Birdie and then bailed. Yep, that sounds about right, given my luck.
Sweeping the thoughts aside, I grab some fresh clothes and jump into the shower.
The sappy romantic in me half expects to find Jase walking through the front door when I get out, having brought me coffee or something as a sweet gesture, like you see in the movies.
But as I know all too well now, my life is no rom-com.
It’s a cruel bitch, and that bitch continues to laugh in my face as I come out to the still-empty bedroom.
I fall back onto the mattress and regret it instantly. Jase’s clean yet musky scent engulfs my senses, and my heart quickens as remnants from last night pour through my mind’s eye.
I don’t want to panic and jump to the conclusion that he’s ditched me here, but after another forty minutes of pacing, I officially begin freaking out. I even turn my cell back on, not surprised by the number of messages pouring in, but none are from Jase.
I roll over and bury my face into the sheets, grateful the mattress absorbs my scream. Not until my fingers curl into the sheets do I feel it.
A piece of paper.
Imagining only the worst, I brace myself for impact as I open it. Sure, it seems ridiculous that someone would run out on their bed buddy come morning, given that this is the other person’s place, but secondhand experience has taught me better.
The morning after a dorm party, I awoke to find Daniel Lockhart in Maggie’s bed…
without Mags. She’d apparently hooked up with him after a twosome between her and a bottle of tequila turned into a ménage à trois that included body shots and further questionable behavior.
An awkward-as-hell conversation with this relative stranger ensued until Maggie thankfully called, informing me that Daniel was a “stage-5 clinger.” She wouldn’t have been able to get him out of the dorm room without being forced into going out on a date with him, so she snuck out early in the a.m. to avoid the whole scenario, forcing me to play host until he finally gave up and left on his own.
I’m definitely not a clinger, but what if I’m just that bad in bed?
Sure, we’d done it several times last night, making that notion seem unlikely, but I could still be wrong…
I unfold the sheet of paper to see only two words.
“Take me.”
I turn it over, hoping to find more, but that’s it.
Take me?
What the hell is that supposed to mean?
I must have rumpled the bedsheets in my sleep more than I realized, because as I fish around the mattress for another clue, I find Jase’s car keys near his pillow.
And I’m officially a dumbass.
Grabbing my purse, I follow the instructions and take the keys down to the bar.
Thankfully, I don’t have a hangover, but the abundance of light pouring in through the front windows leaves my retinas burning.
It’s infinitely worse stepping out into the blazing summer sun, and it takes a solid minute for my eyes to adjust as I make my way across the parking lot to the old police car.
Unlocking the driver’s door, I’m greeted with an envelope taped to the steering wheel.
“Take the tube to the helm at JFK and see a captain’s view of the crow’s nest,” reads the note inside.
Oooookay.
Clearly, it’s a riddle, but I don’t even know where to begin trying to crack it. Several modes of transportation come to mind, and none make sense in correlation with each other. The underground Tube in London, JFK airport in New York, and the helm and crow’s nest of a ship.
I don’t know if it’s “against the rules,” but I’m also running on only a few hours of sleep and no coffee, so I search on my phone for anything named JFK near me. Sure enough, there’s a John F. Kennedy Boulevard not too far from my family’s house on the north side of town.
Bingo!
The vibrant green leaves of the infamous massive oak come into view well before I roll up into the lot of John F.
Kennedy Park. I thought the tree was gigantic as a kid, but I figured I had exaggerated its height.
Seeing it as an adult, however, I see that’s not the case.
It’s easily over a hundred feet tall, having only grown more over the years since I’d last been here.
The other changes to the park are easy to spot as well.
The old manually powered Merry-Go-Round has been replaced by a couple of seesaws, horse-shaped Spring Rockers take the place of the chin-up bars, and the jungle gym dome climber that was always concave on the top has been completely gutted out.
The monkey bars, swing sets, and enormous pirate-themed play fort, however, are thankfully still intact.
With the rising temperatures and the early hour, the entire park is vacant, so I don’t feel too ridiculous climbing the ladder to the upper deck of the fort.
Working through the maze of bridges and tunnels, I finally come to the bright yellow crawl tube leading to the top platform of the equipment, and taped to the pirate wheel in question is another envelope.
I expect to find a note inside, but instead, it’s a picture of the same oak looming overhead.
It also shows a boy dressed in a Steelers jersey standing on a lofty bough halfway up the tree and clinging for dear life to the thickest branch near him.
Oh, and the fire department is working to get him down since he slipped, twisted his ankle, and was too afraid to continue climbing down.
I turn the picture over to see Jase’s familiar scrawl declare, “The Crow’s Nest. Only the bravest of the brave attempt to climb the towering branches of this ancient tree. To this day, the record for highest ascent goes to Brian Mayer (as seen here), but I know something no one else does…”
I look inside the envelope again, wondering if I’ve missed another part of the clue, but nothing else is there.
After a moment, the planks of a nearby bridge pound as footsteps gallop toward me.
I look over the large tube, but I can’t see anybody.
At least, not until a set of light blue eyes and plump cheeks greets me as a little boy scuttles out of the tube beside me.
He pulls out a creased envelope from his cargo shorts and hands it over.
I try to ask him who gave him this, but the boy merely giggles and races over to the giant blue slide, dropping out of sight.
I open the next envelope to find a collection of wrinkled photographs of the Crow’s Nest. I look closer to the first one, seeing a bright yellow mass hiding in the very top of the branches.
I flip to the next image, seeing long, stringy black locks, a yellow shirt, and matching shorts hanging off a skinny little girl.
The third photograph makes me laugh, seeing giant black-rimmed glasses as she climbs back down the tree.
I look up from the picture to the oak overhead and realize that not only is this the same infamous tree, but the vantage point of the photos matches up perfectly as well.
“X marks the spot where I first saw the girl I would inevitably fall for. As you may remember, dear old Brian had climbed higher than anyone else had dared to. It may have only been halfway, but the accomplishment still made him a legend in these parts. So, color me surprised when I spotted this odd little black-haired Bird climb to the very top of the Crow’s Nest every single day throughout the spring and summer that year.
I wanted so badly to talk to her, to ask a million and one questions.
Why did she only climb it when no one else was there to witness it?
Why was she always alone? Why did she look so sad?
But then I heard about what happened to her mother, and I realized the “why” behind everything.
It was why she insisted on showing up here at odd hours of the day.
She was there to escape the noise of it all the only way she could. ”
Jase is right. After my mom passed away, everyone at home refused to be still, to digest the silence, to cope with her loss, and it made for a torrent of constant motion and chaos. There was never a moment to breathe, to think, to grieve.
But when I climbed that tree, I could escape it all—not just the chatter but even the mundane sounds most people consider white noise. There were no car engines, no music blasting from inside the vehicles, no cell phones chiming—just pure, uninterrupted quiet.
And Jase had seen it.
Seen me .
Even back then.
My heart does a little summersault, and it only continues as I read the next clue.
To Jase’s good fortune, some kind of open house is being held at our old elementary school, so I’m able to follow his clue to the cafeteria.
Nobody’s there to greet me, and there isn’t another envelope visible anywhere, leaving me to walk around until I find something.
Finally, in the far back corner, I see the next clue waiting for me on a table bench.
And once again, I smile.
Because Jase saw me. He saw I was the only person who would sit with Mary Kelly when everyone else was convinced she had cooties because they didn’t understand what eczema was.
He saw me outside my sister’s ballet studio, and the movie theater, and the library, and so many other places during so many moments I had forgotten about.