kel: This is what Justin left behind.

lise: Kel, you wrote this scene, though I think I fucked around with the last line. Explain.

kel: There's this book, The House of Leaves, by Mark Z. Danielewski, which influenced a lot of what I brought to this story.

Merry sent us feedback comparing the story and the book without even realizing that we'd listed it in the bibliography on the index page.

This scene is the most explicit tribute to The House of Leaves, I think, because -- the book itself is very multi-media, and there's a lot of unorthodox placement of text, and there's one chapter where there's a blue-outlined box in the center of each page and inside the box is a running list of every single thing that isn't inside this particular room.

These things in the second paragraph, they aren't Justin, they're just the shell of Justin.

 

This is what Justin left behind.

Articles, interviews, album reviews, video tapes, official releases, limited edition vinyl, CD max singles, mix CDs, audio tapes, radio shows, photographs (both staged and candid), awards, trophies, certificates, contracts, royalty checks, ticket stubs, concert programs, hand scribbled set lists, press conferences. Talk show appearances. TRL premieres. Autographs.

There aren't any tapes about Justin's breakdown in Lance's collection. Chris' disappearance made everyone forget everything else. It's almost as though the three days that separated the two events never even happened. Lance doesn't even have any memories of discussing Justin. Not that he's forgotten them. He's forgotten precious few seconds between paying toll at the Golden Gate Bridge with four crumpled ones and four quarters and throwing his cell phone out the window at seventy-five miles an hour, because he really would recognize that 407 area code and phone number anywhere.

There just aren't any memories to be had. In the three days before Chris disappeared, both Lynn and JC were on the phone with Lance every other minute, worried about Justin, worried about where he was. After Chris went missing, they stopped. After that, no one discussed where Justin was, no one asked why Justin was missing from the news reels and CNN footage and press conferences.

Nobody was willing to say that maybe there was nothing left of Justin after Chris, and certainly nobody was willing to say the opposite, either. Mostly, Lance worked hard not wondering how fast Justin would have had to drive to make it from San Francisco to Orlando in two and a half days.

 

kel: Also, we spent more time figuring out what the shortest amount of time it would take for Justin to drive from San Francisco to Orlando. We employed Mapquest! It's something like fifty or sixty hours if you drive straight through, and we figured that Justin wouldn't stop for sleep or anything.

There it is in the header -- 2800 miles in 53 hours. Anything's possible if you're crazy, right?

lise: I remember agonizing over the wording of that last line, trying desperately to make it obvious that Justin made that trip but not saying it. I think, with the header, it works. I hope, anyway. Next.