“Well, he drove,” Emil replies, “so as long as his car is still here, we know he hasn’t gotten too far.”
The three of us begin haphazardly shoving the remains of our feast back into the bags. Rafaela barely shakes out the blankets before sloppily throwing them over her arm.
“It’s going to be okay,” I say, though I’m not sure if it’s more for my benefit or hers. “We’ll find him.”
“Yeah,” she says as we march along through the departing crowd. “He’s almost eighteen, not a little kid.”
But of course what none of us says out loud is that he’s off his meds, which changes everything.
We cross Santa Monica Boulevard, walking as fast as we can without running and stepping on the heels of people ahead of us. Emil still says nothing, but I see the concern on his face when I look at him.
“Shit.” Rafaela stops when we get halfway down the street she says they parked on. “We were right there, under that tree.”
There’s an empty spot where she points, the pavement and curb illuminated by the streetlamp above.
“Are you sure it was this street?” Emil says.
“I’m positive. We were on Tamarind, because then we started talking about tamarind trees and how most people don’t even know any other trees but, like, the really obvious ones.… Shit,” she says again, closing her eyes for a moment.
“Let’s take a look around, just to make sure he didn’t move the car,” Emil says, already walking.
“He wouldn’t move the car,” I say. “This is Hollywood. If you find a spot, you keep it.”
“Suzette, I’m trying to be practical.” He turns to look at me. “We need to go through this step by step because if we don’t find him here, we have to tell your parents. And I think you know how well that’s going to go over.”
We look for Lionel on every side street around the cemetery, but he and his sedan are nowhere to be found. We loop back to the cemetery grounds to take one last look, but the security guards are kicking everyone out and say we can wait by the entrance for stragglers. We stand around for another twenty minutes, but no Lionel.
Emil looks at me. “What do you want to do?”
Rafaela is looking at me, too. I hate this. I shouldn’t be the one in charge. Lionel is the older one. He should be looking out for me.
But he’s sick, and that illness is currently untreated and I knew that. So this is partly, if not mostly, my fault. I pull out my phone and try him again; it goes straight to voice mail this time.
“Go home and tell my parents he’s missing.”
twenty-two.
Emil stops at every place I suggest on the way home, just in case we happen to find Lionel at one of his old haunts.
None of the bookstores or libraries he’d visit are open, so that knocks out three-quarters of his life right there. We check the school grounds and the taco truck. Live music makes him anxious, so that rules out any of the shows tonight. We take a lap around the reservoir, the same at the lake. Rafaela wants us to check the area around Castillo Flowers, just in case, and she calls Ora to see if he’s at her house. The last stop before home is the Brite Spot. I’m hoping he’ll be sitting in a huge booth by himself, surrounded by platters of pancakes and bacon and sausage and eggs. He’s not there.
Emil shuts off the Jeep and jumps out when he pulls up to my house.
“You don’t have to walk me up,” I say. “I mean, that’s nice, but—”
“I’m going in with you.” He slams the Jeep’s door.
I stare at him. He was so upset that he barely spoke for over an hour, but he’s willing to take the fall with me?
He shrugs like it’s no big deal. “You shouldn’t have to do this by yourself.” He looks at Rafaela in the backseat. “You coming?”
She gazes up at the house with wonder as we walk to the porch. “Holy shit. This is your home? You guys never said you live in a fucking fairy-tale house.”
Emil shoots her a look, like maybe this isn’t the time, and she keeps her mouth closed for the rest of our walk to the door.
Mom and Saul are sitting in the living room, curled up together on the couch. They’re watching something on TV, a fast-moving scene that sends white light flashing across their faces.
“How was the movie?” Mom asks, wiggling her toes. She’s relaxed into Saul, her knees tucked in so she’s almost curled in a ball.
I don’t say anything. I’m standing in front of Emil and Rafaela, but my mouth won’t open. I look at Emil, who frowns a little but says, “Pretty good. Lot of people…”
“And who’s with you?” Saul asks, trying to see behind me.
“Remember me? I’m Rafaela.” She steps forward. “I met you at my aunt’s flower shop.”
“Of course,” says Saul, and his face is so warm it makes me look away. I have a feeling I won’t be seeing that grin much longer.
“We’ve heard so much about you, Rafaela,” Mom says, smiling. “It’s really nice to meet you.”
“Did you ditch my son?” Saul glances toward the windows that overlook the front yard.
Emil nudges me into speaking.
“We, um… we sort of lost him at the movie,” I finally say, my voice creaky.
Saul gives me a funny look. “You lost him?”
“He went to the bathroom and never came back,” Rafaela says, and I want to squeeze her in gratitude for helping me out. “He drove the two of us, and when we went to look for the car after the movie, it was gone.”
“He’s not answering his phone,” I say when Saul immediately pulls his out. “And we stopped by a few of the places we thought he might be, but…”
Saul is calling, and it must go straight to voice mail for him, too, because he hangs up without saying anything. Mom is sitting up now, checking her phone on the coffee table.
“Maybe he went for a drive. It’s just barely past curfew, so he’ll probably turn up soon.” But her voice doesn’t sound as confident as her words. “You kids are welcome to wait here until he does.”
“Is anyone hungry? I can make us some sandwiches,” Saul says, getting up from the couch.
There’s another silence, and now is the moment I should say something, but I’ve forgotten how to open my mouth.
Emil clears his throat just as Saul is almost out of the room. “You guys need to know something.”
I know he will say it if I don’t, and I think that’s the moment I truly understand how difficult it is to stop caring for someone. My conversation with Emil was so painful, but here he is standing by me, willing to do the one thing I’ve been avoiding all summer, one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to tell my parents. But I can’t let him, as much as I’d like to. I’ve been so busy trying not to betray Lion that I didn’t realize I’m exactly the one who has to do it.
“Lionel is off his meds.”
It is the longest sentence in the world and my voice shakes the whole way through, but I get it out.
Saul whips around so quickly it scares me. But not as much as the look on his face. “What did you say?”
I breathe out through my nose. “He’s off his meds. He has been for a while.”