If Birds Fly Back Read online

  God. How is it possible to love someone more than the moon—to miss them and worry about them this much—and be so angry with them at the same time? I cringe. Did Álvaro follow the rule of tell no one?

  What if he had someone with him, and Grace could have brought me along but didn’t?

  Focus, focus, focus.

  But when I bat away images of my sister, Sebastian rattles into my head. (What’s his deal anyway?) Tomorrow I’m planning on dragging him to Books & Books, my favorite indie store, to buy all Álvaro’s novels. I know I’m being overly idealistic, but part of me thinks these texts might hold some insight—that all those years ago, Álvaro was already planning his marvelous return. I jot down a list:

  Midnight in Miami

  Ten Years in Havana

  In the Hour of the Spring

  The Emperor’s House

  Memories from No-Man’s Land

  Divvying up the titles, I assign Ten Years in Havana and The Emperor’s House to Sebastian and give myself the others.

  Outside the closet is a muffled sound—a soft tap of knuckles on my door—followed by Mom’s voice: “Linny, lights-out.”

  It’s just after 9:00 p.m.

  After suppressing a groan, and leaning back and knocking my head three times against the wall, I open the closet door and switch off the overhead lights.

  “Thank you! Good night,” Dad says, because of course they have both been waiting directly outside my door. Their footsteps swish on the white carpeting, all the way down the hall. I listen for the zipping of blinds in the master bedroom, the rustle of the comforter as they pull back the sheets—good, they’re in bed now. Movie time.

  I found Grace’s headphones in one of her desk drawers when I practically ransacked her room. They’re blue, with yellow lightning bolts, and mold perfectly to my ears. Popping in Breakfast at Tiffany’s—my favorite nighttime movie—I climb into bed with my computer and pull up the covers to my chin, thinking about dominoes on Saturdays and the way Sebastian’s shoulders pitch forward when he’s talking and how darn much I miss my sister.

  Outside, a paper moon hangs flat against the black sky. I make a wish on it—because wishes shouldn’t be exclusive to stars—and fall asleep to Holly Golightly’s voice trailing into the dark.

  “It’s the mistake you always made,” she says, “trying to love a wild thing.”

  THE LEFT-BEHINDS (SCENE 5)

  CARSON FAMILY BACKYARD

  LINNY (thirteen) and GRACE (fifteen) are lying on beach towels under two orange trees, LINNY on her back and GRACE on her stomach. There’s a large mound under GRACE’s T-shirt, as if she’s stuffed her wings beneath it.

  LINNY

  What does it feel like?

  GRACE

  It’s hard to explain.

  LINNY

  But will I know when I feel it? Like Holly and Paul in Breakfast at Tiffany’s?

  GRACE

  Of course.

  LINNY

  How?

  GRACE

  You just know.

  LINNY

  But—

  GRACE rolls her eyes.

  GRACE

  Love isn’t like chicken pox, Linzer Torte. You don’t get spots or anything. It’s just like . . . like . . .

  LINNY

  Like finding the perfect shot in film?

  GRACE

  Okay, let’s go with that.

  LINNY

  My shoulders tingle.

  GRACE laughs, then:

  GRACE

  Okay. The first time a boy tingles your shoulders, you have to tell me before anyone else. Promise?

  LINNY

  Who else would I tell?

  GRACE

  Just promise me, Linny.

  LINNY

  Promise.

  “You mean this is all for him?” says Sebastian, hunching over a pile of fan mail beginning to resemble Everest. He puffs out his cheeks and runs a heavy hand through his hair, which this morning looks like the “before” picture for a Supercuts ad. One of his parents must be half lion.

  “Every last one, honey.” Marla dumps another bag on top of the sprawling mountain, over a hundred letters that we’re supposed to sort into three piles: Keep, Toss, and Report to the Police (because people send suspicious things through the mail). Álvaro is at a doctor’s appointment, so we’re trapped in his room for the next hour, reading.

  Crouching down, I cross my legs and nestle into the letters. We’re almost knee-to-knee, Sebastian and I—close enough to know he smells of laundry detergent and something distinctly boy. (Oh boy.)

