When he turned back to face the interior, the look on his face was disturbingly calm. “That’s Jamie Lynn.” As if that explained everything.
“Jamie Lynn Beaumont?” William asked.
Daniel shook his head. “Nah. You don’t know her. She’s two years older, and anyway she went to Marion.”
“Oh,” Melissa said. She cupped her hands over her elbows as if she were about to start shivering. “Jamie Lynn from Marion.”
“I guess Epheme isn’t as ephemeral as it’s supposed to be,” he said, and then he did something in such complete defiance of the moment that it struck Christina as heroic. He bent his head, skimmed a finger along the page of his Hawthorne collection to find his place, and resumed reading quietly as if nothing had happened. As an afterthought, without looking up, he added, “Jamie Lynn’s my dealer. I am presently high as balls on cocaine.” He paused. “Actually, I’m coming down. Beer me, please, Otto.”
A cup holder slid from the bench at Daniel’s side, bearing a frosty can. Daniel popped the top and took a swig.
Christina was completely taken aback. It was the kind of thing people said as a joke, but she didn’t think Daniel was joking. She thought back to the dance floor before the fight, before Daniel even went up to the balcony. He’d wrapped his long arms around her, pulling them all in for an alarming number of group hugs, bouncing up and down and blathering on about how the trip wasn’t going to be awkward, urging them not to worry, telling William again and again how grateful he was that they were assigned as lab partners, along with some crap about Yeats.
He looked at each one of them in turn, and his eyes challenged them to react, despite one being swollen shut.
Looks like he’s going for the gold in multiple events. Just an incredibly gutsy performance.
“I’ve never even seen cocaine in real life,” Christina said, just to break the silence. She associated hard drugs with people who hung out under the Cayahota Creek bridge and slept in their cars next to the Dumpster behind the Odyssey. Used needles and blackened spoons and rooms kept in perpetual twilight by mildewed towels pinned across windows—the general chaos and disorder of addiction—made her want to bathe in hand sanitizer. Even if she’d been remotely curious, the sheer inertia of that lifestyle freaked her out. Getting into drugs in Fremont Hills was a surefire way to spend a few decades stuck in Fremont Hills.
She looked at Daniel’s swollen eye, the blood crusting on his upper lip, the Hawthorne book in his lap, the sleeveless gray Knicks shirt. She flashed back to their conversation outside the asylum chapel. Sometimes I wish it happened differently, you know? She wished she’d had the presence of mind to treat that as more than some throwaway thought by a person she didn’t know very well. She wished she could go back and say, Yes, I do know, and pull the thread he’d dangled in front of her face until whatever he was trying to say came flopping out at her feet.
“Are you serious?” William said. “Is that why you were such a psycho back there? You’re about to go to Princeton, man.”
Daniel sipped his beer. “Sherlock Holmes did cocaine.”
“He’s not a real guy,” Christina pointed out.
“Sigmund Freud did cocaine too.”
“Sigmund Freud didn’t have to play Division I basketball!” Melissa said. “Do you know how many people would kill to be able to play on a college team like that? Then you’ve also got your freshman seminar on Proust plus your other classes—”
“That’s why I have to keep my mind flexible,” Daniel said.
Melissa’s eyes went cold, and Christina braced herself for screaming. But she kept her voice low and even. “You’ve been high this whole trip, right? You haven’t seemed like yourself in…not since…”
“Whoa,” Daniel said, “let’s maybe not get into the whole time thing.”
William shook his head in disbelief. “Are you even gonna remember this?” He sounded defeated. Christina gave him a look that she hoped was supportive and girlfriendish.
“Sure,” Daniel said. “I’m not blacked out or anything.”
“No,” William said. “I mean the whole hashtag Autonomous Road Trip. The point of this trip is to have something we did together as a group to remember when we’re all in different places. We were supposed to catalyze something incredible here.”
The opening chords to Green Day’s “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)” came from the speakers. A slide show played on the front windshield. There was the Patricia Ming-Waller selfie, the East Village rooftop, the Higginsburg Asylum sign.
William slapped the bench. “NOT NOW, OTTO.”
“Way too on the nose,” Christina agreed. The music stopped, and the slide show vanished. The dark streets of Kenner returned. A lone Shell station cast light down on its pumps, and then it was behind them.
Daniel drained his beer and set the empty can into the cup holder, which promptly retracted. “I really don’t want you to take this the wrong way, but you’re operating under the assumption that we were any kind of group to begin with. I honestly one hundred percent love you for what you’re trying to do, but we’re just four people, man.” He winced and laid a hand against his side. “Ugh. There you are, ribs. Tomorrow’s gonna suck.”
A fresh beer sprang forth.
William’s face scrunched up like he was staring at the sun. He reminded Christina of a little boy who’d just been yelled at by an otherwise friendly teacher and was struggling not to break down and cry.
She wanted to crawl inside a privacy shroud and hold him. At the same time, she was struck by the fact that she was getting exactly what she wanted. The William/Daniel/Melissa triangle was smashed like
