Acting.
There was no brother. Not even an identical twin. This isn’t the f**king SyFy Channel. He had been Eric. Now he was Evan.
Why? And why did he lie about it? What else had he lied about?
Where does he go on his days off and why does he sit in his car for hours, talking to himself?
Jesus, was this going to be some Silence of the Lambs shit? Did I really want to know what was eating Eric/Evan Wilke?
Yes. Of course I did.
I want to talk, I texted him Monday. Can I come over?
Yes. Should I pick you up?
I’ll walk.
I took my time. If following Hiyam felt like walking to my execution, this was like walking to my own funeral. When I stepped up to the coffin and peered inside, I was pretty sure I’d see the big bloody red thing currently throbbing in my chest.
There was snow on my shoes when I stood at his door, trickling into the carpet, staining it like ink. I thought of Ilsa’s letter and the ink running in the rain.
The man who opened the door had a scruffy beard, dark circles like camera lenses around his eyes, and the thousand-yard stare of a frightened little boy.
Turn around, I thought. Run. This is going to hurt. There’s no point.
I stepped inside.
Signs of depression: dishes piled in a Jenga tower in the sink; dirty glasses on the coffee table next to the empty Old Forester; the fact that he was in pajamas at two P.M. and had some kind of echidna growing on his face.
“You’re living like a slob, Eric,” I said.
He didn’t flinch. His brow furrowed, his eyes tightening into that beautiful squint. I turned away.
“I talked to Park,” I said.
“I know.”
“So let’s hear it,” I said, walking around, poking at things, tickling the garland on the Christmas tree and making it shiver with a furry sound. “Let’s hear your sob story. Should I make popcorn?”
“I want you to know something first,” he said. “I never—”
“Stop.” I spun around, staring at him with my jaw set. “Don’t soften me up. Just tell me.”
He walked toward me, palms up, pleading, so ridiculous and disheveled and heart-breaking in the cold afternoon light.
“It’s not that simple, Maise. There’s so much—”
“Let’s make it simple,” I said, crossing my arms. “Tell me why you lied about your name.”
He opened his mouth, shook his head. Swallowed. Started to speak again and stopped. God, how do you ever plan to teach a speech class? I thought.
“I didn’t lie,” he said at last. “I had it changed legally.”
“Is that why you were in court that day?”
“Yes.”
“Why did you change it?”
He swallowed again. “There’s a situation I needed to separate myself from.”
“Jesus. Stop talking in circles and just tell me—”
“I had a relationship with a student,” he said.
My arms unfolded of their own will. The ruby in my chest finally split. I stood there full of released light and blood and a hundred crimson shards.
“It was two years ago,” he said. “It was completely over when I met you. But it ended badly, and the student had some—issues with me.”
The student. The student.
“A high school girl,” I said.
“Yes.”
“How old?”
He sighed, long and deep. His shoulders had a concave, defensive arc. “Seventeen when it started. Eighteen when it ended.”
I didn’t really care about her age. I was trying to work up to the “issues.”
“What happened?”
He spoke to the floor. “She was infatuated with me. And I made a huge mistake in returning it. I kept telling myself it was just a crush, an emotional affair, that it would never go farther than that. But I was lying to myself. I let it get to the point where we could act on it, and we did. One time.”
“And someone found out?” I said, amazed by my detachment.
“No.”
“So why—” My mouth fell open. It hit me as he said it.
“She got pregnant.”
“Oh my f**king god,” I said, my voice suddenly way too loud, way too big for this sad little scene. “Do you have a kid?”
“No,” he said. “No, Maise.” He only managed to look at me in slivers of glances, like knife slashes.
“What happened to it?”
“She miscarried.”
I was going to throw up. “Jesus fuck, Evan. Eric. Whoever you f**king are.”
“I didn’t abandon her,” he said quickly. “She was eighteen when it happened and we talked it over and I told her I’d do whatever she wanted. I was ready to accept all consequences. Her parents, the school, the police, whatever. But she cut me off, and I thought that was it. I resigned. I moved away. And then she came after me. Her friends knew about it, and they tried to make my life hell. Like it wasn’t already.”
I laughed, dry and hoarse and cruel. “So you changed your name and started over here, so you could do it all over again.”
“No,” he said earnestly. “Don’t you understand? That’s why I was so careful with you. Why I kept asking your age.”
“You didn’t care about my age,” I said, spitting the words. “You just cared about not coming inside me.”
He lowered his face, his eyes closing as if he was in pain.
“God,” I said. For an insane moment I wanted to tear down the Christmas tree, rip it to shreds. Destroy something beautiful, the way a child would. “I’m so f**king stupid. I thought we had an actual connection. I thought you saw me for who I really am. I’m so f**king gullible I actually convinced myself I was special.”
