Every You, Every Me (7 page)

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.

You opened the door. You lit some candles. You left the lights off.

Your door was closed, and I had this
stupid
moment when I wondered if we should knock.

“Make yourself comfortable,” you said, so I went to the bed. Kicked off my shoes. Made myself comfortable there.

Neither of us wanted to be the one to open the door. We just stood there until Jack finally grabbed the knob and turned.

It was still your room, but it was different.
Anything. Something.
Someone besides you had cleaned it. Everything was in place, which wasn’t like you at all.
Anything. Something.
It was as if the whole room had been folded neatly.
One more betrayal.

Anything.

Something.

Nothing.

Suddenly I was light-headed, like I hadn’t eaten in weeks. I sat down on the bed.
I made myself comfortable.
Feeling it under me made me want to cry.

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