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 hav**g s*x 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.