Everyone We've Been (12 page)

I feel guilty for listening, and Raj is probably about to come up the stairs to get made up, too, so I start to take the steps two at a time till I reach the kitchen and the side door leading outside.

But not before I hear Zach say, “That violin is one lucky son of a bitch.”

Me.
They're talking about me.

It barely registers that Zach calls it a violin instead of a viola.

Raj is laughing so hard now that the sound follows me out the door to where Kevin has set up camp.

I'd give almost anything to know what else they're saying, what Zach thinks about me.

It's unbearably hot out, but I hardly notice because I'm already burning all over.

The first two days of filming proceed without incident, unless you count running out of ketchup in the middle of a scene involving an ax lodged in someone's stomach.

It's the afternoon of our third day of filming. Raj is at the store, stocking up on ramen noodles and plastic machetes for tomorrow. “I'd have a better chance of finding this stuff if we were, say, in October,” I can hear him yelling through Zach's phone when he calls.

Kevin is already at work, and I'm in the backyard, hosing down all of today's stuff before Zach's parents get home.

“Hey!” Zach says, coming outside. We haven't really been alone since our maybe-date last Thursday, but little eruptions keep happening in my chest whenever he so much as glances at me. I've been trying very hard not to let them show.

“Done inside?”

He nods, pulls a cigarette out of his pocket, and lights it.

See, not everything about him is perfect,
I tell myself, looking away.
His lungs are probably covered in tar.

I start to hose off my legs, since having ketchup trickling down them on the way home is something I can live without.

“I think I'm done with hot dogs. Forever,” I say, and Zach laughs, breathing out a cloud of smoke.

“Sorry,” he says. “I guarantee a couple of weeks after we're done, you'll start to miss all the ketchup.”

“Maybe,” I say skeptically. I've been wearing my oldest, rattiest clothes the past couple of days. Today I'm wearing a pair of denim cutoffs and an old tank top, with my bikini top underneath. My tank top got soaked through, thanks to my being misinformed about the proper workings of the hose by Kevin just before he left for work. I can't swallow my shock when I see Zach's eyes widen the slightest bit when he notices, and blood rushes to every bit of my skin.

“You know,” I say when the silence grows too loud, “I feel like, of the four of us, you have the best end of this deal.”

Zach smiles from where he's sitting on the last step of the deck, squinting from the sun. He stabs his cigarette butt into the concrete. “How do you figure?”

“We're all, like,
innards
at this point. All our characters. You”—I step toward him, wielding my hose like a weapon—“are practically unscathed so far.” I let the hose spray the grass where his foot is.

Zach laughs, moving his feet up and holding his hands out. “Okay, stay calm. Disgruntled actors should be able to calmly address their grievances with
their director.
”

“I'm actually really, really calm,” I say, flicking the hose up a few inches. “Are you?”

“Oh shit!” he exclaims as I let the hose spray his shirt. He's up and laughing immediately. I let the hose spray his face now, taking a few steps back as he runs straight for me.

I laugh maniacally, aiming the water right at his eyes so he's too disoriented to come after me.

“Where is my ketchup when I need it?” he sputters between gulps of water.

It's my overconfidence that does me in, or the fact that Zach is really fast and not as deterred by getting wet as I hoped. Soon he's gotten a portion of the hose and we're fighting for it. Then I'm completely wet,
soaked,
and now I'm the one squealing and looking for ketchup.

After begging for mercy—and Zach double-checking my surrender a few too many times—we wind up on the lowest step of the deck, breathing hard, Zach's T-shirt sticking to his chest just as tightly as my tank top clings to me. We're both still laughing, our knees touching, and then slowly, we grow quiet, listening to the cars passing behind the fence of his house, birds chirping somewhere far away.

My heart is racing even though I've caught my breath, and although it's the oldest trick in the book, I put my hand on the wood between us so he knows it's okay to touch it, to take it.

He doesn't.

“I finished recording the CD last night,” I say, when neither of us has spoken for minutes. “I can bring it tomorrow.”

