“White stripe? You’re sure it’s not a clown fish you’re looking for?” asks the spiky-haired teenager who is helping us.
Zach gives him an unimpressed look. “Yeah, I’m sure. It wasn’t a long stripe. Not even a big one. Just, like, a white mark.”
We try another store, where the manager is this super tall guy, like quarterback big, except in his forties. He is very knowledgeable about all things goldfish, and maybe even a little judgmental. “Sure,” he says after we explain what we’re looking for. “I’ll show you our troubling and we’ll see if there’s one that meets your very specific criteria.”
“Troubling?” I echo.
“A group of goldfish is a troubling. Like a herd of cows.” He flicks his gaze over us, like he’s not sure what they even teach in school anymore. I’m not, either; I thought all groups of fish were called schools. “I bet you didn’t have him in a big enough tank. That’s always it. And to think some people put them in bowls. They can grow to be over a foot. How would you like to live in a bowl all your life?”
I know he means “you” in the general sense, but it sounds pretty accusing. Zach and I exchange a glance, and I bite my lip to keep from laughing. I wouldn’t like to live in a fish tank, regardless of the size, but I don’t see the point in saying this out loud.
Being in a pet store reminds me of how animal-crazy I used to be in elementary school. Before music, horses were the great love of my life—my room and notebooks were covered in cutouts of ponies. Since I couldn’t have a horse, I’d drag Dad into a pet store whenever I could and try to convince him I desperately needed a gerbil or rabbit or parrot. We owned a tiny gray Lhasa apso for a whopping twenty-eight hours once. Mom freaked out because Caleb was allergic and the dog wasn’t hypoallergenic, so we returned it, and there was talk of going back in the next few months and getting one that shed less. I’m not sure why we never did.
Zach peers into the giant aquarium full of goldfish that look, to me, exactly the same as the fish I saw in his house.
“What do you think?” I ask when the guy goes to attend to another customer, leaving us to decide. Personally, I am starting to wonder if Zach is crazy. Maybe it’s too good to be true that I would like a normal, well-adjusted boy who likes me back.
“They just seem very obviously not the same fish.”
He sighs and walks around to the other side of the aquarium to look more closely at a particular fish that is in the process of eating something.
“Zach,” I say, realization dawning on me as to why a person could possibly be this obsessed with replacing a goldfish. “Did you do something to Goldie Hawn?” I drop my voice so Judgy McJudgerson doesn’t overhear, even though he’s about two aisles away. “Did you kill him?”
Zach’s eyes widen. “What? No!” he says, and I laugh, not believing it for a second.
“No, I swear,” he insists. “I just found him that way this morning.”
“Right. Well, you seem awfully invested for just having found his body.”
Zach shakes his head and looks at me. “It really had nothing to do with me,” he says. “I just…Kev—for how annoying and mouthy he tries to be—is actually kind of a sensitive kid. He is. Don’t look so shocked.”
“I’m not,” I lie.
He straightens to his full height now and runs his hand through his hair, which just makes it look even more like he might have been electrocuted. “I mean, Kevin is fourteen and obviously knows about the circle of life and all that, but even I was sad when I saw Goldie just lying there floating at the top of the tank. It just sucks to watch something go from being alive to being dead. No warning, no in-between. And we’ve had him for three years. I just hoped Kev wouldn’t have to know.”
Zach shakes his head when the manager comes back to ask if we’ve found what we’re looking for.
We leave and try another store, the last pet store in town, and the fish area is close to the loud, squawking bird area, which doesn’t seem like the best idea if those birds ever get free, and we circle the tanks over and over again, looking for the right fish, but Zach keeps coming back to one that has sidled up to the glass and is peering right back at us. With our heads pressed close together, I can smell citrus laundry detergent and sweat and the slightest hint of cigarette smoke on Zach. I watch him while he nods at this fish. He runs his hand through his hair worriedly as he leans against the counter while he’s paying, continuously looking back at the water-filled bag we’re taking Goldie Hawn’s twin home in and asking if I think it’s fine that this fish’s mark is closer to the mouth than the eye. I think it’s kind of the sweetest thing I’ve ever seen in my life.
But when I mention this to him, he says, “Nah, you’d do the same if you had a younger sibling,” but he’s smiling a little bit.
