Everyone We've Been

by Sarah Everett

  “I’m an idiot,” he says.

  “I’m not going to argue with you,” I say, and he laughs. I order for both of us—the chef’s special—which neither of us has ever had before: corzetti stampati al limone. The pasta is round and flat, shaped like coins, with lemon sauce and cheese sprinkled over it. It is hot and cheesy and lemon-tangy, the best thing I’ve tasted in years.

  “Hmmm.”

  “Mmmm.”

  We take turns making increasingly questionable-sounding murmurs of appreciation over the food, and as I do, I’m conscious of the fact that I rarely do this—let go, enjoy myself, wrap myself in a happy moment, even if it means being silly.

  I make a concerted effort to indulge myself, to dip myself in the buzzing, happy, warm Zachness of this moment.

  “Good.”

  “So good.”

  “You should be a professional meal orderer.”

  “Only if I got to eat everything I ordered.”

  “Of course,” Zach says.

  “I’d try something new every single day,” I say.

  “I like that about you.”

  “You like what?” I glance up at Zach, but tearing my gaze away from my food for too long seems like blasphemy, so I quickly go back to it.

  “That you try things. That you haven’t made up your mind about every single thing,” he says. “When I offered you a horrody, you went for it, which not everyone would. Some people would leave with only what they came for. And then you watched it—and went for all the rest.”

  I chew more slowly now. “I was kind of swayed….I mean, I don’t promise I’d have done the same thing if you were really unattractive.” This isn’t untrue, but I am suddenly feeling emotional about what Zach has just said.

  I’ve never thought of myself as open. I think of myself as somehow incomplete, desperate to find things that will fill me, make me feel like I’m really living.

  I blink rapidly because, oh my God, I can’t cry in here. On my first date with Zach. Over something so stupid.

  He doesn’t notice what’s happening, and he’s grinning at what I last said. “And then when I asked you to be in my movie, you were game. And you were up for everything. Even the mattress-hoisting thing with Raj. Sorry about that, by the way.”

  And as if the only way to prevent the crying is to channel all that emotion into the exact opposite feeling, I start giggling. It starts in my chest, little ripples of laughter, rising, frothing upward. Unfortunately, I’m still chewing, and a small piece of food gets caught in my windpipe, so now I’m choking a little and laughing a lot. Which sets Zach off. Which makes me laugh harder.

  I reach for my glass of water and gulp it down, but it seems to go down the wrong way, so now I’m actually coughing and my face is hotter than ever—both from the coughing and the awareness that we’re making a scene—and it’s completely embarrassing. Zach is laughing so hard he’s wheezing, but then he abruptly stops and his eyes go wide and he says, “Wait, you’re actually okay, right? You’re not actually choking?”

  But with all the coughing and laughing, all I can do is nod. The couple at the table next to ours looks over at us and I lose all composure again and I think the last time I was this silly was in, maybe, fifth grade, but the laughter is like the contents of a bottle whose cork has sprung off. I can’t stop it. I can’t push it back in.

  Zach, no longer laughing, says, “It’s not like you’re about to die on me, right?”

  I shake my head, sobering up the slightest bit, the coughing receding a little, but I still can’t trust myself to speak.

  “Wait, is that yes, you’re fine, or no, you’re not?”

  I nod, and when I see Zach’s wide eyes, I dissolve into a fit of giggles again, which makes the coughing resume. And then Zach is dragging his chair around to my side of the table, like all the way around, so our chairs are touching, and then he puts his hand on my arm and says, “I need you to nod if you’re okay, Addie, and shake if you’re not.”

  Get a grip, Addison, I chide myself.

  The hysterics cease for a bit, and though my eyes are still watering, I nod.

  “O-kay,” I wheeze out, except it sounds like oke. Maybe oh. There’s not even really a hard K sound.

  Zach shakes his head at me, fingers still on my arm, still sending jolts of current through my bare flesh. “Shh,” he says, to discourage me from more attempts at speaking. “And good,” he says. Then, more quietly, his eyes dancing as a smile slides across his face, “You’re, like, my favorite person right now.”

