The Lost & Found (14 page)

I
woke Willa up early (for her) after a mostly sleepless night (for me). She staggered into the bathroom at ten o'clock, and I called the University of Texas while I waited for her. I'd called them a few days ago and told them to expect me, and they said to let them know when I arrived.
Whenever you get here is perfect
, they'd said. There was someone different on the phone now, but she knew who I was and that made me, for some reason, instantly uneasy. Like they were putting too much importance on me. Was I tricking them into thinking I was someone worth counting on?

And then—should I have brought my tennis racket?
Were they going to ask me to play? Was I going to meet Earl Clarington or Lisa Kent, two of the best young tennis players in the country? Was I going to be forced to play against them? Was this all some elaborate test?

“You're spiraling, aren't you?” Willa said.

I looked up, the phone still held against my ear even though the university had hung up minutes ago. Willa stood in the doorframe of the bathroom. She already had her legs on, and she had a towel wrapped around her. Her hair was wet and uncombed. I hadn't heard her open the door.

“I think this was a mistake,” I said.

“You think what was a mistake?”

“Coming here. They don't even know anything about me. I'm probably not at all what they're looking for.”

“That is a distinct possibility, Louis. But that's not a reason to bail now. We've come a long way for this.”

“I just don't know—like, what if I don't even want to play tennis anymore?”

“Do you not want to play tennis anymore?”

“I don't know. Maybe I never wanted to. Maybe I only liked it because I was good at it.”

“For what it's worth, I actually think that's a really good reason to like something,” Willa said. “We all want to be good at shit. There's no shame in that.”

She went over to her suitcase and pulled clothes out of it until she found something she liked. Then she went into the bathroom again. When she came out, she was toweling
her hair dry and I was staring at the phone in my hand.

“You really think that's a good reason to like something? Just because you happen to be naturally talented at it?” I asked her.

“Of course. I could think of a ton of things I would like more if I didn't have to work to be good at them. Practicing sucks. If I could, like, pick up a guitar and be instantly awesome, I guarantee you I would like playing the guitar. As it is, I cannot play a barred chord to save my life, and every time I've tried to change a string, I've poked myself in the face and almost blinded myself.”

“Oh yeah, I forgot you had a guitar,” I said.

“I sold the guitar,” Willa replied, shrugging. “You're lucky, Louis. I mean, I wouldn't necessarily pick tennis to be instantly good at, but at least you have something.”

“I wasn't instantly good at it.”

“Oh, whatever. You were. Obviously you've gotten better with practice, but you didn't start at zero.” She paused a minute, threw her towel on the bathroom floor, and finger-combed her hair. I don't think Willa owned a hairbrush, and I'd definitely never seen her blow-dry her hair before. She gathered it into a low ponytail and then let it go again. “Just don't complain about it, okay? Some of us are zeros at everything.”

It was the most disparaging thing I had ever heard Willa say about herself, but she didn't give me time to respond. She aggressively repacked her suitcase, throwing clothes
into it without taking the time to refold them. I didn't even tell her that we were staying in the same motel tonight and she didn't need to pack everything. I just watched her go and then followed her outside.

“Willa—” I started.

“Oh, shut up. I'm not, like, devastated I can't play the guitar,” she said.

“That's not what I was going to say.”

“I get that you're nervous, Louis, I really do. But you have an amazing opportunity here, and the best part about it is that you can do whatever the fuck you want. You can take the scholarship or you can pass it up, and nobody will even be the wiser, you know? You don't ever have to tell Mom and Dad. Your secret will die with me.”

“That's really nice of you—”

“But if you're relapsing now because you feel too much pressure to accept this scholarship, you have to let me know. Okay? You have to tell me, or tell somebody. Just know that you can do whatever you want.”

I didn't like the word
relapsing
; I didn't like how heavy and deep it felt.

“I'm not . . . I mean, I didn't . . .” I couldn't get the words out. Or, I could get
some
words out, but they weren't the right words. And I didn't know why she was so angry, why it felt like she was lecturing me, but at least it looked like she was calming down. She sighed and pulled open the car door.

“Listen, let's save the heavy shit for later,” she said. “We need to go tour a university. Wait—let's get a coffee first and then go tour a university.”

