Page 81 of Shatter

I've said it to teachers and girlfriends and the manager at the Jiffy Lube in Media, and to Runes the night he handed me my prospect patch.

I've said it so many times it feels true.

The lie's right there, sitting on my tongue.

All I have to do is open my mouth and let it out.

She let it go the last time, when I told her Philly, and she called me a liar so gently it's still stuck in my throat two months later.

She'd let it go again.

Here in the dark, with her real name out in the air between us, I'd give her nothing back.

Her fingers tighten around mine.

My palms go damp against the sheet.

I open my mouth.

"Espen." It comes out rough, barely louder than the rain.

The word sits in the dark between us.

I stare at the ceiling, and I can't take it back.

"Espen Solheim." I say it again, because I've started, and if I stop now I'll never finish.

She doesn't move.

She doesn't breathe.

The name fits my mouth wrong, like boots I outgrew twenty years ago.

The last time anybody said it, she was kneeling on a dirty airport floor with her hands on my face.

"I was born in Oslo." My voice sounds like it belongs to somebody else. "In Norway. I lived there until I was nine."

She lifts her head.

In the gray light from the window, I can see her eyes, wide and wet and fixed on my face.

She still doesn't say anything.

She waits.

"My mother put me on a plane." My throat's so tight the words scrape coming out. "Before the sun came up. It was snowing. She took me to the airport in a taxi and wouldn't let go of my hand the entire way."

I can see it.

The orange lights over the runway, and the snow blowing sideways past the big windows.

The lady at the counter in the blue scarf, smiling at me too long.

"She'd gotten me a passport with somebody else's name in it." I swallow. "Breckett Hale. She made me practice it at the counter until I could say it without tripping. It sounded like something you'd yell at a dog."

A sound escapes her, half laugh and half sob, and she presses her lips together.

"She had these little silver scissors she kept in her purse, for loose threads." I stare at the fan. "My name was sewn on my backpack. She'd done it herself, before first grade. She knelt down and cut it off right there, in front of everybody."