“Excuse me?” Mara says from behind a puffy cloud.
“I burned Sydney’s things.”
“Right,” she says, swiping at the air. “I heard about that.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it. I’ve often wanted to burn them myself.”
I light my cigarette. The smoke swirls in and tickles all the right places. She lowers herself onto the curb and I join her. We sit for a while, smoking in silence. It feels like we’ve just hiked up some impossible mountain and now we’re resting at the top, taking in the view, surprised at how we got up here.
“Can I ask you something?” Mara says.
“Sure.”
“What Sydney said he felt about my art—do you think it was sincere?”
Inhale, exhale. “I understand why you’d ask that,” I say. “Honestly, there were times I wondered the same thing. Did he truly think I was a good actor? Or was he just biased by his emotions? But you know what? I don’t think the two things are separate, you and your art. They’re part of the same thing. And the whole point with art is that we try to make people feel something, right? And you did that. Really. That I can say without any doubt.”
She leans back onto her elbows, gazes skyward. Her smoke joins mine, forms a supercloud above us. I follow the smoke as it rises, wondering how far it will travel, imagining it will somehow reach Sydney. If he’s up there watching, I’d like him to know I approve of his choice, even if I disagree with his method. I just wish he hadn’t felt the need to keep it from me. I wish I hadn’t made him feel like he had to.
“I should probably go,” she says, crushing her cigarette into the pavement.
It feels too soon. I just found her.
“My boyfriend’s been calling,” she explains. “I was supposed to meet him a few hours ago.”
This is the first I’m hearing of a boyfriend. “How long have you been with him?”
Mara seems to know why I’m asking. “Believe me, it had nothing to do with my decision. We’ve been together only a few weeks, but we dated in high school. When I came back here to New Hope, he was still here. It’s been a huge help to have him around, actually.”
It’s good to hear. For some reason, I feel invested in this girl’s future now. “Do you think you’ll ever go back to Brooklyn?”
“I don’t know, maybe. I don’t see myself staying here long term, but I think I needed to come back for a little while, just to recharge.”
I know what she means.
We both stand and face each other. “I’m sorry for just showing up like this,” I say.
“I’m glad you did.”
I hug her, hold her like I’m holding him. It’s hard not to think of what might’ve been.
When I finally let go, I tell her, “I think Sydney would want me to keep an eye on you, if that’s okay. You know, just to make sure you’re not slacking.”
“Please do,” she says. “I’d really like that.”
29
The next morning Gavin finally comes upstairs. Mom is leaving for her tutoring session and Gavin asks her when she’ll be home because he really needs to chat.
Mom leaves and Gavin makes coffee. He offers to make me breakfast but I say no and then he offers to squeeze me fresh OJ with the present we got Dad for Father’s Day last year and I say yes because I’m afraid that if I say no to every single thing, he’ll know there’s something fishy going on. But the OJ is a mistake because it makes my stomach feel extra-nervous.
And then my stomach feels even more nervous when Gavin asks me why I’m wearing a dress. I tell him I’m going to make a video on my iPod in my bedroom and he believes me. He finishes his coffee and says he has to use the bathroom. He goes downstairs and that’s when I pull the note out of my pocket and leave it on the kitchen table:
Finally my memory is good for something. I go the same way Gavin and I did the day we went into the city, down the big hill and through Hoboken. It gets trickier when I reach the underground train because Gavin used a yellow card to get us through the gate but I don’t have a yellow card. I thought of everything else. On my back I have Dad’s Gibson and inside its soft case I have all my supplies: my journal, change purse, the Sydney guitar picks, bubble gum, and the papers that Felicia sent over. But no yellow card.
A nice man in a Mets jersey sees me standing by the gate and asks me where I’m going. He slides his yellow card into the gate and tells me to walk through. He makes sure I get on the right train and I thank him for his help. I know I’m not supposed to talk to strangers, but I’m not supposed to do a lot of things.
The train lets us out underground. I walk past a man on a bench who’s bent over so far it looks like he might fall onto the tracks, but I don’t have time to help him. It smells like the toilets at the Riverview Fair and I have to follow the people up the stairs until it’s bright and I can finally breathe.
There are so many people and they’re knocking into my guitar like they can’t even see me. Suddenly I realize where I am: I’m in New York City and I’m all alone.
This place is very dangerous because it’s hard to tell who’s crazy and who’s normal and that’s what happened to John Lennon. Mark David Chapman looked like a nice guy, but he was really a fanatic (which is totally different than just a really big fan, like me and Dad). Mark David went to the Dakota and he walked right up to John and he shot him with a gun, even though earlier that same day John gave Mark David his autograph. I don’t know why Mark David did that because John was being so nice to him. It makes me think of that photo Gavin took with those two women (Tuesday, July 16, 2013). Dad says Mark David wanted to be famous by hurting someone famous and so for just this one time, I’m happy to be nobody special.
But not for long, because today I’m going to be on television.
I walk to the corner and reach my hand up as far as it can go, but the taxis just zoom by. I wave and wave and the guitar is getting heavy on my back and the shoulder straps are digging into my skin.
I’m still waving my arm when I hear a man’s voice behind me: “Just you?”
The man has a mustache, but it’s not bushy like a cowboy’s, it’s thin and neat. He sticks his arm way up high and a taxi stops. The mustache man puts me in the backseat and I tell him I want to go to Chelsea Television Studios. He tells the driver where I want to go and I ask the mustache man, “Do you watch The Mindy Love Show?”
“Never heard of it.”
“Well, I’m going to play a song on the show. You should watch.”
He says, “Good luck,” and he taps his hand on the taxi roof, and the driver starts driving. I see the driver’s dark eyes in the mirror and he says, “Hello.”
And I say, “Hello. My name is Joan Lennon.”
I wait for the driver’s eyes to get big because he is amazed by my name, but his eyes stay the same size and he says, “My name is Adisa.”
“Do you like the Beatles?”
“No, no beetles. Where I am from, this is no good.”
“The last time I was in a taxi was July sixteenth, which was a Tuesday.”