Postcards for a Songbird by Crane Rebekah

Author:Crane, Rebekah
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781542092982
Published: 2019-08-05T16:00:00+00:00

The pause echoes in the night as I wait for Wilder’s response to appear on my phone. He doesn’t come back to the window.

Wilder: I think the better question is

Wilder: What if ur not?

With that, his bedroom light goes out.

22

A VACANT ROOM

Baby Girl has definitively decided that by the time she goes to Spokane Community College in a month, she will know who she is. The countdown is on. She’s on a scavenger hunt for herself. And today we are searching for clues in Target.

“Anything a person could want is in this store. I’ve got to be hiding in here somewhere. Let’s look in the bathroom section.”

“What are we looking for exactly?”

“Me.”

“How will you know when we’ve found . . . you?”

“Shakespeare once said, ‘To be or not to be me. In the end, we are what we buy.’”

“That’s not how Hamlet goes.”

“Who said anything about Hamlet? Come on.”

I wish my heart was into helping her, but I’m consumed with Luca. His eyes. His lips. His hands. And I’m not sure the past should occupy our house as much as it currently does. It might need to move out soon to make room for the present.

Luca hasn’t come back to Driver’s Ed. I waited, pulling his usual desk extra close to mine, waiting for the moment he would coast through the door and take up the air with his scent.

But he hasn’t showed all week. Frustration settled around me. Where was he? Did he decide to give up? To stop coming? Just like that? Like he does with high school.

He wants me to believe I’m strong, but what about him? If he’s willing to quit, why should I be any different?

I shouldn’t let doubt creep up on me like the cold chill of a familiar ghost. But the more I replay the night, the harder it becomes to fight the uncertainty of reality. Maybe I made it all up. Maybe it was all a trick of hands and shadows and moonlight. Maybe it was easier than I thought for Luca to let me go.

“This is all plastic junk.” Baby Girl can’t find anything in Target that gives her a clue as to who she is. “‘We are merely machines for soul-sucking corporations who use our labor and shit on our individuality.’ Carl Jung said that. Let’s go to Starbucks.”

But Starbucks only makes it worse.

I’m so consumed with my own problems that it isn’t until we’re about to order that I see complete panic on Baby Girl’s face.

“What is it?”

Paralyzed, Baby Girl looks at me. “I don’t know if I can do this.”

“What do you mean? Drink coffee? Just get decaf.”

“Order coffee.”

“You’ve ordered coffee before. What do you like?”

“That’s the problem,” she says. “I’ve never ordered for myself. I order what I think I should get. I ask myself, ‘What would a pothead order?’ A Caramel Cocoa Cluster Frappuccino with extra whipped cream, of course. Or a theater geek? A double Americano with a side of angst, and don’t get me started on Samuel Beckett or how Lin-Manuel Miranda has single-handedly revived Broadway.

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