After the End

18 MILES

I’VE BEEN WANDERING FOR HOURS WITH NO LUCK, feeling like the biggest fool on earth. I want to give up, but remember the look on my father’s face when he said I needed to prove myself to him. That’ll never happen in the mail room. I’ve got to find this girl.

I try to think like a detective would. If you’re new to a city, you most likely go to touristy areas. I walk up a road with several restaurant terraces and sit down on a street bench to watch the people passing by.

At least I got out of the house for the weekend. When I told Mrs. Kirby I would be fine on my own, she actually sounded relieved. And I answered Dad’s Is everything okay? text this morning with: Just watching TV in my jail cell. Don’t worry, I’m fine.

I finally get up and begin following signs for Pike Place Market, the one spot in Seattle that I’ve actually heard of. Across the street a rowdy crowd sits at tables outside a sports bar. I doubt this girl will be in that group. I sigh. This is worse than finding a needle in a haystack.

“Hey, Starry Eyes, baby! Come back, I was just kidding!” someone yells.

I’m suddenly on high alert, my eyes scanning the crowd across the street. I home in on a group of college-age guys wearing identical Greek letter T-shirts and drinking pints of beer. It was one of them who shouted “starry eyes.” But walking away from them is what looks like a small-built boy with a kind of fuzzy crew cut.

Wait, no. It’s a girl.

I jog across the street toward the frat boys, watching as the girl stops at another table, leans in, and talks with them.

“Hey, what’d that girl ask you for?” I ask the first table.

One of the guys looks me up and down and then, satisfied that my button-down and jeans meet his dress code or something, says, “You don’t want her, man. She’s crazy.”

“You’ve got that right,” the guy next to him says, and laughing, they lift their mugs to clink in agreement.

“What do you mean, crazy?” I ask.

“Chick’s been showing up every night, wandering around asking everyone their name,” another guy says. He shakes his head and wipes the foam off his mouth with the back of his hand.

“And what about that creepy star-shaped contact lens?” the first guy says. “Weird, right?”

Star-shaped contact lens? Excitement rises in my chest. I walk away from their table. “You’re welcome!” one of the frat boys calls after me, and his friends laugh.

The girl is watching something across the street, and I turn to see what she’s looking at. My heart stops in my chest. It’s two of Dad’s security guards from work, and they’re staring straight at her.

A car speeds by, forcing them to wait before they jog across the road. I look back at the girl, but she’s gone, and Dad’s guards are looking around like Where’d she go?

I take a quick right onto the next road, and then I see the girl dart out of an alleyway a block away. She moves so smooth and fast it looks like she’s gliding.

I spend the next hour trailing her around town while I run over Dad’s description in my mind: starburst eye, long black hair, probably traveling with two huskies. Looks like she lost the dogs and the hairdo sometime during the last week, but according to the frat boys, she kept the weird contact lens. She doesn’t seem like an “industrial spy” who everyone’s dying to get his hands on. She looks more like a lost little boy.

As I watch her, I realize there’s something wrong with her. She flinches at the smallest provocation. A street cleaner goes by and she looks ready to climb the nearest tree to escape. She stands outside the Apple store and stares at the window for so long it looks like she’s planning a major electronics heist. You’d think she was seeing everything for the first time. Like she’s Tarzan or something—raised by wolves in the deepest, darkest forest. And then there’s the fact that she keeps stopping people and asking their name.

I follow her as she roams the streets until well after dark, and watch as she finally walks into a guesthouse with a sign outside reading CATCHING DEW GUESTHOUSE: NO VACANCIES. I jog back to where I parked my car, hoping she doesn’t leave while I’m moving it. Once parked in front of the guesthouse, I settle in and keep an eye on the front door. That’s when my phone rings. Dad’s yelling before I even have a chance to talk.

“… called the home phone and when you didn’t answer, I got Mrs. Kirby on the line. She went straight over to the house and then called to tell me you weren’t there. Now you better have a good reason to—”

“I found her,” I say, cutting him off.

“You found her? What the hell’s that supposed to mean?” my dad asks, confused.

“I’m in Seattle, and I think I found the girl you’re looking for.”

Dad is silent for a whole thirty seconds, and I wait to hear whether he’s going to start yelling again or if he’ll take me seriously.

“Where are you?” he asks, his tone clipped. Unreadable.

“I’m parked in front of a guesthouse I saw her go into,” I say.

“Where? Give me an address.”

Within minutes, one of Dad’s company Saabs comes down the street and parks a few places away. I stay in my car and watch as one of the men I saw earlier today walks up to my window and taps on it.

I roll the window down and stare at him. “Your father says for you to check into a hotel and then drive straight back to L.A. in the morning,” he says.

“Got it,” I say, and roll the window up in his face. I make no move to leave. He shakes his head and walks back to his car.

The guards and I spend the night in our cars. Finally, around 10:00 a.m., one of them goes into the guesthouse and comes back out at a jog. “She’s gone,” he calls to his partner, and throws me a scowl as they speed off.

Dad calls five minutes later and commands me to head home. Now I’m in a bind: if I go home without the girl, Dad will definitely kill me. I have to find her before his security team does and somehow convince her to come back to L.A. with me. I rest my head on the steering wheel and experience a moment of pure panic. What have I gotten myself into?

I breathe deeply and reason with myself. What worse can happen? I’m already grounded. I’m already going to be kept out of Yale until Dad feels like greasing some palms. I can’t think of a fate worse than the mail room, although I’m sure Dad could. I have to do this, I think, and start the car.

Three hours later I finally spot her, crouched down outside an ultramodern glass building, talking to a street person. Just then it starts pouring down rain. The girl stands, pulls her hood over her head, and sprints into the building.

I turn the car around, park in the building’s parking lot, and make a dash to the door she disappeared through. I just hope she’s still here. If she’s not, I’m going to seriously consider admitting failure and going home.