“Huh?” Zach looks like he's missed an entire conversation, and it makes me feel better that he's flustered, that maybe he's
thinking
about taking my hand.

“The sound track?” I say, and turn my hand over in the space between us. Just a reminder that it's there.

A couple days ago, Zach and Raj picked out some classic horror music that they wanted me to play and record so we could use it for the movie. Not full songs, but a couple of bars from
Jaws
and something called
Night of the Electric Insects,
lots of minor chords and unresolved phrases.

“Oh, yeah.” Zach nods. “Great. Thanks.”

“Addie,” he says all of a sudden, and I look up at him. “I've been thinking…and, I mean, maybe it was fine, maybe you didn't think anything of hanging out last week. You were missing your friend and I…” His voice drones out for a second, then resumes. “Maybe I should apologize for it.”

“What?” I ask, confused.

Apologize?

No, no, no.

“Lindsay and I only broke up three months ago.”

His gray eyes stare into me. I should be wondering why he's bringing this up, but I am busy being amazed that he said
only
three months. Katy has started and ended three “relationships” since she's been on her road trip. Texting me details of one guy, sometimes forgetting to mention that it is a different one now before she launches into the details of another life-shattering but short-lived connection.

“I just think it would be more fair to both of us if we were just friends.”

“Oh.”
Oh.

My heart is tumbling down through my body. I can't look at him. I pull a blade of grass from the lawn. Then another.

Zach focuses on a different spot in the grass ahead as he speaks. “I'm not an idiot. And I'm not blind. You're beautiful, and I like hanging out with you. I mean, I do
like
you,” he says, continuing to rip out every shred of hope I have, the way I'm doing to the grass in his lawn. I glance quickly at him and see that he is blushing. He has, after all, just admitted to liking me. He just called me
beautiful.
But. “But,” he says, “I think I'd be a better friend than boyfriend right now.”

I yank one more blade of grass out of the lawn and set it in my lap.

“Why did you break up?” I ask. “You and Lindsay?”

“We were together since we were Kevin's age and I guess…that our love was stifling. She said that it was
literally
draining the life out of her,” he says. “Which I wasn't aware was something that could happen. I mean, with real love.” He says this wryly, but I can tell that he is mostly serious. Our eyes meet and then flicker away from each other again, and because I'm in the process of being devastated, I don't tell him I agree with him. That I think love wakes people up. Even the idea of it. Even the whisper of the idea of it.

My body is thrumming, a timpani beat of want and disappointment and embarrassment.

“So I guess it's for the best that she ended it,” Zach says. “But it still feels so recent.”

He waits for me to speak and I don't. Silence is my only recourse.

“I'm trying to be honest, Addie,” he says softly, and I nod, feeling like a world-class idiot. Feeling like a jerk for wanting to say,
Three months is a
lifetime
ago!
To ask what is so great about Lindsay anyway. Lindsay, whose refusal to lend her trampoline had, just this afternoon, led to Raj sighing heavily with him and Kevin having to hoist me (in nun costume) up at every third count from Zach. When that had failed, they bring in a spring mattress from the guest bedroom for me to jump up from to make it look like I was flying through the air.

But instead, I say, “Thanks for telling me, Zach,” the way my mother has taught me to, and then plot word for word the text I will send Zach later tonight, informing him that I rode into a postal truck on my way home from his place and have broken too many bones to continue filming. Or, alternately, that I've developed a sudden and ferocious allergy to anything red—ketchup, his
hair
—and, as such, can no longer be part of anything with which he is associated.

I call first thing in the morning and make an appointment with Overton for after school. The receptionist is a woman with a crisp European accent, and when she asks what I'd like to see the doctor for, all I can think of to say is a checkup. I'm expecting her to ask more, but she just takes my name and tells me to get there fifteen minutes early for my appointment at four. If I have to pay for anything, I'll have to dig into my savings.

