The Girl with the Wrong Name (11 page)

“Max, what are you doing?”

“I’m not doing anything. I’m just asking if there’s anything you want to say to me.”

His eyes wouldn’t let mine escape. They were bluer than neon blue. Bluer than the aqua blue walls and the digital fish tank. They kept getting bluer as they came closer, searching my eyes. Bluer and closer. Bluer and closer . . .

“OKAY, WHAT IS GOING ON TONIGHT?”

I howled it to the ceiling or to God, to nobody or to whoever was listening. I grabbed the drawstrings of my hood and pulled them as tightly as I could, nearly strangling myself. The hood shrank down over all but my eyes, nose, and upper lip.

Max jumped off the bed and backed away, almost tripping over his desk chair. “Jesus, what is
wrong
with you?”

“Why were you looking at me like that?” I shot back.

“You were looking at me, too.”

“Yes, I was looking at you, but I wasn’t
looking
at you. You were looking at me like—like a boy would look at . . .”

“A girl? Like a boy would look at a girl? Is that what you’re trying to say?”

“No. You were looking at me like a boy would look at
her
.
Everybody’s looking at me the way they’d look at
her
.”

“Who?”

“Sarah.”

“Who the hell is Sarah?”

“Maybe
I
am. I don’t know!”

“I thought we’d established that you were
you.
”

“I
know
that.”

I thought he’d take a step toward me. He always came closer when I was struggling. But tonight, he took two steps back.

“I was just trying to do the thing,” he muttered.

“What thing?”

“The thing you asked me to do in the letter. I was just trying to do it. Trying to pretend it was the first time I’d ever—”

“
I
wasn’t asking you to do anything. That was Lou’s letter. I didn’t even know we were writing it to you. I thought we were writing it to Mike ‘Me Like’
DeMonaco!”

“Oh.” Max’s entire body seemed to deflate. He drew in a deep breath and took another step back toward his TV. He examined its edges for nicks and scratches. “Okay. Can we just, like, strike this whole thing from the record? Can we just erase it and go back to the moment right before I said it?”

“Yeah,” I said, looking down at my sneakers. “We can do that.” I shouldn’t have gotten into his bed with my sneakers on. That was rude. Why did I do that?

“Cool,” Max said.

We looked at anything but each other until our eyes accidentally met again. I found myself searching for physical ways to recede farther into the sweatshirt. I wish I’d had six more sweatshirts to throw on, one after the other, till I looked like a puffer fish. This was supposed to be the safe place. But now I was drowning all alone on the bed. My mattress was sinking, and Max was the only tall ship for miles.

“Max,” I said to my sneakers.

“Are you hungry?” He started walking quickly to the door. “Maybe I should make us some—”

“Max, do you think there is any possible way that I could ask you to hold me for a few minutes? But without it evoking any of the clichés of girls asking guys to hold them, and without it being sexually suggestive in any way, or implying that it might become sexually suggestive a few hours later after I’ve passed out, which I’m about to do, and we accidentally wake up face-to-face, or in some other entirely unintentional romantic configuration?”

Max took his time and considered my question. “Yes, I think I can do that.”

“Okay,” I said. I waited for him to come back to the bed.

“Oh, now?”

“Yeah, now.”

I lay back down on my side and faced the window, shutting my eyes. I felt Max climb slowly onto the bed and reach carefully around my waist, searching for the least suggestive place to put his arm. He settled on cupping my shoulder with his hand, and we lay there in suspended animation for a few seconds.

“No, too weird,” I muttered, sitting back up.

“Yeah, weird,” Max agreed.

“Maybe just the hand,” I said. We lay down on our backs, and he took hold of my hand at the center of the bed.

“No, still too weird,” I said. He began to slide away. “No, stay close!”

He froze in place. “Like here?” he asked.

“Yeah, okay, there,” I said. “Yeah, I think there’s good.”

I lay back down on the pillow. We were back in the Freudian position, both on our backs now, staring up at the ceiling—each with our own side of the mattress staked out, just like every other session we’d ever had. I fell asleep almost instantly.

Chapter Eleven

5:42
a.m.
Max had kept his promise. He was still asleep when the sun opened my eyes, but the line down the bed had stayed intact. No accidental spooning or entangled limbs. I had slept so hard and so deep, I’d never even shifted onto my side.

