“Fine,” Zach says, but he’s smiling as his father goes back inside. We follow Mr. Laird, still holding hands, and tingles travel up my arm.
I help Zach finish stocking the DVDs, and then he mans the counter while Mr. Laird has his lunch and watches TV in the breakroom. He keeps the door open, though, presumably to keep an eye on us.
“Can I ask you something?” I’m standing on the other side of the counter, leaning against it as Zach does inventory. When he nods, I ask, “What’s with the smoking?”
He glances up at me, as if he’s surprised that’s what my question is about.
He puts down his pen before he answers me. “I went to an all-boys boarding school at the start of ninth grade. Fincher? It’s just outside Raddick. My dad and my older brothers went there. Everyone smoked at Fincher. All my friends, the teachers. Students weren’t allowed to smoke on school property, but we would literally walk half a mile out to where the school’s sign was and smoke right in front of it. As long as we weren’t behind it, we were fine.”
I laugh.
“The first time my roommate, Dean, offered me a cigarette, after I’d been there, like, two months, I tried it just to see what the fuss was about. It was horrible. Like, I-nearly-hacked-a-lung horrible.”
I giggle again.
“Then Dean got caught smoking in the locker room one time and wound up with an expulsion warning. I hid his last two packs in my suitcase, hoping it’d deter him.”
“Did it?”
Zach shakes his head. “He gave me this.” He leans forward to point out a tiny scar on the side of his right eye. The scar isn’t raised and it looks old, but I reach out to run my finger over it.
“Violent boy.” Zach tsks. “Anyway, I forgot all about the two packs and came home for spring break.” He drops his voice, like he doesn’t want his father to hear this part. “And then my parents sat me down and said they couldn’t afford another year of tuition for me at Fincher.”
He speaks louder again, but not quite as loud as when he started the story. “I was pretty devastated. I was making all these friends. My brothers had both gone to Fincher and graduated; it was supposed to be, like, a rite of passage for my family.”
“That sucks,” I say, and he nods. He rips open a bag of gummy bears and sets them between us.
“It does. But at least I had the one year.” He chews on a bear. “Kevin probably won’t even get that.” It’s the first tinge of real sadness (non-Lindsay-related, anyway) I’ve ever heard in Zach’s voice, and it makes something twitch in me, too. “Kevin might not need that, since he already curses like a sailor.”
I laugh, reaching for some gummies.
“All my bad habits I learned at Fincher.” Zach picks up the pen and checks something off on his piece of paper. “Anyway, it’s spring break. Dad tells me I can’t go back the next September. I try to act cool about it, but I sit in my room, moping all week. And you know what I find? Two packs of cigarettes. I smoked both of them in a weekend.”
“Zach,” I scold, as if it’s happening now.
“I’m trying to quit, though. I’m way better than I used to be,” Zach says, looking proud. “Dad has promised to get me a Sonic CXX if I’m down to two a day by the time school starts in September.”
“That’s”—I pause, searching for the right word—“nonjudgmental of him.” I imagine the Cerebral Event—aka stroke—my mother would have if she ever caught me with a cigarette in hand.
“He’s worse than me!” Zach laughs. “Or he was. But he finally stopped at the end of last year, all these years after he picked it up at Fincher.”
“Well, I hope you stop,” I say, unable to hide the disapproval in my voice.
“So what about you?” Zach asks. “What’s your vice?”
“Hmm,” I say with mock thoughtfulness. “I’m weirdly addicted to gummy bears. This is practically poaching.” I pop one into my mouth as I speak.
Zach smiles, but he appraises me seriously before saying, “You love your viola more than you do people.”
I’m so taken aback by it that it takes me a while to answer, and I remember that he said something similar at his house last week, too. “You’ve only seen me play once.”
“I know,” he says.
There’s a long pause before I say, “Well, maybe I just haven’t found the right person to love.”
Zach’s lips are tilted up at the corners. “Yet,” he says.
