I WAS ON the platform at Union Station in Denver when my father called me for the second time. The air was chilly and my fingers trembled against the iPhone screen.
“Arthur, this has to stop now,” he started before the phone hit my ear. “You said you’d keep in touch and no one’s heard from you since last night. You said you’d go back to your auntie and uncle’s, but no one’s seen you. You said you were by the lake but—well, I don’t know what to believe.”
“Hey to you, too, Dad.” Mara heard me and my face burned red.
“Do you have anything you want to tell me?”
“Yeah, actually,” I said, thumbing through the clues in my backpack. “I had a question I wanted to ask you.”
“What?”
I squeezed my ring. “Did Grandpa ever, when he was younger . . . is there any reason he would’ve gone back and forth across the country? Like, before you were born?”
Mara leaned close, trying to hear his side of the call, the cold mist of our breath tangling in front of us.
“Did he . . . what? I’m sorry, Arthur, I don’t understand what this has to do—”
“Did he ever say anything about Green River, Utah? Or Elko, Nevada?” I asked.
“No. Your grandfather lived his whole life in California.”
“Maybe he didn’t tell you—”
“Arthur, what are you asking?”
“I’m just, I’m trying to figure out some stuff about Grandpa’s life.” There it was again, Grandpa instead of Grandfather. The word hollowed out my stomach.
“Stop doing this,” he commanded.
“Doing what?”
“Stop trying to guilt me into forgetting about the fact that you’ve disappeared for three days without calling or telling any of us where you are. I’m not just going to drop it because I feel bad about raising my voice at you the other night!”
Mara sensed it was a conversation she no longer wanted to be a part of and wandered away across the station.
“I told you yesterday, I want to give you all the freedom in the world, and let you find your way, but you can’t keep using it as an excuse to manipulate us, Arthur. Our pity isn’t a free pass for you to be inconsiderate. In fact, in light of everything that’s happened, it’s more important that you listen to us now. So give me one good reason why I shouldn’t drive up to Truckee right now to come find you and bring you home.”
I could taste bitter anger in my mouth. Manipulate us—like me not following his rules made me an inherently shitty person. Pity—as if he was some kind of all-star dad for feeling bad for me. Inconsiderate—like my life was required to be lived in accordance with his wishes.
“Well, Dad, be my guest. Because I’m not in Truckee.” I took a deep breath. “And I haven’t been for three days. I’m in Denver.”
I pulled the phone back from my ear, but he didn’t explode. “Denver? You’re in Denver?” He sounded angry, but strangely only half surprised, like he was pretending to be. “Arthur, what the hell do you think you’re doing in Denver?”
“I told you, I’m trying to figure out some stuff about Grandpa.”
“And you think you’re going to somehow find that in Denver? And you think the best way—”
Mara was getting directions from a man in a navy-blue suit across the station. She was laughing as he pointed at a map and I felt a familiar burn in my chest. The same burn I’d felt when I saw Kaitlin with the guys in her AP History class, teachers that helped her, even her cousins. I should have believed her when she said they didn’t really like her and been okay with it, but I had hated it. I saw Mason in the navy-blue suit, mouthing “I’m sorry, Arthur” as he giggled with Mara over the map. I wanted to run across the station and slap the map out of his hand and the grin off his face.
My dad was still shouting. “—some bullshit about your grandfather—”
“Yeah,” I cut him off. “I think I’m going to find out some more about his life here. The last week.”
“And you think that’s in Denver?”
“I know it is.”
“Arthur,” he spat. “Let me save you some trouble. He died. That’s what happened. That’s what always happens.”
“Not good enough.”
“Arthur, please. I don’t know what you know, or what you think you know, about my father, but it’s not worth it. I spent years, years trying, and you know what I found? Nothing. A shitload of angry, soulless nothing. Until I realized there was nothing to find. He wasn’t a tortured genius, and he wasn’t hiding some elaborate secret. He was a cynical, demented old man. And he died. And that’s all.”
As my father spoke, I unfolded the photo from my pocket. It was starting to crease in the center, directly down the middle of my grandfather’s face, splitting him into two halves. On one side, my father, his brother, and his brother’s wife, all tired faces and sunken shoulders. On the other was me, for whatever reason alive with energy, and behind me, the train.
“I’m sorry, Dad.”
“What?”
“I’m sorry that you had to convince yourself he was a shitty person just so that you would feel okay exploiting him because you never did anything worthwhile in your own life.”
“Arthur—”
“But just because you gave up on him doesn’t mean I’m going to.”
“Arthur!”
“I’m going to hang up now.”
“You know that if you do, we’re going to have to do a full search, right?” I couldn’t tell if he was warning me or threatening me. “We’ll make you a missing person. Police and everything, across the country. And they’ll have to find you and bring you home, kicking and screaming.”
I wanted to scream, but I held myself to spitting. “Really? Because it seems like the last time someone in this family ran away—”
“Don’t do this to me, Arthur. Not you, too.”
“—no one went looking for him! No police, I doubt he even got this fucking lip-service phone call.”
“He was an adult—”
“So am I!”
“No, you’re not! And my father was out of his mind—”
“Not good enough.” I slammed my finger down on the screen to end the call.
Mara looked only partially interested in my rage as she danced back toward me, a postcard in her hands.
“Dear Dad,” she pretended to write on the back with her gloves. “Hello from Denver. Met the grandson of a literary legend today.” She smiled up at me. “Not quite as cool as it sounds. All the same, thanks for never bothering me with angry phone calls or tracing my cell phone or anything.”
I laughed. “Tracing your cell phone?”
“Yes,” she said. “Your dad’s probably doing it right now.”
I almost laughed again, but choked on it, remembering how casual my father had been when I told him how far I was from where I was supposed to be. He should have screamed, but he had to force himself to be surprised.
“You’ve got, like, six different kinds of GPS on that thing. You could get walking directions to the nearest strip club in fifteen seconds, you think they can’t figure out where you are?”
I spun my cell phone end over end in my hand. She was right. The search would be over before it even started. It might be almost over.
“If you’re going to make a daring getaway from your parents,” she said, “you might as well do it properly.”
“Okay.” I nodded. “How?”
“You can’t turn it off, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“Then what do I do?”
Her face lit up. Without a word, she snatched my phone out of my hand and strolled casually across the platform to a line of people waiting to board a bus labeled Express Arrow. She snuck in behind a man with a plaid backpack and, without drawing any attention to herself, slipped it into his backpack pocket and walked away, whistling.
“See, life is better untethered,” she said, close enough to almost kiss me, before turning to check the train counter. “Your parents will be looking for you in . . . Billings, Montana.”
I stood in stunned silence, watching the man with my phone board the Express Arrow. I thought about running after him, begging for my phone back, apologizing and explaining the miscommunication. But as I turned, Mara smiled at me, and it seemed like a good idea, if only because it was her idea.
“Come on now,” she whispered, and she grabbed my hand and pulled me down a Denver side street and into the cold, snow-blown afternoon.