Looking for Alaska

'Yeah.'

'This is going to end poorly,' he said to himself.

And then I was asleep. That deep, can-still-taste-her-in-my-mouth sleep, that sleep that is not particularly restful but is difficult to wake from all the same. And then I heard the phone ring. I think. And I think, although I can't know, that I felt Alaska get up. I think I heard her leave. I think. How long she was gone is impossible to know.

But the Colonel and I both woke up when she returned, whenever that was, because she slammed the door. She was sobbing, like that post-Thanksgiving morning but worse.

'I have to get out of here!' she cried.

'What's wrong?' I asked.

'I forgot! God, how many times can I fuck up?' she said. I didn't even have time to wonder what she forgot before she screamed, 'I JUST HAVE TO GO. HELP ME GET OUT OF HERE!'

'Where do you need to go?'

She sat down and put her head between her legs, sobbing. 'Just please distract the Eagle right now so I can go.

Please.'

The Colonel and I, at the same moment, equal in our guilt, said, 'Okay.'

'Just don't turn on your lights,' the Colonel said. 'Just drive slow and don't turn on your lights. Are you sure you're okay?'

'Fuck,' she said. 'Just get rid of the Eagle for me,' she said, her sobs childlike half screams. 'God oh God, I'm so sorry.'

'Okay,' the Colonel said. 'Start the car when you hear the second string.'

We left.

We did not say: Don't drive. You're drunk.

We did not say: We aren't letting you in that car when you are upset.

We did not say: We insist on going with you.

We did not say: This can wait until tomorrow. Anything — everything — can wait.

We walked to our bathroom, grabbed the three strings of leftover firecrackers from beneath the sink, and ran to the Eagle's. We weren't sure that it would work again.

But it worked well enough. The Eagle tore out of his house as soon as the first string of firecrackers started popping — he was waiting for us, I suppose — and we headed for the woods and got him in deeply enough that he never heard her drive away. The Colonel and I doubled back, wading through the creek to save time, slipped in through the back window of Room 43, and slept like babies.

After

the day after

The colonel slept the not-restful sleep of the drunk, and I lay on my back on the bottom bunk, my mouth tingling and alive as if still kissing, and we would have likely slept through our morning classes had the Eagle not awoken us at 8:00 with three quick knocks. I rolled over as he opened the door, and the morning light rushed into the room.

'I need y'all to go to the gym,' he said. I squinted toward him, the Eagle himself backlit into invisibility by the too bright sun.

'Now,' he added, and I knew it. We were done for. Caught. Too many progress reports. Too much drinking in too short a time. Why did they have to drink last night? And then I could taste her again, the wine and the cigarette smoke and the Chap Stick and Alaska, and I wondered if she had kissed me because she was drunk. Don't expel me, I thought. Don't I have just begun to kiss her.

And as if answering my prayers, the Eagle said, 'You're not in any trouble. But you need to go to the gym now.'

I heard the Colonel rolling over above me. 'What's wrong?'

'Something terrible has happened,' the Eagle said, and then closed the door.

As he grabbed a pair of jeans lying on the floor, the Colonel said, 'This happened a couple years ago. When Hyde's wife died. I guess it's the Old Man himself now. Poor bastard really didn't have many breaths left.' He looked up at me, his half-open eyes bloodshot, and yawned.

'You look a little hungover,' I observed.

He closed his eyes. 'Well, then I'm putting up a good front, Pudge, 'cause I'm actually a lot hungover.'

'I kissed Alaska.'

'Yeah. I wasn't that drunk. Let's go.'

We walked across the dorm circle to the gym. I sported baggy jeans, a sweatshirt with no shirt underneath, and a bad case of bedhead. All the teachers were in the dorm circle knocking on doors, but I didn't see Dr. Hyde. I imagined him lying dead in his house, wondered who had found him, how they even knew he was missing before he failed to show up for class.

'I don't see Dr. Hyde,' I told the Colonel.

'Poor bastard.'

The gym was half full by the time we arrived. A podium had been set up in the middle of the basketball court, close to the bleachers. I sat in the second row, with the Colonel directly in front of me. My thoughts were split between sadness for Dr. Hyde and excitement about Alaska, remembering the up-close sight of her mouth whispering, 'To be continued?'

And it did not occur to me — not even when Dr. Hyde shuffled into the gym, taking tiny, slow steps toward the Colonel and me.

I tapped the Colonel on the shoulder and said, 'Hyde's here,' and the Colonel said, 'Oh shit,' and I said, 'What?'

and he said, 'Where's Alaska?' and I said, 'No,' and he said, 'Pudge, is she here or not?' and then we both stood up and scanned the faces in the gym.

The Eagle walked up to the podium and said, 'Is everyone here?'

'No,' I said to him. 'Alaska isn't here.'

The Eagle looked down. 'Is everyone else here?'

'Alaska isn't here!'

'Okay, Miles. Thank you.'

'We can't start without Alaska.'

The Eagle looked at me. He was crying, noiselessly. Tears just rolled from his eyes to his chin and then fell onto his corduroy pants. He stared at me, but it was not the Look of Doom. His eyes blinking the tears down his face, the Eagle looked, for all the world, sorry.

'Please, sir,' I said. 'Can we please wait for Alaska?' I felt all of them staring at us, trying to understand what I now knew, but didn't quite believe.

The Eagle looked down and bit his lower lip. 'Last night, Alaska Young was in a terrible accident.' His tears came faster, then. 'And she was killed. Alaska has passed away.'

For a moment, everyone in the gym was silent, and the place had never been so quiet, not even in the moments before the Colonel ridiculed opponents at the free-throw stripe. I stared down at the back of the Colonel's