She smiled one of those twin smiles, where I knew exactly what she meant—
I'm fine and you're gonna be fine and we're fine. Get in the car.

I got in the car.

The university representative had given me directions, but I put the address into my phone anyway, and then I ignored everything my phone told me to do in favor of what she had said. This drove Willa crazy, and she spent the car ride drumming her fingers against the doorframe in exasperation, until I stopped and got her a coffee and a muffin, and then she was fine.

I had been told to meet my tour guide in front of the tower in the middle of the campus, which I was worried about finding until we got there and I realized it was a little hard to miss.

“Think you're allowed to go up there?” Willa asked, letting me help her out of the car (she was still tired; she didn't really hit her stride until the early afternoon).

“Probably, sure. I think I read something about an observation deck.”

“It's really pretty here,” she said. “Not at all what I expected.”

“What did you expect?”

“I don't know. A lot of farmhouses.”

“You need to get out of Los Angeles more.”

“Oh, like you're so world traveled.”

Willa and I walked to the tower, passing a series of large white buildings with red roofs and then a fountain with figures on horseback, overshadowed by a woman with enormous, angel-like wings.

“What is that supposed to be?” Willa asked.

“Littlefield Fountain.” She shot me a look. “What?”

“For someone who doesn't want to go here, you certainly know a lot about observation decks and fountains,” she deadpanned.

“I did some research,” I said. “And I never said I didn't want to go here. I said maybe they're wrong about me. Maybe they won't want me.”

“I hope that sounds as dumb to you as it does to me,” she said.

It did, actually.

There was one more building in front of the tower. We walked around it (with Willa complaining about why we had to park so far away) and saw three small tour groups already gathered together, with parents snapping relentless photographs of the tower as their children pretended not to know them.

“What one are we in?” Willa asked.

I spotted a girl with a clipboard and headed over to her. She brightened when she saw us, and I saw her eyes land
only momentarily on Willa's legs.

“Hi!” she said. “You must be Louis. I'm Mary.” She held her hand out to each of us and we shook it.

“Sorry, how did you know who I was?” I asked.

“I've seen your picture,” she said, like this was normal.

“Gross, you're famous,” Willa said out of the corner of her mouth, so Mary wouldn't hear her.

“You can go ahead and join any group you'd like, and then after the tour we're going to bring you around to the tennis courts and have some one-on-one time,” Mary said. “Sorry, you're his sister? You look alike.”

“Sister, yeah. Willa. Nice to meet you.”

“Great! Here, um, here's my number. Sometimes the groups get back at different times, so call me whenever the tour is done, and I'll meet you back out here.” Mary scribbled her number on a piece of paper on her clipboard and then ripped a piece off and handed it to me.

“Thanks,” I said.

“Sure thing! See you later.”

Willa and I joined the smallest group and I took my phone out of my pocket while I waited for the tour to begin. I'd missed a text from Frances a few minutes ago.

   
Austin is hot.

   
I'm here, too! Starting a tour at the university.

   
I guess I'm going to try calling Wallace Green in a minute. That's weird.

   
Pretty weird. Keep me updated. Dinner tonight?

   
Yeah. I'll text you later.

I put my phone away and said, “I guess we're having dinner with Frances tonight.”

“Are
we
having dinner with Frances tonight, or are you having a little date with Frances tonight?” Willa retorted.

“I don't know. Shut up.”

“Did she meet Wallace Green yet? Did she weasel her way into his inheritance?”

“That's not why she wants to meet him.”

“I know, Louis,
relax
. I was kidding. Obviously she wants to meet him because she has dreams of being a famous movie star and she thinks he can get her in the biz.”

“You're impossible.”

“I was still kidding. But did she meet him? How do you even find a movie star? Is she just walking up and down the streets of Austin yelling his name? Do you think that would work for me and Michael Pitt?”

“I think Michael Pitt lives in Brooklyn.”

“I know, I'm thinking ahead. Next road trip! What if
we didn't go back to high school, what if we just kept going on road trips?”

“We would run out of money.”

“Well, obviously we would sell our internal organs for funds. Gosh, you're so uninventive. I need a better road-trip partner.”

“Do you want another coffee before we start? I could go get you another coffee,” I offered.

“Are you trying to get away from me?” Willa asked suspiciously.

“You're just talking a lot. I think it might be nice to have some quiet time.”

