Now that I understand why he’s here, now that I have some sort of lead, I figured I only had to ask the right questions for the rest to become clear. It’s why I haven’t broken and done the obvious thing—ask Katy. I was sure I could piece it together myself. It’smymemory, after all. I knew him—Zach. The name still seems magical after days of not knowing.
But after an hour of grilling him for information, I’ve learned exactly one thing about him. And it didn’t even come from him; it came from going over and over the details of the night I started seeing him. It came when I remembered what was sticking out of his backpack when he got on the bus.
A folded tripod.
His backpack contained camera equipment.
It is late at night and we are at Jolley’s, an old-timey diner just off the highway. I cradle my cup of coffee, blowing on it while I watch Zach, who’s sitting across the booth from me. As we’ve been talking, I’ve forgotten numerous times that I am the only one who can see him. After a few odd looks from strangers, I’ve started pretending to be on the phone or reading the menu aloud when someone walks by.
“It seems like I can only tell you what you already know,” he says now, and I roll my eyes. He’s kept repeating that one all night. His explanation for why he knew I’d gotten his name right but couldn’t tell me any more. “You have to find the things they couldn’t explicitly wipe. Like a feeling, things you associate with…the other me.”
“Uh-huh.” I already tried listening to “Air on the G String” on my phone, and that feeling of recognition, that warmth I got listening to it at the concert the first night I met Memory Zach, came back, assuring me I’m on the right track. But while it might have triggered my memory of Zach the night of the accident, it’s hardly going to give me his last name. I am starting to lose patience with myself now, starting to think I might need to go crawling back to my parents or Katy for answers.
I’m staring absently over the rim of my coffee mug when I feel Zach’s gaze on me.
“What?” I ask. I can’t read the expression on his face.
“What do you think happens when you find him?” he asks, fidgeting with a chip in the wood on his side of the table. “You know, to me?”
I shrug. “Why would anything happen?”
Zach nods, seems to shake off his worry, and leans forward. “Okay, go back to the tripod and camera stuff. Can you use it in any way?”
“Maybe you’re a photographer?” I ask hopefully, and Zach says, “Maybe.”
I sigh, pretty sure this is what it is like to talk to an amnesiac. Someone who knows absolutely nothing about himself. I push aside the thought that, in some ways, that’s exactly who I am. Who I’ve been.
“Okay,” I say, and type “Zach Lyndale photographs” into my phone’s browser. Also “photography,” “pictures,” “photos.” “There are a surprising number of Zachs in Lyndale who happen to be photographers. Most of them over the age of fifty.”
Zach laughs and I am startled again at the warmth in his voice, the fullness of it. I glance up at him, wondering if maybe that was a memory—if, somehow, I am remembering the real him. And I am surprised to find him already watching me, his eyes twinkling. I glance away quickly.
One thing that isnotgoing to make my life easier?
Falling in love with the Memory of some boy I used to know. Theinvisiblememory of some boy I used to know. Everything I see him do happens only in my head, and Ilikehim. Tonight, when we were on the bench, our bodies so close it was like we didn’t need the coat at all, it felt like something heavy had lowered itself onto my chest. It was the realization that I was inches from kissing an invisible stranger, and I wished the space between us was less. But more than that, I started to get the sense, to understand for the first time, that I might have loved the real Zach. The breathless, pulsing kind of love that you can’t recover from. The kind you can’t forget.
So why would I have erased him?
“What other types of cameras are there?” Memory Zach asks, mercifully drawing me out of my thoughts. It takes a second to remember what we’re talking about.
“Video,” I say, scribbling down the names of three Zachs I’ve found without pictures who could conceivably be the one I need: Zach Easton, Zach Thomas, and Zack Neil. “Maybe you evensellcameras. Do you sell cameras, Zach?”
“Your guess is as good as mine,” he says.
“But what do youfeel?” I intone, making the corners of his mouth tilt up. My stomach twirls at it and blood rushes to my ears.
I glance at the screen of my phone again.
“Okay, let’s try…” I type in “Zach cameras” and get mostly useless hits.
“Hey!” I say all of a sudden. Someone glances over at me from across the diner, and I duck my head, bringing my voice to a whisper. “What about that job you were ‘working’ at the Cineplex that day? What doesthatmean?”
Zach narrows his eyes, thinking. “Camera. Cinema. Movies?”
I type in “Zach movies Lyndale” and take a sip of my coffee while I wait for the search results.
“What’s wrong?” Zach asks. I’m frozen, staring at the screen of my phone. “Addie?”
“I think this is it.”
