"Tawny?"
Tawny opened her eyes to find Louis sitting on the grass, his right leg outstretched gingerly on the ground, a look of affectionate concern on his face. She was lying on her back on the field next to their tent. She still felt no pain, as if it had all been magically spirited away while she had her eyes closed. It must have been just a matter of minutes or even seconds, though it might as well have been half a lifetime that had whizzed by without her realizing.
"How's your ankle?" she asked, raising herself to a sitting position.
He smiled slightly. "It's going to be okay," he answered. "Thanks to you."
She rose to her feet and headed into their tent, nudging him gently on the arm along the way. She let out a sigh of relief as she found everything as they had left it there, spared from the downpour for the most part. She took a fresh hand towel from her backpack and handed it to Louis, who had delicately shifted his way inside, his outstretched leg still in position.
"You first," he said softly, almost in a whisper.
Tawny took a moment to press the towel ever so slightly against her face and then handed it to Louis again, who proceeded to dry his face and hair with it.
As he was finished, she took the towel back and rolled it up. "This will have to do for now."
She placed Louis's right leg over her lap, resting it in an elevated position, and began applying the makeshift bandage over his ankle.
"Thanks, Tawny," Louis just said.
"You don't have to thank me, Louis," Tawny responded in a somewhat subdued tone. "I just did what I had to do. Both of us would have done the same thing in that situation."
She looked up as she finished to find him looking intently into her eyes. There was an intensity about it that couldn't be captured in words, the two of them just sitting alone in that tent, trying to process what had just happened.
"I guess you did owe me that one," Louis finally said, keeping a straight face. "I saved you from the Evil Twitty that one time, remember?"
Tawny began to chuckle, but managed to hold back. The sparkle in his eyes kept drawing her in, but she kept telling herself in her head that it was all just a dream. It was just a dream and they were about to wake back up, or somebody from the rest of the group was about to show up at their tent and ask them, none too amused, where they had been the whole time.
"I think this is the part where I say you're my hero and I kiss you," Louis went on, finally breaking into a smile.
Tawny smiled back. The memory of that day came rushing back, together with a thousand other memories that started merging, one into the other, little by little. The memory of promising him that she will forever be his friend as she lay tied to the railway, showing him just how easy it was to be a hero, at least to her. The memory, and the sensation, of Louis leaning in and kissing her, making her understand everything in the easiest way he knew how. She closed her eyes. It was all just a dream, and she was about to wake back up when it would all become too much, when reality would come knocking and take her back to where she needed to be.
Tawny opened her eyes and looked at the computer screen in front of her. The clock on the lower right corner of the screen read 7:01 AM. The article in front of her was all written, waiting only to be sent. It was just a blink of an eye ago that she had finally gotten to the end of the last paragraph, virtually dragging herself across the finish line. She speed-read the article from the beginning one more time. Almost ten pages of running text, somehow pieced together in the space of one night. She went to her e-mails, the message she had drafted earlier that night waiting only for the attachment to be added. It was 3 o'clock in the afternoon in London, and if she was lucky, it was going to get read before the end of the work day there. Attach file, click, send. She went through the motions in one swoop, almost as if to make sure it was done before anything else could happen.
Just then, Louis suddenly appeared at the doorway of the studio, his faint footsteps having escaped her attention the whole time. He had found his way there as if by sheer instinct, knowing that that was where he would find her. Tawny sat still, not knowing what to say to him, as he casually stood there, resting his arm on the adjacent wall.
"Louis," she finally said. "It's done."
Louis just nodded. "I know," he just whispered. "You're the best, Tawn."
Tawny rose from her desk and walked up to him, putting her arms around him before he could say anything else. "Will you dance with me?"
Louis didn't say anything, but she didn't need him to. She took hold of his hands and walked the two of them over to the counter of their living room. The stereo was still there, as was the remote, which she used to put on track number one. They started dancing, their arms and legs moving in unison again. Tawny closed her eyes and went with the flow of the music, letting the familiar motions take over.
The thoughts flowed inexorably through her head, in between the music. She didn't know what to do, where to go from here. They were effectively trapped within their four walls, in an apartment full of bugs, with nowhere to go. She was without a job and he had little prospect of finding one ever again. The article she had sent out just now was their only hope, but also potentially their death sentence. If the authorities were serious about tracking what she was up to, they were going to show up again before long. Just how long was the only question.
"Let's get out of here, Tawny," Louis whispered in her ear.
"Where to?" she whispered back.
"Anywhere but here."
