Read Where You End for Free Online Page B

dentist’s recliner. I check again. It’s definitely a living room.
    I make like a Navy Seal and lie perfectly still. My heart is finally beating, the way it does right when I’m about to take a picture. I Zen up and ignore the bed of acorns poking me everywhere.
    It’s perfect. There are bookshelves in the back, a coffee mug, a sweater draped on the arm of a green sofa. It takes forever for the lens to shut; my favorite kind of wait, when you can hear the light churning in there.
    When I get back on the bike, I’m something close to happy. But happy is a ripple that hits land pretty fast these days and, after the first hill, I’m already thinking about him. I’m remembering my hair on his chin and him blowing it away. He just stared afterwards, right into my face. Neither one of us could bear to move. He was wearing a gray shirt that smelled like us. I was wearing a red button-down I stole from my dad’s closet. At least three buttons were undone.
    You could see whatever you wanted, if you were looking, and he was definitely looking. I felt brave. His arm was sprawled across my waist. I looked down at his toes, then the creases of the sheets, then a strand of my dark hair again—a little mischief, a little pride. The whole thing felt so big and so little at the same time, like it could never really leave the room, like it would always be between the two of us. I was awake and asleep; contained and in pieces. Whoever says sex is nothing hasn’t had sex with somebody who stared at their face.
    A drop of something warm dribbles down my chin. I take one hand off the handlebar to touch it. It’s blood. My lips are cut. I’ve been biting down on the memory.
    I wonder what I could offer this ghost, what I could do to make it go away. I already painted over my walls. I throw up. I don’t sleep. I lie. I yell at my mother. I ignore my best friend. I push innocent sculptures. I used to make things. Now I just destroy them. Maybe I could bike to 18th Street and pay twenty bucks for fake sorcery, some kind of exorcism, somebody who will tell me to put garlic in my pillow and a pound of sugar under my bed. What do you want, Elliot? You happened. You left. Now stop happening.
    A block or so before my own home, I take out my phone to try Paloma’s number again, but it looks like she beat me to it.
    IS THIS MAGGIE? her text reads.
    I type No and ride back to bed.

six
    I’m going to look for her black hair. My bike is parked against the wall of the Bishop’s Garden, where I hope nobody will steal it. These are church grounds, after all, and I’m supposed to have a little faith. The gardeners have left the hydrangea heads on, like skeletons of summer. In the sun it’s still warm, so I take my jacket off, wrap it around my waist, and walk inside the garden. We used to come here all the time when I was little, and I wish I was here to count carp in the koi pond. Boxwoods line the path right and left, smelling like dust and new earth.
    A woman with huge shears trims the hedges. She’s not wearing gloves, and the skin on her hands is a thin map of freckles and veins. The roses look embarrassed behind her; they’re all chopped stubs with the occasional thorn.
    I used to know this place pretty well, but I haven’t been here in years. I walk past the empty gazebo onto a wide lawn. This is where we’d have the occasional picnic, or toss a ball with my dad. I try to remember when exactly we stopped doing all that. I haven’t caught a ball in years, I think, just for the sake of it, to see if I can, to feel that kind of surprise.
    My watch says it’s almost time, so I head for the side doors of the cathedral. Walking up the steps reminds me of running from the sculpture, and I consider how maybe you can get away with something but how stupid to think you can get away from it. It’s Sunday, two full days after I pushed the sculpture, and my hands still