I looked for things in the pieces I played, for the yelp my mother would give when Dad jumped around a corner, surprising her by flying in an hour early because of unbelievably good weather in the Keys. I looked for that feeling of certainty, of everything right and in its place, instead of broken and scattered and wrong. For an explanation of why everything had fallen apart without warning, why there seemed to be holes and cracks in my life I couldn’t explain.
But mostly, I found things in my music. Hope. Distraction. Happiness. I found those things and held on to them as long as the piece lasted, and then I tucked them back inside a melody, where they’d be unreachable.
I explain this to Zach after the concert. If he thinks I’m crazy, he doesn’t show it.
We talk about that Bach second movement the rest of the drive home. I stop short of calling it our song, because Katy once told me that sharing a song with someone is on par with sharing a pet. It just should not happen. For everyone involved.
But Zach says, “Air on a Thong. I kind of like it.”
I throw my head against the headrest when I laugh.
But I think he agrees that somewhere in the second phrase, in between the tremor of the violin strings, there’s a little bit of us.
AFTER
January
After me and my parents get back from Overton, I spend the next three hours tearing my room apart. Searching every drawer of my dresser, every corner of my closet, under my mattress, beneath the rug. I throw all my clothes out of my closet and search the pockets of pants I haven’t worn in years. Looking for a note, a T-shirt I don’t remember, a picture.
A memory.
Bus Boy is one thing: his full-wattage smile, the weird ease I feel around him. And I want to see him, I like being with him, but even being with him is so incomplete.
His first name is a start, but with more, I could find more. I feel disgusted at myself for ever walking into Overton voluntarily. Why would I do that? What could have happened?
Why would I knowingly rob myself of a life that had real experiences? And if it’s true that I did, then I owe it to myself to figure this out, to piece everything together myself.
I could ask Katy to explain it to me, to tell me what happened as she remembers it, but I don’t want her version of the truth. I don’t even know how much I can trust it. I want to find all the pieces that have been lying around me all this time—that must still be lying around somewhere—and fit them together to rebuild the scattered fragments of my life.
And I need to do it alone.
I keep searching through everything I own, looking for a clue.
Maybe two initials scribbled on the back of my sneakers, or a name etched into the wall behind my headboard.
I come up empty.
Of course I come up empty.
Did I throw out everything that would remind me of him—of Zach?
There are so many gaps in my life—missing pieces. There always have been.
And I barely even noticed. How is that possible?
It’s past nine, late enough that I could conceivably go to sleep, but I’m sick of lying awake at night, tossing and turning.
I want answers.
My mother is upstairs in her room, talking to Bruce on the phone, so it doesn’t take much to escape the house unnoticed.
It’s dark out, night creeping in where evening was, and though the roads are icy, I drive faster than I need to.
Without having a particular destination in mind, I wind up at this park my parents used to bring Caleb and me to when we were little. I would hang upside down, pretending to be a bat, and stare up at the sky, which was the brightest shade of blue. I’d stay that way till I felt the blood rushing to my head, and then I’d pull myself right-side up, and even without the pumping and swirling of blood between my ears, there was never a doubt in my mind that I was alive.
The park is completely deserted. I climb out of the car, snow crunching underneath my shoes.
The too-small swing is wet, and I wipe it down with my sleeve. It sinks from my weight when I sit. Instead of actually swinging, I just close my eyes and twist and twist around, the chains that hold up the swing wrapping around themselves.
Eyes closed, I spin and spin and spin until my head feels light and my stomach turns. The air is so cold it makes my ears hurt.
I hum a song with a melody that feels like getting lost, every phrase a new path, and none of them lead back home. Then “Air on the G String,” the piece that I think first made me see the boy. In my mind, in the night of my closed eyes, I imagine that I’m playing it instead of humming. Feel the weight of my viola underneath my jaw. My bow, weightless, as much a part of my body as my own fingers.
Zach.
I don’t need to say it out loud.
I plant my feet on the ground, pulling myself to a stop, though the world continues to spin around me, the park whirling like a merry-go-round, circling me.
On the first turn, I see a red-haired boy with his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his jeans.
On the second turn, he grins at me and steals all the night.
On the third turn, I breathe in, adjusting to the still world.
“Are you okay?” he asks as I try to refocus on him.
How are you here? Who are you? Why do I feel this way with you?
“Zach,” I say out loud this time, slowly, matching his face to the sound of his name, the cadence of the person in front of me.
He smiles at me, his gray eyes wide. “That’s it. That feels like mine.”
I know he can’t really make that call, that it’s my mind confirming that the face of this boy I’m seeing fits the name I’ve been given. A flicker, maybe, of my memory.
A wave of loneliness rushes over me then, because there is no Bus Boy. There’s only me and my mind and what it’s been trying to tell me all this time, without finding the words. The details. The facts.
But the air is still warm with his breath, and his eyes catch the moonlight, twinkling at me. He still feels real to me.
This invisible boy is still here, to me.
Even if he’s a figment of my imagination.
