“Then what do you mean? Letting go. Do you really think it’s there because we’re holding on to it? Do you really think it’s that easy? I’m not holding on to it, Jack. It’s holding on to me. And it’s holding on to you, whether you ignore it or not.”
Jack’s right hand curled into a fist. Not to hit me—just to be a fist.
“Look, Evan—I wasn’t good at this with her, and I’m not good at it with you. I can’t fight you over it. I can’t. Call me whatever you want—heartless was a favorite of hers. And you know what, I’ll have to take it. But I’d rather be called heartless than keep living in this mess she created. I thought it was going away, and now this evil girl is doing whatever she’s doing with the photos and trying to pull it all back. But I can’t play that game. It’s a game, Evan. And sometimes you have to walk away. Don’t play it.”
“You’re not heartless,” I said. “She never called you heartless.”
The fist unclenched, then went back to being a fist.
“Of course she did, Evan! I was there. There are times you have no idea about. You weren’t always there. Just like I wasn’t there when she was alone with you. She would disappear in front of me. And then she’d reappear and she’d say the most awful things—about me, about herself. Mostly about herself. Of course, now I know what it was, but I didn’t know then. I was too caught by it. It hurt to hear those things, Evan. She would tear it all apart to find her ‘truth.’ If I tried to hold her, she’d tell me to get off. And if I just sat there, she’d say, ‘Why aren’t you holding me?’ Long hours of this. And I’d be afraid to go, and I’d be afraid to stay. ‘Just moods,’ she’d finally say. ‘I’m sorry—I was in a mood.’ Well, yeah. That’s what we both thought. That’s what all of us thought, right? Because we didn’t want to believe anything else.”
“But, Jack—”
“No—let me finish. It’s time we had this conversation. Because I don’t think you’ve been angry at her yet—and you need to be angry at her. You think it’s about what you didn’t do and what I didn’t do and maybe what her parents didn’t do and what her other friends, whoever they were, didn’t do. You might even think it’s about what she didn’t do. But mostly it’s about what she did. Whether or not it was under her control, she did it. And if you’ve done any reading about it, you’ll know that there isn’t anything we could have done to stop it. It was inevitable. We were just lucky—or unlucky—enough to be there when all the pieces fell apart from each other.”
A fractal is generally a rough or fragmented geometric shape that can be broken into parts, each of which is (at least approximately) a reduced-size copy of the whole.
“Evan, listen to me. I don’t want you to fall apart, too. You understand? If this photographer shows up, I will gladly put her in her place. But you can’t let it happen. And if you follow her, you’re letting it happen. You are.”
His voice was trying to be calm, but I could hear the fractures, I could feel him gluing the calmness together. I wanted to say I need you, but I figured you’d said that, too. I wanted to say This has to be done, but I knew it didn’t have to be. Not to him. Because he was separating himself. And I couldn’t.
“I’ll go without you,” I told him, gambling that he wouldn’t let me go alone.
He tilted his head, disappointed. Then he slapped his hands on his thighs before standing up.
“You’ll do what you’re going to do,” he said. “I’m not going to stop you. I just want you to realize that I tried. And that you can stop playing the game at any time. I can help you with that. But I can’t help you play it. Not anymore.”
“Is this because of Miranda?” I asked, not getting up.
“No,” he said. “I had to let go of some of it before I could even talk to Miranda. I don’t want you to think I got through this undamaged, okay? But I’m learning to live with it. Because otherwise, the damage is all you are.”
Now I stood up.
“I’m going,” I said.
“Fine,” Jack said. “Just do me a favor. Whatever you find—don’t let me know. Don’t. I’m done.”
I was still thinking he might come with me. Even after he left.
14
Heartless. Heartless. Heartless.
You’d never called me that. Never.
But.
I was there for you. I was the one you trusted.
But.
I knew you.
“You can’t know me.”
I did.
“You know one me. Just like I know one you. But you can’t know every me, Evan. And I can’t know every you.”
I didn’t want this to be coming back. I didn’t want to be having these conversations in my head.
“It’s not a conversation. You’re the only one here.”
I wanted to find the spot on the train tracks. I was walking along the train tracks. Looking for that spot.
“Fill your head with the right pictures of me. Fill your head with the ones you’d hang on a wall.”
Every now and then, a train would go by. But not too often. It wasn’t rush hour yet.
“I’m still here. I’m just unreachable.”
“Stop!” I yelled. “Just stop it!”
I knew Jack was right, but I also knew it didn’t matter.
I had to see it through to the end. Because the end could be better. It couldn’t be worse than this.
