We were in front of the gravestone from the photo now. I tried to read it, but I couldn’t. Time had worn away all of the words. Some light green moss grew on it instead.
“You can’t read it anymore,” I said. “That’s what upset her.”
Jack nodded. “She kept saying, ‘What’s the point? All this, and what’s the point?’ And I don’t know—I just wanted to kiss her so much then. I wanted it, and she needed it. So I held her, and I kissed her, and we just started making out in the middle of a graveyard.”
“That’s so romantic,” I said.
“What do you know about romance, Ev? I mean, really.”
It took me by surprise, his anger. I hadn’t realized he cared enough to be angry with me.
He took out a cigarette, looked at me for my permission, then lit it.
“Runner like you shouldn’t dabble in cancer,” I said, pressing my luck.
“You sound like her,” he said, then let it hang there, like the smoke.
I looked around the gravestone for another envelope, but didn’t find anything.
“Are you watching us?” I called out. “Anyone there?”
“This time of night,” Jack said between drags, “they’d need a flash.”
“He’d need a flash,” I said. “Or she’d.”
“Who is it, Evan? If it’s not you and not me, who is it?”
“Do you think there was someone else? Do you think she was cheating on you?”
“No. Did she have any other friends she would’ve told? Do you think she was cheating on you?”
Between us, we were supposed to know you. Between us, we were supposed to know everything.
“You have to help me,” I said to him. “We have to help her.”
“We would joke about it,” he continued. “That first kiss. How weird it was. I was going to find out whose grave it was. I was going to find out, and then on our anniversary, I was going to write the name back on. I thought she’d like that.”
I looked down at the anonymous stone. I couldn’t meet his eye.
“She needed help,” I told him.
“Shame we couldn’t give it to her.”
I lifted my head to stare at him in the darkness, over the gravestone.
“Do you really believe that?” I asked.
“Some days I do. Some days I don’t.”
“She was breaking,” I told him. “We had to.”
“I’m not convinced we didn’t break her more,” he replied.
“You can’t break someone by caring.”
“Are you really sure about that?”
“I don’t need your help!” you screamed.
“Yes, you do,” he told you. “Evan and I both think that.”
“You’re against me! Both of you—you’re against me.”
“That’s not it,” I said. “That’s not it at all.” But I wasn’t sure you could hear me over your own crying.
“They’ll be here soon,” Jack said. “It’s for the best.”
I was glad he sounded so confident. Because I was starting to wonder whether we’d done the right thing.
“I’ll kill myself. I swear, I’ll kill myself,” you threatened.
“We’re not going to leave you alone,” I said.
But we had to, eventually.
After all, people are always separable.
“Evan?” Jack said to me now. “You there?”
“As much as I ever am.”
I half expected him to follow up with You okay? But instead he started walking back home.
“There’s nothing for us here,” he called back to me. “I guess we’ll just see what happens next.”
“I’m not okay,” I said.
But he was already too far away to hear me.
8
We had to face the fact: Someone else knew you. Maybe not another boyfriend or another best friend. But someone who would have known where you and Jack had your first kiss. Someone who would have followed you to the spot where it all happened. And took pictures.
8A
It wasn’t like we didn’t know other people. It wasn’t like I sat alone at lunch now. But there are people you know, and there are people you have a connection with, and I had thought that you’d only had a connection with me and Jack. Wasn’t that what made us feel responsible—not for what happened, but responsible for you? We always felt responsible for you. That’s the nature of connection—not just the attachment, but the responsibility.
At lunch, I sat with people from class at a different table from the one I sat at with you. It was easier that way. Strangers were more difficult. One time, there was a field trip, and Matt, who I usually ate with, wasn’t there. I sat at our usual table, and this girl sat down, looked at me, and said, “You were friends with the crazy girl, weren’t you?” And I didn’t know what to say. I kept eating, pretending I hadn’t heard her. Finally she said, “You must be crazy, too,” and then left to sit somewhere else.
The whole time, I didn’t look up. But under the table, I crossed my legs so hard it hurt. I was using all the strength it would take to run away, only to stay still.
Was that how you felt?
8B
There weren’t any new photos over the weekend, and there weren’t any on Monday morning, either. I felt like I was missing something. Missing you more. Missing whatever was going to happen next.
Monday at lunch I followed Matt from calculus, talking about homework and our history test and nothing that mattered. You and I never talked about calculus. There were football players sitting at our table, so Matt led me over to where Katie and that group were sitting. Katie had a camera out.
“What’s that for?” I asked her.
She looked at me strangely. “For taking pictures? For art class?”
Charlie chimed in with, “Do you want her to take your picture?”
“Oh, cut it out,” Fiona said. “It was a perfectly valid question.”
