“What?” It takes me a second to realize that the Starline is the motel. Meg’s motel. “No, some other dive.”
“Would you like some coffee?” Alice asks.
All the coffee I drank last night has turned acidic in my stomach, and though I’m hazy and exhausted, I can’t fathom drinking any more. I shake my head.
“Wanna smoke a bowl?” Stoner Richard asks.
“Richard,” Alice swats at him. “She has to pack up all that stuff. I don’t think she wants to be stoned.”
“I’d think she’d wanna be stoned,” Stoner Richard replies.
“I’m good,” I say. But the sun is fighting its way out of the thin haze of cloud and it’s making everything so bright that I feel dizzy.
“Sit down. Eat something,” Alice says. “I’m practicing making bread, and I have a new loaf.”
“It’s slightly less bricklike than usual,” Richard promises.
“It’s good.” Alice pauses. “If you slather it with lots of butter and honey.”
I don’t want the bread. I didn’t want to get to know these people before, and I certainly don’t want to now. But Alice is gone and back with the bread before I know it. The bread is kind of dense and chewy, but she’s right; with butter and honey, it’s decent.
I finish it up and brush the crumbs from my lap. “Well, I’d better get to it.” I start toward the door. “Though someone already did the heavy lifting. Do you know who packed up her stuff like that?”
Stoner Richard and Alice look at each other. “That’s how she left the room,” Alice says. “She packed it up herself.”
“Girl was on top of shit till the bitter end,” Richard adds. He looks at me and grimaces. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. It saves me work,” I say. And my voice sounds so nonchalant, like this is such a load off my plate.
x x x
It takes about three hours to pack the rest of her stuff. I pull out holey T-shirts and underwear because why do they need that? I throw away her stacks of music magazines, piled in a corner. I’m not sure what to do about her bed sheets because they still smell like her, and I have no idea if her scent will do to Sue what it’s doing to me, which is making me remember Meg in such a real visceral way—sleepovers and dance parties and those talks we would have until three in the morning that would make us feel lousy the next day because we’d slept like hell but also feel good because the talks were like blood transfusions, moments of realness and hope that were pinpricks of light in the dark fabric of small-town life.
I am tempted to inhale those sheets. If I do, maybe it will be enough to erase everything. But you can only hold your breath for so long. Eventually, I’ll have to exhale her, and then it’ll be like those mornings, when I wake up, forgetting before remembering.
x x x
The UPS place is downtown and I’ll have to get a taxi, cart the stuff over, ship it, come back for the duffels, and be ready to catch the last bus at seven. Downstairs, Alice and Stoner Richard are where I left them. It’s unclear to me if these students at this supposedly well-regarded college ever actually study.
“I’m pretty much done,” I tell them. “Just have to close the boxes and I’ll be out of here.”