Sylvie A Little Later
Or maybe a lot later, I don’t know. I still don’t want to talk to him. To apologize, or hear his apology. I don’t want to hear that he’s joining back up with his messed-up cult. But I don’t want him to leave, either, and so when he starts to stand, I say, “Where are you headed?”
“Maybe gonna find some dinner. The people down the row are selling chili from a Crockpot for five bucks a bowl.”
“Hmm. Is it worth five bucks?”
“Probably not,” he says affably.
“Especially not your last five bucks.” I fish some money out of my wallet, but Knox shakes his head.
“I don’t need any more charity.”
“Okay.”
“Just so we’re clear.”
“We’re clear.”
A LITTLE LATER
Finally I have to ask. “Was somebody in your—crew making that chili?”
“No,” he says. “I would’ve told you.”
“Does your arm hurt?” I’m not sure why I’m asking. “Right now?”
“It does,” he allows. “Not a lot. Mostly it itches. After I’m done eating I’m thinking about sticking a spoon under there and going to town. I mean, I’ll wash it first.”
All this talking, and the only thing I’m listening for is Sylvie, I’m not going back to them, or Sylvie, the last real conversation we have isn’t going to be about parking lot chili.
But I don’t hear it. All I hear is Winslow, thwapping his tail on the ground. Maybe the psychic was right: Winslow, my constant companion; Winslow, my one and only.
“Good boy,” Knox says, without a trace of irony, without any blame in his voice for the bones Winslow broke, and when I start crying I hope it’s quiet enough to go unnoticed.
The people-watching is epic. Kids with solar system T-shirts, boys running around with super soaker water guns, a pair of twins my mother’s age rushing by in rhinestone shorts, shivering. Somewhere, someone is cooking hot dogs. A dog howls, and Winslow’s ears go up and down, up and down.
Finally, I say, “I don’t know where I’m going to go after I drop you off. I don’t want to go home, though. I definitely don’t want that. I used to—“
“What?” Knox asks.
“I thought I wanted to be alone. But it was killing me. After we met, the only thing I wanted was you. To be with you. I was almost stupid about it. Because, Knox, I should’ve known you were with them.
Dawn and your mom and their cult. You basically told me, a bunch of times, and I went on willfully ignoring it so I didn’t have to part ways with you.
I invited someone into my home who was aligned with the people who came in when I was at my lowest to drag me down even further. Who hit me in the face.”
Knox is listening.
“Lara says you and I are alike, and that’s why I’m so upset. That the stuff you did to me is so close to the stuff I did to you that it makes me hate it even more.”
“That sounds about right,” he says. “Who’s Lara?”
“Long story. I’ll tell you . . .” Later, I was about to say, but I don’t know if there is a later for us.
“I’d been planning to leave them for a long time,” he says.
“What made you go? When you did?” I’ve been talking out to the world all this time, but now I let myself lean back, look at his face. From this angle, he’s in shadow—his eyes, his stubble. The boy who ran out into the dark to find something I’d lost.
“Because I stopped believing in it,” he says.
“All they talked about were the evils of the world. But I didn’t see any good in them.
That gas station, the one I didn’t want to go into.
We ripped it off. Stole a few hundred dollars’ worth of gas.
We called it ‘bleeding the Beast.’ I don’t want to make anything bleed anymore. ”
“I’m sure you didn’t hurt anyone by stealing gas.”
“I wish that were true. I tripped the owner up when he started chasing us and he fell and hurt his arm.”
“The fortune teller saying that thing about your arm must have freaked you out.”
“Oh, it did. She nailed it.”
“So it was hurting the gas station guy?”
“It’s that, but it’s also the hypocrisy that led to it. We were all trying to act like we were free, but we kept making decisions that just bound us up in other people’s pain. Or our own pain. It’s a different kind of shackles. And I love my mom, but if I stayed, I couldn’t escape it.”
“But why did you leave them in Michigan?”
“Why anywhere?” Finally he looks at me, and there’s something in his eyes that makes my skin prickle. “There was this Girl with Serious Eyebrows. She asked me where the showers were.”
“It wasn’t just any girl? Whatever girl was there?”
“No,” he says. “It was you. Just like . . . well, I don’t know. Was I just the first guy to rescue your dog?”
“No. Of course not. When I met you, it was like . . . I knew you already.”
“I know. Maybe you were my reason, the idea of you before I knew the real Sylvie. Maybe it was the way everyone was throwing their stuff in the bus, yelling go go go. We were running from something else. We were always running.”
“That time, it was probably from me. When I caught Dawn in the van.”
“I didn’t know about the robbery. Not until you told me later, on the road.”
“I know. Anyway I don’t think I was the one who scared you all off. It was mostly that older couple with the taser. Dan and Jan.” I hug myself. “I hope they saw a lot more waterfalls. Jan liked to swim in them.”
“I wonder if Dan and Jan will make it to the eclipse.”
“There’s a lot of eclipse. A big swath of it to see in the Midwest. Maybe they’ll be somewhere out there, watching it from a waterfall.”
A LITTLE LATER
“I’ll get my tent,” he says. “I’ll see you in the morning. Do you—do you still want to see the eclipse?”
“Might as well,” I tell him, and there it is, sneaking up on me again: anticipation.