  There’s a second of nonsensical neuron firings in my brain, and I’m glad I don’t have permission to speak, because my heart is tingling and blood is coursing through my body so quickly I think it would sound like an ocean if I tried to speak. Just a roar of currents and waves and things I can’t control, threatening to come up or apart. Have I always had this much inside me?

  It’s not that I don’t feel like myself, either; I do. I just feel like a different version of myself at exactly this moment.

  So instead of speaking, I just lift three fingers up at Zach.

  He frowns, trying to comprehend. “Three…top three?”

  I point at him, then raise three fingers again.

  “Me,” he says. “Top three?”

  I shrug, and he bursts out laughing.

  His full, uncontrollable laugh that feels as warm as the temperature of the sun on my skin. “God, you’re really pissed about this restaurant, aren’t you?”

  AFTER

  January

  “So I get that I’m remembering you, but why like this? Are you a ghost?” I ask him, cranking up the heat in my car when we’re back in it.

  I guess the pieces started falling together while I was playing in my room earlier. Hundreds of questions and guesses moving in slow motion until they collided with one another just now, until the single most messed-up day of my life finally started to make a crumbling kind of sense.

  “The real you,” I clarify when he still hasn’t responded.

  I obviously don’t remember Bus Boy. The “real-life” Bus Boy.

  But I know I am asking the right questions. It’s the only version of things that makes sense and that doesn’t make me a complete lunatic.

  If I’m right, though—if he is a memory—I have a million of them, and none of them are like this. Life-sized, real enough to talk with, to touch. Could he be a ghost?

  I shoot a quick glance at him, his long legs cramped in my small car, and wonder exactly what he was to me. What I was to him. Blood rushes to my face and I feel angry with myself. Of course, I’m crushing on an invisible boy. The fact that I know I didn’t completely make him up offers some relief, but it is mild at best.

  “Well?” I prompt, impatient for his response.

  “Well.” Bus Boy pauses thoughtfully. He sticks his arm out and flexes his hand so his fingers press against the cool window. “I can’t go through objects. But maybe that means nothing. I wouldn’t call myself an expert on ghosts.”

  Or anything, I think bitterly. I mean, if we were to tally up the number of things he does know, particularly on the subject of himself, we’d be firmly at zero.

  I cross my arms over my chest. “So, then, you might be dead?”

  “I suppose.”

  “In which case, you’d be a ghost.”

  “I…could see that,” Bus Boy says carefully, and I roll my eyes, but my heart is starting to feel like a rock in my chest.

  What if the real him is dead?

  Did my parents know about him? Did they remove him intentionally when they removed Rory’s memory?

  But if that’s the case, why didn’t my mother mention him when she told me about my little brother?

  We don’t seem to be getting anywhere, sitting in the car, watching our breath mist the windows, so I drive home. Bus Boy and I say goodbye in my driveway. Then he climbs out of the car and starts to walk down the street. I watch him for as long as I can, his figure growing tiny before,
in one blink, blending into the darkness. Did he disappear? Or did he just get too far away to see?

  I hate that I can’t tell.

  I quietly slip into the house, ready to endure another night of tossing and turning, my mind whirring with too many things.

  In the morning, the atmosphere in the house is nearly as cold as the one in my car last night. Neither Mom nor Caleb seems sure of what to say to me. I leave without saying anything to them, without even having breakfast.

  I corner Katy at her locker before first period. I know she’s used to determining the duration and continuation of her relationships, but she can’t do that with me. I won’t let her. And I need backup. I need my best friend.

  “Oh, hey!” She looks surprised, caught off guard when I corner her at her locker. “Sorry I didn’t call you back last night. Working on those monologues is killing me. Literally killing me. You’re so lucky that you don’t have to perform a piece or anything for NYU. You’ve applied and it’s done, but my process is just starting. So that’s why I’ve been so busy.” I fold my arms across my chest and let her dig herself into a hole with her explanation. “Plus, my throat has been killing me. Maybe it’s all the practicing, but I told my mom to produce proof of my mumps vaccination by the time I get home today, because I am not one hundred percent sure I’ve had it. And this is not a regular sore throat.”

