“Who?”
“Our Tuesday-night lover-girl. Melissa found it in Room 304. We thought maybe you’d know what it means.”
Aunt Nellie hands me a folded scrap of paper, and before I can open it she says, “Someone threw up in Room 101. You’d better hurry.”
I wait until I’m in the elevator. The note is no bigger than my palm, just a corner of notebook paper. On it, Querida has scrawled in smeared pencil.
yo me perdí de noche sin luz bajo tus párpados y cuando me envolvió la claridad nací de nuevo, due?o de mi propia tiniebla.
—Neruda
Google tells me:
I got lost on a lightless night under your eyelids and as lucidity enveloped me, I was born again, master of my own darkness.
—Neruda
Cameron opens the door in a pair of Jefferson High School sweat pants that ride an inch above his ankles and a gray T-shirt stained at the neck. He looks how I expected. Gaunt. Eyes darting in all directions.
“Come on,” I say from the stoop. “I want to show you something.”
“Right now?” he says.
“Right now.”
He puts on the same jacket he wore on the cliff, though it’s warmer outside now, and the Velcro covering the zipper has balls of lint caught in its teeth. Behind him, his mother stands in a baggy sweater, arms crossed. She looks like someone who is constantly cold.
“Jade,” she says. “It’s nice to see you again.”
“Hello, Mrs. Whitley.”
“I have something to give you. Wait right here.”
Cameron and I sit, both bumbling and gawky, while he ties his shoes. I’ve only come over here once since the truth came out, and then, we sat on the couch. We watched six episodes of Full House until I said, It’s getting late; I should go. Cameron looked at me with these huge, weird eyes and said, Come back soon, okay?
When Cameron’s mom returns, she presses a purple brochure into my hand.
“Take a look at this,” she says. “Just an idea. It’s a summer program I did when I studied ballet, around your age. Cameron says you want to be a writer, and I’ve heard their program is good. They give out scholarship money where it’s needed.”
The brochure is for a summer arts program at NYU. A summer of artistry and diversity in the heart of New York City, it reads. The words alone make my throat itch, so I fold the flyer and stuff it in the pocket of my jacket so she can’t see how softly this touches me.
“Thank you,” I tell her.
“When will you be back?” she asks.
“An hour. Two, tops.”
I have Ma’s car, and as we slide in, I turn the radio all the way up. I wish the Crucibles were playing, but they’re not, just some shit pop song I don’t recognize. Cameron presses his forehead to the window as we merge onto the highway. Headlights whiz by, fast-moving light. Comets.
I steer us into the Hilton Ranch parking lot and pull my all-access key from the pocket of my army parka. Cameron follows, feet shuffling and dragging, in through the revolving doors and to the elevator bank.
When we get to the room, Cameron glances back, furtive.
I know this room will be clean, because I did it myself and no one has reserved it since. I triple-checked the log. Trash bags are tied tight around plastic cans, the bed is tucked, neat and trim at the corners. Pillowcases fluffed. I’ve even Windexed the mirrors and folded a towel into the shape of an elephant at the foot of the king-sized bed.
“Smell it,” I say, as Cameron follows me inside.
“Smell it?”
“Clean, right?”
“Very clean.”
I perch on the edge of the bed and pat a flat swatch of comforter.
“Sit,” I tell him, and he does. His snow boots are thick and rubbery against the checkered pattern of the carpet.
That’s the thing about hotel rooms. They level the world. Every single one is the same, and inside, you can become what you’d like. You all sleep in the same scratchy sheets, you all stand under the same underpressurized showerhead, you all dry your legs with the same starchy towels. Doesn’t matter who you are; in a hotel, you become no one and everyone, all at once.
Cameron lies flat, and I do, too. The green-shaded lamp on the nightstand is the only light in the room. Together, we watch the amorphous white ceiling like dazzled stargazers, finding constellations in the asymmetrical cracks, nubs of drywall gathered in clumps. We lie like this until it’s an hour and forty minutes since we left his house.
“We should go,” I say.
“Yeah,” Cameron says.
I drive him home.
WHAT YOU WANT TO SAY BUT CAN’T WITHOUT BEING A DICK
A Screenplay by Jade Dixon-Burns
INT. HOTEL ROOM—NIGHT
Celly and Friend sit on the edge of the freshly made bed. The pillowcases are fluffed. A towel is folded in the shape of an elephant at the foot of the king-sized bed.
CELLY
I have a question.
FRIEND
Yes?
CELLY
Are you angry with her? With Lucinda?
FRIEND
Not angry, no.
Friend watches her for a moment. Celly falters under his gaze.
CELLY
Everyone has more going on inside than you’ll ever know. You couldn’t have seen this, no matter how hard you tried.
FRIEND
It all feels a little pointless, then, doesn’t it?
CELLY
Maybe the point is this.
FRIEND
This?
She looks up at him, unwavering.
CELLY
Everyone’s running around, trying to understand themselves and each other. But there are moments like this. Moments when our little human bubbles collide. We rub our boundaries together. We create friction.
FRIEND
And then what?
CELLY
We spin away again. We’ll always feel the shape of the people we’ve touched. But still, we spin away.
FRIEND
That’s sad.
CELLY
It’s not so sad. It’s just life. It’s how things go sometimes.
Russ
Russ walks into the station wearing his only pair of blue jeans and a T-shirt from the softball league he quit seven years ago.
He marches straight to the back office, where the gold plaque on the door reads “Lieutenant Gonzalez.” He does not knock. The lieutenant is hunched over a stack of paperwork—caught off guard, he looks ten years older. The bags under his eyes are a purpling blue. Russ decides that he does not hate the lieutenant. Just pity.
Fletcher, the lieutenant says. Didn’t I give you the week off?
I’m leaving, Russ says.
He places the grocery bag on the edge of the lieutenant’s desk. A stack of paperwork slides as the lieutenant pulls out the accoutrements of Russ’s police career: pants, belt, jacket. His badge. RUSSELL FLETCHER. His gun, with the bullets packed separately in a Ziploc. The lieutenant lays Russ’s things across his desk, then shakes his head.
Are you sure you want to do this? the lieutenant says. In the corner of his mouth, the faint hint of a knowing smirk.
I think so, Russ says.
You know, the lieutenant says, you did have some potential, Fletcher. Even after all that mess with Lee Whitley.
Thank you, Russ says, and then he lies. It’s been a pleasure.