  Marla trudges back into the hall and shuts the door.

  “I have something for you,” I say, handing Sebastian the Álvaro book list. “You read some, I read some.”

  He grabs the paper and nods, but doesn’t say a word.

  “Maybe there could be clues in the mail,” I say. “Like, what if the person who hid him wrote a letter?”

  Silence.

  Switching tactics, I hold up an envelope postmarked Edinburgh. “Kind of amazing, huh? And this one, too! Who knew he had fans in Scotland?” I show them both to Sebastian, who side-eyes me and groans.

  I mess with my fishtail braid and wonder if I’ve said something stupid. Time slows. I can literally feel it passing, the earth rotating, the stars shifting. The two mutes in The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter manage better conversations. (Good movie. Sad ending.)

  “You’re really quiet,” I say.

  “Why does everyone keep saying that?”

  “Because it’s true?”

  Sebastian drums his fingers against a package from Argentina. “Everyone knows Álvaro so well.” His voice sounds rusty, like he’s left it out in the rain.

  I’m not an idiot; I can tell he’s trying to shove down an emotion—and hard—but my mouth can’t seem to quit. “We just have to keep digging, that’s all.”

  At that, Sebastian chucks a letter onto the pile, closes his eyes, and leans back into a stack of travel books. A sliver of skin appears just above his waistline.

  What sort of feeling washes over me, I’m not sure, but I zoom in on him like a camera lens. Can’t help it.

  Sebastian’s definitely a different species of attractive: too willowy to be a jock, too imperfect to be astoundingly popular. Nothing about him should work, yet it does. Even the T-shirt he’s wearing—a green, screen-printed number that looks like the sun ate it and spat it out in neon—somehow complements his brown skin. It’s like someone’s edited him and ratcheted up the color.

  Was I ever like that? Maybe when Grace was around, but now? I feel color drained.

  I shake the thought from my head and try to shake out Sebastian as well. No, I can’t have him in there, because inevitably he’s going to leave—just like Grace. Figuring out this mystery should be the only thing I’m worried about.

  “We’re going to a bookstore after our shift,” I say, quickly adding, “you know, for investigative purposes.”

  Without opening his eyes, he slowly breathes out and says, “Yeah, okay . . . mind if I turn on the radio or something?”

  Oh. “Sure.”

  To our left is a small white transistor radio that he flips to the first station. For the next three minutes, the Beatles’ “Hey Jude” plugs the gaps in our failing conversation. It’s ridiculously awkward.

  Wordlessly, I slice open an envelope with my index finger. Dear Señor Herrera, it reads. You have no idea how long I’ve been wanting to say hello.

  Then Sebastian’s voice: “Hey, Linny?” It comes out like the song. “I was thinking about it and I think you’re right I mean I’m not sure you’re right but you’re probably right about the Joe thing because statistically speaking someone must’ve seen him in the last three years or helped him out because he’s really old and stuff and I doubt he could live by himself.” His hyperventilated soliloquy reminds me of the Scripps National Spelling Bee champions on TV, how they always talk extraspeedily, like they have so much materi
al batting around their brains, they have to expel it or burst. It wouldn’t surprise me one bit if Sebastian was a genius. Yesterday, he told Álvaro he’d gotten into one of the best universities in the world: Cal Tech. For astrophysics! (I made a mental note that 90 percent of Miami Beach Senior High’s guys probably couldn’t spell astrophysics, and the other 10 percent . . . Well, let’s just say that the Science Olympiad members generally sport aggressive unibrows.)

  He’s waiting for an answer, palming his knee offbeat. Hey. Whack. Jude. Whack.

  So I tell him about looking up Joe.

  Sebastian leans in. “Well, did you find anything?”

  Our knees touch, but neither of us moves. (Okay, he’s officially back into my head!) Words burble out like unset Jell-O. “Just a photo of him at some bookstore. But no Joe.”

  Sebastian considers this by chewing his bottom lip. He says nothing else.

  My mouth proceeds before my brain can tell it not to. “Why are you here?”

