The Geography of You and Me Read Free

And her brothers—the only friends she’d ever really had—were now thousands of miles away at college.
    When they’d left a few weeks ago—Charlie heading off to Berkeley, and Ben to Stanford—Lucy couldn’t help feeling suddenly orphaned. It wasn’t unusual for her parents to be away; they’d always made a habit of careening off to snow-covered European cities or exotic tropical islands on their own. But being left behind was never that bad when there were three of them, and it was always her brothers—a twin pair of clowns, protectors, and friends—that had kept everything from unraveling.
    Until now. She was used to being parentless, but being brotherless—and, thus, effectively friendless—was entirely new, and losing both of them at once seemed unfair. The whole family was now hopelessly scattered, and from where she sat—all alone in New York—Lucy felt it deeply just then, as if for the very first time: the bigness of the world, the sheer scope of it.
    Across the elevator, Owen rested his head against thewall. “It is what it is…” he murmured, letting the words trail off at the end.
    “I hate that expression,” Lucy said, a bit more forcefully than intended. “Nothing is what it is. Things are always changing. They can always get better.”
    He looked over, and she could see that he was smiling, even as he shook his head. “You’re totally nuts,” he said. “We’re stuck in an elevator that’s hot and stuffy and probably running out of air. We’re hanging by a cord that’s got to be smaller than my wrist. Your parents are who-knows-where, and my dad’s in Coney Island. And if nobody’s come to get us by now, there’s a good chance they’ve forgotten about us entirely. So seriously, how are you still so positive?”
    Lucy slid out from the wall, folding her legs beneath her and leaning forward. “How come your dad’s in Coney Island?” she asked, ignoring his question.
    “That’s not the point.”
    “For the roller coasters?”
    He shook his head.
    “The hot dogs?” she asked. “The ocean?”
    “Aren’t you at all worried that nobody’s coming to get us?”
    “It won’t help anything,” she said. “Worrying.”
    “Exactly,” he said. “It is what it is.”
    “Nope,” she said. “Nothing is what it is.”
    “Fine,” he said. “It’s not what it isn’t.”
    Lucy gave him a long look. “I have no idea what you’re saying.”
    “Or maybe you’d just prefer not to,” he said, sitting forward, and they both laughed. The darkness between them felt suddenly thin, flimsy as tissue paper and even less substantial. His eyes shone through the blackness as the silence stretched between them, and when he finally broke it, his voice was choked.
    “He’s in Coney Island because that’s where he first met my mother,” Owen said. “He bought flowers to leave on the boardwalk. He wanted to do it alone.”
    Lucy opened her mouth to say something—to ask a question, perhaps, or to tell him she was sorry, a word too small to mean anything at a moment like this—but the silence felt suddenly fragile, and she could think of nothing worthy enough to break it.
    His head was bowed so that it was hard to make out the expression on his face, and she felt useless, sitting there without any idea of what to do. But then a faint knock sent her heart up into her throat, and his eyes found hers in the dark.
    The sound came again, and Owen stood this time, moving over to the door and pressing his ear against it. He knocked back, and they both listened. Even from where she was still sitting numbly in the middle of the floor, Lucy could hear the muffled voices outside, followed by the scrape of something metal. After a moment, she rose to her feet, too, and without a word, without even looking at each other, they stood there like that, shoulder to shoulder, like a couple of astronauts at the end of a long journey, waiting for the doors to open so they could step out into a dazzling