  “I need to talk to you,” I say.

  “I’m serious. Cough drops aren’t helping. Am I running a fever?” She grabs my hand and puts it against her forehead.

  “You feel fine.”

  “I feel awful,” she says, but a second later, she’s waving violently at Mitch Enns, who is en route to class with his football posse but breaks away to pretend to reel her toward him. She laughs and flicks her wrist, dismissing him and the rest of his crew.

  “Maybe Mitch gave you something,” I say pointedly, and her eyes snap to mine, hurt at my impatient tone.

  She decides to ignore it. “Did I tell you Mitch found my bracelet? It was in his car.”

  “I thought you said you drove your car the day you hung out?” My voice is still sharp, accusing.

  Katy’s cheeks flush. “That was a different day.” She tucks her hair behind her ear. “He looked all over for it—he looked through all the dressing rooms at Act! Out! because he didn’t know which one was mine. He checked all the classrooms and the girls’ bathrooms after school and told the custodian I’d lost it. I didn’t even know he was doing all that, but it ended up being in his car the whole time. Can you belie—”

  “Katy, you’ve been avoiding me,” I say, cutting her off.

  “I’ve been busy,” she says, proving my point by avoiding eye contact.

  “I need your help. Urgently,” I say, and my throat tightens as everything I’ve learned rushes into my mind.

  Rory.

  I’m not imagining Bus Boy.

  I have pieces, but I need help ordering them, figuring out where the corners go.

  She frowns, gauging my no-nonsense expression, and scans the hallway. “Okay. Where do you want to go?”

  We sneak out of the school building as the warning bell rings and wind up in my car, Katy in the same seat Bus Boy was in only hours ago.

  “What’s up, Buttercup?” she asks, dropping her backpack on the floor. “Why’s the seat so far back?”

  I blink back the memory of my invisible boy’s long legs cramped in here last night, blink back the tears building in my eyes.

  “My whole family is so fucked up, Katy,” I say, which was not where I intended to start, but it now seems as good a place as any.

  “Hey,” Katy says gently, leaning over to hug me. “What happened? What’s wrong?”

  “I had a baby brother. Rory.” Even now the name feels poisonous and big and small. It means nothing and everything at the same time. “He died when I was eleven because of a mistake I made. And you know Overton? That brain facility outside of town? My parents—well, my mother—had him erased from my mind there. Erased.”

  I feel Katy’s body go rigid beside me. Her arm over my shoulder becomes wooden. After a second, she slips it off and puts her hands in her lap.

  “Oh my God,” she whispers. “Oh my God.”

  “I know,” I say. “I went there yesterday to ask if they could help with my memory lapses and not being able to sleep.”

  She looks at me, surprised, all color drained from her face. “You said it was better—that you were sleeping. That you weren’t seeing him anymore.”

  “I lied,” I tell her sheepishly.

  “Oh God, Addie.” She says it over and over, under her breath.

  “I know,” I say, and I want to reach across and hug her again because she understands. Because she’s my best friend and the only person I could tell this to—tell that my whole life has been a lie—and she’ll understand how much it hurts, how awful everything feels.

  “Anyway, I think Bus Boy is related to Overton and to Rory. I thought for a second that maybe he was my brother, but he can’t be. He’s too old and they look nothing alike.” Also, I think I like him. I’m rambling now, only vaguely aware of Katy turning white as a sheet beside me. “So now I think maybe he got erased along with Rory when I was eleven. I mean, I could be wrong. Maybe I have brain damage from the crash. Maybe it is a Psychological Episode and I’ve imagined up some guy, but I don’t think that’s what this is. He feels familiar. I think I’m remembering him.”

  “Addie,” Katy says, and when I look at her, I see that she is weeping now, the kind of crying where you can’t draw in enough breath. I’m confused because I know she’s shocked about everything I just told her, but that can’t explain her reaction.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask her.

