We Are Lost and Found

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  Books. Change. Lives.

  Copyright © 2019 by Helene Dunbar

  Cover and internal design © 2019 by Sourcebooks

  Cover design by Nicole Hower/Sourcebooks

  Cover art by Adams Carvalho

  Cover and internal images © ircy/Getty Images; RobinOlimb/iStockphoto

  Internal design by Travis Hasenour/Sourcebooks

  Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks, Inc.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Apart from well-known historical figures, any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  All brand names and product names used in this book are trademarks, registered trademarks, or trade names of their respective holders. Sourcebooks, Inc., is not associated with any product or vendor in this book.

  Published by Sourcebooks Fire, an imprint of Sourcebooks

  P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-4410

  (630) 961-3900

  sourcebooks.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is on file with the publisher.

  Contents

  Front Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Part One

  December 1982

  January 1983

  February 1983

  March 1983

  April 1983

  Part Two

  May 1983

  June 1983

  July 1983

  August 1983

  Part Three

  September 1983

  Afterword by Ron Goldberg

  Afterword by Jeremiah Johnson and Jason Walker

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Back Cover

  For those we lost…

  And for those who found their voices.

  All through the years of our youth

  Neither could have known

  Their own thought from the other’s,

  We were so much at one.

  —William Butler Yeats

  We’ve got to live,

  no matter how many skies have fallen.

  —D. H. Lawrence

  Part One

  December 1982

  On the last day before Christmas break, Mr. Solomon hands out a bunch of sharpened number two pencils and a stack of Xeroxed sheets. Just answer honestly, he instructs our class, It’s a career-assessment test, not a final exam.

  The first question:

  Which tasks would you prefer to undertake (select as many as apply):

  • Arrange flowers

  • Sell products

  • Study the cause of diseases

  • Make people laugh

  • Drive a truck

  I hesitate and write my own list in the margins, drawing boxes and filling them in hard until the pencil tip is ground down to nothing.

  • Fall in love

  • Figure out who the hell I am

  • Have sex without catching something

  • Repair my family

  • Escape

  St. Sebastian’s is glowing with candles, swirling with incense, and overrun by kids allowed to stay up way past their bedtimes to attend midnight mass. But the only thing I can focus on is my brother, Connor, drumming his fingers on the wood of the back pew, trying to pretend he doesn’t care that he’s sitting alone in our family’s church on Christmas Eve.

  When Dad goes to talk to someone he knows from work, I whisper to my mom and ask if she can find a way to get my father to allow Connor to sit with us.

  She looks back at my brother, who is wearing a bizarrely conservative button-down and cardigan. The only part of the getup that looks like Connor is the BEAT IT button over his heart. Even when he tries to rein it in, he can’t.

  Connor glances over and then looks away. He knows we’re watching.

  For a minute, I’m optimistic. After all, it’s Christmas and Connor didn’t have to come to St. Sebastian’s. He has a million friends. A world of boys he’s replaced us with. He only came to this church because he knew we’d be here. That has to count for something. Even to my father.

  But then Mom spins her wedding ring and says, It’s a holiday, Michael. Let’s not make waves. You know how your father is.

  And any hope I have for a Christmas miracle is dashed faster than an eight-year-old’s belief in Santa Claus.

  My parents would murder me if they knew I was standing outside Central Park at midnight on New Year’s Eve with my best friends.

  They’d murder me twice if they knew I was drunk.

  But Becky brought a flask of something that goes down like fire, and it’s freaking cold out, so we pass the container back and forth, while horses pull tourists around in carriages behind us. Then, in unison, we tilt our heads toward the sky, watching the clouds move across the moon, while the whole city explodes in noise and light and the possibilities that 1983 might bring.

  Time kind of stops, and I hold my breath, trying to hang on to this feeling. We’re standing shoulder-to-shoulder—Becky, James, and me—for warmth, or friendship, or safety, or something I can’t name. James is in the middle as always, binding our little group together simply by being James.

  He’s wearing this long, black, wool coat with tiny anchors etched onto the silver buttons that might make anyone walking by think he had military leanings, but the sharp architectural cut of his white-blond hair and the gray slash of his eye shadow would set them straight.

  Next to him, I look like a mannequin for Sears’s Young Men’s department in my sweater and jeans, while Becky is channeling that new singer, Madonna, all teased hair, rubber bracelets, and a fishnet shirt under her blue wool pea coat.

  James reaches an arm around each of us.

  I lean my head on his shoulder, careful to avoid his TEARDROP EXPLODES: TREASON button.

  Becky reaches behind his back and grabs my hand, her skin cold through her black lace gloves.

  You know what, Michael? James asks, as he steps forward and turns to face us, backdropped by the fireworks, arms open wide as if he could embrace the entire city.