I’d
slept.
I couldn’t believe I’d
slept.
I hadn’t slept for more than two hours in as many weeks, and that stuff had barely counted as sleep. Now I remembered what real sleep felt like. Maybe that was why my head finally felt a little clearer.

I watched Max’s chest rise and fall, taking in his stubbly profile. Dawn was creeping through the huge windows, bathing everything in a pink-orange light. Yesterday already felt like a distant memory, like another life.

All except for my guilty thoughts of Andy.

I’d left him in my room, no doubt as freaked out and confused as I was. I wondered where he’d gone after I took off. I wondered what he’d done. I climbed over Max, careful not to wake him. Within seconds I’d snuck out of his apartment and was on the street, making my way home. If I could get back soon enough, I could make it into my own bed before Mom and Todd woke up and turned on NPR.

The apartment was lifeless.
All the lights were out. The only sound in the kitchen was the hum of the refrigerator. Todd’s laptop was still asleep on the table, which meant they hadn’t even gotten to the Huffington
-
Post-and-soft-boiled-eggs stage yet. I tiptoed through the dining room, watching for any sudden lamplight in the hallway.

On the third step, I somehow tripped the Complete-and-Utter-Chaos Alarm.

A horrid folk song filled my ears. It was a girl (maybe two?) and guitar: a poor woman’s Joni Mitchell, but happy. Pop-Tart commercials/Disney Family Channel happy. The music stopped. Two spindly arms grabbed me from behind. I let out a strangled shriek as they swallowed me.

“Oh, thank God,” Mom cried. Her body was shaking.

A door burst open, and I screamed again. Todd flew out of their bedroom, wielding a squash racket over his head, poised to strike. “What the—I heard screaming.”

His Breathe Right nasal strip was still pasted over his nose. Aside from that, he wore too-short pajama pants puffed out like old-timey bloomers. I wondered if he’d seen a late night infomercial for “Pajoomers” and just gone for it. I’d say he was the third shirtless man I’d seen in less than twelve hours, but his chest and shoulders were covered in coarse white yak hair. He was, pretty much, wearing a shirt.

“She came back,” Mom sniffled, not letting me go. “Todd, she came back.”

My mother was hugging me. Not just hugging me, embracing me. Passionately, urgently. Maybe this still wasn’t my life? She pulled back and shouted in my face, shaking my shoulders, “Where the hell
were
you?”

Okay, more like my life. Except that she had on these big, chunky headphones, the cord dangling down her flannel robe, pockets stuffed to the brim with used tissues. She must have accidentally pulled out the cord when she ran to me.

Todd exhaled and slumped against the wall, finally lowering his squash racket. “I told you she’d be back by morning, Meg. Welcome home, Theodore. I’m going to make us all some soft-boiled eggs. And how about some whole-grain Swedish limpa toast?”

I stared at him. “I don’t know what that is, but okay,” I managed.

“Coming right up.”

Todd trotted down to the kitchen. Mom ripped off her headphones and tossed them on the dining table next to her laptop. She escorted me into my bedroom and shut the door behind us.

“Were you just listening to folk music?” I asked with disbelief.

“It was helping to calm me,” she snapped. She must have finally gone haywire with fall semester stress because even with her blood boiling and her jaw clenched, there was . . . There wasn’t another word for it. Love. There was love in her eyes. Actual, visible love. I suppose I couldn’t be sure, given how seldom I’d seen it before. “Theo, you have to tell me everything. You have to tell me everything about him.”

My spine stiffened. “Who?” I asked.

“The boy.”

“What boy?”

“Theodore, there can’t
be any more bullshit between us. This is too important!”

My jaw nearly fell off its hinges. My mother just cursed. She must have found Andy. “It—it’s not bullshit,” I stammered.

“I see,” she said, crossing her arms. “So you went to a semiformal party last night and drank pink champagne all alone?”

“How did you know?” I saw the mop and bucket sitting in my bathroom doorway. The floor was sparkling clean now. She’d cleaned up my entire mess. Or maybe Andy had? There was a trash bag next to the bucket, which surely contained my puke-stained dress, reeking of champagne. Oh, God, was Andy’s shirt in there, too? Had she spent the whole night interrogating him? Was she testing me to see if I’d confess?

