“Let’s walk,” he whispered.
We started walking, along the quays, and we didn’t touch until we were past the DART station. On City Quay, he took my hand. The sky was dark gray above the river. We could see our breath on the air.
Once we got to Gordon Street, I let us in and we stood for a minute in Erin’s silent room, staring at each other in the low light coming in the window, breathing, before he reached for me.
For years, I would remember almost everything about that night, the way the light came through onto the bed, the way his lips brushed my shoulders, the blur of his face above me, the feel of the corded muscles along his back, and the way he smelled—sweat and smoke and the cold metal tang of the outside air still on his cheeks and hands.
We talked in hushed voices all through the dark night, murmuring into each other’s bodies, skin on skin, lying tangled under the sheet. I memorized the shape of his neck, his shoulders, his stomach.
He said, “I can feel your heart beating.”
I put his wrist to my lips and said, “I can feel your pulse.”
“Why are you crying?”
“I don’t know.”
When the sky began to lighten, I asked him, “What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?”
He was silent for a long time. Finally he said, “I can’t.”
I traced the line of his jaw with my index finger.
I said, “One time, when I was ten, I had to go looking for Erin. My uncle woke up and she was gone and he called us. My mom went door to door and she told me to go down and check the beach. Erin loved the beach. I walked for a long time and then I saw her. She was sitting on a log and when I got to her, she didn’t even look up, she just said, ‘Leave me alone. I don’t want to go back.’ I told her everyone was worried about her and she didn’t say anything. She was stacking these rocks on the log and she kept stacking them, making little piles. I didn’t know what to do. I just sat there. Finally she got up and started walking. I just followed behind her, until we got home.”
He stroked my hair away from my temples.
“Did you ever ask her? Did you ever ask her why?”
“She would never say. I always thought it was … my fault somehow. Because I had a mother and she didn’t. Because … I just thought it was my fault.”
“You can’t think that,” he said. “Where do you think she is?” His body was warm against my cheek.
“I don’t know. I keep thinking if I could just remember more about the last time I saw her, then I would know.”
“What was the last time?” he asked quietly.
“She told me she was moving over here and I accused her of doing it just because I was supposed to come here, because I was supposed to come and then I couldn’t because my mother got sick. And I … I said some awful things to her about my mother and how Erin made her last weeks worse.” My voice caught and he rolled over and pulled me in closer.
“You have to forgive yourself,” he said after a long moment. “You have to forgive yourself for everything.”
We slept until a thin cold light came in through the windows. I opened my eyes to find him dressing. He wouldn’t even look at me.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have. I can’t do this again.”
I went back to sleep and when I woke up I was crying.
I’m taking the trash out when I see Erin standing in front of our house.
“Hey,” she says. “Can I ask you something?” She looks smaller, hunched down into her blue flannel shirt, her hair tucked into the collar.
I nod. I’m in tenth grade now, Erin’s in eleventh. I haven’t been alone with her in nearly six months. She gets rides to school now and we’ve only seen each other a few times in the last year, when she and Uncle Danny come over for dinner or in the hallways at school.
“What?”
“Will you lie to your mom and come into the city with me on the train after school tomorrow?” She waits a minute and then her face breaks into a wide grin. “I know that sounds super weird.”
I just look at her.
“Why are you asking me?”
“Because I want to go look for Brenda Flaherty and you’re the only one I can ask. But your mom can’t know because, like, my dad can’t know.” She’s holding the photocopy of the phone book page.
She’s beautiful. She’s tan from the summer and her hair has bright blond highlights. She has it in a ponytail but it’s falling down around her face. Her flannel shirt is soft, worn, the blue pulling out the blue of her eyes. She’s thin, her jeans loose around her waist.
She looks tired, but the bruises under her eyes and her messy hair only make her seem more romantic, wild. I’ve seen how boys at school are drawn to her, tried to figure out why I don’t have the same effect.
I don’t want to go, but something about her makes it impossible.
“Yeah,” I say. “Okay.”
Erin has money for a taxi and we meet up after school and she calls from the pay phone. When the taxi pulls up, it’s Aaron, this guy in his twenties who buys beer for high school kids if you throw in an extra ten dollars. “Hey, Erin,” he says. He’s a little flirty with her but she just gets in the back and looks out the window as we drive to the station.
We’re on the train before she says, “I just want to know if she’s there, you know? If we can find her.”
“How do you know it’s her?” I ask.
“I don’t, but it’s the only one I could find. I asked my dad and he won’t tell me anything. He literally won’t even talk about her. Your mom hasn’t said anything to you, has she?”
“She doesn’t know anything,” I say.
“I know. So at least … Maybe this is her.”
The address is on East Thirteenth Street and Avenue A. We take the subway to Union Square and then walk over. It gets grittier the further east we go. I’ve only been to the city with my parents or on school trips. I know Erin and Jessica come in sometimes to go to bars so I tell myself she knows what she’s doing, but after we cross Second Avenue, Erin says, “Put your wallet in your shirt in case we get mugged.”
I do what she says.
Brenda Flaherty’s address is a rundown-looking building squeezed between two bigger rundown-looking buildings. Erin stares at the door for a minute. I don’t say anything. There are a couple of bells next to the door, with numbers, not names. She rings the one next to apartment 7 and waits a minute. Nothing happens. She tries again. Nothing.
“I just realized,” I tell her. “If she works, she might not get home until six or seven.” It’s five. I told my mom I had to stay at school late to build the homecoming float. I told her I’d get a ride when we were done.
We sit down on the front stoop to wait. People come and go, but no Brenda Flaherty. A tall black guy wearing a pink sweatshirt puts his key in the lock and then turns to look at us. “You okay?”
“Yeah, we’re just … we’re looking for Brenda Flaherty. She lives in apartment seven. Do you know her?”
He watches Erin for a moment. “I live in apartment seven, and I can guarantee you there’s no one named Brenda Flaherty in there with me.”