  “Is that . . . do you mean, like, on this earth?”

  I roll my eyes. “No, at Silver Springs. Why are you here if you’re not even from Miami?”

  He clears his throat—awkwardly, for an extended period of time. “Can’t I just, you know, love old people?”

  “And there aren’t any old people in California?”

  That cracks him up, splintering his puzzle face for a moment. “Nah. Just gym rats and fake-tanned people.”

  I lightly shove his shoulder, something I saw Grace do all the time with boys. “I’m serious.”

  “So am I.”

  “I don’t believe you even the tiniest bit.”

  He crosses his arms. “Why are you here, then?”

  “Because my parents are obsessed with me going to Princeton and becoming a doctor, and tending to old people looks good on an application.”

  “Tending to them?”

  “Yes, tending.”

  “That makes you sound like a gardener. Like they’re your shrubbery.”

  Just for a second, I laugh—another thing I can’t help. The boy might be strange, but he also knows that shrubbery is an abnormally funny word. He adds, “I don’t believe you, either, by the way.”

  “Um, what I said is true.”

  “Maybe. But you’re not obsessed with Álvaro’s disappearance because your parents want you to go to Princeton.” The way he says it is inarguable, like he has me all figured out.

  I shoot back a mature “Whatever” and then pretend I’m immediately reabsorbed in my pile of letters.

  At least the silence is less awkward now—and although none of the letters so far have contained any clues, they are interesting. Some are rather to the point and grammatically dubious: Hey hombre, glad to see your alive. Others are from incredibly creepy people—people who’ve snipped Álvaro’s face from vintage magazines and drawn devil horns on his forehead; people who say if he ever writes a book like that again, there’ll be “hell to pay.” (That’s a direct quote from Mrs. Roberta Tully in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, who I imagine as a middle-aged woman who owns several Snuggies.)

  The majority of letters, however, splinter the solid bits inside of me. Divulging your personal life to a stranger is something I’ll never understand, but here it is, over and over again:

  Hi, Álvaro

  To my dearest

  Only you will understand

  I haven’t told this to anyone

  We’ve never met, but I feel like we have

  Out of nowhere, Sebastian mumbles, “It’s kind of like the Mars Voyager 1 Golden Record.”

  Sure? Is he kidding? I squint at him, trying to figure out if he actually expects me to identify with this statement.

  “Oh, sorry,” he says, picking up on my confusion. “I do that sometimes.” Messing with his hair—as if it could get messier—he resumes his Speedy Gonzalez speech. “It’s just this collection of images that NASA sent up with the Voyager spacecraft so that anyone who found it could know about life on earth and it’s kind of like this wish to not be alone and to connect with people or nonpeople and that kind of reminded me of the letters.” Pause for breath. “Aaaaannnnd now you think I’m the biggest nerd ever.”

  The corners of my mouth turn up. “Yeah, pretty much.”

  Sebastian throws his head back—probably with the intention of laughing—but in the process he whacks it on the edge of the wooden bookshelf, which makes him really start laughing. His whole face participates; it’s an event.

  I say, “You all right there?”

  “Just perfect,” he says, hand massaging the back of his skull.

  Since I’m preoccupied with Sebastian’s minor head trauma—and Sebastian’s general Sebastian-ness—I don’t hear the doorknob twist open, but the smell of aftershave hits me like a camel’s kick. In the doorway stands Álvaro, clutching a cane with flame decals shooting up the side. A part of me wonders if he actually needs the mobility support or if it’s a weapon for the next time Marla tries to confiscate his cigarillos. On the positive side of things, his high-collared shirt doesn’t reveal masses of chest hair, but it is conspicuously inside out—and horizontally striped, matched with vertically striped pants. He looks like a candy cane that’s been chopped up and wrongly reassembled.

  Squinting, he mumbles a stream of incomprehensible Spanish (someone turn on the subtitles, please) and then points to his desk.

  “Get my hat. I need to go.”

  In my mind, I hear the theme music to The Great Escape.

  10.

