Once I'm Found

The bell of the gas station tinkled as Peg entered, her Sadie Oxfords making no sounds against the linoleum flooring. From a corner of the counter, a fan valiantly exhausted air into the room, although the temperature still read 89.6°F. Outside, the concrete shimmered with heat.

Right behind her were the twins. Hannah was still holding the door she’d pushed open, allowing Olivia to enter after Peg, and now, the three girls spilled into the store full of hunger.

Hannah, in a modern version of the Y2K lumberjack fashion, was eager to pay for their gas and get out. Olivia, dark hair spilling over her shoulders in Dutch braids beneath a wide preacher’s hat, removed her black tea-shades just as her stomach started rumbling. Peg, dressed in retro pastels and contrast, went looking for something new.

“These look disgusting,” Olivia said cheerily as she folded forwards to peer closer at the display of day-old cellophane-wrapped turkey sandwiches. From her station, the store clerk managed to roll her eyes as she looked away, popping a gum. Hannah bumped Olivia with her hip.

Slipping between the centre aisles, Peg let her hand skim over the baubles there. Polyester fabric roses hung in plastic phials next to kids’ glimmer slime and camping frisbees that no one ever expected would make it to the trip home. Next to a board covered in keychains of Simpsons figures, a row of snow globes stood silent guard. Some of them were forested with redwood or maple trees, others with roadside attractions such as the diner that had produced the world’s largest pancake.

Only one of them actually had snow, and Peg reached for it gingerly. It had been a long time since she’d seen the real thing. They should have run away in December, but road trips weren’t meant for winter.

As it tilted, so did her head, watching the flakes swim down. She shook it gently, mesmerised.

“Hey!” From the end of the aisle, the booming voice of a man in a cap, mutton chops, and an unfriendly, grime-stained wife beater pointed straight at her, startling Peg out of her reverie.

At her feet, the globe shattered.

“I wasn’t stealing; I was just looking!” Peg said, panic frosting her voice. She didn’t know why she bothered. They never listened.

The attendant angled sideways. “You break it, you buy it,” she said, sounding bored.

“It weren’ me!” the man huffed in his thick accent before turning to point at Peg. “It was—”

But Peg was already gone. Signalling the twins on the way out, she brushed towards the door. The bell jingled amicably as a woman stepped inside, and Peg disappeared past her, quickly followed by Olivia, who gave a cheery, “Thanks!” waving the sandwich at the girl behind the counter on her way out. It earned her a charmed shake of the head, as if the group of girls weren’t fleeing the scene.

***

Three months ago, they had all sat in a darkened room, two fingertips each on a planchette, shadows flickering across their faces from the candles.

“If anyone’s here, give us a sign,” Hannah said, her voice loud and clear.

The planchette moved to Yes, and Olivia shivered.

Hannah raised an eyebrow at her that wasn’t as inconspicuous as it tried to be.

Peg blew at a candle, a little bored.

“Can you tell us your name?” Olivia asked bravely, her voice a hoarse whisper. This had originally been Hannah’s idea, but Peg hadn’t let Olivia back out when she protested. The old ouija board had just been gathering dust in the attic anyway, and when Peg had led her to it, Olivia had been pressed for a reason to say no. Surprisingly, Olivia was not the sister with a penchant for horror movies.

Wood scratched against wood as the planchette moved steadily over to M. Then A-R-G—

Continuing to spell out the name, Peg waited, her gaze resting easily on Hannah rather than the planchette.

“What do you want?” Hannah said.

Peg bit her lip to contain herself as she spelled out the next words: F-I-N-D-M-E.

“Holy shit!” Olivia said, releasing the planchette as if scalded.

Peg tried to hold in a laugh.

Hannah failed. “You’re the one moving it!” she said wryly, as if it had been a big secret. Hannah loved puzzles, her expression impeccably smug whenever she solved one.

Olivia looked at her, shocked.

“I’m sorry!” Peg finally broke, petitioning Olivia with a smile she couldn’t quench. “But you should have seen your face, Ollie.”

At length, Olivia folded herself back into position, but she looked pissed. Peg felt a little bad. A very little. After all, they were the ones who had asked her to come. They should have known better.

***

For the next couple of days, the road turned into a series of polaroid moments. Peg played with the dying sunlight as it shone through windows, painting the tips and sides of her fingers a fiery pink.

Sometimes, it hit the rearview mirror as they drove, but Peg had promised herself not to look back when they left. It was probably for the best she wasn’t driving, for several reasons. One being that her driver’s license had expired.