“You
can’t
drink on your Lexapro. You know that. It’s not safe. How many times has Dr. Silver warned you about the side effects? Why do you think you got so sick?”

“You’re right,” I said. “I shouldn’t have had that drink. I shouldn’t have messed with my meds, but there’s no boy, Mom.” My eyes darted to the corners of the room, searching for signs of Andy—under the bed, behind the newspaper stacks. “I just went to Lou’s second performance, and then I came back here to change. That’s when I got sick, but I still wanted to meet everyone after the recital, so I went back out to meet them, and I ended up falling asleep at Lou’s.”

I knew she wasn’t buying it. I wasn’t even sure it made sense. But at least I knew she hadn’t found Andy.

“I still feel pretty sick,” I added. “And I’m so grimy. I’ve got to take a shower.”

She shook her head. “Get yourself cleaned up. Todd will finish making breakfast. And then you’re going to tell me where you really went last night and with whom, and we’re going to set new ground rules that cannot
be broken ever
again. Are we clear?”

“Clear,” I mumbled, trying to peer behind the bathroom door.

“Are we
clear
?” she repeated.

“Crystal,” I said. “But I’ve
got
to shower, Mom.”

I opened the door for her. She turned away, and I began to close it, but then she whirled around and wrapped me in her arms once more.

“I’m very glad you’re back,” she said, then let me go.

I locked the door as softly as I could and nearly collapsed.
Jesus Christ.
I needed to calm my nerves. I ran to the bathroom and swallowed down the pills I’d missed last night, along with a couple extra. I ran the shower for Mom and Todd’s benefit. Then I flipped open my laptop and clicked on the Beatles’ “Revolution 9,” filling the room with just enough noise to reach the hall. The song picked up right where I’d left it nearly every night.

“Number nine . . . number nine . . .”

I felt a rush in my ears, a throbbing that I suddenly realized was my own heartbeat.

“Andy?” I kept my voice buried under the music, but loud enough for him to hear. “Andy, are you still here?”

I dropped down to the floor to check under the bed, and that’s when I heard something rustling behind the closet doors. I jumped up, dragged open the closet, and found him lying between two towers of
The New York Times
. I wasn’t sure if I felt relief or horror. He’d obviously slept there all night just to stay hidden from my mother. He’d turned himself into a closet-dwelling pretzel for me.

“Is she gone?” he said, his voice hoarse.

“Not for long.”

Andy’s marathon hideout had
stretched the jagged holes of his T-shirt, which, combined with his messy hair, made him look like he was homeless, or a junkie, or in a band, or a homeless junkie in a band. I’d never seen his hair look anything but perfect, or at least perfectly
un
-perfect, but now it was dry and bushy—crushed into a sort of L-shape. And somehow he’d never looked sweeter or more innocent. It made me wish I could take back everything I’d said last night.

“I am so sorry,” I said. “I don’t know what happened to me—”

“No, it was my fault,” he said. “I shouldn’t have tried to kiss you. I don’t know what happened to me, either. I think I just wanted her so bad that I went a little crazy.”

“No,
I
went crazy. I shouldn’t have accused you of keeping things from me—it was all just temporary insanity. No, you know what? Neither one of us is insane. Emma Renaux is insane. She’s the one who thought I was Sarah when I am obviously me.”

“But Theo, you were right. I don’t think I’ve been totally honest with—”

“No,” I interrupted through clenched teeth. “You said you weren’t lying about anything else—”

“Wait, let me finish. I haven’t been honest with
myself
. You were asking all the right questions. What do I really remember about that night? What do I really remember about
her
? It was all I thought about after you ran away. I was folded up in that freaking closet, staring into the dark for hours, and I finally had to face it.”

I swallowed. “Face what?”

“There’s just . . . My head is just like that closet. Dark. Some of it is darker than dead. I’m not just forgetting little pieces, I’m forgetting whole chunks.”

“Like how much?”

I could tell he didn’t want to say it out loud. Once he did, he couldn’t take it back or deny it—even to himself. “Sunday morning,” he said. “It’s a total blank.”

