You crawled in next to me. We were supposed to be studying. And there, in the flicker of the candlelight, I guess we were. I studied you. You studied me. You smiled. I was too lost to smile.
“Hey, Evan,” Jack said, “don’t lose it. Let’s just get what we came for and leave.”
I couldn’t believe this was easy for him. I couldn’t believe he wasn’t shaken, too. I didn’t know why, but this got to me just as much as being in your dead room. Before I could think about it, I was yelling at him, “What do you know, Jack? What do you know about anything?”
The tears were coming, but I was too angry to cry. They just fell out of my eyes.
“That’s not fair, Evan,” Jack said, standing in front of the bed.
“I’m so sorry it’s not fair.”
He sighed. “Evan, you should talk to someone about this. Really, you need to talk to someone.”
“How about you, jerk?” I said. “Why can’t I talk to you about it?”
The first time the three of us went to the movies together, he waited until you went to get popcorn, and then he said, “You don’t mind, do you?” And I’d been so moved that he’d asked, that he wanted my permission.
“Do you really think this is the time and place? We’re in her room, Ev.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Don’t you think that’s a little weird? Doesn’t that disturb you?”
He looked at me like I was out of my mind. “Of course it does. Jesus, who do you think I am?”
“You never talk about it,” I said. “Ever.”
“What is there to talk about, Evan? It’s done. She’s gone. It happened. We did the right thing. Is that what you want to hear? Well, we did. We did the right thing.”
I hated that I needed him so much. Because he was the only one who knew.
“I wasn’t sure I’d ever be in here again,” he said, staying in the perfect middle of the room, as if he didn’t want to touch anything. “It all feels so empty now, doesn’t it? It’s like her spirit’s gone. So it’s just a room. And that’s so completely surreal. I know you think I don’t care about it, but that’s not true. I’m just not as open as you, okay? That’s how I deal with it. But that doesn’t make this easier. I don’t want to be here, Evan—and I can’t help but feel that you do. It’s your way of keeping things going even after they’ve stopped.”
“They haven’t stopped,” I told him. “Even with her gone, things don’t stop. As long as we’re around, they’ll keep going.”
“Remember at the beginning, when we fought it? When we said we weren’t going to let go of her?”
I studied you. You studied me. We lay there. I moved my hand gently onto your arm.
I nodded. “Yeah, that didn’t work.”
Finally, he touched something—a picture frame, with you and your parents safely inside. “I don’t think they’d be very happy to find us here,” he said.
“It’s not your fault,” your mom had said that first night. But she never said it again.
“I like to think Ariel knows we’re here,” I said. “That somehow she senses it. Wherever she is.”
I moved my hand gently onto your arm.
Jack put down the photo. “That’s assuming she’s forgiven us.”
“Evan,” you said. “Don’t fall in love with me, okay?”
“Yeah. I guess so.”
“I’m not in love with you,” I said.
I looked at your mirror, which was surrounded by more photos. Some of you and Jack. Some of you and me. A couple of Jack alone. One of me alone. Only one of Jack and me together, from Six Flags in May.
You didn’t move your arm. You let me rest there. You didn’t pull away. You pulled closer. You were so good to me. You knew and pretended you didn’t.
“Let’s always love each other, and never be in love with each other.”
And I agreed.
“Evan?” Jack said.
I pointed to the picture from Six Flags. “That was a good day, wasn’t it?”
And then …
“What’s that?” I asked, pointing to the picture next to it.
Jack didn’t see it at first—it was small compared to the other snapshots, the same size as the first photo I’d received.
“Look,” he said, taking it out of the mirror frame and handing it to me.
9F
9G
“It has to be the same photographer,” he said.
I looked at it closely.
“Is that Ariel?” I asked.
“I think so. I’m not sure, but I think it is.”
“On the railway bridge.”
“Walking on the tracks. Jesus.”
“You don’t think she was—”
“Trying to kill herself? Doesn’t look like it. And it would have to be one scary individual to take photos of a suicide attempt.”
“It’s like she’s floating there. Like she’s already dead.”
“Ariel the angel, huh?”
That sounded dumb. “Not really,” I mumbled.
“You see,” Jack said, taking the photo back from me, “I don’t think it looks like she’s floating at all. I think she’s teetering. Which is just about right. It’s shaky because she’s about to fall.”
The train comes. If you stay on the tracks, you die. If you jump off the bridge, you die.
“So who took it?” I asked.
There’s always a train coming eventually.
“Well, that’s the question, isn’t it? If I remember correctly, we’re here to find that out.”
“The journals,” I said.
“Yeah, the journals.”
I knew you kept them in a box under your bed. I knew that because I’d seen you take one out, write in it, then put it away. I’d never looked in the box, and had certainly never read anything you’d written. That would have been the worst kind of violation, to read your words uninvited. Now, though, it was like all those rules were off.
