31 · Ben
Guthrie and I are out in the backyard at the fire pit when I get the text from Tami.
Have you seen Lucy today? No one has seen or heard from her since last night.
My first thought is, Why is Tami asking me? How the hell would I know? But then my stomach heaves.
Lucy is missing. I hit call.
“Tami,” I say when she picks up, “what do you mean no one has heard from her?”
“Daniel called.” She sounds worried. “Lucy’s parents are flipping out. They thought she was here today, but when she didn’t come home for dinner, her dad tried to call her. It went straight to voicemail. Same with Hannah’s phone. Have you seen either of them today?”
“No.” My stomach twists again. I don’t know what I’ll do if something happened to Lucy, too. “I’ll call you back if I find out anything.” I stand up and pace back and forth in front of the fire.
“What’s up?” Guthrie asks.
“Lucy. She’s missing.”
Guthrie takes a swig from his bottle of water. “She’s not missing. Everyone knows she went to South Dakota with Hannah and Dustin and Simon.”
Fuck.
“What? How do you know?”
“Hannah told me Lucy’s parents wouldn’t let her go to the rodeo this weekend, but they were going to go anyway.”
“When did you see Hannah?”
“I see her around,” he says.
I sit back down and call Tami again.
“You should ask Lucy’s mom and dad if they know of any reason she might have gone to South Dakota for the weekend.” I hang up before Tami can say anything.
“Dude, you need another beer,” Guthrie says and hands me an ice-cold bottle from the cooler at his feet. The glass feels good in my hot, sweaty hand. The beer feels even better as it chills and numbs my throat. I want to be numb.
Numb is better than the feeling of worry that crept deep into me and twisted my insides. For thirty seconds, tops, I thought something had happened to Lucy. Those thirty seconds felt like the ceiling had crashed in, that the world had spun to a halt.
I remember that feeling.
The beer goes down easy. I throw my empty bottle on the ground by the cooler and stand up again.
“I gotta go,” I say.
Guthrie shrugs. “Be careful, Ben.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“Get your shit together. Either you want to be with her or you don’t, but make a decision and stop messing with people.”
He stands up and waves as he walks toward the house. “In case you’re wondering, the rodeo is in Mitchell. Mitchell, South Dakota.”
There are a lot of reasons why Guthrie is my best friend, has been since second grade when we both got in trouble for hiding out in the woods behind school, trying to hit squirrels with a slingshot, instead of coming in after recess. Guthrie gets it.
I’ve had a couple of beers but don’t feel a thing. I get in the car and send a text to Mum that I’m staying at Guthrie’s tonight. I’ve got a full tank of gas and GPS on my cell and fuckall, I’m going to drive to Mitchell, South Dakota.
I think about Lucy. I think about how much I’ve missed her, her laughter, her smile, and how, when I get to Mitchell, I’m finally going to get the balls to apologize.
I crank the radio loud to stay awake. For a while I even catch Darkness Radio out of the Twin Cities, talk radio about paranormal shit, and when the story of a mysterious unsolved murder in St. Cloud freaks me out too much, I switch over to a classical station and blast it.
I get to Marshall, a town on the western edge of Minnesota, close to the South Dakota border, and I stop to take a leak and get gas.
I’ve been driving three, maybe three and a half hours. I’ve got at least three more to go.
But I’m standing in front of the cooler in the gas station when suddenly it hits me.
I’m an idiot. I’m driving to Mitchell, South Dakota, to try to find my dead sister’s best friend at a fucking rodeo. And she’s there with another guy. And let’s not forget that I’ve got a girlfriend. How stupid am I?
Pretty fucking stupid.
What would I say to her? How the hell would I even find her?
She wouldn’t forgive me, anyway.
What I said was unforgiveable.
I am unforgiveable.
I buy a Coke and turn around.
Somewhere around Willmar, I start to cry. Not big, racking sobs like right after Trixie died, but these pools of tears that make it impossible to see, no matter how often I rub them away. It’s ridiculous. I don’t even know why I’m crying. I pull over at a park bordering a lake. I walk down to the beach, and my heart is pounding so hard, I feel like I can’t breathe.
I drop down to my knees and sift through the sand and grass looking for good rocks, and then I remember the stones I found at Guthrie’s that are in the pockets of my shorts. I stack the rocks, and the act of putting one stone on top of another calms me somehow.
I’ve stacked rocks everywhere. Next to the cracked concrete steps at the shack where we clean fish. In the grass at the edge of the parking lot at the bank. At the top of the Fire Tower.
And even though I promised myself I wouldn’t go back to the cemetery, I stacked them on top of Trixie’s gravestone, where I’d seen Lucy put the candy. The wind probably blew them down before I even got to my car, but it was enough that, for a few minutes at least, there was balance, and it soothed something inside of me, that constant ache.
Trixie would know what to do. She would know how I should ask Lucy for forgiveness.
But she’s not here.
I stack the rocks and they fall and I stack them again until I find balance.