"Let's go back home for the weekend, to my parents' place."
Tawny let out an inner sigh. She couldn't begin to think how she would face Eileen and Steve or what she would say to them. But the only thing she wanted right now was to defer to Louis's wish, whatever that happened to be.
"Okay," she finally whispered. "Shouldn't we call them first?"
"Let's just go," he replied. "Will you be ready in an hour?"
"Of course," she said back. "I'll get breakfast ready once this song is over, okay?"
She could feel his lips forming into a smile on the cheek next to hers. "Thanks, Tawny."
Tawny climbed into the driver's seat of their car. She looked over to Louis, sitting there calmly, his seat belt already strapped. She fastened her own seat belt and placed her hands on the steering wheel. She quietly took a deep breath, trying to gather herself. It was at least four weeks since she last drove and fifty hours since she last slept, for all intents and purposes. And yet, that was somehow the least of their worries right now. She was ready to drive this thing as long and far as she had to, as if that was all there was to it. And that, in a way, was precisely the problem. There was no use pretending, no use trying to go through the motions as if this was any other trip home.
She reached across and placed her hand gently over Louis's. Why does this have to be so difficult, she thought to herself. All she had to do was defer to Louis's wish, which was just what she was doing. And yet, it was this urge to defer that was playing with her mind, turning into an urge to defer the inevitable, to defer and hold off the moment of truth that wasn't going to resolve anything anyway. Their lives were going to go on and on like this, and there wouldn't be much his parents could do for them. She had led the two of them down the path of living like fugitives, prisoners in their own home, a home they would have to return to eventually once the weekend was over. Facing his parents and telling them everything that had happened wasn't going to change any of that. Nothing she did now could make up for everything that had happened. Nothing.
She quietly let out another deep breath and glanced at her watch. It was barely nine o'clock. It wasn't going to make a difference now if they arrive in two hours or four. At the end of the day, she knew she was being selfish. But maybe, just maybe, it offered a way out, even if just for a few hours.
"Louis," she finally said. "Can we make a stopover on the way?" She knew that her words had come out rushed, her voice lacking its usual steadiness.
Louis said nothing. He was clearly deep in thought, probing the depths of her heart, latching onto every little hint in her voice. He knew her inside out, better than anybody else. He was going to make this easier for her by doing what he did best, just by understanding her so easily.
"Our little paradise forest," he finally said, his voice ever so calm. "Senior camping trip. It's on the way, isn't it?"
Tawny locked her eyes onto Louis's, his eyes somehow speaking to her through the pitch black of the shades covering them.
"It's a slight detour," she replied, the steady calm in her voice now mirroring his. "We should be there in an hour and a half." With that, she turned on the ignition and lowered the handbrake, her hands and feet putting themselves in motion.
Tawny drove in silence, trying to focus on the road ahead. In a way, this was madness, driving on two full days of sleep deprivation. But she knew that there wasn't anything else she would rather be doing if she had her proverbial last day to live, and that was good enough for her.
She shifted her hands every now and then on the steering wheel, trying to keep her senses alert. Somehow, she had been here before. Such a simple task, and yet everything hinged on approaching it as if she was doing it for the first and only time. It was always the same feel, the unmistakable touch, the same 2006 Elantra they had pooled their money to buy during senior year of high school and shared ever since. Louis sometimes joked that it was their only child, insisting that he wasn't even going to think about getting another car until this one literally dies on them. And now, all they needed from it was to make the trip they had made so many times before, with just a stopover on the way added in.
Just a stopover on the way. She let out an inner sigh, recognizing the futility of the whole exercise. In a way, she didn't know what to expect. They hadn't been there ever since that senior camping trip, even though it really was just a slight detour from the path they took so often. They had the memories of that day, as vivid as they could be, and yet it was all emanating from an utterly different world that was now lost forever.
"You know," Louis's voice cut through the silence like a razor. "It's been a while since we've been to a baseball game."
Tawny took a moment to reorient her thoughts. Louis still had that uncannily steady, contemplative tone, with a certitude in his voice that the banality of those words struggled to contain.
"You mean the only time we've been to one," she replied. "It's already been five years since we saw Twitty pitch in Double-A."
Louis let out a deep breath. "I miss everything about it," he said softly. "We'll have to go back if he ever makes it to the majors."
Tawny just kept looking straight ahead. Somehow, she could feel Louis's gaze reaching her over those thick shades, even if she couldn't look back at him.
