As I left, I saw Jack at his table, laughing with his friends.
This feeling would always be mine alone.
8C
Between every period, I passed both my locker and Jack’s, hoping to catch someone placing a photograph inside. I was waiting for it, really. I couldn’t believe that he or she would stop.
At the end of the day, I found Jack putting his books away. I had come up with a plan.
“Anything?” I asked him.
“Nope,” he said, closing the door.
“That doesn’t make any sense,” I said.
“I have to go to practice. I promise I’ll tell you if something comes up.”
He was about to walk away, and I felt I couldn’t let him. Not yet.
“Doesn’t it bother you?” I asked.
He looked at me impatiently. “What?”
“That she told someone else.”
“It is what it is.”
“No, there’s something else there.”
Jack slammed his hand against his locker door. “Look,” he said. “What do you want me to do? What do you want me to say? There’s a part of me that thinks you’re actually enjoying this.”
Enjoying. This.
“Jack—you can be such a jerk sometimes.”
“No—I know. That’s not right. But, Evan, I don’t know what you want from me here. It doesn’t make any sense for us to get worked up over something we don’t have any control over.”
“I’ve thought about it,” I said.
“And?”
“I think we need to go to her house.”
He was not expecting me to say this.
“What are you talking about?”
“Think about it for a second. If she was close enough to someone to tell him or her our locker combinations and the place where you two first kissed—don’t you think she would have mentioned that person in her journals?”
“Wait a second, Evan—”
“No, it makes perfect sense. All we have to do is read the journals—we don’t even have to read them, we can just scan them. But there has to be a name there.”
“Are you crazy?”
“You must be crazy, too.”
“No.”
“First of all, I don’t think Ariel’s parents would just let us into their house because of what we did to their daughter. Second, we have no idea if the journals that I don’t want to read are still there. And third … I’m sick of you well, it’s just wrong.”
“You remember where the spare key is, don’t you? You are not getting out of this. I’m sure it’s in the same place. Nobody not even your new girlfriend ever has to know we were there. Nobody. It’s the only way for us to find out.”
Jack shook his head. “No. We’re not doing it. I’m late for practice.”
“If you don’t do it with me, I’m doing it alone,” I told him.
Jack hit the locker again. “Evan.”
“Someone’s stalking us,” I said. “We have to stop it. The only way is to find out who it is. Her parents both work until six now, at the earliest. I’ve been by their house. They’re never back before six.” This wasn’t true. I was just guessing.
“Does it have to be tonight?”
I knew if I wavered, I’d lose him.
“Yeah. Let’s get it over with.”
Jack didn’t like any of it, but he wasn’t going to make me do it myself.
“Fine. I think you’re a jerk, too, sometimes. I’ll get out of practice early and meet you here at four. Out front. In the meantime, go over there and make sure their cars aren’t in the garage.”
I nodded and started to leave. But Jack grabbed my shoulder and turned me so I had to look him right in the eye.
“I’m only going to say this once, Evan, okay? If I find out that these are your photos and you’re doing this just to mess with me, I’ll kill you. Got it?”
“Don’t worry,” I told him. “I’m not that smart. Or that masochistic.”
He let me go.
“I think you are that smart,” he said. “But not that cruel. That’s what I’m betting on.”
This was, I figured, the biggest compliment he’d ever paid me.
9
I let myself lose focus as I walked over to Ariel’s house. There were so many frequencies playing in my mind.
“I’m having sex with him,” you said. “You know that, right?”
“It was a perfectly valid question,” Fiona said.
“I guess I did,” I said.
I didn’t. I didn’t want to think about it.
“Mrs. Taylor, you have to come with me now.”
“I don’t know. It’s a mood.”
“Evan, get help. I’ll stay here. You get help.”
But I wanted to be the one to stay.
“My parents aren’t home right now,” Fiona said.
No. Not Fiona.
“What is it, Evan? What is it?”
It’s the end. It’s the end. I can’t stop it.
“I am so happy right now,” you said.
You wanted to die.
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.”