Where She Went by Gayle Forman Page B

on-again-off-again-smoker, to quit. It had taken Mia months to prevail upon Kat, but prevail she did. By the time I met them, Kat didn’t smoke at all. Mia’s dad, Denny, puffed on a pipe, but that seemed mostly for show. “ You smoke now?” I ask her.
    “No,” Mia replies. “But I just had a really intense experience and I’m told cigarettes calm your nerves.”
    The intensity of a concert—it sometimes left me pent up and edgy. “I feel that way after shows sometimes,” I say, nodding.
    I shake out a cigarette for her; her hand is still trembling, so I keep missing the tip of the cigarette with my lighter. For a second I imagine grabbing her wrist to hold her steady. But I don’t. I just chase the cigarette until the flame flashes across her eyes and lights the tip. She inhales and exhales, coughs a little. “I’m not talking about the concert, Adam,” she says before taking another labored drag. “I’m talking about you .”
    Little pinpricks fire-cracker up and down my body. Just calm down , I tell myself. You just make her nervous, showing up all out of the blue like that . Still, I’m flattered that I matter—even if it’s just enough to scare her.
    We smoke in silence for a while. And then I hear something gurgle. Mia shakes her head in dismay and looks down at her stomach. “Remember how I used to get before concerts?”
    Back in the day, Mia would get too nervous to eat before shows, so afterward she was usually ravenous. Back then, we’d go eat Mexican food at our favorite joint or hit a diner out on the highway for French fries with gravy and pie—Mia’s dream meal. “How long since your last meal ?” I ask.
    Mia peers at me again and stubs out her half-smoked cigarette. She shakes her head. “Zankel Hall? I haven’t eaten for days. My stomach was rumbling all through the performance. I was sure even people in the balcony seats could hear it.”
    “Nope. Just the cello.”
    “That’s a relief. I think.”
    We stand there in silence for a second. Her stomach gurgles again. “Fries and pie still the optimal meal?” I ask. I picture her in a booth back in our place in Oregon, waving her fork around, as she critiqued her own performance.
    “Not pie. Not in New York. The diner pies are such disappointments. The fruit’s almost always canned. And marionberry does not exist here. How is it possible that a fruit simply ceases to exist from one coast to another?”
    How is it possible that a boyfriend ceases to exist from one day to another? “Couldn’t tell you.”
    “But the French fries are good.” She gives me a hopeful half smile.
    “I like French fries,” I say. I like French fries? I sound like a slow child in a made-for-TV movie .
    Her eyes flutter up to meet mine. “Are you hungry?” she asks.
    Am I ever.

    I follow her across Fifty-seventh Street and then down Ninth Avenue. She walks quickly—without even a faint hint of the limp she had when she left—and purposefully, like New Yorkers do, pointing out landmarks here and there like a professional tour guide. It occurs to me I don’t even know if she still lives here or if tonight was just a tour date.
    You could just ask her , I tell myself. It’s a normal enough question.
    Yeah, but it’s so normal that it’s weird that I have to ask.
    Well you’ve got to say something to her .
    But just as I’m getting up the nerve, Beethoven’s Ninth starts chiming from her bag. Mia stops her NYC monologue, reaches in for her cell phone, looks at the screen, and winces.
    “Bad news?”
    She shakes her head and gives a look so pained it has to be practiced. “No. But I have to take this.”
    She flips open the phone. “Hello. I know. Please calm down. I know. Look, can you just hold on one second?” She turns to me, her voice all smooth and professional now. “I know this is unbearably rude, but can you just give me five minutes?”
    I get it. She just played a big show. She’s got people calling. But even so, and in