And I don’t know if it’s true—what I’d be like as an older sister—but I remain firm in my conviction of his sweetness.
Later, once Goldie Hawn II has been acclimated to the tank and Zach has gone to work and I’m back at home, arguing with Caleb about cleaning the bathroom, I get a text from Zach.
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 a boy who 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 he does write 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 seeing him. 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 made you, 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.
&n
bsp; 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 hell is Zach?
“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?
This isn’t my life.
It can’t be my life.
Who is Zach?
“How did it work?”
“The procedure? I’m not too sure. I know they use electrodes—these black patchy things hooked up to a machine. Or do you mean how we were able to get them to do it without your parents knowing?” She pauses, but I don’t answer, so she addresses the latter question. “We used our fake IDs. You had it done as Kathleen Kelly. They thought you were nineteen.”
I glance up at that. So we did get use out of them, like she wanted.
“Who was my doctor?” It’s such a stupid question. Mundane.
“Overton. The old one.”
Dr. Hunt must have done the procedure when I was twelve. Overton Sr. removed Zach. And Overton Jr. really had never met me.
“But how?” I ask again. “Nobody else knew him? My parents have never even mentioned him. How?”
“We never told your parents you got the procedure done. You were really upset after everything with him, and they knew that. So when you asked your family not to bring him up again, they were only too happy to agree. None of our friends at school really knew him. The biggest problem was his dumb-ass friends would approach you and try to talk to you—mostly at the beginning.”
People I thought were Katy’s friends.
The girl at the mall—Ashley—who said she’d met me.
God.
Oh God.
Still leaning over the steering wheel, I bury my face in my hands and cry. Quiet, heavy tears that start from my chest and weave their way up.
This is not my life.
None of this can be true.
And yet—here are the pieces, falling together, interlocking. Making sense.
My whole life is a lie.
“I’m so sorry,” Katy says. “I only wanted you to not be so sad. I didn’t even want you to have the procedure, but you were so sure. I’d never seen you so upset.”
I can’t even answer her. I can only continue weeping, shaking silently.
Oh God.
What do I do now?
“I’ll tell you everything you want to know,” Katy says, squeezing my shoulder. “Everything I remember. Stuff you told me. I’ll tell you how you met and everything you told me.”
Everything she remembers.
What about me?
Somehow Katy has one giant chunk of my life, and my family has the other. What do I have?
What have I done?
“No,” I say, lifting my head from the steering wheel. I don’t want her to tell me what happened.
“O-okay.” Katy seems surprised. “Addie, I’m really, really sorry. I swear I didn’t know about Rory. And I should have told you right away when you started seeing the…Zach, but I was just…I didn’t know how to handle it or whether it was the right thing.”
I nod, but say nothing.
I feel numb, like a stranger in a completely new and foreign world. Katy gives me the closest thing to a hug she can manage with me sitting catatonic, leaning over the wheel and looking out the windshield.
“Will you be okay?” she asks.
I nod again, and then she is reluctantly opening the door, scrambling out of the car. I stay there for minutes, hours, staring out the window. Trying to make sense, for the second time in twenty-four hours, of an entirely new version of my life.
BEFORE
Early August
Zach is working today, and I’ve just ridden over from my viola lesson. Since his dad is at a dentist’s appointment and the store is dead, I am sitting cross-legged on the counter, wistfully scrolling through the latest pictures Katy has sent of her trip.
“Did your dad always want to own a movie store?” I ask as Zach works on the computer a few feet away. He’s ordering some new horrodies.
“No way,” he says. “We used to sell mostly music back in the day, but the only thing selling worse than DVDs is CDs. It’s all digital.”
Then he points at the screen and says, “Look at this one.” I squint at a picture of a man in a business suit, his pants rolled up to the knees, holding a briefcase and standing in a literal pool of what is quite obviously ketchup. Of course.
“It’s by a British dude named Moyer. He was number one on Cinema Tomorrow’s list of up-and-coming directors, and his first film was pretty good, but obviously not as good as what Ciano was making when he first started. Do you know what’s so great about Ciano, like, specifically?” Zach says.
“What is so great about Ciano, like, specifically?” I ask.
