Everyone We've Been

by Sarah Everett

  Katy rolls her eyes. “Um, I was covering my ass.” She laughs now and I manage to force a laugh too. “And please, Sullivan. Are you new here? Best friends come before the-yo-ter friends. By definition, that means I like your secrets better than I like theirs.” She laughs again now, but adds, “Yours feel like mine.”

  I want to keep pushing Katy for more and more answers, but really, there’s only one person I want to hear the truth from. The real Zach.

  “Speaking of secrets,” I say, and urge her to tell me about Mitch Enns, and how her bracelet got to be in his car, and just how often they’ve been “hanging out.” It turns out to be quite a lot, and she doesn’t even seem ready to start referring to him as Rich or Fitch yet.

  “The second he seems bored, his new name is Glitch,” Katy says, and I laugh.

  “I don’t think he’ll get bored, Katy.” I hope she stays with him long enough to find this out herself.

  “Everybody does eventually,” she says, and I think she means her dad and Jason and all the other boys she’s dumped before they had a chance to get sick of her and do it to her first.

  “You can want things, you know,” I tell her now. “Other than Juilliard.”

  “Shut up,” she says, half laughing.

  “It’s true,” I insist. I want to say, You can want a boy to call, and cry about it when he doesn’t, or you can call him yourself. You can want solos and your parents’ love and you don’t have to passive-aggressively fight for them or invent crises. But what I say is, “When you first came to Lyndale, I bet Mrs. Dubois would have given you more solos if you’d asked.”

  “And robbed you of your billions, Chosen One? I doubt it,” she says dismissively. “Did I mention Mitch has a special ringtone for me?”

  As she talks about him, her cheeks redden and she plays with her braid again.

  I wonder if I was this embarrassed the first time I told Katy about Zach. I wonder when I knew I loved him.

  “Hey, Addie? There will be other boys, okay?” Katy says just before we climb out of the car and head back for the rest of the day.

  I swallow and nod, then shut the car door and follow her.

  I know she must be right, but I can only think of one boy at the moment. Well, two, if you count Memory Zach.

  All through last period, I keep glancing at the clock. I might as well have not even come to Spanish for the amount of attention I am paying. But I decide to wait it out. Then, with thirty minutes left in the period, I hand Mr. Hilton the note my “mother” supplied about my dentist’s appointment and leave. I feel Katy’s eyes on me as I walk out, that one perfectly trimmed eyebrow with its acrobatic curve. She’s worked for years on getting it to tilt up just like that to show surprise or curiosity, and it does so now, like, Dentist’s appointment, huh, young lady, even though she wrote the note herself. Fighting a laugh, I run—or slide, thanks to the snow—all the way to my car, crank up the heat, and drive the fifteen minutes to Meridian High. Massive trees, white with snow, leaves bitten off by winter, guard the redbrick building. A few cars wait in front of the entrance, and a couple of students are already walking toward their cars or talking to each other, but school hasn’t let out yet.

  My heart is staging a stampede, each beat a heavy-booted kick to my chest, and I have to fight with myself, argue with my fear, to step out of the car at all. I drag myself toward the building but stop under a tree. I try to blend in, to look like a student who has gotten out early and is waiting for a friend or a ride or a sibling.

  I thought about bringing Memory Zach with me to do this, but I could see things getting awkward quickly. I don’t know if my mind can take the real Zach and the invisible version of him both in one place.

  I try to figure out what I’ll say, what I’ll do, when I see Zach. Should I just walk up? Should I let him walk up?

  I’m turning over seventeen different scenarios in my mind when a sharp trill pierces the air. Instantly the heavy doors of the school burst open and people begin to pour out, laughing, talking, yelling to be heard over each other.

  A couple is holding hands. One very tall boy launches himself onto the shoulders of another boy with an Afro, and they stumble down the front stairs, struggling to stay upright. Everyone around them laughs or bolts out of the way.

  As kids flood out of the doors, my heart is beating, beating, pounding so hard that I stop being able to hear them.

  Then I see him.

  Not Zach, but his best friend, Raj. The one with the glasses and the serious expression from the article. The one who looked like there was so much he wanted to say in the theater that day. That was the expression on his face, I realize now.

  Raj walks down the stairs, and holding my breath, I scan the crowd around him for Zach but don’t find him. No red hair. No tall, thin guy. No hundred-watt smile. Raj has paused now, looking around, probably for his ride. His eyes skitter over the tree I’m still under, then around again, like he can’t find who he’s looking for.