Even if he is a ghost, gone, just like Rory.
He stretches out his hand, the wind making his hair tickle his forehead. I stick out my hand and let him pull me up from the swing.
Are you dead? I want to ask, but he can’t tell me that. I slip my fingers between his and he squeezes, his palm warm.
You can’t be dead.
We sit on a bench, damp with moisture, and I can’t stop looking at him. Zach. Memory Zach.
“What?” he asks, quiet in the dark.
“It drives me crazy the way you’re dressed,” I say, even though it’s the last thing on my mind. “I get that you’re not really cold, that you won’t die from hypothermia”—especially if you’re already dead—“but it’s still really bizarre that you’re wearing that shirt when it’s so cold out.”
I unzip my puffy coat and peel it off. Then I hold out the left side to him. “Here.”
One of his eyebrows skitters up, but he takes it, amused. Scoots closer. Closer.
The warmth of his body against mine makes me lightheaded.
I wrap the right side of the coat around me. He pulls his half of the jacket around his body the best he can, which is ridiculous because it is much too small for him, not to mention both of us. But we are sharing it just the same, our bodies pressed close to each other, our breaths loud and warm, indistinguishable.
“Better?” he asks, the hint of a laugh in his voice, but his face is weirdly serious. And his eyes seem glued to my lips.
It makes me self-conscious. It makes me think too much about his lips.
“Better,” I whisper, and his face is suddenly even closer than before. He smells like a mix of mint and cigarettes.
“Zach?”
Zach. His name is Zach. In the car yesterday, Katy didn’t talk about him like he was dead. Neither did my parents. He can�
��t be dead.
“Hmm?” he says, still so, so close.
“I want to find you. The real you.”
BEFORE
Early October
Once school starts, it gets harder and harder for Zach and me to see each other. Especially since he’s just gotten another job, working at the Cineplex at the mall. When we’re not at school, he’s either working or doing something with Raj, and I’m at orchestra practice or viola lessons or doing something with Katy.
So when Zach tells me his parents are going out of town for the weekend, and Kevin is at work, and he doesn’t have to be at the store, it feels like fate is screaming at us.
I make up something about going to study at Katy’s and then wait outside for Zach’s piece-of-shit car. I’ve grown to appreciate its tacky bright blue color, the way it whines every single time Zach hits the gas.
“Hey, you,” Zach says as I climb into the passenger’s seat.
I lean over and kiss him. “Hey, yourself.” A drop of water falls on my chin and I giggle, then brush Zach’s wild and wet hair up.
The car smells like cologne, and my ears warm as I realize he put some thought into what we’d be doing today. We hadn’t said it in so many words, but we had both clearly been thinking it. I’d brought a small bag with a toothbrush and hairbrush and makeup and other very important items.
“Where did your parents go again?” I ask Zach.
“To Caldwell. They can’t get enough of Russell.” The last time I was over, Zach’s mom had insisted Zach show me something of the hours of footage he’d taken of his nephew when they’d gone up to Caldwell the week before. Zach blushed and pulled out his phone, showing me a pink-skinned baby with brown hair.
“He’s adorable,” I whispered, staring at the video of a cooing, wriggling newborn. I felt a tug at my chest, an overwhelming desire to reach through the screen and grab hold of Russell’s tiny pinkie. I like babies, but the thought of babysitting has always terrified me. What if I do something wrong? What if something bad happens and there’s no one to help me? Maybe I inherited Mom’s slight aversion to little kids, or maybe it’s because, being the youngest, I haven’t had much experience with them.
Russell is adorable, though, if only because I know they have a bunch of good-looking men in their family and he’d have to go seriously wrong to not wind up at Adorable.
We drive the rest of the way to his house, talking about school and his dad’s store and the solo Mrs. Dubois gave me a week ago.
“So,” Zach says when his car belches to a stop outside the garage. “What shall we do today?”
One side of his lips is tilted up, his gray eyes warm and twinkling, and I lean over and slide my hand up, up his thigh.
“Oh,” he says, fully smiling now. “I can get behind that.”
“Oh my God,” I say, laughing, and lean over even more to kiss his neck.
“What? I didn’t mean it like that,” he says, laughing too. He slides his seat back from the wheel and starts to pull me into his lap, and the idea of doing anything else but that seems impossible.
And then there is a loud rap on the driver’s window.
Speaking just loudly enough for us to hear with the glass still up, Raj says, “What are we doing today?”
BEFORE
Mid-October
Life continues to be very cruel to us and then one day, about two weeks later, I’m sprawled out over my bed, surrounded by Spanish homework, with zero desire to tackle it. So I pick up my viola and am playing an elegy by Stravinsky, a deceptively slow-moving piece that is bittersweet and sounds like falling or watching a shadowy graveyard or the kind of heavy storm that rolls in cloud by cloud, when I get a call from At Home Movies.
“Hello?”
“Hey, baby. I got let go from Pizza Hut. Which, I’m told, means fired.”
“Kevin?” I ask after a moment of trying to place the voice.
“You know it, babe.”