“He nearly died.” Which is not what I’m expecting him to say. “Rotary Windclock—you know, the third one I gave you—was inspired by it. When he was nineteen and in college, he was out late one night alone when he got jumped by four guys, mugged, beaten to a pulp, and left for dead.”
“Holy crap,” I say.
“I know. There was no one around, and by the time they found him, he was unconscious. He had to relearn how to walk. Like, he still walks with a cane because of it.
“Anyway, the point is that when he made it into a movie, he decided not to make it heartwarming or depressing or a story about overcoming or whatever. He didn’t even aim for funny, which is at least the respectable cousin of silly.” Zach opens up another web page while he talks, pauses to read its synopsis of a movie, then closes it. “He said in an interview that his producing partner wanted him to do a documentary about his journey back, like regaining his locomotion and stuff, but he refused.”
“That might actually have been pretty interesting,” I say.
“Yeah, but that’s his point.” Zach focuses on me now, his eyes intense, voice passionate, the way he always gets when he talks movies. “That was his power. You take the worst thing that’s ever happened to you and you tell it any way you want to. You make it silly. You reclaim it. The point is that it’s yours. And everything that happens to you, not just the bad stuff, is like that. Make it whatever the hell you want it to be. The entire interview is a fucking revelation. I should find the article and email it to you,” he says.
“Do it,” I say, reaching for my phone, which has just vibrated in my pocket.
I show Zach the picture Katy sent. “They were literally outside Carnegie Hall.”
Zach squints at my phone, then stands and stretches. His T-shirt jumps up, revealing his stomach and the waistband of his underwear peeking just above his jeans.
“You’re making yourself miserable,” he says, playing with a strand of my hair. I untuck my feet and let them dangle so Zach is standing between my legs. “Maybe Katy is having a horrible time but she’s taking Ciano’s advice and making it sound wonderful.”
I roll my eyes at him but hold his shirt between my fingers and pull him in closer.
“I’m not that miserable,” I breathe against his lips.
“Now,” he says, smiling. His lips are so soft, his tongue warm inside my mouth. His breath is a little cigarette-y, but he’s always chewing mint gum lately to decrease the taste. I wrap my legs around him and kiss him harder. If this is misery, I want to be miserable for the rest of my life, die miserable.
We are tangled all around each other when the door of the store suddenly bursts open, a faint breeze—the first real hint of summer passing—wafting in.
I twist my upper body around to find Raj gaping at us, his jaw a few inches lo
wer than normal.
“Hey, dude,” Zach says casually.
I spin around so my legs are on the counter again, no longer locking Zach’s body around me. “Hey, Raj.”
He stands there for a good thirty seconds, not speaking, before he says, “So I hit an electrical pole on my way over.”
“Holy shit. Is your mom’s car okay?” Zach asks.
“I was on foot,” Raj says, speaking in this slow, dazed way I’ve never heard from him before. “Anyway, now I realize it must have been a person.”
Zach and I exchange perplexed looks.
“A person,” Raj repeats. “Because my glasses are old and my eyes keep playing tricks on me. It’s happening right now.” Oh—he’s talking about us. I guess Zach hasn’t yet told Raj that we are more than friends.
Zach evades his friend’s eyes, looks down at his computer, and says with no emotion in his voice, “Really.”
“Really,” Raj echoes, still looking at me, stupefied. I feel my ears get a little hot. And then he seems to shake off the bewilderment and strides toward the counter. “I was playing Dungeon World 2 last night, and I think I have a new idea for our next film.”
“Sweet. What is it?” Zach asks.
Raj launches into a tale about dragons and a mall cop and a blood-vomiting sea animal with the ability to exist on land so long as it has mated.
“That’s really disturbing,” I say, glancing up from the exclamation-laden text (Omg, so cool!!! You must be having the BEST time!!!! ) I’m sending back to Katy.
“Right?” Raj says, misunderstanding my use of the word “disturbing.” “It’s genius.”
“It’s almost the exact same plot as that Van Durgen movie Truth or Troll,” Zach says.
“That movie was shit,” Raj says, and I’m not a hundred percent sure, but I think he means it as an insult.
“And still the highest-grossing Swedish movie last year.”
“So that’s a no?” Raj asks sadly.
Everyone We've Been Page 16