Chapter Thirty-Three
They’d pulled into the motel so late the night before that Nora hadn’t seen much beyond the faded neon VACANCY sign and the silhouette of pine trees looming like sleepy sentinels in the dark.
But now—morning.
Nora sat at a weather-stained picnic table, notebook open, pen moving.
The lake stretched before her like a silver platter from her mother’s china hutch.
Mist curled from its surface as the sun peeked over the hills.
There was a stillness to the lake that was a mix of something eerie and tranquil all at once.
Birds chirped from overhead, and the air smelled like pine needles, dew, and a hint of motel coffee drifting from a cracked window behind her.
Her bare feet pressed into the cool, damp grass, and she let the sensation ground her. Anchoring her to this moment. To this place.
She wasn’t writing a story. Not a poem, scene, or even a character sketch. She was just writing an amphigory of what was. The slant of the light. The way the water caught it like glass. The ache in her lower back from sleeping half-curled in the Lincoln. The heartbeat of being alive.
Freewriting had been encouraged by her teachers, but writing without purpose wasn’t an indulgence she’d allowed herself.
Normally, her pen worked in desperate bursts to capture something before it vanished.
A story idea. A snippet of overheard conversation.
A one-liner that might someday become a first sentence.
But now…she was just observing. Soaking in the world like her mother soaked in a hot bath after vacuuming the whole house from top to bottom.
This was what it meant to be a writer. To notice. To translate air color and sensation into ink.
She wanted, more than anything, for whoever might read this notebook someday to sit down on this exact bench—feel the splintering wood under their thighs, the morning air’s chill, the tickle of dew on their ankles—and know.
The door creaked open behind her. And she saw her mother poking her head out, hair still tousled from sleep, brow furrowed. She looked panicked for a second, not like she had last night on the side of the road, but still, it was an emotion that she could pick up quickly.
They’d all been too spooked by Eleanor’s vanishing act. On edge now like every absence might be permanent.
“I’m right here,” Nora called gently, lifting her notebook with a wave.
Leanne strolled across the gravel lot, her gaze lifting toward the lake, which sparkled beneath the rising sun. “Wow,” she breathed, squinting into the morning light. “I didn’t see this last night. It’s beautiful.”
Nora closed her notebook apace, the soft snap of the cover more of a reflex than anything else.
She wasn’t ready to share what she’d written—not yet.
The idea of calling herself a writer still made her throat feel too tight, and she feared she might choke on the word.
Writing was still sacred, and she wasn’t ready to hand it over for inspection.
Lucky for her, her mother didn’t ask.
Instead, Leanne tilted her head back and closed her eyes, allowing the sun to warm her face. The light caught in her eyelashes and gave her a glow Nora had never really noticed before. She looked…peaceful.
Nora smiled. She knew exactly what that felt like.
They hurried through their morning routine, neither of them wanting a repeat of the long lines they’d endured at past festivals. Nora pulled her hair back into a loose ponytail, slipped on her sandals, and tried not to think too hard about whether Joe would be there.
It had been weeks since she’d seen him. Weeks since he’d vanished into the music-scattered sunset with his camera, notebook, and maddening ability to make her laugh at exactly the wrong time.
But she hadn’t felt too far from him, looking for the Chronicle at every newspaper stand they saw, reading his byline and smiling.
She hadn’t meant to fall for anyone over a single summer.
Especially not Joe, destined to vanish once they returned to school that fall.
But her stomach flipped anyway, and she knew—just as she knew when a song was about to crescendo, that if she saw him again, it’d be like pressing play on something she couldn’t pause.
They paid for their tickets and pushed through the gates, the thump of bass rumbling in their chests.
The concert grounds were already a blur of movement—bodies swaying, hands lifted, long skirts twisting in the breeze. Cigarette smoke curled lazily through the air, blending with spilled beer, damp grass, and illicit herbal scents.
Up on stage, Santana had his guitar slung low, coaxing wild, feral sounds from the strings like the instrument was a living, breathing thing. His fingers were a blur of motion, his head nodding in time with the drums. He was electric. Alive. Pure genius.
Nora and Leanne found a spot near the center of it all, unfurled a blanket, and sank down, both of them instinctively pulling off their shoes to dig their toes into the grass.
For the first time, they weren’t in a rush. They weren’t darting through the crowd looking for Eleanor. They were here, simply existing in the now, knowing the show wasn’t over, and neither was the story.
Leanne leaned back on her elbows and smiled at Nora. “We’ll find her.”
“I know,” Nora said.
And just as she was about to close her eyes and soak in the next guitar solo, a familiar voice drifted from behind her.
