Every You, Every Me (10 page)

11J

Ariel, look at me.

Look at me.

Look at me.

11K

I sat there in the dark, staring at you. The screen was the only light on in the room, so I imagined your image projected into every corner. I was seeing it, but I was also within it. That last photo, you a blur. I was a blur, too. I was being erased because I would not stop for time.

11L

You see a photograph and you try to make yourself be there. But you can’t. Even if you were there. You can’t.

And if you weren’t there, you retreat into desperate invention. You weave your own fiction and try to convince yourself it’s fact.

It doesn’t work.

A photograph is a souvenir of a moment.

It is not a moment.

It is the looking at the photograph that becomes the moment. Your own moment.

I was losing myself in there.

Because.

Because.

Because you were
everlasting in sunshine curious all right
the kind of beautiful that I remembered.

“Let’s go into the woods and take some pictures,” you said. “I found this old camera.”

“Let go!” you screamed. “Let go of me!”

“You have to let go,” the counselor told me. “Let go of what you’re holding inside.”

I can touch the picture but it’s not your face.

I can touch the screen but it’s not your face.

Let go.

11M

I pulled back and remembered what I was doing.
Investing
Investigating.

I looked at the dates Alex/Sparrow had posted the photo—11/13.

And there she was.

The photographer. Untagged. Nameless.

And I had no idea

none

who she was.

All this time, I thought if I could glimpse her, I would know.

I checked all of Alex/Sparrow’s profile. I checked all of his friends for someone who looked like her. I went back and checked all of Ariel’s pictures, all of Ariel’s friends.

No recognition.

No similarities.

She knew me, but I didn’t know her.

So then I did something
stupid
. I didn’t think about it. I just did it.

I sent Alex/Sparrow a message.

11N

How do you know Ariel?

11O

It was morning already. At least where I was.

In California, I imagined Alex/Sparrow was still sleeping, postponing all my answers with his dreams.

12

I was waiting for Jack with printouts the next morning.

He looked annoyed to see me there in the smoking section, outside school. He checked for permission and lit his cigarette before saying anything.

“What is it now?” he finally asked.

I wondered what would have happened if we’d met up like this before you went over the edge. Would we have been able to stop you if we’d talked about it?

“I think I know who the photographer is,” I told him.

I showed him the photos.

“Who is she?” he said.

“I don’t know.”

He looked at me hard. “I thought you just said you knew.”

“Well, I know what she looks like. She’s right there. Do you recognize her?”

“She looks familiar.” He studied the photo some more. “But I couldn’t tell you where from. Maybe she goes here. But maybe she just reminds me of someone.”

I thought of Venn diagrams, those two overlapping circles. And how the translation of “You remind me of someone” is that piece in between, that common space that’s the only piece we’re seeing.

“I didn’t sleep last night,” I told him. “I was up all night looking at her profile. Looking for Sparrow and this girl.”

“I don’t know who she is,” Jack said, handing the photo back to me. “Sorry.”

I found myself saying, “I wish she had a sister.”

“What?”

I didn’t know why I’d thought Jack would understand. Too often I thought he’d have the same impulses as me, just because we’d both loved you.

“If Ariel had a sister,” I explained, “we could ask her. Show her the photos. Because we can’t do that with her parents. They hate us.”

“I don’t think they—”

“They do, Jack. They hate us.”

We went to your house the week after. To hear the news firsthand, instead of through gossip and rumors. They let us into the house, but it was clear that they didn’t want us to stay there. They told us what the doctors said. It was what we’d already feared.

Jack ground out his cigarette and put his hand on my shoulder.

“Ev, I don’t know what to tell you. We don’t even know if it’s the same girl who’s leaving the pictures for us. Don’t you think if these people were really important to Ariel, she would’ve told us about them?”

I was calmer now that he was using words like
we
and
us.

I’d felt that way with you, too. Whenever you talked about
we
and
us,
I felt things made sense, that we were going through everything together, that if I could take it, then I could carry you through. It was only when you splintered off into your own lost
I
that things became complicated, overwhelming.

“I don’t know where I am, Evan.”

“I’m seeing red everywhere. It’s just … everywhere.”

“I am underwater right now. You don’t understand. I’m underwater.”

“I need a gun.”

“Evan? I need—”

“Evan?”

Jack was waving his hand in front of me.

“Evan.”

“What?”

“Don’t do that!” He was angry. “Jesus, not you, too, okay? Not you, too.”

We just stood there for a moment, neither of us knowing what to say next.
Just like old times.
And then a girl asked, “Is this a bad time?”

“Hey, Miranda,” Jack said, his tone lightening.

I didn’t know whether to say hi or not. Miranda Lee wasn’t someone I usually said hi to. She’d never been mean to me or nice to me or anything. She’d never been anything to me. She was one year younger than us and played sports, which was probably how Jack knew her.

“Hi,” she said to both of us. “What’s going on?”

I still had the photos out. I quickly put them back in my bag.

“Evan was just showing me some of his pictures,” Jack explained smoothly
keeping you a secret
. “He’s working on a project. It’s pretty cool.”