Katie’s camera was new and digital and small—not the kind of camera I imagined had taken the photographs that Jack and I had gotten. So I didn’t know how valid a question it had actually been.
Valid questions:
Why am I still here?
Who are these people?
What should I say next?
Are they expecting me to say something next?
Katie and Charlie were eating from the same cardboard boat of French fries. Matt was talking to Rich, another refugee from our usual table, about World of Warcraft. Fiona would take a look at us all, then take a bite of her sandwich, then take another look at us all. Which was pretty much the same thing I was doing, only I was eating a square slice of pizza.
She and I didn’t have any classes together, so I didn’t know what we could talk about.
“Do you like to take pictures?” she asked me.
“No,” I said. Then I realized too late that I’d shut down the conversation. I had to think of something else to say.
“Do you?” I asked.
She shrugged. “When the mood hits me, I guess.”
“When does the mood hit you?”
“I don’t know. It’s a mood.”
I thought: You don’t understand that talking is hard for me. I watch all of you doing it, but I just can’t. I could with her. But I can’t now.
“Evan?”
I looked up at Fiona. I hadn’t realized I’d looked down. I hadn’t realized she wanted me to say something else.
“Sorry,” I said. “I was just … thinking.”
“About what?”
“Nothing, really.”
She looked disappointed.
“I’m sorry,” I said again.
She smiled. “What do you have to be sorry about?”
Ariel. The fact that I can’t talk to you normally. The fact that you’re being nice and I can’t be nice back—not because I don’t want to. I want to be nice. But my mind won’t let me speak. My body won’t let me speak. It’s too uncomfortable.
“Lots,” I said.
Now Fiona looked at me a different way, and I wondered if this was how I used to look at you, the barely masked concern that lands like pity.
What was weird was: I thought I’d hidden it so well. I thought, to them, I was just quiet Evan, shy Evan, plain Evan. I was the orphan sidekick, the trusty wallflower.
“I gotta go,” I said, even though my lunch wasn’t finished and there were still at least fifteen minutes to go before next period. As I stood up, I had the strangest sensation that this would be the moment that someone would take a picture of, because this was the moment I’d least want to be captured.
You said that once, didn’t you? I remembered it. One morning, I was at your locker and you were just staring inside it, as if there was a mirror there. “Ariel?” I asked. And you said, “Why is it that I’m always forced to see people at the exact time I don’t want anyone to see me? Why is life that cruel?” Jack might have made a joke about it, but I took it seriously.
“Bye,” Fiona said, and I managed to say it back. Even Matt was looking at me a little weirdly as I left; he’d noticed me talking to Fiona, and it was clear he thought it was a good thing, which I was now messing up. This only made me want to leave faster, and I almost spilled my soda on Katie’s head as I swerved away. I liked them all, but I was going, and the only person I blamed was myself.
As I left, I saw Jack at his table, laughing with his friends.
This feeling would always be mine alone.
8C
Between every period, I passed both my locker and Jack’s, hoping to catch someone placing a photograph inside. I was waiting for it, really. I couldn’t believe that he or she would stop.
At the end of the day, I found Jack putting his books away. I had come up with a plan.
“Anything?” I asked him.
“Nope,” he said, closing the door.
“That doesn’t make any sense,” I said.
“I have to go to practice. I promise I’ll tell you if something comes up.”
He was about to walk away, and I felt I couldn’t let him. Not yet.
“Doesn’t it bother you?” I asked.
He looked at me impatiently. “What?”
“That she told someone else.”
“It is what it is.”
“No, there’s something else there.”
Jack slammed his hand against his locker door. “Look,” he said. “What do you want me to do? What do you want me to say? There’s a part of me that thinks you’re actually enjoying this.”
Enjoying. This.
“Jack—you can be such a jerk sometimes.”
“No—I know. That’s not right. But, Evan, I don’t know what you want from me here. It doesn’t make any sense for us to get worked up over something we don’t have any control over.”
“I’ve thought about it,” I said.
“And?”
“I think we need to go to her house.”
He was not expecting me to say this.
“What are you talking about?”
“Think about it for a second. If she was close enough to someone to tell him or her our locker combinations and the place where you two first kissed—don’t you think she would have mentioned that person in her journals?”
“Wait a second, Evan—”
“No, it makes perfect sense. All we have to do is read the journals—we don’t even have to read them, we can just scan them. But there has to be a name there.”
“Are you crazy?”
“You must be crazy, too.”
“No.”
“First of all, I don’t think Ariel’s parents would just let us into their house because of what we did to their daughter. Second, we have no idea if the journals that I don’t want to read are still there. And third … I’m sick of you well, it’s just wrong.”
“You remember where the spare key is, don’t you? You are not getting out of this. I’m sure it’s in the same place. Nobody not even your new girlfriend ever has to know we were there. Nobody. It’s the only way for us to find out.”