Autumn was sneaking in days of rain, gathering wet leaves on the payment as the car disappeared in-between ridge-backed forests, the roads hatcheted into the sides of mountains. Those were the days the girls found obscure roadside diners that served the best pancakes they’d ever had, although Hannah always insisted on cherry pie instead.

“Makes me feel like I’m in Twin Peaks.”

In one diner, Peg noticed a young man reading The Grapes of Wrath. He had that crumpled, intellectual look about him, constantly pushing his wireframe glasses back up his nose. His hair was nicely kept, though, his features borrowed from Peg’s idea of an all-American war hero, with a leather jacket neatly folded beside him.

Outside the window stood a parked motorbike weighed down by saddlebags. Peg was intrigued. She’d never read The Grapes of Wrath before.

Her own thumb was bookmarking a copy of To Kill a Mockingbird, annotated. Olivia had brought it after Peg had apparently left it out on a credenza at their house one night. She’d almost forgotten all the notes she’d made in the margin back in high school, but Olivia thought she was hilarious. Sometimes, she’d take it from Peg, reading her teenage thoughts aloud to Hannah like a diary when they were all sat around a bonfire at a campsite.

A couple of red-leather booths down, Beatnik James Dean flipped his book upside down on the sticky surface in front of him and got up. As he passed them on his way to the washroom, Hannah unfolded from her seat, slapping a few bills on the table next to the receipt.

Peg saw an opportunity. On their way out, she switched the books.

***

Driving north coloured the skies monochrome. The summer days still put up a fight, the sun baking petroleum puddles until they shifted colour in the light. At one of their stops, the girls picked up a flyer for a carnival being held in the next town over and decided to go.

The car door slammed hollowly as Hannah got out in the parking lot, which was rich with the scent of cotton candy and popcorn.

“That’s a lot of people,” she said. Peg and Olivia followed her gaze over the stream of families with children, groups of teenagers jostling each other around, people shouting across rows of cars and waving their hands as far into the air as they could to catch the attention of people they knew.

Peg considered the way Hannah snaked her arms around herself.

“Do you want to not go?” asked Olivia. “I think—” Fishing out a map they’d picked up at one of the roadside attractions, she unfolded it. Behind her, Peg loomed over her shoulder, trying to see what she was seeing. It was incredible how much noise paper could make. “—the home of one of those haunted motels or something was right around here…”

Hannah shook her head, although Olivia wasn’t looking, too busy trying to find something more palatable to her sister. She managed to point a finger violently at a spot on the map before Hannah said, “No, that’s alright.”

Convinced, Peg said, “I’ll meet you guys in there; I just have to find a bathroom really quickly. I think I saw a library around here.”

Hannah looked over her shoulder.

“Alright,” said Olivia, clearly still concerned about her sister.

Peg slid away. The other two hadn’t noticed the book she was hiding underneath her shirt, although they hadn’t realised she’d exchanged To Kill a Mockingbird either. The library in the town square was a small Greek revival building with marble-looking columns holding up the lip of the roof, and inside, all speech was swallowed by the carpet and the books.

Not that anyone was here; they were all at the festival.

Thumbing the Steinbeck book fondly, Peg opened it on a random page, gaze falling over the words written in mechanical pens. She’d added her own thoughts to his, but she’d let him do most of the talking. He hadn’t finished before she’d stolen it from him, but her ribcage ached hollowly with a weird form of grief anyway at the thought of giving up the book with his comments.

Road trips weren’t meant for staying, though. They were full of single-serving moments, cups made of plastic, experiences made for scrapbooks. People on the road passed each other like trains in the night, but having taken this piece of him with her, she felt like she knew him.

And she realised he would never know her.

Finding Steinbeck on the shelves, Peg slid the book into place where it belonged, letting go. This was her mark on the road now: exchanging books with her thoughts in them, leaving them for others to find pieces of her.

If To Kill a Mockingbird had been like reading her diary, Grapes of Wrath read more like a love letter to him, her unnamed boy.

On the way out, she grabbed Little Birds by Anaïs Nin.

***

It was exchanged a week later, at a student apartment where the three of them had been invited to a party. There had been a brief discussion in the car one day about whether they needed a break from the open road, and the girls had taken a detour into a bigger metropolis for a couple of days.

In a night club, a couple of days before she changed books, she discovered another way to be remembered.

It was no one’s scene, but it was a reminder that they existed here and now, that not everything was a liminal space. It hadn’t taken long for Hannah to need to lock herself away in a dirty bathroom with glow-in-the-dark paint on the walls. Peg had come with her for support while Olivia swayed up to the bar for another drink.