I reached down for the box I’m sorry, and Jack said, “Wait.” I looked back up at him. He was even more skittish than before. You made him afraid. Did you realize how afraid you made him?
“I understand why we’re doing this,” he said, “and I’m okay with you checking to see if she, you know, mentions someone else. But I don’t want to read it. Any of it. And I don’t want you to tell me. Because we don’t know what she wrote there. And if she said anything about me that I’m not ready to hear—well, I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready to hear it. I need to remember it the way I’m remembering it now. If that’s all a lie, I don’t want to know it.”
I looked at him. How helpless he was.
“She loved you,” I said. “You know that, right? She loved you.”
And that’s what did it. That’s what made the tears finally come to his eyes.
“You can’t know that for sure,” he said quietly.
“Yeah, I can. There are only a few things I know for sure, and that’s one of them. There’s not going to be anything in the journals that disputes that. I’m sure there were times when she was mad at you. And there were definitely times she was out of her head. But on the base level, she loved you.”
It was hard to say these things. I knew he wouldn’t say them back. I had to trust my belief that you loved me, too. In a different way. We were never in love. But we loved each other.
As he wiped his eyes, looking mad at himself for letting something out, I reached under the bed and found the box. It was surprisingly light as I pulled it out. Then I took a look inside and saw why.
It was empty.
9H
My mind became a brief history of empty boxes.
The big cardboard ones I’d find as a kid and turn into a fort. Or a house, drawing in windows on the sides. I would cut out the windows and ruin it.
Boxes that sweaters would come in. Boxes from department stores that I would keep in the bottom of my closet until they could be filled with some kind of collection.
Coffins.
The Cracker Jack box when I was all done, when the prize had been revealed to be something plastic, something worthless.
An empty sandbox, looking like it was waiting for sand.
A mailbox always looks like it’s full of envelopes. But you never know for sure. Most of the time when you open it, it sounds hollow.
What did Pandora do with her box after she’d unleashed despair into the world? Did she keep it on her mantel, as a reminder of what she’d done?
9I
I threw the empty box aside. I crawled under your bed, looking for another box. Looking for something, for the prize. And when I didn’t find it, I was suddenly so angry at everything. I started ripping at things. Your room was not supposed to be neat. I pulled at the sheets until the mattress was bare. I attacked the drawers by the handles. Jack was yelling at me to stop. He was asking me what I was doing. I was sick of emptiness, tired of order. I opened the drawers one by one, looking for those journals, looking for any word from you.
“Evan!” Jack was shouting. He grabbed at my arms, but I pushed him off. I was just like you.
I reached the bottom drawer of your desk. I reached for the bottom drawer of your desk. I pulled it open.
You know what I found there, don’t you?
9J
9K
9L
9M
9N
I turned them over. There were dates and captions on the back. Months ago. Before. It wasn’t your handwriting.
11/11 tracks
11/11 underneath
11/11 Sparrow
11/14 self-portrait
As quickly as I’d started trashing the place, I stopped. Jack was back in action now, first staring at me, then staring at the pictures in my hand.
“It’s the guy,” Jack said. “That’s him.”
I turned over the photo. “It says it’s Sparrow.” I held up the abstract fourth picture. “This is the self-portrait.”
“Well, that’s a big help.”
I studied the captions. “It looks like a girl’s handwriting,” I said.
“Still, there’s a guy. Right here.”
I didn’t see what Jack was so bothered by. “I really don’t think that’s a self-portrait,” I said.
“Yeah, but she kept a picture of him, Evan. You don’t keep a picture of a total stranger.”
“It was in her drawer. It’s not like she had it up.”
“But maybe she wanted to keep him a secret, okay? Maybe he’s a secret.”
No, I wanted to say. She was ours.
“There’s no way he goes to our school,” I said. “Even with two thousand kids, you’d remember that hair.”
The air was getting dark; night was blooming. I opened the rest of the drawers in the room, more gently this time, but couldn’t find anything else. No image. No word.
“We should go,” Jack said. “Clean up and go.”
Go go go go go go go go. Why is it such a short word? Shouldn’t it be the same length as STOP?
I held up Sparrow’s picture.
“People will remember him,” I said. “Someone will recognize him. He’s the key.”
10
I never kept a calendar.
I had no idea what I’d been doing on 11/11. Or 11/14.
Had I been with you? For at least part of it? Had you seen Jack? Were you off with people we didn’t know? Or people we did know?
I tried to remember other people. I tried to remember other people in your life. “My secret girlfriend,” you joked. But nothing was there. Nothing I could reach. Or was it “my secret boyfriend”?
I was starting to think I was making up memories, just to have answers.
Our brain does that sometimes.
Or at least mine does.
You were never able to trick yourself like that, were you?
10A
What had I given you that you could keep? Not photographs. Other things.
Words and words and words and words. Mostly in person, or on the computer.
I should have given you my own ink.
Why? So you would have had more to leave behind?
