Today Tonight Tomorrow

“Are you doing all right? You won’t be out too late, will you?”

“We’ll probably be asleep by the time she gets home,” my dad says, “if the scotch does its job.”

My mom lets out a low whistle. “This is almost as bad as what happened after that D. B. Cooper book. I think that was whiskey, though.”

“The what?” I ask.

“Riley tried to solve the D. B. Cooper case in one of the Excavated books,” my mom says. “Do you remember? We were so upset when our editor didn’t want to publish it. She didn’t think it was kid-friendly.”

“D. B. Cooper… That was a Seattle thing, right?”

“You don’t know the story?” And when I tell her no, she explains it to me.

This is the legend of D. B. Cooper: In 1971 a man hijacked a Boeing plane somewhere in the air between Portland and Seattle. He asked for $200,000 in ransom and parachuted out of the plane… but was never found, even after an FBI manhunt. It’s the only unsolved case of its kind.

I’d read the book in manuscript form, but must have forgotten about it when they had to shelve it. And Neil wouldn’t have known about it either.

“We even worked with the staff at the Museum of the Mysteries,” my mom says. “That creepy old building downtown?”

“It’s just as creepy on the inside,” my dad says. “And weird, too. It’s half museum, half bar. So they keep it open late.”

Suddenly, everything clicks into place. God, I love my parents.

“Rowan?” my mom says, with enough urgency that makes me think I must have zoned out. “Rowan Luisa, when do you think you’ll be home?”

“I probably won’t be too much longer.”

“Have fun,” my mom says, and they start giggling again as we hang up.

The Museum of the Mysteries. If I still cared about Howl, I’d get this view clue and then go there. Good to know, I guess.

I blow out a breath. They know, and Kirby and Mara know, and when I start classes in the fall, this could be what I tell my new friends too. I’m writing a romance novel.

The Great Wheel glimmers against the night sky. I’ve never actually been on this Ferris wheel. The name is no joke. When it was built, it was the tallest Ferris wheel on the West Coast, and the idea of being so high up scared me. But tonight its lights draw me closer, and I wonder why I was ever afraid of it.

“Last ride of the night,” the guy at the ticket booth says after I hand over my five dollars. “You’re just in time.”

A minute later, my feet are off the ground.

The air is cool against my face, and down below, the water is black and serene. A couple cars above me, two teens are laughing and taking selfies. A couple cars below me, a father is trying to calm a too-rowdy child.

“Don’t you dare rock this seat, Liam,” he says. “Liam… LIAM!”

I am on a Ferris wheel at midnight. It would be extremely romantic if I weren’t alone.

This whole day, I’ve felt on the edge of so many things. In high school, I knew how to do everything and how it should all make me feel. There’s a comfort in challenging Neil because there are only ever two outcomes: he wins, or I win. A routine. A security blanket.

I’ve lived here my whole life, but I’d never been on the Great Wheel. I’d never almost broken into a library. I’d never experienced Seattle the way I did tonight, but it’s not just the setting. Bit by bit, today forced me out of my comfort zone. The end of the game means the end of high school, and while there’s plenty I romanticized, there’s so much I’ll miss. Kirby and Mara. My classes, my teachers.

Neil.

“Oh my God,” someone says, breaking my concentration. A woman’s voice. “Oh my God!”

The voices are coming from the other side of the wheel. It’s not a scared-sounding oh my God. It’s the good kind.

“She said yes!” Another woman’s voice.

Everyone on the wheel breaks into cheers as the couple embraces. If that’s not romance-novel-worthy, I don’t know what is.