"Remember when you got a foul ball and then gave it to the little boy sitting next to us?" Louis chuckled. "It took me a while to get over that, you know. That was our souvenir, and you just gave it away. But you were just being how you always are." His voice trailed off.
Tawny remained silent, just trying to drive. Tears flowed silently down her cheeks, her jaw beginning to tremble. She desperately tried to pull herself together and focus on the road ahead. She couldn't do this to him, couldn't break down now, of all moments, when both of their lives were literally in her hands at the steering wheel. When he trusted her and believed in her so much that even if she were to drive both of them off a cliff right now, she would still be an angel to him, the one guiding him all the way to the afterlife. This whole drive was turning into a slow torture, and yet she felt the strangest wish for it to go on and on, if only so that there would be no other reality they would have to return to once it was over. How she wished she could just put herself through it over and over, for Louis and the two of them, if that was all it took.
She quietly let out a deep breath as they finally neared the campsite. So this is it, she thought to herself. In the middle of all that had happened in the last few days, this was their little detour, their long, winding path leading them to a distant corner of memory lane, neatly hidden away as if nothing had changed all these years since their last visit.
Tawny pulled into an empty side lot. It all came back to her, little by little. She knew where to go from here, at least to the extent she could be sure of anything right now. She parked the car and turned off the ignition. "Louis, we're here," she announced.
She looked over to Louis, sitting still next to her, still contemplating. She too remained seated, her seat belt still on. She was going to give him as much time as he wanted and let him dictate the pace of things. It was surely the least she could do in this situation.
She took the phone out of her pocket and opened her inbox. She scanned the list of unread messages and clicked on the first one, the only one that mattered. She speed-read the message and then went through it one more time, slowly, as if just for good measure.
Tawny, I've just finished going through your article. This is a story that needs to go out. I'll release it for publication and send you the link later tonight. Take care. Yours, Valerie
Just then, another message popped up. It was from Twitty, addressed to both her and Louis. A message as if from another world, oblivious of all that could have possibly happened in the last few days.
Hey guys, hope you're doing ok in the middle of all that's going on! I wanted to share some big news with you: I'm starting a comeback as a pitcher. I ran into a scout the other day after a pickup game and he says I still got it, maybe enough for a fasttrack to the upper minors. You guys are the first to hear about it, since I owe a lot to you both. You guys always inspired me to keep going and never give up, ever since that one time in seventh grade. Will keep you posted – got a lot going on right now but hear from you soon! And don't forget you promised to come watch if I make it to the bigs ;-) -Twitty
Tawny just stared at the screen, having read the text a second, third, fourth time. She then started to well up as she thought about what it all meant. But the tears somehow stopped halfway out of her eyes as she looked out the windshield and toward the stopover place that lay ahead, the place they had come all the way here for.
"Shall we go?" Louis finally asked, his voice cutting through the silence like a razor.
Tawny put the phone on standby and stared for a moment at the reflection of her face on the black screen. "Yeah," she replied, no trace of hesitation in her voice.
Tawny hurried over to the other side to help Louis out of the car. "I'm alright," he said softly. She shut the door behind him and then grasped his hand with hers.
They stood there for a moment with their hands held, looking around. Louis had his face turned upward, taking in the forest-scented air mingling with the sunlight. Tawny followed suit, closing her eyes and trying to picture the path that lay ahead. It all came back to her, little by little, the path to the campsite and the forest. The air they breathed and the words they exchanged, the snapshots from a past that was so far away and yet so palpable, waiting to be grasped right in front of them.
They started walking. Tawny clutched Louis's hand more tightly, as if trying to let him know where she was and where they were headed, even though he already knew. She was going to have to be his eyes from now on, to the extent that that was even possible. She thought again about how they had gotten here, trying to resist the temptation to expunge from her head everything else that had happened after that day. It was one long chain of events, one single catastrophe whose moments just fleeted by, taking on a whole different meaning from where they now stood.
The memories kept coming back to her like a long-lost dream. How they snuck out after breakfast to spend time together just exploring and lost themselves in the woods, chancing upon the most gorgeous gorge adorned with lush green shrubbery and singing birds. It had all felt like a dream at the time, but it was somehow all too real, the dreamy sequence laced with the awareness that they were living out a fantasy, in the middle of that forest.
They walked on. It was the stuff of fantasy, an outlandish story that only the most fanciful of imaginations could have drawn up. The two of them sitting on that rock just taking in the picturesque delight, exchanging the words they did, then the sunlight turning into thunder and rain just in time for that freak accident. And then Tawny with her little makeshift act, doing her best impression of The Little Engine That Could all the way back to the campsite.
