Everyone We've Been (28 page)

The real Zach was right in front of me yesterday and I let him slip by.

“You'll do it today,” the other Zach—Memory Zach—says from the passenger seat beside me. “He's not going anywhere.”

“I know,” I say, but I'm feeling the anxiety bubbling up inside me. Both at the prospect of meeting real Zach and at where I'm headed to beforehand.

I left school today thirty minutes earlier than I did yesterday, skipping last period entirely, and this time I'm driving north instead of south, toward Lyndale Heights Cemetery.

When I pull into the parking lot of the cemetery, my stomach does a few somersaults. I've never been here in my life, only driven past it, either completely unaware of it or with a fleeting thought, sometimes a prayer, that I'd never have to walk through it.

It hits me even as I think this that remembering has nothing to do with it. I might have been here before, for the burial.

When I shut off the car, I turn and face Memory Zach. Look into his eyes, which are kind and concerned.

Come with me,
I want to say, but no, I need to talk to my brother on my own.

Make a joke about concerts for the dead.
I want to think about music, the happiest song I know, and I want the little brother I never knew to be hearing it right now, to be somewhere or something that is not dead.

“I'll be right back,” I tell Memory Zach.

He reaches for my hand and squeezes.

“Okay,” he says, instead of what he must want to say:
Don't forget about me.

It is a given, by now, that I won't, so I don't bother to say it. Just take a deep breath, gently untangle my hand from his, and climb out of my car.

Some part of me might already know where Rory's grave is, but if that's the case, my mind is certainly not in any hurry to share that information as I glance left and right, trying to figure out which direction to go.

I spot a sign with a map of the cemetery and find the section containing the newer graves. It's several yards north of where I am. I follow a concrete path to it, then walk between the graves, searching for a stone with his last name. My last name.

And then I find it.

I'm expecting his grave to be empty, devoid of flowers, like many of the headstones around it, but a bouquet of fresh hydrangeas sits in front of it. The flowers seem to shiver in the cold.

I kneel on the ground in front of them.

My fingers trace out the words on the granite stone.

The
R.

I see it on flesh instead of on rock.

RORY DAMIEN SULLIVAN. OCTOBER 18, 2009–JUNE 9, 2010.
Instead of a poem or quote, it simply says
WE WISH WE'D HAD YOU LONGER.

My hands are trembling as I continue tracing out the letters, and my eyes cloud with tears.

“Hi, Rory.”

I have no idea what to say or if I'm doing this right. How do you miss—someone you don't remember?

Didn't I love him?
How is it possible not to miss someone you once loved? Or is it possible that I
have
missed him, just without knowing? Is it possible to miss someone in a quiet, unspoken way, the most hushed of whispers instead of a shout? Is the world shaped a little differently for me because I once had someone I loved, someone I lost?

Some of my anger toward my parents returns, but it's overridden by a sadness I can't shake and guilt that something in me didn't just
know
without having to be told.

“I'm sorry,” I say, choking a little on my tears. “Sorry for not watching you more closely that day. You should still be here. With us.”

I sit back on the ground now and dig my fingers into the snow. “You know, I obviously don't have the details, but I'm pretty sure I liked being a big sister. Being
your
big sister. I bet I liked carrying you around and playing games with you and watching you toddle around. I bet I played my viola for you constantly. I was kind of obnoxious about it back then.” I laugh a bit as I speak. “So, sorry if you didn't like that.”

It hits me then that he used to be a
person,
not a concept, not something that happened to us. He liked and disliked things; he took up space and had a particular voice and smell. He was going to grow up and do stuff someday that people would have remembered him for. It feels unfair that he will never get the opportunity, that he's been hidden here, buried without having had a chance to expand his world. To make friends and go to school and find people who wouldn't forget him.

It is the saddest thing in the world that you can take away a person if you take away the people who knew them. And we basically did that to my brother. By not talking about him, my parents and Caleb erased him twice; it's like he never existed.

Suddenly I am crying again, full-on sobbing in a way that forces me to gasp for breath. I just keep thinking,
I'm sorry. I love you. I don't know how I know, but I do.

All those moments when I've wished for a more complete version of my family, less broken, I've been missing the brother I lost. My parents' separation, me and Caleb's relationship. His absence has been all around me every single day.

“I think I've missed you my whole life,” I tell him now. “I always will.”
Consciously, from now on.
And although it feels stupid and like not nearly enough, there is a little relief, a little comfort, in knowing that. Missing a person every day for as long as you live is not something everyone has the right to. But he is my brother, and I am entitled to miss him, and I finally understand that I have, in a way, all along.

“I would have come sooner,” I say now. “And more often, if I'd figured it out. I
will
come more often.”

I take a deep breath and touch the granite stone again.

“I wish I knew, Rory.”
How to change what happened. What to say. You. If you were as much like Caleb as you look in that picture.

I wish I'd known all along that I missed you.

Memory Zach is gone when I return to my car, but I decide to wait until I've seen the real Zach before I bring him back.

After I leave the cemetery, I get onto Park Avenue, retracing my steps from yesterday exactly, and wind up outside Meridian High again ten minutes before school lets out. But this time I stay in the car and wait for students to start trickling out to the parking lot.

I keep my eye on the bright blue car that Zach and Raj drove off in yesterday.

This time, they burst out of the building together, talking and laughing as they walk toward the parking lot.