  Zach?

  Raj gives no indication that he recognizes me. Maybe he can’t see my face this far away.

  Raj pulls out his phone, and his fingers move a mile a minute. Then he sticks his phone back into his pocket and keeps waiting, no longer looking around.

  I’m about to venture out of my hiding place, to brave walking up to him and asking if he knows where Zach Laird is. I don’t know how Raj will react. He obviously recognized me that day, so we know each other. But could he know about Overton? Did he tell Zach he saw me? Have we run into each other before? And what do they think happened to me—why do they think I didn’t recognize him?

  I take a deep breath and decide to approach Raj.

  But before I can take my first step, I see him.

  Zach.

  He’s walking through the doorway, staring down at his phone. He walks until he meets Raj. They talk for a second, then start walking again.

  They have to be able to hear my heart from here.

  I watch them as they cross the parking lot, watch until Zach throws Raj a set of keys and gets into the passenger seat of a bright blue car that makes a loud wailing noise when they start it.

  I let out a small noise as I watch them drive off, because I feel this tightness in my chest, this pain that I can’t explain. I want them to hear me or see me or know me.

  I want to know them.

  I did know them once.

  I keep staring at the spot where the car was.

  I wonder when Zach cut off all his hair.

  BEFORE

  Early November

  The day after Halloween, I go over to Zach’s house at his mother’s request to help finish the leftover candy before it settles on her hips. Her exact words, as transmitted by Zach. I’m spending the weekend at my dad’s, but since he’s catching up on sleep and things are as uncomfortable as ever between us, I’m happy to oblige.

  “Lookin’ fine!” Kevin purrs after he swings the front door open for me.

  “Hey, Kevin,” I say.

  “Maybe you could get your own girlfriend?” Zach suggests, turning up behind him and ruffling his brother’s hair. “Cassie Swinton keeps giving you the eye.”

  “Ew.” Kevin frowns. And I laugh, surprised by his reaction.

  “He only thinks he’s a ladies’ man,” Zach explains. I lean in to kiss him.

  “Well, well, well,” someone bellows. We break apart, and standing behind Zach is his older brother Rob. He’s eyeing us and carrying a plate that is, quite literally, heaped with food. “What do we have here?”

  He is surprisingly less wooden in person than on camera.

  Zach is blushing hard when he says, “Addie, this is my brother Rob. Rob, Addie.”

  “Nice to meet you,” Rob says. “I’d shake your hand, but”—he shows me his food-stained fingers—“Mrs. Gupta sent over a ton of Indian food and I got carried away.”

  “That’s okay,” I say, smiling at him. “Nice to meet you. I’ve seen some of your, er, work in Zach’s
films.”

  He bursts out laughing then. Definitely not as wooden as on camera. “I like this Addie,” he says to Zach, who is still beet red and not showing a hint of a smile. I don’t have to wonder what he’s thinking for too long, because Rob says, “This is all very interesting. All this time when you were skipping trips to Caldwell, saying you had to work or whatever, I figured you were just moping around. Nursing that broken heart.”

  I can tell from the glint in his eyes that he’s teasing Zach, but Zach does not look amused.

  “I did have to work,” Zach says quietly. “Besides, if you didn’t let your phone go to voice mail so often, you might actually know some things.”

  Rob laughs again. “Point taken,” he says. He glances at me, then back at Zach. “But still, you could have told me you had a girlfriend.”

  I glance at Zach then, ready to ask why he didn’t tell his brother about me, but he’s already following Rob to the basement, where his parents, Kevin, and Raj are all assembled. In addition to the food, Raj has brought over Dungeon World 2, and for hours everyone takes turns playing.

  I’m always aware, when I visit, how different Zach’s family is from mine. There’s this sense of ease, a lightness that reminds me of how my family used to be before my dad left. They laugh often, and each of them genuinely cares about the others.

  After a couple of hours of snacking and everyone screaming at the TV and each other, Zach and I stand to go upstairs.

  “Ooh!” Kevin says as we take the first steps up from the basement. “Just so you know, the house is not soundproof, so we’ll hear if there is any screaming or headboards shaking!”

  “Fuck off, Kevin,” Zach says quietly, but still loudly enough to be heard. I’ve never heard him genuinely mad at his brother, and I’ve certainly never heard his father use with him the warning tone everyone in their family usually reserves for Kevin.