“Cool,” Miranda echoed.

“Yeah, thanks,” I said. “Anyway, thanks for taking a look, Jack. I guess I’ll be going. I mean, I was already going, so it’s not you that’s making me go, Miranda. I don’t want you to think that.”

“Oh, good,” Miranda said. She didn’t sound sarcastic.
If I’d said something like that to you, you would have been merciless. You had no use for sputtering.

I spent the next fifteen minutes before school walking the halls, looking for the photographer. I saw girls with similar hair or similar clothes or similar features, but never at the same time. Either she wasn’t here, or she was hiding, or I wasn’t looking right.

I had no way to know.

12A

When I walked through the halls, I thought of you. I wondered what you thought of this school now. This building. Was it a shelter against everything else? Could you be happy here? Or was it just another form of prison, just another place where you felt the weight of all the stones, all the people, all the thoughts?

I wish I’d known what was wrong with you.

I still wish I knew what was wrong with you.

12B

I felt weird asking my friends at lunch about another photo, when I’d just cross-examined them about Sparrow the day before. So I decided to wait.

Fiona, though, brought the whole thing up.

“Did you find Mr. Mohawk?” she asked.

“I think he’s in California,” I mumbled.

“You sent the detectives all the way to California?” Charlie joked.

“No, I found him online.”

That should have been the end of the conversation. And it was—for everyone except Fiona.

“Who is he?” she asked.

“It doesn’t matter,” I said. Then I stood up from the table. “I have to run to the library. I almost forgot.”

Fiona looked at my tray. “You haven’t eaten anything.”

I shrugged. “I’m not really hungry.”

12C

Really: I was hungry. And I was remembering one of the things you had said. Not the last day in the woods, but maybe three days before. Everyone was supposed to hang out together, but you didn’t want to go.

“Why?” I’d asked.

“I don’t trust any of them,” you’d said. “I don’t trust Fiona. I don’t want to see them. They think they know the truth, but they don’t. I know the truth. They don’t.”

The truth.
Really
the Truth.

I should have been concerned. But then you’d said, “You’re the one I trust. You.” And that’s what I felt. That’s what I remembered.

12D

The day it happened, the week after it happened—those were not times I wanted to go back to. How I felt like I was trapped in a chamber of my own noise. Sitting in class and not being there at all. Sitting in a chair and fragmenting at the same time. Clutching to the random facts. Thinking the concept of a fact was itself a fiction. Because we live in a blur. All of us live in a blur.

I was starting to feel it again. Only this time no one was really watching.

12E

“What is the answer, Evan?” Ms. Granger asked.

Giraffe,
I wanted to answer. It was on the tip of my tongue.
Giraffe.

This was in math class.

12F

“Where is your homework?” Mr. McNulty asked.

It’s with Ariel.

“There is no such thing as homework,” I said.

“What?”

“I mean, I left it at home.”

12G

If the photographer existed, I had to be able to find her.

But I couldn’t find you, could I?

12H

You existed. You existed now as a fractal.

Definition:

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.

Maybe I was a fractal. Maybe the photographer was a fractal.

Maybe we were all fractals.

12I

Matt was talking to me. For a moment I didn’t recognize him.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“I don’t know what okay is,” I said.

“What?”

“I mean … I don’t know what
okay
means. No, not what it means. Where it comes from. Where does
okay
come from?”

We looked it up.

The answer: Nobody knows. They think it is a misspelled variation of
all correct
—either
oll korrect
or
ole kurreck
—but they’re not really sure.

Meaning divorced from origin. And it’s okay.

“Weird,” Matt said.

“Yeah,” I agreed.

He never noticed that I hadn’t answered his first question.

12J

I wondered if this was how you’d felt.

I wondered if I was making myself feel how you’d felt.

I knew it wasn’t a choice. It was just what my mind was doing.

Although I could’ve been fighting it more.

12K

What if Jack is right? What if all these things that appear connected aren’t really connected? What if none of us are connected?

Then I opened my locker after school and found another photo waiting for me.

13

13A

On the back, someone—presumably the photographer—had written
4:00.

Was that when the photo had been taken?

Or was that when I was supposed to be there?

I saw the skulls on her vest.

A coincidence?

A sign?

I had to find Jack, then find out.

13B

It was like the day hadn’t happened. Or that it had only happened to me. He was out on the patio, talking to Miranda. She was laughing. He was smiling. They looked like they were
happy vulnerable flirting
together. It stopped me. In my mind, they were kissing, they had their hands all over each other. But then I blinked, and they were just standing there, talking. It was nothing.
I didn’t want you to know about this.
I watched for another minute. They didn’t do anything wrong. I knew I’d be interrupting, but that didn’t seem wrong, either. Jack would want to know.

“Hey, Jack,” I said, stepping close enough for him to hear, but not in their space yet. “Hey, Miranda.”

“Hey,” Miranda said.

“What’s up, Ev?” Jack asked.

“Can I talk to you for a second?” I said, leaving the
alone
implied.

Miranda heard it.