“You are special,” he said softly.
“No. I’m just young.” I put my hand on an ornament, metallic red, fragile and cool as ice, and squeezed and squeezed until it popped and the shards stabbed into my skin. “You know what? You are an amazing actor. I never once doubted you were this character you’re playing.”
“I know this is a lot for you to process,” he said.
I laughed again. “It really is. Did you go see her? Is that why you were in Chicago?”
“No.”
“Why were you in Chicago? Where have you been going when you’re not with me?”
His brow wrinkled.
“Wesley saw you,” I said. “In your car. Talking to yourself.”
“He was watching me?”
“God, please. You don’t get to be offended right now.”
“I was seeing my mother,” he said, not looking at my face. “Because you made me realize I didn’t want to carry this darkness around the rest of my life.” He shook his head, still not facing me. “And Wesley was watching, and reporting to you. That’s great. That’s really normal and healthy, Maise.”
I ground the shards into my palm. “I didn’t f**king know. And you should talk about normal and healthy, Eric.”
“I think we should take some time apart. To process all of this.”
“You think I should take some time, while you sit here feeling sorry for yourself for seducing another student.”
“I didn’t know you were in school.”
I walked toward him, flinging blood-edged shards onto the carpet. “Isn’t that the first f**king thing you should’ve asked? ‘Hi, I’m a teacher and I knocked up a student. Are you in high school?’”
He looked at me now, but his face was all self-pity. “You didn’t seem that young. When I talked to you, it was like talking to someone I’d known my whole life.”
“Oh my god. Is that the same line you used on her?”
“I didn’t use any f**king line on her,” he snapped. Good, I thought. Get mad. Show me you have actual emotions beyond regret that you got caught. “She came on to me, Maise. I’m not saying it wasn’t my fault, but it wasn’t equal. Not like us. She wanted someone to adore, and I let my ego get out of control. It was a mistake. You were never a mistake.”
I didn’t want to hear any more of this. I wanted to go home.
I started for the door and he didn’t lift a finger to stop me. Didn’t even speak. I stopped with my hand on the cold knob, breathing crazily hard.
“There’s something I want you to know,” I said without turning around. “This is the biggest thing that’s ever happened to me. You, and all of this. You changed my life. Who I am. How I think and feel and see the world.” I breathed out through my teeth. “But to you I’m just another student you f**ked. The one you didn’t knock up. I guess that’s why this was never going to work. We’re not equal.”
I slammed his door behind me the way I’d wanted to in class. Somehow I made it down the stairs without falling or throwing myself down them, through the door without punching the glass out, to my room and my bed without harming myself or others, and then I felt something stinging my hand and looked down at the mess of red glitter and bloody splinters in my palm, and I finally started crying.
Black days. Days when I stayed up until four, five in the morning, slept till afternoon, got up only to exhaust myself enough to sleep again, dozing in and out until dawn. I did not want to be awake. Awake meant crying like a baby, a pathetic quivering puddle of saltwater and skin. Wesleypedia once told me that the heart and brain are 73% water. Even our bones are full of it. It made sense, then, why I couldn’t stop f**king crying. My body was made from this stuff. Hydrogen, the same thing stars burned to shine, smashing atoms together until they fused in a brilliant burst of light, the same thing it felt like my heart was doing to the water inside me.
On New Year’s Eve, Hiyam sent her driver to pick me up. In her bedroom, surrounded by peach satin and white wicker and the virginal flora of girl perfume, I sold her an 8-ball for two C’s. She said I was robbing her until I watched her do a line off a hand mirror, her eyes switching on like lightbulbs, bright and empty. Hollow glass.
“Fuck me. Oh, f**k me.” She sat back, laughing. “God, O’Malley. Get me more.”
I went home and slept through the turning of the year.
On the first day of second semester, I stood outside Room 209 with Hiyam and a few other kids while the third period bell rang. The class was dark, the door locked. A note taped to it read:
Film Studies has been discontinued. Please see your guidance counselor for course reassignment.
Hiyam raised an eyebrow at me, smirking. In an alternate universe, I pushed her off the roof.
After school, I went to his apartment. His car wasn’t in the lot. His name had been scraped off the mailbox. No Christmas lights on his balcony.
He was gone.
I walked home in a daze, so out of it I didn’t even notice what was sitting on the doormat until I accidentally kicked it.
Louis, the sad little pony, looking at me dolefully with his too-human eyes.
I picked him up and sank to my knees, hugging him to my chest.
—10—
January.
Dull. Gray. Dead.
I spent lunches in the library writing college application essays. Sometimes Britt would join me. Sometimes she would ask, timorously, about Mr. Wilke. She’d heard he’d gone to another school. She’d always thought he was so nice. I stared at her as if she was talking about a stranger.