While Peg reminded Hannah soothingly to take deep breaths, her eyes clipped across some of the toilet stall poetry. A lot of Antifa stickers had been plastered on the black-painted wood, and next to them, in metallic and white markers, were cheap poetry that didn’t rhyme and fake phone numbers.

Peg picked up a pen that had rolled underneath the gap in the stall unwisely, a smile on her face, and started writing something herself.

It was a short thing as Hannah started hyperventilating again, but it was hers.

This was the club where Olivia had met Hazel, and Hazel had invited them all to the party. Her place was a testament to student debt and romanticising your quarter-life identity crisis. Kitchen cupboards full of pasta and cereal and beer, vinyl LPs stacked away in sideways milk crates, exposed brick and wardrobes hanging on metal racks.

In the kitchen, Peg found a bunch of bendy kitchen magnet words that she rearranged in her newest poem.

magic number three

six feet underground

on cloud nine she's free

once she has been found

One of Hazel’s roommates, a boy who, judging by the smell of it, slept in his denim cap, had a single, naked bookshelf next to his bed. Peg stole a well-worn edition of The Game, which he’d said he'd bought second-hand ironically, and left him with Nin, an army of furious red marker comments in the margin.

***

Not long after, Peg realised she was going home. It had never been spoken aloud between the girls; it just happened that way, although now that she realised, it was too late to turn back. Peg felt unprepared, but she never said anything, just stared out the window. She wasn’t ready for it to be over.

***

She left The Game full of childish drawings and sarcastic comments on manhoods on a bench at a bus stop. Autumn had taken full effect by now, leaves carpeting the ground in dull yellows and bloody reds.

They were one town away from where she grew up, but Hannah and Olivia had decided it was best to walk there. It was a beautiful and slightly chilly day. A wind cut through the girls, and Olivia shivered in her collared dress and stockings while Hannah laid a sweater-warm arm around her.

“We could just not do this,” Peg tried, but the twins didn’t hear. Frustrated, she kicked up a pile of leaves, which earned her a look at least.

They still didn’t say anything.

Peg felt frosty.

After half an hour of walking, the church of Peg’s hometown started cresting the hill in the distance. The highest point in town, the closer to God, an inscription read on the gate to the cemetery. Peg ignored it, jumping the moss-covered stones, but Hannah and Olivia opened it. The black wrought-iron thing yawned open with a whine, and she clenched her teeth. Inside, the wind through the trees greeted the three of them as they made their way to one of the stones.

Neither of the twins reached out to her, holding her hand, hugging her. They barely spoke to her. Not until they reached their destination.

A breath left Peg through the nose, full of sorrow, before she looked away, and Hannah swung her backpack off her shoulder onto the grass. The zipper made a neat, unfeeling sound, opening its maw to the wooden board Hannah drew out and placed gingerly in front of them.

“I don’t want to do this,” Peg pleaded. “I know what I said, but this isn’t what I meant!”

Placing the planchette on the board in front of her, Hannah sat down criss cross applesauce and nodded to Olivia who had followed her down.

“Is anybody here?” Olivia said.

Peg kicked the board, not violently, but enough to startle the other two. “Guys, this isn’t funny.”

“It’s okay,” Hannah said loudly, as if to the wind and not to Peg. “We’re here to help.”

“It’s time that you go to rest,” Olivia said, sympathetically. Peg was furious. Not like this, not when she finally felt like she had found a way to live. Her gaze kept straying to the tombstone, and she kept tearing it away.

“We found you,” Hannah said. “You can go towards the light now.”

In the background, the sun was sinking, slowly devoured by the horizon. It had been one of those crisp apple-picking days; the sky had been clear, pillowed with white. This was one of the first sunsets they had seen in over a week.

And it was beautiful.

Peg’s eyes filled with tears.

“I don’t want to go.”

Her eyes wandered, and this time, it landed on the headstone. It was barely legible anymore, although Peg knew that it spelled out the name she’d given them on the first day they met.

Margaret Dinardi. 1936-1955.

No one left an impression like Peggy. May she find peace.

“We’ll always remember you,” Olivia whispered, her voice watery.

Peg snorted at the inscription. She hadn’t wanted to find peace. She had wanted to find herself. Unkindly, she reminded herself that she had.

Looking back at the twins, she felt fat tears fall helplessly down her cheek. They never hit the ground. Then she looked up at the dying sun, setting the world on fire. She would have done the same, she thought, if she’d had the chance.

Slowly, the girls in front of her moved the planchette. Peg saw it happen, knew where this was going. A second before it reached its destination, she whispered to them, making sure she got there first.

Goodbye.