“I don't even have to go on this tour. Do you not want me to go on this tour? I don't even care,” she said.

“Okay, I think that's about everything! Let's get started!” the tour guide said, cupping his hands around his mouth for projection.

I grabbed Willa's hand. “Of course I want you to come on this tour, Willa. I'm fucking terrified.”

Willa smiled smugly. She removed her hand from mine but squeezed me gently around the side. “Talking incessantly kind of gets your mind off it, though, wouldn't you say?”

Whenever I think I have figured my sister out, she goes and does something I didn't see coming.

Then she handed me her empty coffee cup. That, I could have predicted.

I jogged over to the nearest trash can and threw it away. When I turned around, I saw a small square of white fabric on the ground. I bent over to pick it up. It was a handkerchief with the initials HW embroidered in blue thread in one corner. It was near where Mary had been standing with her clipboard. A boyfriend's? An ironic vintage accessory?

But then I remembered something Frannie had written in one of her messages, something about losing a handkerchief from a boy named Hank Whitney.

HW
.

I mean . . .

It couldn't have been a coincidence, right?

I put the handkerchief in my pocket and rejoined Willa with the tour.

“You're missing it,” Willa said. “The tour guide is extolling the virtues of the tower. It is three hundred and seven feet tall.”

“Fascinating,” I said. I meant it to come out like I didn't care, but I failed miserably. Willa smiled and nudged me with her shoulder.

“It's pretty cool,” she agreed.

The rest of the tour was equally pretty cool.

I
was awake.

It was early—seven in the morning—and I had been up for two hours already. Arrow slept in the sleeping bag next to me, and I stared up at the ceiling, getting intimately acquainted with the fire sprinkler directly above our heads.

After our failed run last night, Arrow and I had come back to our motel room and watched more HBO, and I tried not to freak out about the fact that Louis and I were both in Austin at the same time and I had found his sunglasses and he had found a drawing of an apple that I had never done. That I was unable to do.

And what was I even doing here? What was I supposed to do now?

Was I calling Wallace Green, was I showing up at his address? I'd plugged the address Imelda gave me into Google. There were aerial pictures of his property and even a video tour from a time he'd done one of those in-depth interview specials from his living room. I now knew the walls of his kitchen were painted a bright, cheerful blue and his favorite room in his house was one painted bright red, every inch of wall space covered with shiny, priceless acoustic guitars.

“I don't play much music,” he'd told the interviewer, and then he'd grinned for the camera. He'd had a cowboy hat pulled low on his forehead (I wanted to hate that cowboy hat, I really did, but I couldn't deny the appeal). “But I have a lot of talented friends. And I like how these guitars look. Don't these guitars look nice?”

It should have been easy to hate Wallace Green, but he was so damn happy all the time. And he'd given away so much money that he'd officially been taken off the Forbes list of richest people. And he'd chosen to live away from Hollywood and in the city of his birth. And his house was huge but it wasn't exorbitant, if you considered what he could have afforded instead. And he was just so
happy
. And there was no controversy in his past either. You searched his name on the internet and the only thing that came up was pages and pages of how Wallace Green is basically the
best human being to ever grace the surface of the earth.

And maybe he was my father.

No pressure.

I nudged Arrow awake. I couldn't stare at the ceiling anymore. I itched to get out of the motel room, to go explore, to do anything except listen to the sound of our breathing.

“Lee-me alone,” Arrow mumbled, turning over and pressing her face into the pillow.

“Wake up, Arrow,” I insisted, digging my elbow into her side. “I need to talk to you.”

“Frannie, I'm dead. I'm tired. I'm dying,” she said, lifting her face from the pillow so I could hear what she was saying. “Unless you are similarly dying and need my immediate assistance, please leave me alone. Because my alarm is set for eight and it hasn't gone off yet, so I know it's earlier than eight and that's just stupid. And . . . Oh, shit, now I'm talking too much. I'm awake. Shit, Frannie, you're so annoying.” Arrow rolled onto her back and stretched her arms out in front of her. “What do you want? This better be good. If it isn't good, make something up.”

“I need to know what you think is going on.”

“What's going on with what?”

“I couldn't sleep. I just kept thinking about what the hell we're doing here, and what the hell Louis is doing here, and what the hell does this even mean?”