  I shake my head and watch the snowflakes fly off my hair, each perfect crystal reflecting the flash of colored lights: red, green, gold.

  Becky moves closer to me, either to wait for the wisdom of James, or to warm up.

  This is it, he says, in the quiet space between explosions. The silence is so gigantic, it’s as if all of New York reserved this moment to hear what James has to say. And what he says is: This is the day it all begins.

  What? Becky asks.

  James looks at the sky as if he owns it and says, The best year ever.

 
And that is how I know I’m drunk—I believe him.

  I’m the only one of us stuck with a curfew.

  I have to be home by one thirty—a New Year’s Eve reprieve from my usual midnight deadline—because my mother worries.

  And because my father is a control freak.

  The question is always this: Use the bulk of my allowance to take a taxi—if I can even find one—or risk my life and take the subway?

  A slideshow plays in my head. Graffiti-decorated trains and silent cars where no one will meet your eyes and, this time of night, the smell of piss and vomit, and lights that dim when we hit certain parts of the tracks.

  Take a taxi, Becky says. Money won’t help if you get stabbed.

  James grabs her from behind in a bear hug, his head resting on her shoulder. He says, Oh, kitten, that will never happen. Don’t forget that Andy and his new friends will swoop in like Spider-Man to protect Michael from the bad guys.

  Becky has been dating Andy since the middle of sophomore year. BeckyandAndy, AndyandBecky.

  Once Andy found out he only had to be sixteen to join the Guardian Angels, he started training to become a card-carrying vigilante, like he’s doing tonight.

  James rolls his eyes. Must make the subway safe for the tourists, he says under his breath.

  Becky scowls and pulls away. James shrugs and says to me, Or spend the seventy-five cents on a token and buy the new U2 import single. You know you want it.

  There is that.

  Really? Becky asks me with her hands on her hips. Really? You can’t wait, like, two weeks for a record to come out in the States?

  James and I stare at her with matching expressions.

  I love you, Becks, but you don’t get it, I say.

  And she doesn’t get it. She listens to music, follows the fashions, but to her, it’s all background noise. Something to cover up the sound of traffic and the neighbors screaming at their kids, and to take her mind off the fact that it’s New Year’s Eve and her mom probably won’t come home or even call.

  Music isn’t the thing that makes her feel alive.

  I try to stand next to the cop on the subway. Try not to stare at the hundred-year-old woman with the accordion, or the girl reclining on the lawn chair, or the guy talking to himself and rattling the door between the cars, or the two kids at the end of the car with gang tats.

  I try not to think that maybe Becky was right.

  January 1983

  The three of us spend the first day of the new year at a place in Chinatown with no English menu. The fun of it is pointing at the signs on the wall and eating things we can’t identify.

  When we’re too full to move, too talked out to focus, James pays the check, and the waiter brings us fortune cookies.

  Becky’s fortune says she’ll come into money. She laughs as if it’s the funniest thing she’s ever read and sets the paper on fire by holding it over the candle on the table until the slip turns to ash.

  Mine says, Change can hurt, but the pain always leads to something better. I read it twice and shove it in my pocket, pretty sure I’ll be awake all night trying to figure out what it really means.

  James’s cookie is empty.

  What the hell? Becky asks. Her hair is in a long braid, and it swings emphatically as she shakes her head at the affront.

  James pushes his bangs out of his eyes and gives her a reflective look.

  I guess I get to write my own future, he says.

  This sums up the difference between me and James. I would have assumed that a cookie with no fortune meant I was going to be hit by a truck.

  After, Becky suggests we go to a party. She has a friend who has a friend whose older brother has a houseboat docked at the 79th Street Boat Basin and is celebrating 1983.

  Are you sure they won’t mind us coming along? I ask.

  Oh, Michael, she says looking me up and down, no one will even notice you’re there. Besides, they’re only making spaghetti. Not like you eat that much.

  James hesitates because he knows I hate inviting myself places, hate the feeling that I might be intruding.

  He says, I have an idea. Then he leads us into a bodega where he piles a mountain of Ronzoni noodle boxes on the counter and gives the clerk a twenty. He stuffs the change, well over five bucks, into the cardboard charity collection box that’s raising money for a little girl with cancer.

  The clerk stares at him. At his long, white-blond, New Romantic hair, at his cat-eye eyeliner, at his favorite powder-blue linen jacket—the one with the linebacker shoulder pads, cinched waist, and rhinestone belt.

  You ain’t up to something, are you? the guy asks.

  James doesn’t answer, but shakes his head as we walk out. Sometimes you can’t win, he murmurs under his breath.

  Will Andy be at the party? I ask.