I'm hurtling out the front door, swallowing the last bite of my bagel, when I see him. Bus Boy. I'm not exactly surprised, because I've been thinking about him. Wondering where he is when he's not with me. I mean, he has to
go
somewhere, doesn't he?

He's pacing along the sidewalk, a cigarette in his hand, when I step outside. He freezes and smiles when he sees me. The hundred-watt smile from the bus. A smile of the tummy-turning, heart-teasing variety.

Get a grip, Addie,
I scold myself when I realize that I'm grinning back.

This is exactly why I need medical help.

Loose flakes are falling from the sky. It's the kind of snow that won't stick and looks like salt being sprinkled from a shaker.

Bus Boy takes one more drag of his cigarette, then puts it out and lets it fall on the ground.

“Hey,” he says.

“Hey,” I say. “Want a ride?”

“Don't know how I'd get anywhere otherwise,” he jokes. But it's too soon, and an awkward silence follows as we slide into my car.

I start the car and back out of the driveway, letting my wipers swat away any snow on my windshield.

“So, uh, how was your night?”

“Fine,” I lie. I didn't take a sleeping pill, and the tossing and turning I did last night had less to do with post-accident insomnia and more to do with the Overton appointment. Worrying about whether I could actually get one and if I'd be on hospital lockdown by the end of it.

I shoot a look over at Bus Boy and consider throwing him out of my car. I shouldn't like the manifestation of my insanity so much.

The lingering smell of cigarette smoke makes my throat feel parched.

“Mind if I turn on some music?” I ask so we don't have to talk. So I can start preparing myself for when I stop seeing him, which will hopefully be after my appointment.

Bus Boy looks disappointed, like he can tell I'm trying to create distance, but he says, “Sure.”

The car fills with Bartók's Viola Concerto. A few seconds in, the boy muses, “Wow, you're really dedicated to your violin music.” I can hear the smile in his voice.

“It's a viola,” I correct him as I'm changing lanes.

“Right. Jimi Hendrix,” he says. “Sorry.”

When we pull into the parking lot at school and climb out of the car, he looks a little anxious, knowing his disappearance is imminent.

“See you later?” he asks as I'm pulling my schoolbag over my shoulder.

“Yeah, sure,” I say, already striding away from my car. “Bye.”

“Don't, uh, forget about me,” he calls, almost shyly, forcing me to turn around. Meet his eye. We hold each other's gaze for a long second, his eyes twinkling some message that neither of us can understand. The skin on my back tingles like it's being brushed with a feather, and I
really
don't know what's wrong with me. He's invisible, for God's sake.

I feel torn at his words, but I'm also running late, so I force myself to turn around and keep walking. When I steal a glance back at my car, just before entering the school building, he's gone.

All day I fight the urge to tell Katy about my Overton appointment. To ask her to go with me. But she has been acting weird for the last few days—irritable and distant, always preoccupied with something or some
one.

I told her I've stopped seeing the boy, but whether she believes me or not, she doesn't seem to want to hear more about it. I wonder if she thinks Crazy is contagious.

So after school, I check my phone for directions and climb alone into my car. Apart from a few dustings here and there, we're not supposed to get any major snow today, or my mother wouldn't have let me take my car this morning. Still, I go slowly for the entire fifteen miles out of Lyndale and am constantly passed by impatient drivers.

Finally I come upon a cluster of nondescript gray buildings, a giant
O
in front of each of them. I'm so busy trying to figure out which of these buildings I need that I don't see the massive green gate blocking me from them until I'm right in front of it.

A bearded security officer sticks his head out the window of a small booth. “Do you have an appointment?”

“Um, yes,” I say, looking from him to the buildings again.

“Name?” he asks.

“Addison Sullivan.” I swallow as he types something into his computer screen and then nods. The huge green gate slides left so I can drive through. The whole thing suddenly seems a little ominous. Maybe seeing my family doctor or the school nurse should have been my first step, even if they would go straight to my mom.