In the background, I hear Zach yelling something.
“You got fired? What happened?” I ask.
“I called my boss a fox. I guess that’s not allowed,” he says dismissively.
“Oh my God,” I say, swallowing a laugh so as not to encourage him. “That’s terrible.”
“Eh,” Kevin replies, and I can picture him shrugging.
I am about to ask why he called—other than to tell me he got fired—when he says, “Zach says hi.”
“Say hi back,” I tell Kevin.
“She says hi,” I hear Kevin say. “Zach also says that friend of yours, the blond one, is a babe and would be perfect for me.”
“Kevin,” I hear Zach say, and then there’s some sort of scrambling, scratching sound. And then a slap that is followed by Kevin snort-laughing and continuing to slap what sounds like the counter.
“Oh God, sorry about that,” Zach says, sounding a bit out of breath.
“It’s okay. I can’t believe he got fired,” I say.
“Can’t you?” Zach deadpans, and I laugh.
“So, listen, my parents are going to Caldwell again, and I was supposed to watch Kevin until they get back tomorrow, but now he’s fired, so he’s going with them.”
“Okay,” I say, mimicking his tone, “that’s good to know.”
“No, no,” Zach says, and I can hear the smile in his voice, picture him bringing the phone closer to his mouth as he speaks. “They’re gone till Saturday. With Kevin.”
Oooh. Now I’m catching on. “What about the store?”
“It might be closing earlier tonight. You never know.”
I faux-gasp. “Can you do that? Your dad will freak.”
“We haven’t had a customer in six hours. Somehow I doubt in two—”
A scrambling sound, Mr. Laird’s voice, a pause, and then, “So where were we, babe?”
“Kevin, stop flirting with my girlfriend!” I hear Zach say, and I can’t help smiling. My girlfriend.
Zach’s girlfriend.
“Zach’s back pretending to stock shelves now,” Kevin informs me. “He says please let him know of your decision.”
“Tell him yes,” I say.
“She says yes.”
“Zach said to tell you that just so you know”—he pauses while Zach passes on a message I can’t hear—“he has sent a strongly worded text to Raj.”
More mumbling from Zach.
“With threats of dismemberment and/or”—more mumbling—“Raj wearing the nun costume for the next ten films”—more mumbling—“if he comes within a mile of our house tonight.”
I laugh into the phone.
“Why can’t Raj come to our house?” Kevin asks Zach.
“Tell Zach,” I say, “that I do not condone dismemberment or threats of any kind, but that sounds perfect.”
Kevin relays the message. I’m already texting Katy to cover for me and pretend I’m spending the night at her place.
U slotmachine! she texts back instantly. But done.
“Have a good trip to Caldwell tonight,” I tell Kevin.
“It would be better if you were going,” Kevin says.
“Kevin,” I hear Zach say on the other end. “Didn’t you get fired for this?”
BEFORE
Mid-October
I haven’t been this nervous about seeing Zach since the day we met. When he opens the front door, we stand there and grin awkwardly at each other. Then Zach holds the door open for me to come in, and I do.
So we continue smiling awkwardly at each other in the foyer until Zach laughs and says, “There is no way to be smooth about this. Do you want to come upstairs?”
I laugh now, too, and he leads me up to his room, holding my hand.
I tell him how I only just managed to get here. Despite the pains I’d taken to create an alibi with Katy, Mom set up camp in the living room tonight and patted the couch as I approached to ask if I could borrow her car. Caleb was already in the chair across from her, his hairy feet on the ottoman, and his eyebrows went way up
when I mumbled something about wanting to meet Katy to practice for orchestra and how we had a chem project and also she was tutoring me in English. I was not a good liar.
“I did pretty well in English,” Caleb said. “Want me to tutor you?”
“That’s okay,” I said quickly, and shot him a pointed look. A part of me was worried; Caleb might decide to call me out just because, just to remind me that we aren’t allies. But he only smirked at me. To my surprise, Mom was relatively easy to convince, but she made me promise to spend next weekend at Dad’s, since Caleb had been there the last two, and I’d seen my father once all summer.
“Sure, I promise!” I said, a little too quickly and brightly to be believable. How had I made it into Zach’s movie again?
Zach cracks up as I relay this to him.
His room is cleaner than I’ve ever seen it. All the DVDs usually strewn on the floor everywhere are stacked against the wall. Some of the posters that were half falling off the walls are taped on properly, and his bed is neatly made. I feel honored that he picked up for me, and then I feel nervous that he picked up for me, and then I don’t know how I feel, but my heart beats an unsteady staccato against my ribs.
I put my bag on the table, which is full of books and camera equipment.
“You know,” Zach says when I turn around again, “we don’t have to do anything tonight.” I can almost feel the heat drifting off his face; his cheeks are a warm red. “We can just, like, watch movies. Or…”
While he’s trying to think of another suggestion, I press my lips against his. He looks caught off guard but recovers quickly and kisses me back. We back up until his legs hit the bed. He lies back against the mattress, with me on top of him, our lips never losing contact.
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