“Yet,” I say, and eat another gummy bear.
AFTER
January
After Caleb’s and my mother’s lights go out, I pull on my jeans, sweatshirt, coat, and boots, and then I grab my keys and quietly leave the house.
Bus Boy is not out front. The cigarette he dropped on the sidewalk this morning is gone, too. But maybe someone kicked it onto the grass, or a gust of wind blew it to another street. Maybe it never existed to begin with.
A headache is building behind my eyeballs from running on so little sleep the past two weeks. I rub my temples and try to remember what I was thinking of when he appeared before school—Overton, the bagel I had for breakfast, the humanness of his thigh on the park bench yesterday—but none of that works, so I decide to go to him.
I drive first to my school, to outside the window of the music room, because I’m not sure where else to start.
But nothing is there.
I drive around the perimeter of Bentley Lake and the park surrounding it, but there’s nothing.
Then I try the mall, because he “works” there, and presumably he could be there now, even if it is nearly one in the morning. I climb out of my car and wander around the closed mall entrance.
No sign of him. The parking lot is deserted, covered in a layer of snow and tire prints.
At this point, I’m at a loss, so I whisper, “Bus Boy?”
There is, of course, no answer. And I jump, terrified at the sound of my own voice, and hurry toward my car, a little relieved there’s no answer.
I have no idea where to go to find him. How to find him.
I’ve never actively tried to make him appear. Am I just not trying hard enough?
What was the last thing he said to me?
Don’t forget about me.
Still holding on to the door of my car, I shut my eyes and try to think back to the night I first saw him. I think about the concert and the bus. His bright, contagious smile.
No sooner do I hear footsteps crunching in the snow than I jump into my car and lock all the doors. My heart thumps hard in my chest as the red-haired, smiling boy only I can see, nowhere in sight a second ago, walks toward me. He has his hands in the pockets of his jeans, a shirt too thin for the cold, and a completely casual expression.
As if he’s been waiting out here for me. As if I did not just conjure him up out of thin freaking air.
He raps twice on my window, and I take a couple breaths and then slide it down an inch. My skin is littered with goose bumps.
“You okay?” he asks.
No, I think. No, I’m not even almost okay.
But what I say is, “Tell me you’ve figured it out by now. Who you are. Something.”
He gives an apologetic shake of his head.
“Nothing?” I say, exasperated. “Not even a little bit?”
But, of course, I know in the back of my mind that this isn’t about him. It’s about me. If I can conjure him up, if I can see him and nobody else can, if I can speak to him and hear him when he’s not really here, this is all on me. I have to figure out what’s going on.
I stare at him, trying to superimpose the image of the baby that Caleb showed me over this tall, red-haired boy. He looks nothing like my brother. They don’t even have the same color skin.
And yet, they have to be connected somehow.
Is Bus Boy just some kind of beacon? A signal meant to make me question my sanity, to lead me to Overton and the truth about my family? But now that I know, why is he still here?
Apart from looking
nothing like my brother, I can’t be related to him because of the butterflies in my chest when he’s nearby, that turning of my stomach at his smile. I know I’m crazy, but having a crush on someone I’m related to would just be another level of insanity. Not to mention repulsive.
If Bus Boy and the brother I lost are related, it’s not in that way.
“Can I get in?” His breath is visible in the night, and his nose is bright red. I must’ve said yes, because Bus Boy jogs around to the passenger side door and waits for me to unlock it. And the whole time I wonder if I’m imagining this—seeing him, speaking to him, letting him in my car. My head is spinning with so many thoughts I have to fight the urge to scream.
The car feels so much smaller with him inside, like we’re inches apart and not a couple of feet. His long legs take up too much room, and I hear his hand fumbling in the dark, struggling to push his seat back. I lean across him, trying not to breathe him in—laundry detergent, sweat, cigarette smoke—and press the lever under his chair that makes it slide.
“Thank you,” he says, and I’m thinking he means for his seat, but he adds, “for coming back.”