Tawny chuckled slightly at the thought as they neared the campsite. It was completely empty, with no trace of campers or anyone else in sight. The eerie silence was reminiscent of what greeted her when she woke up, or thought she woke up, from her little doze that day, lying on her back in the middle of that field. They were completely alone on their little patch of earth for those few moments, the rest of their group nowhere in sight. The two of them tending to each other in the tent, trying to process everything that had happened, and then the rest just a blissful blur.
They walked on in silence in the direction of the forest. The silence was only interrupted by the sounds of nature, the foliage brushing against the occasional breeze mixed in with the calling of birds. They really were completely alone, almost as if the wooded theater had been set up in anticipation of their arrival that day.
They walked and walked, taking in the forest environment through all the senses available to them. Tawny could feel herself resisting the urge to just close her eyes and let some kind of automatism take over, her legs walking themselves deeper and deeper into the forest, taking them where they needed to go. All they had to do was keep following memory lane and they would reach Sacramento eventually, the house from Louis's childhood where his parents still lived.
Louis stopped in his tracks as they approached an elevated side section of the forest. Tawny would have kept on walking, even though she knew exactly where they were, but willingly obliged.
"This is it," Louis said. "This is the place." He looked around, trying to find his bearings. Tawny said nothing, just looking at him patiently.
"You really saved both of us that day," he mused. "You walked a mile through the rainstorm, carrying me on your back." His words came out with what might have sounded like disbelief, but she knew him well enough to know that it wasn't.
The two of them just stood there, their hands firmly held. Tawny knew that Louis wanted to walk up to the gorge and take in the surroundings again, but something in her kept driving her onward, onto the path they never ended up taking that day, the detour in the forest that had been cut short by the rainstorm.
"Shall we go?"
He looked toward her for a moment. He then nodded, readjusting his feet in the direction of the path that lay ahead, as if instinctively. She smiled ever so slightly and started walking, clutching his hand more tightly.
The forest kept drawing her in, the same feels coming back all over again. Just a stopover on their way back home, and yet it all felt so tantalizingly close. It was like the dream of half a lifetime whizzing by in just a split second, but everything in between happening all the same, just like the entire history of humanity compressed into a mere fraction of a second within the history of all life on earth. They had been living all along in the fantastic reality of a world that could only give meaning to its existence by telling neat little stories, however outlandish they were, and all it took now was the most fanciful one of them all. All it took was the belief that somewhere, some place on the other side of that hill was where Louis's parents were, waiting for them back home even though they didn't know they were coming.
Tawny kept looking straight ahead, keeping her pace as even as possible. She knew that something wasn't right, though she couldn't exactly say what. They were completely alone, so much so that practically nothing and anything could happen to them. It occurred to her that she had no idea what she was doing here, in the middle of this forest, and yet they both somehow knew. It was both of their hearts that had led them here, converging into one, as they had done so often. And she knew what it was that she had to do, if that was what it was going to take.
Without losing a second, she stepped in front of Louis and put her arms around him, trying to shield his body with hers, her back now turned toward the direction they had been walking. "Louis," she whispered and closed her eyes.
There were loud bangs and everything blacked out into darkness.
"Tawny?"
Tawny's eyes remained shut. But she could feel the darkness in front of her merging into light, a blinding light that shined right through. The voice breathed flesh into her bones and formed her lips into an instinctive smile. She was holding onto Louis for dear life, as if everything might dissolve and melt into air if she let go. And yet, she knew he was right there and could feel him as close to her as ever, the vision in her eyes finally becoming his, the blood in her veins flowing into his.
"Tawny." The voice sounded again, this time as a whisper. There was a certitude in it that couldn't be contained in words, an overflowing intensity that gave her the strangest, if oddly familiar, kind of reassurance. It was always the same voice, the same warmth, the same unmistakable touch, the same miracle that made itself felt with every step. It was as if he could see her again, as naturally as ever, right there with him, on the same path they had always been together, hand in hand.
"We should get going, Louis," she whispered back. There was nothing more to be said. They had made it this far and there was nowhere else to go. They were just making a stopover on their way back home. On the other side of that hill was where Louis's parents were, and all their parents. All she had to do was keep believing and following the light, the light that shined through every storm and never failed her. She looked up toward the sky, her eyes still shut, and took one last deep breath.
For Tawny Dean, who doesn't and can't exist, but a little bit of whom exists in all of us