6) If the plane crashed, there was a sister who would never know me.

7) James.

8) If the plane crashed, I would still be in a fight with Will.

9) If the plane crashed, I would never “dazzle” Mr. Weir. I would be “incomplete” for all eternity.

10) I hadn’t brought anything to read.

I figured I could fix the last one at least, so I went into the nearest airport bookstore.

On a table toward the middle of the store, they had Dad’s book, which was just out in paperback. Out Wandering: A Memoir. I turned the book over and read the copy. “From the celebrated writer who along with his wife, Cassandra Miles-Porter, brought you the bestselling Wandering Porters travel series comes this deeply personal memoir about the end of his marriage, as seen through the prism of world events…” blah, blah, blah “…how he and his daughter managed to find peace of mind even while…” blah, blah, blah “…and in some ways, we are all out wandering…” blah, blah, blah. It sounded dreadful. I read Dad’s bio at the bottom. “Grant Porter lives with his daughter, Naomi, in Tarrytown, New York.” I added a couple phrases of my own, “his daughter, Naomi, who is a low-down, rotten liar and who has been lying to him for weeks.”

As a pointless act of contrition, I brought the book to the counter, and with the money the author himself had just given me, I bought a copy.

I landed in California around ten in the morning. Even though he had arranged my flight, James was two hours late picking me up.

He hugged me hard when he saw me.

“Jims, you were supposed to be here two hours ago.”

“Traffic,” he said with a vague wave of his hand. “It’s just L.A. I’m so goddamn happy that you’re here.” And he did look happy, better than before he’d left. His eyes were bright.

We got in the car; I had been planning what I would say to him since we’d gotten off the phone. The idea was to move James in positive directions; the dangerous thing, in my mind, was inertia. “So I thought we could maybe start with taking a campus tour?”

“Is that what you want to do?” he asked.

“Well, I’ve never seen USC before, and isn’t that kind of the point of why you’re here?”

“I…I guess so. I thought we could go to the beach, maybe go surfing. I’ve been wanting to take you surfing as long as I’ve known you. We could take the tour tomorrow, right? I think I’d prefer that.”

“Okay,” I said.

So we drove to the beach, but on the way I started feeling a little queasy. By the time we got there, I was really ready to get out of the car.

“Christ,” James said right after he’d parked.

“What is it?”

“I should have picked up the surf gear from my dad’s before we came here.”

“It’s fine. Let’s just sit awhile, okay? I’m feeling kind of green, you know?”

James sat down next to me on the beach, but I could tell he was feeling antsy. He kept drawing these circles in the sand with his right index finger. Finally he jumped up. “Why don’t I drive back to my dad’s house, and you wait here? I’ll come back with the gear and lunch, too.”

“How long will you be?”

“Probably about an hour.”

I agreed. I’d been traveling for hours, and I was in no mood to get back in that car.

The beach was deserted, and it was a little too cold for beach-goers. The air was crisp and salty. The sand was different from the kind you find on the East Coast: softer, but also firmer somehow. I fell asleep.

I only awoke because a couple were having a picnic on the sand near me. It seemed odd that they would have chosen to be so close to me when they could have sat anywhere, but whatever. He was about forty-five and she was probably ten years younger than that. The guy had gone all-out. He had brought the bottle of wine, the checkered blanket, a stereo with some guy singing opera, roses, and a picnic basket. It was kind of sweet, really. You could tell he’d put a lot of effort into it.

“Sorry,” she called out to me, “did we wake you?”

I shook my head. “It’s fine. Would you happen to have the time?” I’d left my backpack in James’s car.

“About four,” she called.

“Thanks.” James had been gone for about two and a half hours.

Maybe he’d just gotten stuck in traffic again? He couldn’t call me; no one could. My phone was in my backpack in his car.

I decided not to panic. I would just lie back down on the beach and wait it out. I really wished I’d taken my bag, because at least then I would have had my headphones.

Another two or so hours later, it was dark, the picnickers were packing up to leave, and James was still not there. “Can we offer you something to eat?” the man called out to me. I figured he probably thought I was a street kid. “We brought way more than we could ever finish.”

