Everyone We've Been (35 page)

“Open your eyes. Wake up,” my dad whispers as I stir.

When I open them, my parents are on either side of me, and my mother wraps her arms around me.

“Did they do it?” I ask, my voice muffled, pressed into her shirt. “Did I lose everything?”

“No,” she says. “They stopped just as they were targeting the first memory, but you were already sedated, so they let you sleep it off.”

Dad blinks at me. “Your mother called just after it started. She asked me to come.”

“Oh,” I say, squinting at him. Then I look away because we never have anything to say to each other. Because he's probably hurt that I didn't tell him I was doing this, because I don't want to face his disappointment right now.

But a few minutes later, when Dr. Overton gives us the okay to go home, Dad asks if he can drive me, even though I came with Mom.

Mom shrugs when I look at her. “Maybe I'll go with Caleb to pick your car up from my office.”

In the car, I stare out the window, not saying a word. It started snowing while we were in the clinic, and it's still falling in thick and heavy clumps. Sidewalks are already nearly completely white with it. It's hypnotizing watching it fall, watching it restructure the world by hiding edges and rocks and stairs and roofs.

“I'm glad you didn't go through with it.”

I make no sound, don't turn to look at my father.

“I know you've had a lot to deal with the last few days, Addie. And I'm sorry for how everything turned out.”

I had thought that I wasn't going to say anything to him, that I had as little to say to him as he had to say to me the past few years, but I suddenly break.

“How could you let me have the procedure the first time? You fought for Caleb to have a choice, but you didn't do the same for me. Why? Why did you just give up on me? Even if I agreed to it, you had to know that it wasn't really what I wanted. You didn't even
try.
”

“I fought your mother on it for a long time.”

“Obviously, it wasn't long enough. Obviously, you gave up.”

“I…I knew I wouldn't be able to live with myself if she was right—if you did sink to a place so deep you couldn't recover,” he says.
So he agreed with her that I wasn't strong enough, that I couldn't deal with losing Rory.
“I also somehow convinced myself that by walking away, by leaving, I was having no part in it. I wasn't complicit in the lie.”

Tears are stinging my eyes now. “But you were! You lied to me for years and years.”
I am a big sister. “Was” or “am”? What is the word for things you were and no longer are but always will be?

“I know,” Dad says, and he seems on the verge of tears himself. “I realize that now. And not just for Rory, Addie, but for letting you believe you weren't strong enough. By doing what we did…by me letting it happen, your mother and I were the first ones to tell you that. And eventually you told yourself that, too; you believed it. But it wasn't—
isn't
—true.”

He sighs now. “I've lived with depression all my life, Addie, and I don't have the words to describe how difficult that life can be. It's not
just
sadness. For me, at least. Some days it's a combination of the worst things I've ever felt in my life—fear, sadness, apathy, loneliness, sorrow, restlessness, hopelessness. And some days it's absolutely nothing—empty, turned out, like my brain doesn't even turn on. I don't know if you will live or would have lived the same life, but I couldn't take seeing you at eleven, seeing you now, and wondering if I've passed that on to you—my inability to deal with pain.”

I look at him and glance away again, still fighting tears.

“But you are dealing with it,” I say quietly after a moment. “You lost Rory and you lost Mom and you haven't given up. Why didn't you think you'd given me that part of you, too?”

He pauses, then nods. He's leaning forward in his seat, driving slowly on the slippery road.

“While you were asleep, I was talking to Dr. Overton and he was telling me how experiences reshape the brain. Whether it's depression or joy or love, you can see how they physically reform someone's mind. By taking away the first tragedy you ever went through, we also erased the way your mind was learning to face it. Sure, maybe you were learning too slowly for us, maybe you needed more help and counseling or medication, but your brain was rewiring to deal with that pain, and we prevented it. So when this thing with Zach happened, your first instinct, even without knowing it, was to remove the source, not to cope with it.

“Addie, letting you believe that you weren't strong enough was one thing—and it was wrong—but the biggest lie is that there are things that aren't survivable. That there are things not
worth
surviving. I never, ever want you to believe that. That you can't keep going or that you can't overcome the thing you're facing.” He pauses. “I'm sorry that I had a hand in teaching you that.”

My eyes are completely cloudy now, but I shrug. “I had a choice a second time, remember? And I chose it again.”

“Well, today you had a choice a third time, and you chose to move forward. I hope you keep doing that.”

I blink at him.
Move forward.
Just a few hours ago, I thought that meant erasing every moment after the bus crash, but now I realize it means leaving the past behind.
Choosing
to leave it, to move on, instead of living like it didn't exist.

There is a difference.

And it means there's something I have to do.

The front of Zach's house is covered in snow and nearly indistinguishable from all the others on this street. Which is why I'm glad for Katy's presence in my passenger seat, directing me.

It took some convincing for my mom to let me take the car.

“This was the scene of the crime,” Katy whispers as we walk up the driveway. “Where we found them.”