14A
3:30.
Walking.
3:45.
Blanking.
3:50.
Looking.
3:55.
There.
I didn’t even have to see the change from dirt to gravel or the green post.
Because there they were.
Photographs. Taped lightly to the rails.
3:57.
I was within a hundred feet. And then I saw it.
The train.
Coming.
I ran.
Because the train would destroy the photographs.
I ran.
The noise of the train.
The first photo.
I shouldn’t have taken the time to look. But I looked.
Every You, Every Me
And then, written on the rail underneath:
I SAW
The second photo was four rails down.
I could feel the ground shaking.
The train coming.
I jumped over.
Every You, Every Me
Underneath:
WHAT YOU DID
The train almost here.
The train.
The whistle.
The warning.
A screech.
The third photo.
The third.
In my fingers.
I could feel the train pushing the air.
Hear the howl.
I didn’t look. I just read underneath—
TO HER
—and jumped to the side.
Hit hard.
The train screeching by.
I rolled on the gravel. Pieces of stone in my skin.
Crushing the photos as I rolled.
Imagining the people watching from the train.
The photographer watching.
I lost my breath.
Deep breaths.
I lifted myself up.
Blinking. Breathing.
I wouldn’t have died. I wouldn’t have.
Remembering the third photograph.
Looking at it there, on the side of the tracks, as the train pushed past.
Every You, Every Me
Thinking: WHO ARE YOU? WHO ARE YOU?
Aren’t there any other clues?
Hating life. You would say that all the time. I hate life. And I thought it was just something you said.
But I felt it. Down to my bones.
Linked to frustration.
I SAW
Linked to unfairness.
WHAT YOU
Linked to guilt.
DID
Linked to anger.
TO
Linked to helplessness.
HER.
Hate.
Hate.
Hate.
I dwelt within it as I walked home. I dwelt within it the whole night. The next morning.
Let it go, I imagined Jack saying. Just let it go.
And then I slipped the photos into his locker.
I wanted him to find them, too.
15
Do you remember the time the three of us got into a fight over Zeno’s dichotomy paradox?
Jack hadn’t known what it was, so you explained.
“It’s about infinities and motion,” you said. “I’m sure you’ve heard this. It’s about how if you try to get to somewhere by halves, or any fraction, really, you will never actually get there, because ultimately there will be an infinitely small distance between you and your destination.”
“The most common example is a wall,” I chimed in. “That if I go halfway to the wall, then halfway of the halfway, then halfway of that, on and on, always halfway, I will never actually touch the wall.”
“Isn’t that sad?” you said. “I mean, isn’t that really disturbing?”
“But why?” Jack said. “I don’t get it.”
“Because you’ll never actually get there. You will spend your whole life making progress, but you’ll never actually get there.”
“Infinity is against us,” I told him. “There’s no way for us ever to count it or control it or understand it.”
“Are you stoned?” Jack asked.
You didn’t appreciate that.
“No,” you said. “We’re thinking. We’re taking what we learn and we’re applying it.”
“But that makes no sense,” Jack said.
“It makes perfect sense,” you argued. “What about it doesn’t make sense?”
“Well, duh, isn’t the answer to never walk in half steps? I mean, putting aside the fact that it’s physically impossible to walk forward, say, a thousandth of an inch, in order to be trapped in this paradox, you’d have to agree to its terms. And we don’t have to do that. If you want to walk to the wall, you walk to the wall.”
“But those are human terms,” you said dismissively.
“Yeah, but aren’t we human? Last time I checked, we were human.”
You leaned into him then. Leaned in halfway. Then another halfway. Then another halfway. And kept slowly doing this until your lips were hovering over his, only a sliver of air away. You held there—until he pushed in and kissed you. You pulled away immediately, angry.
“Go to hell, Jack,” you said. “Maybe there’s more to the Truth truth than being human.”
“Yeah,” I said. “You might be human, Jack, but Ariel’s mathematics. She’s all mathematics.”
There are so many things I wish I hadn’t said.
15A
I thought he’d track me down. I thought he’d tell me right away about the photos he found in his locker. But instead it was Katie who tracked me down in study hall.
Katie could get away with things like walking into the library for study hall in a period when she didn’t actually have study hall. She was pretty, and she was a good girl, and thus the librarian didn’t need to see a pass from her. If she was here, there had to be a reason for her to be here. There was no way that Katie would disrupt the universe by being somewhere she wasn’t supposed to be.
We were friends, mostly because we’d grown up together. I liked her, and had good memories with her, but I wouldn’t have said she meant all that much to me. At least not until that moment.