I pulled up the photograph of the apple drawing on my
phone and showed it to her. She squinted at it, her eyes still fuzzy from sleep, and then she shrugged.

“Is that—”

“It's the drawing Louis found. My drawing.”

Arrow sat up in bed. I sat up in bed. We sat across from each other, legs folded, staring.

“You asked me why I don't draw anymore. I don't know. I was in art class four months ago. The teacher told us to draw an apple. I didn't. Or else—I couldn't. I don't know which. And then I just couldn't draw anything. I tried, but I couldn't make my hands work. I couldn't even doodle. I failed art.”

“You
what
?” Arrow said.

“I failed art,” I said. It was the first time I had said those words aloud, the first time I had really let myself think about it. I had failed art. The only class I even cared about. The only thing I had that I liked, that I was good at. I had always had my art, through the stabbing and through the divorce and the legal proceedings, through losing my mom and going to live with my grandparents. I had always had art and then I didn't have it anymore, because I couldn't draw an apple, and because I couldn't recover from not being able to draw an apple.

“Grandma and Grandpa know you failed art?” Arrow asked.

“No.”

“But they had to sign your report card. That's policy.
Guardians have to sign off on failed classes.”

“Do you know when the school finally got around to sending those forms out?” I said. Arrow shook her head slowly, but then changed her mind and nodded.

“You braved a bite from a black widow spider to get that form before they did,” she guessed. “And you found the letter from the Easton Valley Center.”

“Imagine my surprise,” I whispered.

“I'm so sorry, Frannie.”

She reached across the bed and grabbed my knee. I remembered that day, just last week, when I had opened the mailbox. Part of me had expected the spider to be there, waiting. But there had never been a spider. Of course there had never been a spider.

“What are you sorry about?” I asked her. “That they lied to me, or that I found out the way I did?”

“I guess . . . both. I'm sorry for both. I'm just sorry.”

“It's fine. I just want some breakfast. I want some pancakes.”

“I have to meditate.”

“Meditate quickly, okay? I'm going to jump in the shower.”

I showered while Arrow meditated, and then she showered while I got dressed, and then I waited while she got dressed, and then we got in the car and drove until we found a diner.

“Look okay to you?” she asked, pulling in front of a
small, sky-blue building with white shutters. It was entirely out of place in the neighborhood. A shabby-chic sign called it Debbie's Diner
.

“I'm starving. Looks great,” I said.

Arrow turned the car off and fed the meter, and we walked around the side of the tiny building. The door was propped open with an old dress shop mannequin.

The inside of Debbie's Diner was decked out like a sewing room. There were antique sewing machines bolted to the walls and a collection of pincushions overcrowding a tall, glass-fronted armoire. Large, embroidered tapestries covered the far walls: elaborate scenes of kittens playing with balls of yarn and puppies napping in wicker baskets.

“Holy crap,” Arrow said, and I knew she meant it in the best way possible. Her eyes were wide and her mouth was open. Arrow loved kitsch; she was in her element.

“This is something, huh?” I said, trying to humor her.

“Give me my camera,” she hissed.

Arrow didn't have a camera, so I knew she had fully committed to an alternate version of reality. I gave her a high five instead of a camera (she was holding her hand over her shoulder), and we took a seat in one of the open booths, as per the
Please Seat Yourself
sign.

There were two menus already on the table, so I took one as a server came over (Debbie herself? One could only hope) and set coffee down in front of us without asking if we wanted it.

“You ladies just holler when you see something you'd like, all right?” she purred (she sounded like a cat, she looked like a cat, and she was wearing a knitted sweater with cats on it), setting a tiny pitcher of cream between us.

I looked up at Arrow, who appeared suddenly crestfallen. “What?” I asked.

“I thought she'd say ‘y'all.' I thought everybody here would say ‘y'all,' and so far nobody has,” Arrow said. She turned her attention to the menu, shaking her head slightly in what I knew was the sincerest of disappointments.

I opened my own menu, and a loose piece of paper almost fell out. It looked like a permission slip of some kind, or else a doctor's office form, one of those emergency contact sheets you have to fill out every time you go to the doctor, even if nothing has changed. I scanned the filled-out information and actually felt my heart skip a beat when I saw his name.

Louis Johar.

That's the weird thing about hearts.

