“We got hungry,” says Beck, digging around in his bag. “Went out for gas station dinners. Hope you like beef jer—” He stops when he looks up. His face changes, and while I’ve learned most of his looks, this one is new. “You look . . . nice, Mim.”
The smile takes root in my stomach; it grows, weaving up through my chest and arms, shoulders and neck, before blooming in my face. I locate the only word between what I want to say and what I should say. “Thanks.”
After our gas station dinners, Beck decides to take a shower (gulp), and Walt promptly falls asleep. I turn down the volume on the TV and drop on the couch as another episode of I Love Lucy begins. Eventually, Beck emerges from the bathroom, wearing a clean gray V-neck and jeans. His hair is wet, and while I try not to picture him in that tiny shower, all making-it-work and whatnot, I just can’t help myself.
“I don’t watch this show very often,” says Beck, “but chick seems to be quite the troublemaker.” Lucy is currently stuffing pieces of chocolate down her shirt. “I don’t really get it.”
“It’s . . . sexy slapstick?”
Beck looks back at the screen, baffled. Lucy has her mouth full of chocolates now, like a chipmunk preparing for winter.
A chocolate chipmunk.
“That’s supposed to be sexy?” says Beck, plugging his cell phone in by the nightstand.
“Yeah, I don’t get it either. I guess back in the fifties, most girls were busy, you know, balancing books on their heads and baking pies. Knees were sexy back then, too, I think.”
“Knees?”
I nod. “And Lucy showed a lot . . . of knee.”
Beck crosses the room, reaches for the light switch. “You need this?”
I shake my head, yawn, and curl my legs up on the couch. In this new darkness, Beck sits next to me, and together we watch the lost art of Lucille Ball while I try my best not to jump Beck’s bones.
“You ever notice how motel rooms all smell the same?” he says.
I swear he and my mom would be friends.
“Moth’s shoe,” I say.
“What?”
“My mom, when she was younger, used to hitchhike through Europe.”
“Wow, really?”
“She’s British.”
“Oh.”
“Oh-nothing. It’s still awesome.”
“Right. I mean, sure. It is.”
“Anyway, she stayed in a bunch of hostels and said they all smelled the same. Like a moth’s shoe.”
Beck sniffs the air. “Yep, that’s it.”
Walt’s snores are a freight train, but we’re too tired to laugh.
“Speaking of moms,” says Beck, “I told mine. On the phone. Just now—or, before, I mean.”
It takes me a second to put his sentence back together. “You told her what you’re doing? About Claire and everything?”
He nods.
“What’d she say?”
“She said—” Walt turns over in his sleep, grunting. Beck runs his hands through his wet hair, and lowers his voice. “She said I’m making a huge mistake, dropping out of school. Said I should come home. She said a lot, actually. You know what she didn’t say? ‘How’s Claire?’”
His pain is visible, even in the dim light of the television. “What’re you gonna do?”
“No idea.” He looks at Walt for a second, shakes his head, turns back to the TV. “I saw her, you know.”
“Your mom? When?”
“No, not—Never mind. It’s silly.”
I stare him down, wait for him to continue. He will. I know this, and so does he. After almost a full minute, he comes through.
“I saw Claire,” he says. “Walk out of that bathroom at Jane’s Diner.”
“What?”
“Not actual Claire. I mean the kid looked nothing like her. But when she walked out of that bathroom, the look in her eyes was just . . .” Life, it seems, delivers the best punch lines only after we’ve forgotten we were part of a joke. I suddenly feel like I need to throw up. “. . . so fucking pained, you know? Crushed. By the world.”
Beck’s voice, along with the blue-lit room, dissolves, and I feel those things—I feel the weight of the world, I feel fucking pained.
I’ll scream.
I’ll tell on you.
“Mim? You okay?”
I feel his eyes on me now, trailing from my hair, down my body, lingering in places they don’t belong . . .
“Mim?”
. . . for the first time in a long time, I feel like a helpless girl. “You are beautiful, you know.”
“I’m not,” I say, I don’t know how loud.
“You’re too good,” he whispers, leaning his head closer.
“I’m not good,” I say. “I’m no good at all, Isabel.”
“Yes, Mim,” says a voice, cool like a fountain, and comforting. “You are.”
Nothing will happen.
“Mim, look at me.”
Nothing you don’t want.
“Look at me.”
I open my eyes. Or eye. And I’m sick of things the way they are, my many oddities, my limited depth perception, as if it’s not bad enough I only see half the world, but it always seems to be the wrong half.
“Mim,” whispers Beck.
And I’ve never so loved the sound of my name.
“Hi, Beck.”