Rooms - James L. Rubart [7]
The scene sparked a memory of himself when he was seventeen, eyes closed, lying in the center of a park near home.
“Hey, Micah, what are you doing?” a friend from his basketball team had asked, interrupting his daydream.
“Not thinking.” Micah opened his eyes. “Do you ever have so many thoughts of what you have to get done that you want to escape from your own mind?”
“Nuh-uh.”
“I do. Never want to be one of those fame or power players so wiped out from racing through life and trying to keep what they have that they never get a chance to enjoy it. I’m going to enjoy being alive every day.”
“You’re weird, Micah.”
A conversation from another lifetime. Micah opened his eyes as the memory faded. He was a pretty naive kid back then. The life he’d created had perks he never dreamed of. But when you get to the top of Everest and it’s not all that great, what do you climb next?
The guy sprawled out on the lawn was still there, undoubtedly thinking about nothing. Or more likely stoned out of his mind. Whatever the case, the guy wasn’t trying to climb a molehill, let alone a mountain. Micah shook his head and tried to smile.
Resistance is futile. Life changes people. It changed his dad. Turned him into . . . something else.
And it seemed life had turned Micah into Sir Edmund Hillary. Accept it. Twenty minutes later he stood at his front door, black leather Vaqueta briefcase in one hand, a Nike gym bag in the other. Anything else?
Yeah. Grab some sunflower seeds for the trip down to the beach. He set his bags down just inside his front door, then trotted down the hall toward the kitchen. Wait. Something was wrong. Out of place in the hallway. Micah stopped and did a slow spin. Not out of place. Missing.
Where was it? He looked down, expecting to see it lying on the ginger-colored carpet. Nothing.
Waves of heat washed over him. Impossible. He’d glanced at it forty minutes ago while talking to his dad.
The framed Inc. magazine cover on his wall had vanished.
CHAPTER 3
Showtime. Time to find out how fully his great-uncle Archie had abandoned his rocker.
Just after three o’clock Saturday afternoon, Micah took the first Cannon Beach exit, lowered his window, and breathed deep. The tang of the ocean air filled him. In it he tasted gut-wrenching memories and, for reasons he didn’t understand, hope.
The odds of the house being real were zero, but he had to see the dirt. It was the fastest way to get Archie’s letter out of his head. Micah had pulled up the satellite photo once more before leaving Seattle, hoping to answer the question before he left. It still showed the outdated patch of open land where Archie’s house now supposedly sat.
If it did exist, the place would be four miles south of Cannon Beach so he didn’t need to go through town; but since he hadn’t been there in more than twenty years, he wanted to see the changes.
It wasn’t the real reason he pulled off Highway 101.
Part of him desperately wanted a house to be standing at the address on the card. He wanted to believe someone was crazy enough—or maybe cared enough about him—to build him a home on the Oregon Coast. But a bigger part didn’t believe, and driving through town would delay the inevitable disappointment.
He turned onto Main Street, and a few seconds later Osburn’s Ice Creamery filled his vision. Still there! His family used to camp up and down the Oregon Coast every summer. And every trip ended at Osburn’s for two scoops of whatever flavor his brother and he wanted. The two scoops were never sweet enough because they meant a summer of adventures had ended, and the bittersweet taste of fall and a new school year would settle on his tongue during the cheerless drive back