Sooo. Mom saw Goldie this morning before I did and she picked Kev up on her way home from work this afternoon and told him the fish had died.
WHAT,I text back.I hope you pretended he’d had a miraculous resurrection or this was his ghost, back to clear up his unfinished business.
Ha ha!Zach replies.I should have done that, but I just told him the truth….He said he’d have preferred a turtle.
HA HA HA,I text.
And,You’re a good brother, Zach.
Hey, thanks,he texts back.
We keep texting for the rest of the night, through dinner and practice and right up until it’s midnight, and my lips hurt from smiling. I thought I needed something to wake me up. Like a city full of things to fall in love with—people and places and monuments and tastes and sounds. Not just one person, not just aboywho lives across town. I want my life to be more than that. And yet.
I feel idiotic and silly and funnier than I am, and my heart kicks in my chest every time my phone vibrates with a new message. I feel crazy, charged with electricity and exhausted and slightly panicked at each text I send that goes unanswered for a few minutes. Or when hedoeswrite back and I have to figure out something funny or clever or flirty—or, oh my God, all of the above—to say back.
It feels a little bit terrible. Like walking across a shaky bridge with the world laid out before you. You might fall off any second, but you have to know what’s on the other side. There is not much to hold on to. And I don’t know if I would, anyway, if there was.
AFTER
January
“I’m so, so sorry. Please don’t hate me,” Katy says. “As soon as you told me he worked at the Cineplex and then when you described him, I realized you were seeinghim.That’s why I asked if you’d let me go to my mom. I thought something had gone wrong.”
That’s why you started avoiding me,I think, but don’t say the words. I’m leaning forward, head bowed on the steering wheel, eyes closed. Trying to get a grip on reality.
“I hoped it was just a glitch. Just some temporary thing because of hitting your head. After everything we’d done so you could forget what happened, after how devastated it madeyou, I wasn’t just going to blurt the truth out to you. And then you said you’d stopped seeing him and you were feeling better, so I thought it was fine….I don’t know.”
I still have a million questions.
Who is he?
What happened?
You knew? All this time I thought I was crazy, and you knew who he was?
How can this be true? How can any of what has happened over the last twenty-four hours be true?
“Who is he?” I ask, deciding to go in order.
“Zach,” she says.
Zach.
The name tugs at something quick and sharp inside me. It’s like a jolt of electricity, a pinched nerve.
His name is Zach.
I picture Bus Boy. His weather-inappropriate clothes, his wide smile. His name feels like a balm on a burn.
And yet. Katy hasn’t given me much. Who the hellisZach?
“What happened?” I ask.
She is tentative. Unsure. “You were so sad. I had never seen you like that before. It scared me. So when you looked up Overton and you wanted to get your memories of him erased…I mean, it seemed extreme and scary, but I wanted you to be happy. You’re my best friend, Addie—I’ve never been friends with someone as long as I have with you. I supported whatever you wanted.”
I stay silent.
What?
