Looking for Alaska

twenty-eight days after

The colonel made it to Latin the next morning—'I feel awesome right now, because I'm still drunk. But God help me in a couple of hours' — and I took a French test for which I had studied un petit peu. I did all right on the multiple choice (which-verb-tense-makes-sense-here type questions), but the essay question, In Le Petit Prince, what is the significance of the rose? threw me a bit.

Had I read The Little Prince in English or French, I suspect this question might have been quite easy.

Unfortunately, I'd spent the evening getting the Colonel drunk. So I answered, Elle symbolise I'amour ('It symbolizes love'). Madame O'Malley had left us with an entire page to answer the question, but I figured I'd covered it nicely in three words.

I'd kept up in my classes well enough to get B-minuses and not worry my parents, but I didn't really care much anymore. The significance of the rose? I thought. Who gives a shit? What's the significance of the white tulips?

There was a question worth answering.

After I'd gotten a lecture and ten work hours at Jury, I came back to Room 43 to find the Colonel telling Takumi everything — well, everything except the kiss. I walked in to the Colonel saying, 'So we helped her go.'

'You set off the fireworks,' he said.

'How'd you know about the fireworks?'

'I've been doing a bit of investigating,' Takumi answered. 'Well, anyway, that was dumb. You shouldn't have done it. But we all let her go, really,' he said, and I wondered what the hell he meant by that, but I didn't have time to ask before he said to me, 'So you think it was suicide?'

'Maybe,' I said. 'I don't see how she could have hit the cop by accident unless she was asleep.'

'Maybe she was going to visit her father,' Takumi said. 'Vine Station is on the way.'

'Maybe,' I said. 'Everything's a maybe, isn't it?'

The Colonel reached in his pocket for a pack of cigarettes. 'Well, here's another one: Maybe Jake has the answers,' he said. 'We've exhausted other strategies, so I'm calling him tomorrow, okay?'

I wanted answers now, too, but not to some questions. 'Yeah, okay,' I said. 'But listen — don't tell me anything that's not relevant. I don't want to know anything unless it's going to help me know where she was going and why.'

'Me neither, actually,' Takumi said. 'I feel like maybe some of that shit should stay private.'

The Colonel stuffed a towel under the door, lit a cigarette, and said, 'Fair enough, kids. We'll work on a need-to-know basis.'

twenty-nine days after

As I walked home from classes the next day, I saw the Colonel sitting on the bench outside the pay phone, scribbling into a notebook balanced on his knees as he cradled the phone between his ear and shoulder.

I hurried into Room 43, where I found Takumi playing the racing game on mute. 'How long has he been on the phone?' I asked.

'Dunno. He was on when I got here twenty minutes ago. He must have skipped Smart Boy Math. Why, are you scared Jake's gonna drive down here and kick your ass for letting her go?'

'Whatever,' I said, thinking, This is precisely why we shouldn't have told him. I walked into the bathroom, turned on the shower, and lit a cigarette. Takumi came in not long after.

'What's up?' he said.

'Nothing. I just want to know what happened to her.'

'Like you really want to know the truth? Or like you want to find out that she fought with him and was on her way to break up with him and was going to come back here and fall into your arms and you were going to make hot, sweet love and have genius babies who memorized last words and poetry?'

'If you're pissed at me, just say so.'

'I'm not pissed at you for letting her go. But I'm tired of you acting like you were the only guy who ever wanted her. Like you had some monopoly on liking her,' Takumi answered. I stood up, lifted the toilet seat, and flushed my unfinished cigarette.

I stared at him for a moment, and then said, 'I kissed her that night, and I've got a monopoly on that.'

'What?' he stammered.

'I kissed her.'

His mouth opened as if to speak, but he said nothing. We stared at each other for a while, and I felt ashamed of myself for what amounted to bragging, and finally I said, 'I — look, you know how she was. She wanted to do something, and she did it. I was probably just the guy who happened to be there.'

'Yeah. Well, I was never that guy,' he said. 'I — well, Pudge, God knows I can't blame you.'

'Don't tell Lara.'

He was nodding as we heard the three quick knocks on the front door that meant the Eagle, and I thought, Shit, caught twice in a week, and Takumi pointed into the shower, and so we jumped in together and pulled the curtain shut, the too-low showerhead spitting water onto us from rib cage down. Forced to stand closer together than seemed entirely necessary, we stayed there, silent, the sputtering shower slowly soaking our T-shirts and jeans for a few long minutes, while we waited for the steam to lift the smoke into the vents. But the Eagle never knocked on the bathroom door, and eventually Takumi turned off the shower. I opened the bathroom door a crack and peeked out to see the Colonel sitting on the foam couch, his feet propped up on thecoffee table, finishing Takumi's NASCAR race. I opened the door and Takumi and I walked out, fully clothed and dripping wet.

'Well, there's something you don't see every day,' the Colonel said nonchalantly.

'What the hell?' I asked.

'I knocked like the Eagle to scare you.' He smiled. 'But shit, if y'all need privacy, just leave a note on the door next time.'

Takumi and I laughed, and then Takumi said, 'Yeah, Pudge and I were getting a little testy, but man, ever since we showered together, Pudge, I feel really close to you.'

'So how'd it go?' I asked. I sat down on the coffee table, and Takumi plopped down on the couch next to the Colonel, both of us wet and vaguely cold but more concerned with the Colonel's talk with Jake than with getting dry.

'It was interesting. Here's what you need to know: He gave her those flowers, like we thought. They didn't fight.

He just called because he had promised to call at the exact moment of their eight-month anniversary, which happened to be three-oh-two in thea.m., which — let's agree — is a little ridiculous, and I guess somehow she heard the phone ringing. So they talked about nothing for like five minutes, and then completely out of nowhere, she freaked out.'

'Completely out of nowhere?' Takumi asked.

'Allow me to consult my notes.' The Colonel flipped through his notebook. 'Okay. Jake says, 'Did you have a nice anniversary?' and then Alaska says, 'I had a splendid anniversary,'' and I could hear in the Colonel's reading the excitement of her voice, the way she leaped onto certain words like splendid and fantastic and absolutely.