The fact that I’ve just had this thought fills me with such horror I gasp. I bring my hand up to my mouth. I take my hand away. The faint outline of a monster face remains on the inside of my wrist—the stamp from the Monster Hands show. The album. It’s in the car. Nina’s drawing. I have to get out of here, get out of this room. I can’t breathe. I get up and walk across the beige, water-stained carpet. Sean’s jeans are neatly folded and lying on top of the dresser. I reach into his pocket and get his keys. I wrap my fist around them to keep them from jingling. I glance at Sean one last time, and slip out.
I walk through the parking lot toward Sean’s car. Stop, stare in the window. The album is sitting on the cupholder between the two front seats. My heart is pounding hard. I unlock Sean’s car door and climb in, sit down, reach for the album. I remove the plastic shrink-wrap and take out the record—dark gray grooved plastic with large, even darker gray fingers printed on the side, as though a giant gray hand is trying to grab it. Something flutters to the floor. The lyrics printed on a delicate sheet of rice paper in dark gray ink. I read the first song.
“Wherever Nina Lies”
Her face changes when she thinks you can’t see her.
Staring out the window, always watching, someone’s chasing her.
She twists her hands, draws pictures on her wrist, bites her lips.
Ask a question, she just shakes her head, won’t answer it.
She cries at night, always cries at night, she thinks you can’t hear it.
Try and tell her it’s okay, but you know she can’t believe it.
Ask her why and she only shakes her head no.
She says one day she’ll go as far as she can go.
She says one day she’ll go as far as she can go.
And I feel my lips curving into a smile. I know just what this last line means, even more than whoever wrote it did: When Nina was fifteen, and I was eleven, we got kind of obsessed with the weird local commercials that would come on late, late at night on cable. Sometimes when our mom was working the overnight shift, we’d stay up until one, two, three in the morning just waiting for them to come on. We loved the ad for Hammer Jones’s Hardware featuring “Hammer Jones himself,” and a spot for a local hair salon showing a woman with a bunch of foil on her head whom we recognized as the cashier at the drugstore. But our very favorite was a very silly ten-second ad for Covered Wagon Shipping in which a trucker dressed in colonial clothing said, “Whatever you need shipped, I’ll personally drive it myself from just across the street”—flash to him driving the truck across a street—“to clear across the country. That’s as far as you can go!” Flash to him driving past a piece of poster board onto which someone had written, Welcome to San Francisco in orange marker. Nina and I absolutely loved this commercial and it became a long-running joke for us. For years all one of us had to do was say, “I’m going about as far as you can go!” and the other one would crack up.
I can just imagine the guys from Monster Hands asking Nina where she was headed and Nina reciting this line. Maybe laughing a little to herself. Maybe thinking of me while she did. I smile, for a second, just for a second before I remember that figuring out the song lyrics is not a triumph now. This is not the next clue. This is not anything.
I look out over the empty parking lot. All the motel windows are dark. I clutch the song lyrics to my chest. It is so quiet out here. I feel like I am the only person in the world.
But the silence is interrupted by a buzzing coming from under one of the car seats. I lean over. A tiny red light is blinking between the seats. Sean’s cell phone. I reach down and pick it up. It’s 3:16 a.m. Unavailable is blinking on the screen. It’s probably another one of those wrong numbers.
I am suddenly filled with such deep anger at whoever is calling, for interrupting me, for being alive when Nina isn’t. I answer the phone.
“She gave you a fake number,” I say. “Whoever you think you are calling, this is not them. This is SEAN’S PHONE,” I say. “Sean. A boy.” I pause. “You do not know him!” My heart is pounding. No answer. “Hello?” I hear breathing on the other end. And then there’s a voice, very quiet, barely more than a whisper.
“Get away from him, it’s not safe for you there.”
My heart starts pounding. This is obviously just a wrong number, some stupid kid playing a prank probably. Or maybe Amanda is somehow involved in this.
“Who is this?” I say. But they’ve already hung up. I don’t want to be in this parking lot anymore in the dark. I put the phone down on the seat next to me. I don’t want to touch it. I just want to go back inside the motel. I’m scared.
There’s a tapping on the window. I turn to the right. A hand. Big eyes. A face. There is a face, someone watching me through the window. I open my mouth and scream.
The door opens and a pair of strong arms wrap around me.
“Hey, hey, hey, hey, it’s okay, baby.” It’s Sean. “It’s just me. It’s just me.” He rocks me back and forth. “I woke up and you weren’t there.”
“I couldn’t sleep,” I say.
“What are you doing out here?” he says.
“I wanted to see that Monster Hands record,” I say. “I just had this feeling that I needed to see it that…”