“Thank you,” I say, and drive my car into the complex. Immediately I spot a green arrow sign that points me to the clinic. I follow other signs like it until I enter the parking lot. Then I climb out of my car and walk toward the entrance, feeling anxious. Maybe I should have done more research before coming.

Different from the gray, impenetrable concrete of the surrounding buildings, the clinic is mostly glass. Inviting. I can make out a reception desk from here, and a woman is sitting behind it, holding a phone to her ear.

My fingers are tingling from the cold, with uncertainty, but the automatic glass doors slide open, beckoning me in, before I've come to a stop.

Inside, the clinic is exactly like any doctor's office I've ever been in. Chairs against the walls, a table of outdated magazines in the center. A man and a woman sit beside each other, the woman on her phone, the man flipping through a sports magazine.

Still, there's a difference in the air, an edge I can't quite put my finger on.

The receptionist behind the desk is a friendly middle-aged woman with the same vague European accent I heard over the phone. Beside her is a man in his twenties. He must be new here, because she's explaining what she's doing as she enters my name. After a few seconds, she passes me a clipboard with two forms. Standing off to the side, I fill out questions about my contact information, medical history, and health insurance. Thankfully, she doesn't mention anything about payment.

I hand the forms back to the receptionist. She tells me to take a seat and Dr. Overton will be with me in just a minute.

As I sit, I still feel nervous. A baroque piece by a composer I don't know plays through the speakers in the corners of the room. I don't understand why classical music is used for waiting-room music, elevator music, hold music. It makes me restless, makes me want to do something, and since there's nothing to do, I tap my fingers on my knees, imagining I'm playing this concerto.

I hope this appointment is actually useful. That the doctor doesn't just tell me to take my vitamins or exercise, the types of clichés you normally hear to help strengthen your mind.

A nurse dressed in scrubs, a purple streak in her dark brown hair, comes to get the couple. She smiles at me while she waits for them to stand and then leads them down a hallway.

On the table beside me, next to a pile of magazines, is a stack of booklets, all with the same oval
O
s as those on the buildings. For the first time, I notice the tagline underneath the company logo:
Because Your Past Should Never Stand in the Way of Your Future.

I flip to the second page.

Ask Your Doctor About Limbic Shaving!
it says in bold letters, the way pamphlets at my family doctor say things like
Ask Your Doctor About Cholesterol Management!
Or at the eye doctor:
Ask Your Doctor About Lubricating Eye Drops!

I turn to the back of the booklet and read the title on the last page:
A Brief History of Overton.
Two men in their sixties are pictured, smiling and wearing lab coats.

It was more than three decades ago when two highly revered neurobiologists formerly employed by the University of Maine conceived of a cure for military personnel suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. They researched, experimented, and conducted longitudinal studies. By the time the Gulf War ended in the early 1990s, it was more than an idea. The theory: that the soldiers were held captive not by PTSD itself, but by memory. The cure: memory splicing, a technique that could wipe clean the worst of their memories, while preserving the best. After years of thorough trials, the Overton technique, as miraculous as it was exact, was made available to the general public. A number of refinements to the Overton technique have since been implemented, including limbic shaving—a tweaking of the emotional components of memories, the feeling and connotations of certain memories.

A chill runs down my spine. They can change the way your memories feel?

What is this place?

I thought they'd give me memory exercises or teach me techniques, that they'd make recommendations to improve my concentration. Wasn't that what it said online? Something about improving your memory and sleep?

I glance up, and the receptionist smiles at me. Feeling weirdly like I've been caught doing something bad, I quickly look away and keep reading.

Since its development, the Overton technique has saved and improved countless lives, and it continues to do so. Since 2013, a team of highly qualified doctors led by Dr. Stephan Overton has maintained the private clinic cofounded by his father.

I skim to the bottom of the page.

Rhys Overton, MD, and John Salisbury, MD, continue to oversee the research portion of their facilities. Over twenty memory-splicing clinics have opened around the world, adhering closely to the Overton method.