My stomach tied itself into a spiky knot. Because some part of me knew it already.

“I wasn’t trying to keep it from you, I swear,” he said. “I just didn’t know. It’s like the time I blacked out from drinking when I was sixteen. I didn’t know I’d blacked out until I was walking around school the next day and people asked me what I’d done the night before. They had to ask me the questions before I realized I didn’t know the answers. Hasn’t anything like that ever happened to you? Haven’t you ever blacked out or fainted, or lost a chunk of time somehow?”

I looked down at my sneakers, ducking under my hair. “Maybe,” I replied.

“Theo, I don’t even remember how I got to the café on Sunday. I mean, I was there by eleven forty-five, but before that . . . It’s like everything just sort of stops before sunrise and starts again on the front lawn.”

“A fugue state,” I mumbled.

“A what state?”

The Beatles song came to an end, and then it began again. Always set to repeat. “Number nine . . .”

I dug my hands into my sweatshirt pockets, catching my gnawed-off fingernails on the fraying threads inside. “It’s something my doctor has talked about. Sometimes, if a trauma is too acute, you can go into this state where you sort of erase the whole thing from your mind. It can happen to victims of abuse or violent crimes. Or to soldiers in combat. Even if you only witness something unthinkable, you can sort of . . . un-think it. Sometimes the cops will find a guy wandering around a bus station or by the side of a road, and he’ll have no idea how he got there or where he was before. Not like he’s forgotten his whole life—maybe just an hour or a day or a week. He doesn’t know; he’s just lost.”

My mind began to race. Andy still had no idea what I’d called him before I knew his real name. He had no idea that I’d watched him for days, walking around the front lawn of the Harbor like—like what? Like he was in a fugue state. Not entirely sure what was missing or what had come before. He hadn’t even known what day it was until I reminded him. He only seemed sure of one thing: when and where he was supposed to meet Sarah.

“Theo, I’m scared.” He threaded his fingers through the holes in his T-shirt. “I think it might be like you’re saying. I think something awful happened to her, and I think . . . I think I might have been there when it happened. I think it might have happened to us both.”

I remembered the words I’d scrawled in my production book that morning.
What really happened to him? What kind of tragedy?
I knew it was something terrible. I knew it because I’d recognized the look in his eyes. I’d seen it in my own eyes whenever I accidentally glimpsed my reflection. Like some vital piece of code in our hearts had been deleted.

“I think you’re right,” I said. “I think you were there when it happened, and you’ve blocked it out—the places you went, the people you met. Andy, when Emma talked to me on that terrace, she said you were a saint. She said you were a good man, that you’d only ever tried to do good. You
know
Emma Renaux.”

He shook his head, helpless. “I don’t.”

“But you do; you just don’t remember. That has to be it. She has the answers. I’m telling you, she was weighed down by all this guilt. She said it wasn’t your fault. That I shouldn’t punish you, that she would fix it.”

“Jesus, what is she talking about?” He pressed his palms deep into his eye sockets. He’d done this before, but only now did I know what that gesture really meant. It was a show of fear whenever he drifted too close to that gaping black hole in his memory.

“Have you ever heard of K.O.P.?” I asked. “Keeping Our Promise?”

He struggled for an answer. “I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

“It’s a women’s shelter on Parker Street. Emma runs it with her fiancé, Lester Wyatt. It’s less than five minutes from the Harbor Café and Battery Gardens. Less than five minutes from where you first saw Sarah and Emma together.”

“A homeless shelter?”

“I think it could be, or maybe just a safe place for girls in bad situations.”

He stared at me with wide, baffled eyes. “You think Sarah was living in a shelter?”

“I’m not saying it for sure, but I met this girl at the party—Helena—and she told me Emma and Wyatt weren’t just celebrating their wedding, they were celebrating the shelter’s anniversary. She said they’d invited six girls from the shelter as, like, shining examples, living proof of all the good K.O.P. does. She thought I could be the sixth girl because no one had met her yet.”

Andy could only shake his head.

“What if Sarah was the sixth girl?” I pressed. “She could have been staying at that shelter. She could still
be staying there. Do you have any memories of that kind of place? Groups of girls, dorm rooms, anything like that?”