I slouch in my seat while they climb in the car and it wails to a start. Zach pulls out, drives to the exit of the parking lot, rolls to a stop at the yield sign. I watch him roll down his window, and his upper body pops out of it as he yells something to a boy on a skateboard. The boy turns around and gives Zach the finger, laughing.

I see Zach laugh, too, as his window goes back up. I can't tell whether his smile is the same as my Zach's smile, the Zach I've been remembering or conjuring up or whatever the name for it is.

Then they get out onto the road, and before I think about it, I'm pulling my seat belt across my body, starting my car, too.

At a stop sign about a block away, Zach signals left. I let a car between us and then follow them.

I know what I'm doing is crazy—illegal, even—but I can't bring myself to stop.

I desperately want to know this Zach.

I want to know what he knows about me.

Following them starts off fairly easy, straightforward. And then, just like that, I've lost them.

I'm on a one-way street, silently kicking myself for trying to play detective and letting a car between us, when a flicker of bright blue catches my eye.

I heave a sigh of relief and keep my eyes fixed on the car.

Zach is not a good driver, if this exhibit is anything to go by.

He speeds up unexpectedly, turns wildly, suddenly slows down. At one point, it almost seems like we're driving around in circles, but eventually he and Raj end up in front of a string of restaurants downtown. They turn into what seems to be an alley. I'm almost a hundred percent sure that there's no exit from it, so I pull up to the curb. I'm trying to decide what to do next when someone raps three times on my window. I jump so high I nearly slam my head on the roof of the car.

It is Raj. He is speaking, but I can't make out what he's saying.

He signals for me to roll my window down, and although I'd rather say “no thanks” and speed the heck away from here, I do.

“Hey,” he says sternly. “Can I ask why you're parked here? You're not allowed to be here.”

He gives no indication of remembering me from the theater or from when I used to date his best friend, but I notice he's craning to see into my car, that his eyes are narrowed at me in suspicion.

I stare blankly at him and then scan the street, desperate for an excuse. “Oh,” I say.
Why are you acting like you don't know me?
That's what I want to say. Instead, I say, “Food. I, uh, this restaurant.” I point at the nearest restaurant. It has a
BRAND-NEW! TRY US!
sign in the window. “Is new. I wanted to see.”

Raj looks in the direction I just pointed. “That's my mom's new restaurant. You're going there?”

“Yeah,” I lie.
No, you idiot.
I should say no, but I nod stupidly. “Yeah, so where”
—is Zach?—
“do I park? Legally?”

Raj frowns, hesitating. “Over there,” he says finally, pointing across the street at an empty parking spot. I maneuver my car into the space, take a deep breath, and climb out.

Raj has already gone through the doors of Real New Delhi, and I follow behind him, eager to find out where Zach disappeared to. Or, worst case scenario, leave with a belly full of Indian food.

The smell of curry envelops me as soon as I walk in, and my stomach rumbles, reminding me how little I've eaten the past few days. I can feel saliva building up in my mouth, and I'm beginning to think this is the best decision I've made all day. That is, until I see Zach in the doorway of the kitchen. He's concentrating on tying an apron around his hips, over his jeans, and there's a yellow pencil in his mouth. When I walk in, he glances up and meets my eye. We hold each other's gaze for a long moment, and then he turns, expressionless, and heads into the kitchen.

“Ma, we have a customer!” Raj yells, materializing behind the counter.

“Sit them!” a woman, presumably Raj's mother, yells back.

Raj sighs heavily and walks toward me reluctantly.
You're not allowed to be here.
For some reason, I'm not wanted here, and it makes my throat tight. “Please sit. Can I get you a drink to start with?”

“Um, some lemonade?”

Why aren't they acknowledging me and why do they seem to hate me?

“Okay.” Raj nods and disappears into the kitchen. I'm scrambling to leave when Raj's mother, a short, skinny woman with a warm smile, appears. She convinces me to try today's special. She asks whether it's still cold out and if anyone else is joining me, and then Raj places a glass of lemonade in front of me. His mom returns to the kitchen, but Raj leans against a wall, arms crossed, pretending not to watch me.

It's difficult to swallow with the feeling of hostility all around me, and even though my meal is incredible, all I want is to get out of here.

Then Zach appears again. His hair is so much shorter in real life that it makes it look darker. My breath is trapped in my chest.

Zach whispers something to Raj as they pass each other, then opens up the cash register. He mutters to himself as he counts, glancing up at times to write something down, but he won't look at me.

Raj's mom calls for him then, and he goes into the kitchen.

I can't get down the last third of my food. All I want is to leave.

I've accepted the fact that I don't know Zach—not really—but I wasn't the least prepared for him to hate me.

Did I
do
something to him?

Maybe I don't want to know how this ends.

Suppressing the fountain of emotion bubbling inside me, I push some words out at Zach. “Can I get my check?”

Screw finishing this meal.

He nods when our glances meet, and I can't read anything in the eyes that have haunted me for days. It's all I can do to keep it together.

He brings the check to my table—gives me a toothless smile, that pressing together of the lips reserved for strangers—and goes back behind the counter.

I put a few bills, plus a tip, under my cup and am trying to hightail it out of there. I'm almost at the door when I suddenly hear him speak.

“Hey, Addison,” Zach says, looking right at me. “Are you following me?”