I shook my head. I wasn’t at all hungry. I was too worried about James to be hungry. “I’m fine. I’m just waiting for someone.”

The man nodded at me sympathetically. “You shouldn’t keep a lady waiting,” he said.

“Damn right,” the woman said.

Still, before they left, the woman gave me the remains of their Caesar salad and half a carton of strawberries. “Just in case he’s too much longer, right?”

I didn’t touch the food. Looking at it made me want to weep.

I was terrified for James, of course, but thoughts of self-preservation began to creep into my brain. I wondered what I should do if James never came back. Who should I call? Alice, maybe? My mother? Not Dad. He’d worry too much. And I couldn’t bear telling him I’d lied. Maybe Will? Then I started to wonder where the nearest phone was. I didn’t even know that much about my location. Somewhere on the Pacific coast near L.A., I reckoned. That narrowed it down to roughly a thousand different places.

Just as I was about to enter all-out panic mode, James appeared. He was carrying a paper bag from a burger place.

“It got cold,” he said. “So I had to throw out the first bag and get another.”

I didn’t even eat hamburgers, but I guess he didn’t know that. I jumped up and hugged him and kissed him all over his face.

“I’m sorry,” he said. Even in the dark, I could tell his eyes were bloodshot. “I…I tried to call you. Your phone was off.”

“It was in your car,” I said.

“Oh, right.”

“Looks like you already ate,” he said, pointing to the picnic remains.

“Some people felt sorry for me,” I said. “They thought I was homeless.”

“Are you mad?” James asked. “Please don’t be mad.”

“Only the smallest amount. Mainly, I was scared for you.”

James sat down on the beach next to me. After a while, I sat down, too.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m such a goddamn loser.”

“No, you’re not,” I said.

“I am. I am. I am.”

“James, don’t say that,” I said.

He pulled up his knees and set his head on them so that I couldn’t see his face.

“James, would you look at me?”

But he wouldn’t. It was awkward, but I tried to put my face under his so that he would have to look at me. He still wouldn’t move. I kissed the back of his neck. Then I kissed his arm.

After a while, he raised his head. He’d been crying.

“What happened anyway?” I tried to say this gently, but an array of other emotions was diluting my intent.

“I was driving to my dad’s in Westwood to get the gear. And I happened to notice this cemetery, so I decided to stop. Marilyn Monroe’s buried there. I’d been there before, but this time when I went I noticed how pink the marble on her grave is because people kiss it and touch it so much, you know…And that made me depressed as hell. My brother’s buried like a mile from there in this other cemetery. No one ever kisses and touches his grave, because no one gives a crap about him, do you know? He was just some kid who died. And it’s gonna sound so screwed up, but I drove over to his grave next. I couldn’t even find it at first. I’d forgotten where it was. It’s way in the back. And I started kissing it, and touching it to try to change the color of the stone…I knew it was crazy even while I was doing it, but I’ve been thinking about him a lot lately. He was never even as old as I am now, how messed up is that? It makes me crazy sometimes.

“This thing I have…this depression…I can see it coming on. It’s like when you’re surfing. You want to stay on the crest of the wave as long as possible, but the nature of waves is that they always come back down.”

I put my arm around him. James felt so small to me. “I love you,” I said.

James laughed, which was horrible. “I can’t help but wonder if you’d still say that if you could remember everything. If you were in your right mind.”

I could have told him then, but it didn’t seem the place. “Don’t you love me?” I asked.

“I do.”

“Let’s get out of here, okay?”

When we got to the car, James looked really tired, so I suggested that if he gave me directions, I could drive.

“I thought you didn’t remember how,” he said.

“I remembered,” I answered. He didn’t question me beyond that.

James’s dad’s house was the California equivalent of James’s mom’s house. Roomy, empty. His dad was away somewhere. “On business,” James said.

“Have you been here by yourself the whole time?”

James shrugged.

I made eggs, but James didn’t really eat anything. He didn’t say much the whole evening. I could tell he was thinking about something, and I didn’t want to disturb him. Still, I felt like each second he didn’t speak became an inch between us.