That mixture of confusion, guilt, pity—I don’t know what—at the way I seem to make him come and go stirs in my chest and all I can do is stare straight ahead through the windshield.
“I found out tonight I had another brother,” I say quietly. I don’t know why it comes tumbling out, but it does and it feels okay. It feels right.
“What happened?” Bus Boy asks, no lightness in his voice.
“He died,” I say. “Almost six years ago.”
“I’m sorry,” he says. He touches my shoulder, and through my layers of clothing, I feel a surge of warmth in my arm. From an imaginary boy.
I don’t say anything for minutes, my mind spinning, spinning, coming to its inevitable conclusion.
I’m not imagining him.
A burst of cold air comes into the car, and when I face the boy, he has a cigarette in his mouth, a lighter in his hand, and the window rolled down.
“What?” he asks, his eyes wide.
“That’s disgusting,” I say slowly. As I continue to speak, my voice gradually rises. “If you’re going to smoke, get the hell out of my car.”
I’m angry, yes, but it’s not just because he’s smoking. It’s not just because of what seeing him has put me through. It’s the way I can feel my life shattering, a tightly confined case of glass dismantling all around me, and there’s nothing I can do about it. Who do I trust? What do I do next?
To my surprise, he pushes open the door of the car and climbs out.
I watch him start to walk off, cigarette in hand, and I wonder where exactly he’s planning to go.
If a tree falls in the forest and there’s no one there…
He knows that when he leaves my sight, he’ll be gone again. And maybe I’ve annoyed him enough that it doesn’t even scare him at the moment.
But then it hits me that if he goes, and of his own will for once, I might not be able to find him again. Whatever mind-conjuring voodoo I did to get him here might have just been luck, and I still have too many questions to let him be gone forever.
“Hey!”
I start after him, but he’s walking quickly and making a point of ignoring me.
“Hey, come back!”
“Why?” he yells over his shoulder, not stopping.
“I think I know who you are,” I yell back. I see him freeze, his back to me. And then he turns around and looks at me.
We are both holding our breath. Even from this far away, I can tell.
“Who am I?” he asks. A challenge.
I don’t yell it because I am confident. Because I am afraid. Because I feel it in my bones.
Don’t forget about me, he said before.
“A Memory,” I whisper.
BEFORE
Early August
Our first-ever date is at Schiavoni’s. Since we already have some things established—the kissing, the fact that this is actually a date, the location—I’m excited and not nervous about tonight. Selecting an outfit is terrible and nearly worthy of an emergency phone call to Katy, but then I remember that Zach has seen me with a face full of ketchup and this is still happening, so I pick out a navy blue dress with a halter top and sailor-like stripes at the bottom and top. I pair it with my favorite cork wedge sandals and keep my hair down.
Zach picks me up at six, and he’s wearing an oxford shirt, brown tailored pants, and sneakers. His hair is slicked back and looks almost unrecognizable, except for a tiny portion at the front that rebels and sticks up just a little bit.
My mom is at an event for Channel Se7en, but Caleb is in a surprisingly good mood tonight. He’s out of his room and still sporting facial hair, but he’s wearing clean clothes. He bolts for the door before I reach the bottom of the stairs. “Do not embarrass me!” I say, hurrying after him. When he’s not sequestered in his room, Caleb’s ratio of asshole to nice older brother is still a paltry 7 to 3, and I’m worried about which one he’ll be tonight. Which one he’ll be to Zach.
When I reach the entrance, he’s let Zach in and is asking, “So what are your intentions with my sister?”
“Caleb!” I hiss at him, and he bursts out laughing. Zach is smiling, too, but his face is the deepest shade of red. I punch my brother’s arm. Nice. He’s going to be nice to him.
“I’m kidding,” Caleb says, leaning against the wall, arms crossed. He is enjoying this, and I suddenly feel like there’s so little I understand about my brother. What makes you sad and happy and angry at random times? I wonder. “So you go to Meridian?”