I hadn’t looked in your room for the roses, but I figured I would have seen them if they’d been there. Do you remember? It had been our arbitrary anniversary. Last year, near the end of the school year, so probably June.
“We don’t have an anniversary,” you’d said as we walked home from school. “We should have an anniversary.”
“How about today?” I said. “If we’re going to have an arbitrary anniversary, it might as well be today. We’ll be celebrating the anniversary of the day we came up with our arbitrary anniversary.”
You’d smiled. “I like that. I like that a lot.”
We gave each other two hours to plan. Then we’d go to Brookner Park to celebrate.
I’d never given anybody flowers before, but I’d always wanted to. So I went into town, to the florist, and I got roses. I didn’t want red ones, because it wasn’t like this was a romantic anniversary (“except in the poetry sense,” you would have added). So I went with a dark yellow—the color of the sun just before it turns orange. I had them wrapped, and signed a card and everything. After that, I went out and bought some of your favorite foods—peach salsa, lemon yogurt, almond cookies. Then, since I’d covered the anniversary, I stopped in a couple more stores for the arbitrary part. Salad tongs. A gobstopper. Birdseed. Somethings.
I was ten minutes early to the park and you were ten minutes late. This was about our usual ratio. You were rushed, flustered.
“I stopped at home and—oh my God—it was like I couldn’t get back out, because Mom was home early, and she was asking me about homework, and it’s like she thought I was still in seventh grade, so when I went to go back out, she was all like, ‘Where are you going?’ and I told her I was going out, and she was like, ‘I can see that,’ and I just didn’t know what to say, you know? I knew there was something to say, but I just didn’t know what it was. So instead of making it better, I left, and I’m sure when I get back, she’s going to be seething. I swear, that house keeps getting smaller and smaller. Soon it’s going to be an exquisite birdcage.”
You were quiet with other people. This wasn’t your usual talking. This was you with me.
I held the flowers out to you. Remember?
“Happy arbitrary anniversary,” I said.
Your eyes grew wide and you put your hand over your mouth.
“What?” I asked.
“I totally forgot our arbitrary anniversary, honey!”
For a second, I believed you. Then you laughed.
“Just kidding.”
You reached into your pocket and pulled out a small box, the kind that rings come in.
I handed you the flowers and you handed me the box.
I held my breath a little as I opened it. I remember that.
“I figured each of our arbitrary anniversaries can have a theme. So this will be our Cat’s Eye anniversary.”
Inside the box was a marble, a bigger-than-usual marble. Completely black glass.
Cat’s Eye.
I gave you everything I’d collected, but none of it seemed to add up to that single marble.
It was a good night. We talked, joked. Jack called a couple of times, but you didn’t answer. Nobody else called. I couldn’t remember anybody else ever calling, except your parents.
Nobody else.
When the time came for us to head home, I noticed that the roses were already wide open. They wouldn’t last much longer than the day.
“Sorry about that,” I said. “They were closed tighter in the shop.”
“That’s okay,” you told me. “I like them better when they’re dried up. I’ll keep them for years. Until our Get Rid of the Roses anniversary.”
And I kept the Cat’s Eye. Until it disappeared.
Did you steal it one day when you were in my room? Or did I lose it? Either way, isn’t it my fault for not noticing?
Why was I th
inking about this?
Oh, yes—the roses.
Something to keep.
Something gone.
11
Jack and I had an advantage over the photographer: We had four photographs she didn’t know we had. I was assuming it was a she because handwriting doesn’t lie.
But, of course, the advantage meant nothing if we didn’t know what to do with it.
11A
I took Sparrow’s photo to lunch. There was no way Jack could have asked his friends about it—it would be too out of character; there would be too many questions. So I was left showing it to my friends. They wouldn’t think there was anything out of the ordinary about me being out of the ordinary. I didn’t tell them where I’d gotten it—I just said I was wondering if any of them had seen this guy around. And as they responded, I couldn’t help thinking about you you you and how they knew you.
Matt was actually your first boyfriend—or “first ex-boyfriend,” as you would tease him. In fifth grade. Or maybe sixth. It lasted a few months, just so you could get something from him for Valentine’s Day. I think it was over on February 15th. He would tease you about it, even when you weren’t in the mood for teasing. He couldn’t tell the difference. said, “Dude, look at that hair! I’ve never seen anyone at this school try that out.”
Fiona had been friends with you—maybe even good friends—until you started spending all your time with Jack and, to a lesser extent, me. She was shaken after everything that happened, but not to the point that she felt the guilt as well as the shock. studied the picture for a while. Then she turned it over, read the caption, and handed it back to me. “Nothing,” she said. “Sorry.”
Katie thought you were a downer. She even said it to me once, shortly before: “I just can’t spend too much time with her. She’s a downer.” I give her points for being the one to admit it. But did she ever ask herself why? said, “He kind of looks like you. Not the hair, obviously. But there’s something about him that reminds me of you.”