ERICA’S WORKING THIS MORNING, LOOKING CRISP and 500 percent more awake than anyone else in the coffee shop. Honestly, it hadn’t crossed my mind that she wouldn’t be working. I couldn’t imagine her not being here, waiting for Max and me to show up. Although as I slide onto a stool at the counter, I realize it’s very possible she’s forgotten about us. Maybe she throws out her dare to a dozen people a day.
I wait until she comes behind the counter to grab a pitcher of coffee.
“Hi,” I say, waving to catch her eye. “Erica, right?”
She smiles politely. Yeah, no way does she remember me.
“Good morning,” she says.
“I was in here a few days ago with my friend. Super-tall guy?”
Erica squints as if trying to see into her own blurry past of customers.
“You gave us a challenge, to do seven acts of kindness to strangers before New Year’s.”
She puts down the coffee pitcher. “Yes. That’s right.”
“Well, we did them.”
“You did them.”
“All seven. We have proof.”
Erica smiles for real. “Do you, now?” She looks off toward the tables. “Hold on. I’ll be right with you.”
She moves to one of the tables, refills several coffee cups, then returns, placing the pitcher gently back onto its warmer.
“Okay. I’m all yours.” She leans her elbows on the counter, like she’s waiting for me to tell her a story.
I pull out my notebook and I show and I tell. As I’m doing that, I realize that I’ve actually been able to finish something I started. It’s not my novel about the end of the world but it’s better, it’s about the beginning of something, at least for me, filled with characters more interesting than anyone I could make up.
When I’m done, Erica just says, “Wow. I had no idea that you’d take me seriously.”
“Well, we did.”
“I promised you a fantastic breakfast, didn’t I?”
I’ve thought about this.
“Yes, but my friend’s not here and it wouldn’t feel right to have it without him. Can you give it to someone today who seems like they need it?”
Erica laughs. “Sure, sweetie. That won’t be hard, believe me. I promised you a photo on the wall, too.”
“That I’ll take you up on. Can I send you one to use?”
I show her the picture of Max and me at the penguin house. We look tense and awkward, like someone forced us to be there. We are not those people anymore. But I love that that version of us will live on the coffee shop wall: confused and lost, drifting our way through some kind of purpose while surrounded by the rest of the world. Not knowing, yet, what we were capable of. Not knowing that it would all come together at midnight.
Ari, Camden, and I grab the last forward-facing three-person seat on the Metro-North train, and this is important. I couldn’t bear to ride backward, it would be too symbolic. But I am, after all that, going home and back to school. I am doing it because I know I can, or at the very least I know I can try and that’s enough for now.
Ari and Camden let me have the window. Before the train’s even left Grand Central, they’re both asleep, Ari’s head in Camden’s lap, and I’ll be honest, that stings. Because if I hadn’t left Big E’s the way I did, if I hadn’t scribbled that note quickly before I changed my mind, Max and I might be doing something similar. Everything would be different.
But it would also be wrong.
Right should feel better than wrong but at this second, not so much. There are at least twenty different moments for me to replay in my head from last night with Max and let me tell you, every single one of them causes me physical pain.
Finally, we’re on the move and as we travel out of the tunnel and north through Harlem, I’m determined to think about something else.
Jamie? asks a Thought Worm.
Okay. What about Jamie? I picture his face right before he ran after Eliza and expect to feel angry and guilty. But all I feel is relief. Every minute of being with Jamie took effort, and not that I have anything against effort, but when you experience a different way of being with a person, stuff begins to make sense. Jamie and I were never going to happen, at least not in any real or lasting way. It all went down the way it needed to, for him and for Eliza, too.
So I think about Luna. I open my notebook and sketch what I remember about her. I start with her eyes, and then her mouth. The rest is a little fuzzier in my memory, but I go on impulse.
Then it’s time to start writing her up as a character. I scrawl her name, but when I try to write more, I find I can’t do it. Instead, I add the word Dear in front of Luna, and now the words come.
I tell her about everything that happened in the days since she stepped off that curb. It takes me most of the train ride. My handwriting is shaky and it’s a struggle to keep it legible. When I get home, I’ll send this to the hospital and maybe she’ll get it, maybe she won’t. Maybe she’ll be able to read it herself or maybe someone will have to read it to her. Maybe she can’t even hear or understand it. These are things I have no control over.
I take a picture of the finished letter for extra proof that yes, I did this.
The Hudson River sparkles with midday light and when it does that, it’s hard not to feel like maybe everything will be okay.