“Well, aren’t you a sight for sore eyes?”
Nora glanced up, and there he was—Joe, notebook in hand, a pencil tucked behind his ear like some roving journalist straight out of a French new-wave film.
“I never really got that phrase,” she said, shielding her eyes from the sun. “‘Sight for sore eyes.’ Are your eyes hurting or something?”
He chuckled, tapping the pencil against his temple. “Only my ego. But I’ll survive.”
She laughed too, the sound light and unguarded, and hopped to her feet, brushing grass off the back of her jean shorts. “Mom, I’m going to take a walk with Joe.”
Leanne didn’t even open her eyes, just gave a lazy nod, one hand folded beneath her head while she basked in the afternoon sun and the dulcet riffs of Santana.
The crowd thickened as they wove between booths—macramé vests, tie-dye headbands, patchouli-scented everything.
Music floated through the air, bleeding from one tent to another.
A couple kissed with reckless abandon near a hot dog stand, and someone in the distance let out a whoop that could’ve been joy or just the mushrooms kicking in.
“How’s the story chasing going?”
“Kinda stalled,” Joe admitted. “I was able to get through to Shep’s manager, and your grandmother agreed to an interview, but then she vanished. Again.”
“A lot like she’s been doing with us.”
Joe chuckled. “Exactly, but—”
A man in a rainbow poncho and round John Lennon glasses leaped in front of them, nearly tripping over his own sandals. He held up a pair of pink fuzzy handcuffs like a prize from behind door number three.
“Ever tried love handcuffs?” The man’s eyes gleamed.
Nora’s eyes rounded. “Love handcuffs?”
“They’re symbolic,” the man said with a little shimmy. “But also literal.”
Joe raised an eyebrow, a teasing challenge in his gaze that she couldn’t help but be drawn to. “I’m game if you are.”
“Oh, God,” Nora muttered, rolling her eyes. “Fine. For the bit.”
She held out her wrist, expecting a quick clip and an even quicker laugh. The man slapped the cuffs on both of them—ticklish pink fuzz and all—then cackled and bolted into the crowd like he was training for the music festival’s first annual handcuff heist.
Nora looked down at their wrists. “Wait… Did he just—”
Joe tugged gently, the chain between them clinking. “Yup.”
“Oh my God, we’re going to be stuck together for hours.
We don’t have a key! How are we going to explain this to my mom?
” Nora groaned, still tugging at the chain between them.
“Somehow, I don’t think she’s going to find it very funny,” she added, cheeks flaming as festivalgoers passed by, chuckling at the sight of them joined together by fuzzy pink handcuffs.
Joe raised an eyebrow, the very picture of calm mischief. “I guess you could say we’re…in this together?”
She shot him a look.
A sparkle lit his eyes and he nodded extra seriously. “Too early for bad puns?”
But then she laughed—half from panic, half from the ridiculousness of it all. Joe joined her, shaking loose some of the angst.
“We need to find that guy. Chase him down. Get the key.”
Joe grinned. “Wow, we’re just stacking up missing persons like it’s a full-time job. Your grandma, the mystery band, and now…Fuzzy Poncho Man.”
“Definitely way too soon,” she said, though the smile on her face stayed.
There was something electric in the air now—besides the cigarette smoke and the heavy scent of clove and fried onions. The music shifted, a vinyl-scratch twist of fate as the ironic opening riffs of “Break On Through (To the Other Side)” roared across the speakers, and Nora froze.
Maybe this was it.
Her breakthrough.
To the side of herself she kept hidden beneath perfect grades and polite smiles. The one who scribbled poems in the margins of textbooks and didn’t always want to follow the rules.
“Actually,” she said slowly, the edges of a grin forming. “On second thought…maybe we play this out. See where it goes?” It was the most let-loose thing she could have ever said.
Joe looked surprised. Then his lips curved, slow and full of something that made her stomach tumble.
“You sure?”
She didn’t answer with words. Instead, she lifted their cuffed hands high in the air, laughing as people around them whooped and danced in the mud. She swayed to the beat, singing along with Jim Morrison, loud, off-key, and completely uncaring.
And then, like it was the most natural thing in the world, Joe tugged her gently toward him—one hand on her hip, the other still bound to hers—and kissed her.
This wasn’t her first kiss, not by a long shot. There’d been plenty of awkward spins of the bottle, and one high school boyfriend who thought being “passionate” meant trying to swallow her whole.
But this kiss wasn’t rushed or awkward or desperate. Rather like stepping into a story she hadn’t realized she was already writing.
Like breaking through to the other side.