“Oh,” I say, looking around, but there's not a trace of recollection. The disappointment only lasts a millisecond before it is overshadowed by the task ahead, the reason we're here.

I ring the doorbell, and after a few seconds, we hear footsteps getting closer and then the door is flung open. For the briefest moment, I think it's Zach. Maybe even Memory Zach, because this boy is younger, shorter, and skinnier than the Zach I talked with yesterday. But then his eyes widen and the boy grins, a different smile from any in Zach's collection.

“Well,
hello, ladies.
”

“You're repulsive, Kevin,” Katy spits before I can work out who this is and why he is here.

“Is Zach around?” I ask, and Kevin's eyes wander back to me. He knows me. Some version of me knows him.

“Zach! Addie's at the door!” he yells, eyes still fixed on me. “Thought you hated him now?” He smirks, and I realize he doesn't know about the splice, the erasure. To Zach's little brother, we had a completely normal breakup.

When Zach comes out to meet us, his eyes are wide with surprise.

“Um, hi,” he says uncertainly, looking between the two of us. “Is something wrong?”

“Yeah, your moral compass. How dare you call her a coward, you cheater,” Katy hisses, and I grab her elbow to restrain her. Both Zach and Kevin look shell-shocked. Katy's clearly been itching for a showdown with Zach for a long time, because when I asked her to come with me to his house, she was only too happy to go running for some pitchforks and firewood. I shoot her a look now—
down, Katy
—and take over. She relents, remembering our discussion on the drive over about how I'd get to do the talking.

“Can I talk to you in private?” I ask a red-faced Zach. With him here now, the familiar turning in my stomach is starting, the lure to his gray eyes, the desire to touch his hair. Why didn't I touch Memory Zach's hair before he was gone?

“Um, yeah, okay,” he says, scratching the back of his head. I remind myself that this is not Memory Zach; this is the boy who broke my heart. They might look and sound and act the same, but one is gone and one is someone I
used
to love.

I start to follow Zach, and I hear Kevin's voice behind us, telling Katy, “I'll keep you company, babe.”

I can't hear what she says back, but the acid in her voice is hard to miss. I fight a smile.

As I follow Zach through the hallway—passing family photographs and an autographed picture of a soccer star—I strain my mind for something familiar. The house feels warm, like I could imagine feeling comfortable here once, but I don't remember it. Not in the detailed, specific way you recall places you've been to.

Zach leans against the island in the kitchen and offers me a stool, but I shake my head. “So,” he says, a question in his voice.

Across the room, a goldfish bigger than my hand swims across the tank, its tail waving some kind of greeting.

I try to think of all the things Past Addie would want Zach to know. All the things she might have felt or wanted to say, but didn't give herself the chance to. But I don't know enough about her or enough about what she knew to speak for her, so I take a breath and tell him how I feel now.

“You said I was a coward,” I say, jumping right in—starting in the middle of a thought because I can't think where else to start. I don't have much context for so many things in my life, but I can't keep waiting to gain it. I want my life to be more than that. “For erasing you.”

Zach hesitates. “I meant—”

“I was,” I say, cutting him off. “But it wasn't your place to tell me that. It was a stupid choice, but it was
my
bad choice. The way you acted yesterday in your car was completely unfair.
You
broke my heart.
You
lied to me. You don't get to act like I'm the one in the wrong or like I'm the one who owes you an apology. I'm not obligated to remember you.”

Hurt flickers over his face, but he doesn't speak.

“I
want
to,” I admit, feeling my voice shake a little bit. “But only because it mattered to me. Because it changed everything. You're the first boy I ever loved.”

“I'm sorry, Addie….”

“It's my fault I don't remember. And I'll live with that for the rest of my life.”

I continue. “But
you
were a coward for not telling me you were still in love with Lindsay. For treating me like I didn't matter.”

“But I
told
you I was. At the very start. I said we should be friends.”

I…don't remember that.

“Then why did you change your mind? Why did you let things go further and further with us?”

“Because…” Zach sighs, pushes his hand into his hair like Memory Zach used to, but there's so much less of it. “What I liked about you was how open you were, how ready you were to try new things. And I wanted to be a little bit like you. I didn't want to keep moping about Lindsay. I wanted to be open to something new, to forget about her.”

So I wasn't the only one who was trying to forget someone.

He looks me in the eye. “I know now that it was wrong and I wasn't being honest with you or myself. But even though I wasn't over Lindsay, I
did
like you and I told myself this was the way to move on.”

Move on.

There it is again.

“Can you at least understand how much pain I was in and why I would want to erase you? You didn't have to cheat on me. If you weren't over Lindsay, if you wanted
her,
then you should have been honest with me. You could have just
told
 me.”

He looks ashamed, but he holds my gaze. “I know, Addie. I'm sorry. I fucked up. Some days I hate myself for what I did.”

I am silent for a few moments, and then I tell him, “You shouldn't have used me as a crutch, but I think to move on, you have to deal with the stuff behind you, to let it go. That's why I came here.”

And I'm not exonerating him.

I'm letting him go.