“Yeah. Go Titans,” Zach says, trying to sound normal, but he seems nervous. Even though they’re about the same height, Zach seems smaller and more subdued in Caleb’s presence.
“Wrong answer. West Lyndale Wildcats,” Caleb says.
“Hey, we kicked you guys’ ass last year in football.”
“One game. Psh,” Caleb says. “What do you have to say about our three-year streak before that?”
Zach laughs. “We called it the Reign of Terror.”
“Damn straight it was.”
“Okay, glad we had this talk. We’re going. Bye,” I say, pushing Caleb aside to get to the front door.
“Seriously, though, where are you two going and when will you be back? Mom’s going to need that information when she gets home, unless you want her to send out a search party.”
Zach tells him the plan and then Caleb finally lets us leave. I watch my brother shut the door behind us, a hundred unanswered questions circling the air around him.
“Hey, you,” Zach says when we’re outside. He leans down and kisses my cheek. “You look beautiful.”
“You too,” I say, and he laughs. He is beautiful, with his Zach hair and Zach smile and Zach eyes. He has become an adjective.
The meeting with Caleb behind us, I expect him to relax, be back to his normal, springy self. But Zach’s face is still flushed and he’s fidgety as he drives, and I think, He’s nervous about our date, which makes me feel good in this sadistic, wonderful way, and when we get out of the car at the restaurant, I take his hand and thread my fingers through it. They are warm and bigger than mine, rough and a little bit dry, like my dad’s hands.
I feel like everyone is looking at us when we enter and Zach gives them his name for the reservation. He made reservations. But, of course, they are all just eating dinner, going about their business as usual. Except that Zach seems to stiffen a little as soon as the hostess approaches us, and if he was nervous before, now he seems to be waging some internal battle. I don’t know what to think, and I stare at the short, blond woman in front of us, younger than my mother but older than us, and she says, “Your usual table?”
And I get it.
They used to come here before.
Him and her.
This is their place.
Lindsay.
My hand goes limp in his.
&nb
sp; Zach is shaking his head. “Um, no.” He points somewhere far across the room. The hostess looks at me, sees that I’m a stranger, smiles apologetically, and leads us to a table for two over there.
I slide into my seat across from him, the heat of the lights making my face feel hot, or maybe I’m wearing too much makeup. Our waitress, Taryn, places two menus down in front of us. Zach immediately picks his up and starts to read, but his expression is still strained, still distant. She returns seconds later with a plate of steaming garlic bread, and my stomach rumbles, but I don’t reach for it.
The tips of my ears start to get a little hot, and my neck, too, and I feel stupid and so, so embarrassed.
“We don’t have to do this,” I say, and am surprised to hear my voice coming out angry.
“Do what? Order?” Zach says stiffly. “I don’t think they can read our minds. Unless you know something I don’t.”
I don’t laugh, though I know he wants me to.
“Any of it. We don’t have to do this.” I gesture at our table, at both of us. “I’d rather know now if that’s the case.”
I’m expecting him to feign confusion or something, but he just puts down his menu and sighs. “I’m sorry, Addie,” he says. “This is the nicest restaurant I could think of, and it didn’t even occur to me that…I mean, I feel like an idiot.”
Zach leans across the table then and asks, his voice earnest, “Do you want to…we can leave if you want.”
I think about it for a few seconds, my face and neck still warm, the glare of the lights still too much. But then I focus on Zach’s eyes, gray and deep and apologetic. Even though I’m annoyed at him, they send a jolt through my body.
If I storm out, make him take me back home, I’d be ruining something I’ve wanted since practically the moment I met him. Not just getting to date Zach, to spend time with him under the full disclosure that we like each other, but also that vibrant, inextinguishable feeling coursing through my veins whenever we’re together.
It’s like he pries my eyes open with his smile, with his touch, with his presence.
“And let perfectly good garlic bread go to waste?” I say, still a little bit angry, but Zach smiles slowly, relieved.
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