They speed up or slow down. They skip beats. They don't behave. They get in the way.

I put my menu down and read the paper more carefully. It was an emergency contact form. It was filled out in Willa's handwriting (I just knew this, which remarkably didn't even register as weird) and listed her brother as her emergency contact. At the bottom, in defiant, messy script, she'd written
Go green
. With the period.

“What, are those the specials?” Arrow asked, reaching for the paper. “I didn't get them; let me see.”

“It's not a specials list,” I said, letting her take it.

She read it more than once. I saw her eyes scanning across the page. She handed it back after a minute.

“Why would you bring that to a restaurant?” she said. “Where did you even get this?”

But she said it in such a way that I knew she knew I hadn't brought it to the restaurant. I knew she knew I had found it in between the covers of my restaurant menu just like I had found a twenty-dollar bill and used it to buy a tennis racket in a pawnshop.

I didn't know. And I didn't know where to put any of this stuff. Not physically put it, obviously, I put it in my car. I packed it up in my suitcases. But mentally—where did I put it mentally?

For years and years and years I had lost everything. Stacks of letters and packs of bubble gum and a Super Soaker I had begged my mom to get for
months
(“We are not a family that supports
guns
, Heph, not even ones that shoot water instead of bullets, okay?”) and then lost immediately, practically midsoak; one second I was drenching Arrow in streams of beautiful, concentrated water and the next minute I was empty-handed and wailing and miserable, knowing I would never convince my mother to buy me a replacement, not when the original
had been so hard to come by.

But now instead of losing things I was gaining them, but they weren't even my things to gain, they were all Louis's. They belonged to someone else, someone I had never even met, unless you could count hours of late-night instant messaging or doctor-prescribed group counseling sessions—and I wasn't even sure you
could
. I mean, was I crazy for thinking it might be a good idea to meet him in person? Was I setting myself up to be ax-murdered? Was I setting myself up to be, at the very least, vastly disappointed?

“Are you okay?” Arrow asked. “They have fourteen different kinds of pancakes.”

“I think I'm losing my mind,” I said. “Just like them.”

“No,” she said seriously. “It skips a generation. Don't have kids. You're okay.”

“I haven't lost anything for
days
,” I said.

“That's a good thing!”

“No, I mean . . . That's it. I haven't lost anything for days. That means I'm going to lose something big. My brain. My mind. I'm losing my mind. That's how this ends,” I said.

“That's how what ends?” Arrow asked. She tried reaching across the table, but I pulled my hand back. I folded the emergency contact form and put it into my pocket.

“I don't know,” I said. “Forget I said anything. I want banana and chocolate chip.”

“Frannie—”

“I'm fine.”

“You don't seem fine. You don't really think that's a possibility, do you?”

“It has to be,” I whispered. “Of course it is. I mean, that's the whole reason Grandma and Grandpa didn't tell me she was at Easton Valley.”

“Well, they were wrong, obviously. We've already established that. They should never have kept something so huge from you.”

“Maybe they have a point. Maybe I wouldn't have waited until now to realize this was a possibility, you know? Maybe I would have spent the past five years—”

“Having a relationship with your mom? Going to visit her? Frannie, in no universe do they have a point,” Arrow said sharply. “And if you're worried about this . . . Well, I think it wouldn't be a bad idea to talk to someone about it. Someone else, I mean, who knows something about this kind of thing. Like a therapist. A psychologist.”

I heard Arrow talking as if she were in a tunnel, far away, as my mind raced through all the terrible possibilities I had never really considered before. Was schizophrenia genetic? What had caused my father to snap? Was I helpless, doomed to turn out the same way they had?

“I guess so,” I said, only because I knew Arrow was waiting for an answer from me. My heart was beating out of my chest. I thought of those cartoons where anthropomorphized animals fell in love and their hearts popped out
of their bodies,
boom, boom, boom
.

“And, Frannie, your mom needed help for years before she was admitted to Easton Valley. Your father was obviously the same. You're not them. Recognizing the need for help is already so much of the battle. You're going to be okay, no matter what happens.” Arrow reached across the table and squeezed my arm. “Also, we're in a restaurant filled with embroidered cats. We need to make the most of it.”

She flagged down the server and ordered pancakes for us both as my heart slowly calmed down and returned to its proper position inside my chest.