Jack shook his head. “No. We’re not doing it. I’m late for practice.”
“If you don’t do it with me, I’m doing it alone,” I told him.
Jack hit the locker again. “Evan.”
“Someone’s stalking us,” I said. “We have to stop it. The only way is to find out who it is. Her parents both work until six now, at the earliest. I’ve been by their house. They’re never back before six.” This wasn’t true. I was just guessing.
“Does it have to be tonight?”
I knew if I wavered, I’d lose him.
“Yeah. Let’s get it over with.”
Jack didn’t like any of it, but he wasn’t going to make me do it myself.
“Fine. I think you’re a jerk, too, sometimes. I’ll get out of practice early and meet you here at four. Out front. In the meantime, go over there and make sure their cars aren’t in the garage.”
I nodded and started to leave. But Jack grabbed my shoulder and turned me so I had to look him right in the eye.
“I’m only going to say this once, Evan, okay? If I find out that these are your photos and you’re doing this just to mess with me, I’ll kill you. Got it?”
“Don’t worry,” I told him. “I’m not that smart. Or that masochistic.”
He let me go.
“I think you are that smart,” he said. “But not that cruel. That’s what I’m betting on.”
This was, I figured, the biggest compliment he’d ever paid me.
9
I let myself lose focus as I walked over to Ariel’s house. There were so many frequencies playing in my mind.
“I’m having sex with him,” you said. “You know that, right?”
“It was a perfectly valid question,” Fiona said.
“I guess I did,” I said.
I didn’t. I didn’t want to think about it.
“Mrs. Taylor, you have to come with me now.”
“I don’t know. It’s a mood.”
“Evan, get help. I’ll stay here. You get help.”
But I wanted to be the one to stay.
“My parents aren’t home right now,” Fiona said.
No. Not Fiona.
“What is it, Evan? What is it?”
It’s the end. It’s the end. I can’t stop it.
“I am so happy right now,” you said.
You wanted to die.
I have to stop thinking about these things.
“It’s Ariel. She’s—”
“Make sure their cars aren’t in the garage.”
Checked. Check. Checklisted. Checked off. Checkmate.
“I’m not in love with you.”
9A
Your red bike was still there. It’s not like you ever rode it. So it made sense that it was still there.
I was going to tell Jack that, but by the time it was four o’clock, I’d forgotten.
9B
On our way over, I asked him, “Are you sure you want to do this?”
He was speechless for a second, then said, “I tell you, Evan, sometimes I don’t understand you at all.”
9C
I came with the territory.
What was the territory?
9D
“I’m not in love with you.”
9E
The key was right where I knew it would be. I’d never used it, but I’d seen you use it all the time. You never carried your own key. You just used the one hidden in the lip of the geranium pot.
“Come on,” you said. We were supposed to be studying. I can’t remember what. And I thought, Okay, here we are. It was what? October or November of tenth grade? Before Jack. Before
Jack and I let ourselves in the back door. I went to turn on the light, but Jack told me not to.
“Wait till we get to her room,” he said. “Less chance of someone seeing it.”
“Let’s just go to my room,” you said. We didn’t bother turning
on any of the lights. You led me by my hand.
It was starting to sink in now: We were in your house. It smelled like your house, a little bit like pillows and a little bit like pine. There were the same magnets on the refrigerator, the same paintings on the walls. Do you miss them? It made me realize it hadn’t been all that long ago, when things had changed. And just because people changed, it didn’t mean houses automatically changed, too.
Jack had fallen quiet, but he was looking around as much as I was.
“It’s weird,” I said.
He nodded.
Jack and I had never been in your house without you. We’d never waited here for you to show up, never hung around while you ran off to do something. I’m sure there were times when we’d been watching a movie and you’d left us alone on your lime-green couch to go get something. But I couldn’t remember any of those times now. I couldn’t remember ordinary moments, only the ones that had made an impression. Ordinary moments were the ones that fell away first.
You opened the door. You lit some candles. You left the lights off.
Your door was closed, and I had this stupid moment when I wondered if we should knock.
“Make yourself comfortable,” you said, so I went to the bed. Kicked off my shoes. Made myself comfortable there.
Neither of us wanted to be the one to open the door. We just stood there until Jack finally grabbed the knob and turned.
It was still your room, but it was different. Anything. Something. Someone besides you had cleaned it. Everything was in place, which wasn’t like you at all. Anything. Something. It was as if the whole room had been folded neatly. One more betrayal.
Anything.
Something.
Nothing.
Suddenly I was light-headed, like I hadn’t eaten in weeks. I sat down on the bed. I made myself comfortable. Feeling it under me made me want to cry.