For now, I wanted to set the universe right. I wanted to find those wishes. To hear Will speak through the words written on the scraps of paper. To know that Will and I aren’t just an institution, we’re the real deal.
I won’t lie, though. I feel guilty when I tell my mom that I’m taking Matt out. Only because she looks so damn hopeful and it makes me want to cry that I can’t make her heart whole and fix mine at the same time. We have to take her van because it’s the only vehicle we have that’s outfitted for Matt’s wheelchair. I’ve heard that there are quadriplegics that can drive by using hand controls, but unfortunately Matt’s not one of them, and I wonder sometimes when I catch myself still thinking about such things how just one small change to Matt’s condition like that, how a break in his spine just a single vertebra lower might have changed the quality of his life entirely.
Mom asks a bunch of questions about where we’re going and what we’ll be doing and when we’ll be back. I guess Matt’s already thought it through, because he has answers for everything. We’re going to the library. There’s a speaker this afternoon. Something about the Civil War. Mom keeps looking at me all, You sure?
She even interjects and says that I have a lot on my mind and maybe it’d be better for me to stay close to home, but I say that I’m fine and I need to get out of the house.
I suppose it’s hope and the fact that I don’t have any friends left that make her believe I’d want to get out of the house with Matt.
Matt won’t recite the first clue until we’ve finished the whole loading process and driven away from our street. I pull to the shoulder of the road, where the tires of Mom’s van crunch the broken seashells scattered there. The smell of rotting seaweed seeps in through the closed windows.
“Well?” I push the gear into park. “You’d better not have forgotten a word.”
“Do you want it or not?” Matt asks from the back.
“Sorry,” I mutter.
He clears his throat and then puts on a surfer-boy accent that I don’t appreciate: “‘Welcome to your great, big, epically magnificent, cowabunga awesome birthday scavenger hunt! First clue: Our inspiration was shaped like a type of shoe. I was nervous and so were you. Go to the place that welcomes tramps. Bring back a ball—quick!—before you lose your chance. Don’t screw this up, Devereaux. Love always, Will.’” Matt drops the imitation, which for the record sounds nothing like Will, who had a nice deep-but-not-too-deep voice and never sounded like an idiot. “Happy?”
I close my eyes. “Repeat it.”
He does. Word for word, exactly the same, so I know it’s real and that he hasn’t forgotten anything. But after that, my heart begins slipping down rib by rib until it winds up in the bottom of my stomach. “Crap,” I groan, and lower my forehead onto the steering wheel. “I don’t know. I don’t know what he meant.” I hadn’t expected this. I beat my fist against the dash. “Say the last half again,” I command.
“‘Go to the place that welcomes tramps,’” Matt recites. “Personally I think it’s a brothel. Seems like the most logical place for Will.”
I sit up long enough to glare at him through the rearview mirror. I’ve run into a problem, though. Will planned for me to complete the scavenger hunt with him, meaning if I got stuck, he could serve as a backstop. Okay, so he’d probably have made me suffer before showing mercy, but I would have made it to the end. I’d have gotten the prize.
But now what?
Think, Lake, think. I had been so sure that this would be the answer. My methodology. My way back. Everything. But if I couldn’t use this, what would I do?
I feel the telltale signs of tears tickling behind my nose and in my eye sockets. I don’t want to cry in front of my brother, but I’m not sure I can help it. I keep my head on the steering wheel and try to keep my shoulders from shaking.
Matt sighs loudly, then says, “Italy.”
“What?” I push my fists into my eyes and swipe away the tears.
“Italy. Italian food.” Matt is mumbling so that I have to strain to hear. “‘Shaped like a shoe,’” he quotes. “He means a boot. Italy is shaped like a boot.”
I twist to face him. The seatbelt cuts into my chest.
“Any Italian restaurants significant to you?” he says.
A lump rises in my throat. “Yes.” Barely above a whisper. “Yes, we…had our first real date at Taterelli’s.”
Matt presses his lips into a line. “Well, there you go. Guess you have your answer.”
I watch my brother carefully before finally turning and moving the gear into drive. “Thank you,” I say, and I find that I actually mean it.
I see now that the ball from the clue is a meatball—like the one the two main characters, a cocker spaniel and a mutt, share in this animated movie, Lady and the Tramp. Will bought a remastered version of it to show his little sister, Maddie, who we had actually come to like despite the fact that her mother was Linda, and Will and I brought popcorn and sour candies and stuffed our faces with Maddie while watching the movie with her, which I think we enjoyed probably twice as much as she did.
A happy memory expands my heart, testing the strength of the arteries and veins that hold it to my chest. We drive downtown to Taterelli’s, where I circle the block three times, looking for handicap parking. “You have to be kidding me,” I say, leaning over and searching the spots. “Where do they expect us to go?”
Matt scoffs. “Are you surprised by this?”
“Um, yeah.” I flick the blue permit hanging from the mirror. “This is supposed to mean something. There are supposed to be designated spots.”
Matt sighs, like I am so na?ve it physically exhausts him. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the world’s not exactly designed for people like me.”
I chew on the inside of my cheek until it becomes raw, barely listening. By the fifth time that we pass the restaurant’s green awning I make a decision to stop in the middle of my lane and turn on the flashers.
“What are you doing?” Matt asks indignantly.
I push the minivan’s gearshift into park. “What does it look like I’m doing?” I say. “Getting you out.” I wait until a few cars pass and then jump down from the van. Matt’s ramp unfortunately unloads from the driver’s side and already there are two cars stopped behind us. The first one puts on its blinker and waits for the chance to swerve over into the next lane, which it does at an entirely unnecessarily high rate of speed. I put my hand up as a human stop sign right outside the front of Taterelli’s and try my best to look authoritative.
I press the button and Matt’s ramp begins to unfurl. “Lake.” His face comes into view, contorted into an irritated look, bordering just this side of angry. “Stop, this is—this is—we’re in the middle of the road.” I’m not used to seeing my brother flustered.
I put my hands on my hips. “They’ll wait.”
“I don’t want to do this,” he says.
“Too bad, we already are.” I glance over my shoulder. Cars farther back in the line with drivers who can’t see what’s happening ahead of them begin to honk. “You wanted to come.”