  Becky fiddles with her braid, her all-black watch wrapped around her wrist, reflecting the sun.

  I don’t think so, she says. He’s on duty again.

  James coughs deliberately, and I knock my shoulder into his.

  James thinks Andy isn’t good enough for her. But aside from the fact that Andy loves to patrol the creepiest parts of New York City and help make citizen’s arrests, he isn’t that bad. He brings Becky presents every Friday in homeroom. Flowers from his mother’s rooftop garden. Iron-on patches for her favorite ripped jeans. Song lyrics scrawled on rough, old paper.

  Becky loves him, she says. She wants to marry him someday, she says.

  But then, she says, there are times I wish he weren’t so nice. We never fight, so we never get to make up. It’s kind of boring.

  The houseboat is rocking from the weight of the people (which is a lot) and the weight of the weather (which is threatening to turn ugly) and the expectations of the partygoers (which are as high as they are, considering that the cloud of pot smoke hanging over the deck is thick enough to blot out the moon).

  Someone shoves a Bartles & Jaymes wine cooler in my hand but disappears before I can thank them. James appears out of nowhere with an open bottle of Asti. He grabs my drink and sets it on a counter. Then he takes a slug of the bubbly wine before handing me the bottle and gesturing for me to drink.

  Before I take a sip, he says, This year you will create music. You will fall in love. You will find your place. You will be happy.

  Only James can say things like this without sounding sloppy drunk.

  Yeah? I ask, daring him. And how exactly do you know?

  He leans in close. I can smell the alcohol mixed with cigarettes on his breath. It’s not at all unpleasant. His mouth is up against my ear, his words only for me. This is your year, Michael, he says. Trust me about this.

  And the silly thing is, I do.

  Last night’s snow didn’t stick, and now there’s a loud Trivial Pursuit drinking game happening up on the roof deck. I’m about to suggest that James join in, because I don’t know anyone as good at remembering obscure facts as he is, but then a bunch of guys throw the host overboard.

  James winces and says, You can’t even fish in the Hudson; everything here is contaminated.

  The guy surfaces, sputtering. He’s hauled up from the freezing river by the same people who threw him in. They’re all drunk and hooting, while he’s laughing and dripping water and who-knows-what-else all over the floor.

  I watch the guy strip off his wet coat and clothes. The alcohol and pot have dulled my reflexes, and my gaze lingers on his abs long enough that James has to cough to get my attention.

  Do you think he knows about the pollution? I ask.

  I doubt he cares; it’s the danger of being young, James says, as if he weren’t just eighteen himself. You think you’re invincible.

  The conversation spreads through the party like the wave at a Yankees game.

  He’s queer, how did I not know…? I mean, he
doesn’t look like a fag… Well, I knew… Shut up, you did not… Well, I do now…

  Acid rises in my throat. I forget sometimes.

  Forget that I’m not transparent.

  Forget that if I just stay silent, no one will know this piece of me.

  Forget that, unlike James, I can hide in plain sight and let them assume what they want. If I take Becky’s hand, they’ll think we’re together. That I’m one of them.

  And that makes me feel sicker.

  James twists a ring and takes a drink. It’s hard to know where he ends and the actor begins. He’s heard this all and worse before, of course, but his face is impassive. Perhaps he’s used to it. Perhaps he’s able to tune it out. Perhaps he has his own way of hiding.

  Later, James and Becky and I stand out on the deck. Prince’s “1999” plays inside. I wonder where we’ll be in sixteen years. In our thirties, I guess, which is bizarre to even think about.

  It’s a clear night under a full moon, and we’re out here so Becky can do her monthly ritual of trying to emotionally let go of things, although I’m never really sure what she’s trying to let go of.

  James leans back against the railing, his eyes to the sky, a thoughtful look on his face.

  I hover over Becky’s shoulder, close enough to be surrounded by a cloud of Love’s Baby Soft perfume, and watch as she writes fear on a piece of paper towel with a black Sharpie, and folds it into a square.

  She holds out her hand, and James wordlessly passes her a slim, silver lighter as if they’d choreographed their movements. Then she lights the paper and throws it over the side of the boat. It hits the water, sizzles, and sinks.

  Well, says James in a voice dripping with sarcasm. There you go. I guess we’re all safe now.

  The next day, I take the rest of my allowance to collect my reward for braving the subway on New Year’s Eve.

  B-Side Records is my father’s worst nightmare. New albums in on Tuesday. Comics on Thursday. A steady stream of rich kids, poor kids, weird kids, gay kids, kids who smell like pot, kids who smell like booze, kids who just smell.

  Music is the great equalizer: $7.99 for an LP. $5.99 for a cassette. Twenty-five cents for all the used stuff in the bargain bin.