  She’s shaking her head, struggling to find words and air. But finally both start to tumble out. “I told you to let me go to my mom. Oh God, Addie. You made me promise. I didn’t know about Rory. Obviously, you didn’t, either. I n-n-never would have let you if I’d known. We thought it was the f-f-first time. You wanted it to get over what happened.”

  She’s saying words, stuttering them, but not one is making sense. I grab her arm to calm her down.

  “What are you talking about, Katy?”

  “We didn’t know, Addie,” she’s saying now, bawling again. “We didn’t know you’d had it done before.”

  “I don’t understand,” I say, even as some of her words are starting to catch like burs on socks.

  We didn’t know.

  We thought it was the first time.

  “I don’t understand,” I say again.

  Katy takes a deep breath and looks at me.

  “We went back, Addie,” she says, her words and voice finally clear. “You had the procedure done again.”

  BEFORE

  Early August

  “Addie, what do you know about goldfish?” Zach asks, in lieu of saying hello, when I pick up the phone.

  “Don’t they forget everything? Or is that a myth?” I ask.

  “I think that’s a myth,” Zach says. It’s around eleven-thirty in the morning. I’ve just come back from today’s viola lesson and quickly fallen into a William Primrose wormhole. Most of the recordings online are fairly old because he died in the 1980s, but he’s probably the most expressive violist I’ve ever heard. He plays the way you use your fingers or vocal cords, thoughtlessly, naturally, like his viola is part of his body. I would kill for his dexterity. Even after all these years, playing is hard for me. The easier I need a piece to sound, the harder I have to work on it. But it’s worth it, if only for that moment I can play the piece all the way through without thinking about technical things and lose myself in the music completely.

  “Well,” I say now, trying to unwind from practice mode and answer Zach’s question. “They’re gold. They’re fish. Freshwater, I think. And you have one.”

  Zach sighs. “Had,” he says. “He was floating at the top of the fish tank, just, like, sitting there, when I woke
up this morning. I tapped on the glass, trying to wake him up, and then used the net to nudge him, and that didn’t work. His gills aren’t moving. Also, his eyes are this weird concave shape and gray, which they never used to be. I looked online and those are all the signs.”

  “That sucks,” I say. “He seemed…like a good fish.”

  “Oh, he was terrible,” Zach says. “We actually started out with him and another fish—a yellow molly called Molly. But Goldie ate him within, like, six hours of both of them being brought home.”

  “Oh my God,” I laugh. “Still. That sucks.”

  “I mean, he was my brother’s, but…yeah.” I hear what sounds like movement on the other end of the phone. “So, listen, Kev is spending the day at his friend’s place and he doesn’t know yet. And I thought maybe you’d like to help me find an exact replica of Goldie Hawn before he gets home. I hate to overhype it, but it’s going to be pretty mundane.”

  I laugh. “I don’t know. I was going to spend the day doing nothing and maybe practicing for a bit and then going back to doing nothing,” I say. “But I guess I might be able to take some time out of my busy schedule.”

  “Excellent,” Zach says, and I can hear the smile in his voice.

  When he picks me up, half an hour later, he’s wearing a faded green T-shirt with a tiny hole in the neck, and his hair is exceedingly messy. The whole effect is so hilariously disheveled that it makes my stomach flutter. I run my fingers through his hair, because I can, when I kiss him hello in the car.

  “I have to work at four,” Zach says, glancing at the clock on his dashboard. It says 9:12, which I’ve figured out means it’s roughly twelve-something, as it tends to run three hours behind no matter how often Zach resets it. “So we’re going to have to make good time.”

  I shoot him a confused look. “I thought we were picking out a goldfish, not a house. We have three hours.”

  But Zach is right; three hours does leave us pressed for time. Because, as it turns out, we are not looking for a goldfish. We are looking for Goldie Hawn’s identical twin. In the first pet store we go to, there are dozens and dozens of fish, and we press our faces up to the glass and Zach shakes his head in dissatisfaction. “No, he had this one white stripe just under his eye.”