We are Lost and Found by Helene Dunbar

Author:Helene Dunbar
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sourcebooks, Inc.
Published: 2019-07-11T00:00:00+00:00

July 1983

Friday night, Becky comes over to give me an excuse.

And to play fashion consultant, apparently.

Blue shirt, she says. It makes the green in your eyes stand out.

This feels…odd.

Why? she asks.

I think about the reasons: I don’t know. Is this a date? I mean…it might be, but Gabriel doesn’t seem like the dating type, and do guys even date? Does Connor even know what his last boyfriend looked like in daylight?

What I say is, I don’t know how to do this.

Michael?

Yeah?

Shut up and put on the blue shirt.

I change in the bathroom. Stare at my reflection in the mirror.

I don’t recognize myself.

It isn’t the blue shirt, or the fact that my hair isn’t sticking up in all directions.

It’s that even through the nerves, and the fear, and feeling as though I’m declaring something that can never be taken back, I look happy.

I have a date. In Little Italy. With a boy. His name is Gabriel, and when I’m with him, I want to stop time because he makes me feel…

He makes me feel…

I guess because he makes me feel alive. And he makes me feel like I know who I am.

That’s what I want to say to my parents when I leave the house.

James got us free tickets to that National Lampoon movie. I’ll be back by midnight.

That’s what I do say to my parents, despite the fact that James wouldn’t be caught dead at that movie, and Becky has plans to see Andy, and from the dismissive look on my father’s face, I’m glad I didn’t say more.

At some point, there is bread. And salad. And pasta.

At some point, Gabriel orders a jug of wine that comes wrapped in straw, and I somehow don’t get carded.

At some point, there are candles that have burned down to tiny white mountains and cake that tastes like coffee.

At some point he looks at me with those dark eyes and says, If I were nicer, I wouldn’t be here with you, but I can’t seem to stay away, and then laughs in a way that turns me to jelly.

And because of the wine and the candlelight and those eyes, I only hear that he can’t stay away, and I’m undone.

Gabriel leads me to a café off MacDougal.

I heard that Jack Kerouac used to hang out here, he says.

I order a cappuccino while Gabriel gets something made with orange juice and sparkling water.

Do you read Kerouac? I ask.

Gabriel smiles in a way that makes his eyes light up. No, he says. But I thought you would.

I keep trying, I say.

But underneath, something bubbles up inside me. I am consumed by the idea that Gabriel thought about what I might read, and figured out I’d like to go somewhere the Beat writers hung out.

Bob Dylan wrote stuff here too, he says, looking over the edge of his glass.

I glance around at the worn wooden tables and the grooved floors and the high rafters. Dylan’s gravelly voice floats around and around in my head.

Then Gabriel looks

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