  Sebastian

  “It is simply astounding how the spark of an idea can replace the last two hundred years of belief. Take Einstein’s theory of relativity, for example, which radically supplanted the Newtonian model. That is all it takes—one moment of breakthrough to change the world.” A Brief Compendium of Astrophysical Curiosities, p. 23

  Linny grabs her backpack, and we follow Álvaro. He wears a fedora with a spiky red feather.

  The man can move. You wouldn’t think it, with the cane and the shuffling. But when he’s motivated? Voom. He leads us into the empty kitchen, past the industrial freezer.

  Linny whispers to me, “He’s not doing what I think he’s doing?” Her breath smells like bubblegum.

  My response stutters out: “I think he’s—er—doing exactly what you think he’s doing.”

  Under the exit sign, Álvaro fishes into his pant’s pocket and pulls out a scrap of white paper. Next to the door is a keypad. With a shaky finger he presses 0-0-0-0.

  How the heck does he know the code? Maybe he saw someone typing it in?

  Now I understand the purpose of outdoor and indoor security: to stop people from breaking in and out.

  Wedging the door open with his cane—“You are coming, yes?”

  Massaging the back of my still-throbbing head—“Such a bad idea.”

  Correction: This is a horrendous idea. All the things that can—and probably will—go wrong tick through my mind.

  He could fall and break a hip.

  Or give an interview to a crackpot reporter.

  Or wander back to where he came from and never be seen again.

  Or be eaten by alligators.

  Okay. The last one is ridiculous, even in Florida. But the previous three are distinct possibilities.

  Trying to coax him back upstairs, I say, “We’re going to miss Jeopardy!” Linny’s eyes narrow at my pitiful effort, like That’s the best you’ve got?

  Apparently so.

  “I know it’s awful,” Linny offers. Sweetly. Reasonably. “But we’re really not supposed to leave.”

  Álvaro sucks on his teeth and rubs his free hand against the doorframe. “I have no choice, you see.”

  Linny again: “I mean, you haven’t broken out yet. We can just go back upstairs—”

  Álvaro’s chest expands so much that he runs the risk of combustion. “No. No.” His face clouds over. “What I mean is, I have no choice. This place is always: You eat now. You sleep now. Do this. Do tha
t. Know what I want? To do something by myself.”

  Right now would be the obvious time to mention he is, in fact, not alone (we’re accomplices), but what kind of asshat would I be if I said that?

  Álvaro adds: “One hour. One hour, and I promise we’ll come back.” Opening the door a tad wider—“It’s a beautiful day.”

  I peer over at Linny, who’s already looking at me, and we exchange an uneasy shrug.

  We don’t cave because it’s sunny and blue outside, which it is. And it’s not because we’re excitement starved after an hour of reading letters, which we are. The real reason is: Álvaro’s little speech was one of the saddest things I’ve ever heard, and judging by the way her shoulders sank, I think Linny feels the same way.

  In the back alley, Álvaro picks up the pace and tips the fedora over his eyes. A few days ago I found it implausible that a man his age could escape public notice for years. This experience makes me a believer. I’m kind of proud of him.

  Are we having our first father-son moment?

  Behind me, Linny looks like she’s experiencing a hernia. “Am I correct in thinking that we probably shouldn’t be doing this? If Marla finds out . . .”

  In front of us, Álvaro adds an extra spring to his step. So I say to her, “Sometimes the right thing isn’t so black and white.”

  We end up two blocks away, at the beach.

  Álvaro steps out of his loafers and wiggles his wrinkly toes in the sand. Down to the surf he goes. I follow. Linny kicks the crap out of a few seashells and refuses to leave her backpack unattended.

  Álvaro and I wade up to our knees and line up like celestial bodies. Side by side. The water is warm and feels good on my skin.

  This is it. Ahora.

  There won’t be an opportunity more perfect than this. I should tell him about my mom, about me.

  THE BREAKTHROUGH CONJECTURE:

  Opportunities for breakthrough come in sets of finite moments and therefore must be instantaneously capitalized on to ensure world change.

  The lump in my throat is the size of Jupiter. “I—can we talk about something?”