“Where would we go?”
I must look shocked because she starts to laugh at whatever expression is on my numb face.
“Not right now, Jonah. I mean, if we could just back out of this garage, peel down the street.” Her open palm paints an invisible line from me to her side of the windshield. “If we could just go, where would that be? Anywhere in this whole world, where would that be?”
My brow lifts with my rapid blinking eyes.
“Oh, well . . . hmm.” I’m not great at imagining things beyond the practical. Part of my father’s genes. We aren’t really dreamers.
“Maybe Tommy’s?”
Her laugh is immediate and loud. I’d be embarrassed if it weren’t so surprising to hear. There’s a raspy quality to her laughter, one I didn’t expect, especially given how little she has to laugh about.
“I give you the option of anywhere in the entire world, and you want to drive four blocks to the hot dog joint. That’s classic, Jonah. Truly.” She grazes my arm with her fingertips as she continues to be amused by me, and I laugh along with her on the outside. Inside, I’m logging this memory of the time I both made her laugh and she touched me intentionally. Every time she says my name, too—a memory is logged. I shouldn’t be surprised she knows my name, given we have “known” each other for years. It’s just that I’ve never heard her actually say it before.
“Okay, so I should think bigger?” I force myself to relax, twisting to the side in my seat in an attempt to match her. I lean my shoulder into the seat back and grab the strings from my hooded sweater, busying my hands with the frayed ends.
“At least beyond town limits,” she demands.
Her arms cross her chest like an expectant teacher waiting for my answer to a question I didn’t hear in class. I tighten my lips and look down to the space between us to avoid her stare while I think of something that doesn’t make me sound like a loser. I could say Hawaii or Rome, but that’s not the point of this. It needs to be a real escape, one that these wheels could accommodate.
“I always wanted to hike in the Blue Ridge Mountains.” I lift my gaze with my answer and breathe a sigh of relief that she smiles in response. She approves. It was the only thing I could say that would not have been totally made up. I wouldn’t say I’m pining to go there exactly, but my parents used to camp there before they had me, and Grandpa Hank always talks about the fishing. I’ve never done either of those things—fished or camped. Seems like a guy my age should try it once.
“Blue. Ridge. Mountains.” She sighs out the words, staring up at the ceiling as she sinks deeper into the corner where her seat meets the door. Eleanor is a dreamer. My mom’s eyes dazzle just like hers are now. They haven’t in a long time, but they used to often—when she read me bedtime stories, when she planned road trips and vacations for the three of us, when she fantasized about getting a family dog.
“We’d camp, right? With a tent? Or . . . back there?” She reaches over the seat and points to the back of the Bronco. I swallow as I dare fantasize about a camping trip with Eleanor Trombley that involves the two of us sleeping side-by-side in such tight quarters.
“I mean, there are lodges and stuff—”
“No, we’d camp for sure. That’s the only way to do it. In the summer.” She folds her arms over her chest again and flits her eyes as she looks at what must be an imaginary scene above her head.
I run my moist palms over my jean-covered thighs in an attempt to stem my nerves. It works for exactly four seconds. My heart is beating out random rhythms and my mouth is so dry.
“I have fishing rods. Oh, and sleeping bags. We have so many sleeping bags. Before Morgan moved out, we used to beach camp in Michigan, on the lake. My dad even bought a stove you plug in to that little cigarette lighter thingy.” She leans forward and taps the space where the Bronco’s lighter is missing.
“The twelve-volt,” I say.
“Sure.” She giggles. It’s the one technical automotive word I know, and only because it’s how I charge my laptop in my mom’s car.
Eleanor’s gaze drifts away again, but the smile lingers for almost a minute as we sit in silence, basking in this pretend world she’s built based on some whim that came out of my mouth. It almost feels real, and that makes me want to dive under the hood and get this thing running.
The longer the quiet lasts, the more the pressures on the other side of the garage door seep in. Life outside of this cabin is muted, and I can’t help but think that the minute we open our doors, the sounds of chaos will be waiting for us. The idea weighs on Eleanor too. I see it in her heavy eyelids, her dropped shoulders, and the tight grip her hands have on her opposite arms as she hugs herself.
It’s only in this stifling quiet that I regret not asking her where she would go. It’s too late to do that now. The mood has passed. That’s the thing about daydreams and fantasies—they’re fragile. One miscued thought allows reality to breach a carefully constructed bubble.
Eleanor pops open the door, pausing with one leg inside and one leg out. Her heavy braids glide over her shoulder as she twists back to look at me one last time.
“Thanks for letting me hide in here a while, Jonah.”
We exchange tight smiles that mask all the things we really think and want to say. My inner voice pleads with her to stay. Hers tries not to scream and cry.
“Anytime, Eleanor. Maybe I’ll see ya tomorrow?” The question feels ridiculous the moment it leaves my lips. My dream girl slips from the seat completely and offers me a polite smile in response that my gut tells me is charity.
I leave the shelter of the cab and move toward the garage button to open the door for Eleanor so she can head back out into a wild filled with wolves ready to eat her. I don’t know anything more than I did before she showed up, no news about her family or how they’re holding up, nothing about the investigation or when she might again show her face at school. I didn’t ask any of it even though the questions ran through my brain like ticker tape. I want this to be the place she comes to hide. That, and it’s hard enough for me to talk to her about normal things, let alone the awful tragedy she has to live with when she’s at home.
I press the garage door button with my thumb and take in her silhouette as the bright sunlight from outside overtakes the dim bulbs in the garage. She turns to walk backward and holds up a hand to say goodbye as her feet shuffle away. I do the same, my hand poised to close the door and keep the wolves out when she’s gone. Thankfully, though, I hold out for one more second.
“See ya tomorrow, Jonah.”
Five
I didn’t really believe Eleanor would be waiting in my garage the next day. It helped keep the disappointment at bay when it turned out that she wasn’t. She was right about the media being moved to the corner of our street, though. By the time I left for school Tuesday morning, the police tape was down. And when I got home, the cameras and big media trucks were gone too. Every now and then, someone stops by to do a report from the sidewalk or to take a photo, but for the most part, life outside our house in the space between where our property ends and the Trombleys’ begins is back to normal.