  “Zach,” his dad says.

  Zach does not apologize, just keeps going up the stairs, never letting go of my hand. My face gets warm because now everyone downstairs has to be wondering what we’re doing in Zach’s bedroom, which obviously means we can’t do anything, even if we still wanted to.

  “Are you okay?” I ask Zach after he shuts the door and sits on his bed. I’ve never seen Zach this weird before, this moody.

  “Yeah. I just have to tell you something.” He doesn’t look up at me, doesn’t give me that stomach-flipping smile to reassure me that everything is okay. And for the very first time, I’m not so sure everything is okay between us. We see each other less now than we ever have, and sometimes Zach forgets to call or text me back. But I figured that was all just busyness.

  I lower myself into the rolling chair beside his desk.

  “Lindsay’s been texting me,” Zach says grimly.

  The air freezes all around us.

  “Why?” I finally ask.

  He looks up at me, meeting my eye for the first time since we’ve come upstairs, and says, “At first it was just to discuss our bio labs, but eventually she—”

  “You’re lab partners?” I blink twice.

  Zach’s turn to blink. “Technically. I mean, there’s a whole bench of us.”

  “Why is Lindsay at your bench?” I ask, trying to sound cavalier but not exactly pulling it off.

  “It’s not my bench,” Zach says, a hint of exasperation in his voice, as if I’m missing the point of this conversation. “Anyway, we’re both Ls. She’s Loach.”

  “Loach,” I repeat.

  What kind of bullshit school still uses alphabetized seating charts, I think, while also trying to calculate how close Loach would be to Laird.

  “How long has she been texting you?”

  Zach shrugs. “A couple of weeks. Addie, the—”

  “A couple of weeks?” I repeat. “What has she been saying?”

  “Well, I told you, at first it was just questions about our labs and some calculus problems”—Oh, now it’s calculus, too, for God’s sake, I think, but don’t interrupt—“and then she was more…I mean…” He stares down at his hands.

  “She was more?” I repeat.

  Zach sighs, says softly, “You realize you’re just repeating what I’m saying now.”

  And since I can’t repeat that, I ask, “Does she know you have a girlfriend?”

  “Of course she knows,” he says. “I mean, I told her I did.”

  “Well, that’s kind of a bitchy thing to do,” I say. “To text somebody else’s boyfriend.”

  Zach sighs again and brings his right foot on top of his bed, even though he’s still wearing his sneakers. “I don’t think she’s trying to be bitchy. She just”—is a bitch—“is going through some family stuff.”

  “Zach,” I say, like, Please God, tell me you’re not actually falling for that. “Katy told me in September that Lindsay missed you.”

  He shrugs without meeting my eye, then continues.

  “I told her that her family stuff isn’t any of my business anymore,” he says. “I promise. I just wanted you to know.”

  Now he reaches forward and pulls my chair toward him until I’m right in front of him, only a couple of inches between our faces. The smell of smoke hangs between us.

  “Please change your last name,” I tell him, and his gray eyes twinkle as he laughs. “Or move to my school.”

  He kisses the base of my throat. “Move into my room.”

  He keeps kissing me, but I can’t concentrate, can’t do anything but think of Lindsay and her slutty flower and her curvy body in that black dress, dissecting frogs in a skanky lab coat.

  “Stop freaking out,” Zach breathes against my jaw.

  “She’s texting you advances!”

  “And I’m telling you,” he counters, not denying the advances part.

  “But she obviously wants you back. How can I not freak out?”

  He pulls his face away from mine, frowning. “Because you trust me?” he says.

  “Of course I do,” I say, sliding my hand over where his sits on his lap. “But girls like Lindsay…”

  “You’ve never even met her,” he points out. “You’ve met me. You know me. If that’s not enough, then…”

  He ends it there. Then.

  Then I climb in his lap and kiss him. I do trust Zach.

  At least, I want to.

  It’s just that I know you don’t date a girl for two years unless you’re crazy about her. Or Zach doesn’t, anyway, because that’s who he is.

  And sometimes, at the most random times, like when we’re riding our bikes through town or watching a movie or getting something to eat, her ghost will flit right in between us. Zach will get distant or a little sad or flush a little, and I’ll know it’s because this thing reminds him of her. A lot of things remind him of her.

  It’s like the first time we were at Schiavoni’s or the night Zach showed me his homemade movies in his basement and at first he couldn’t find one that didn’t include her.

  I wish I could kiss him and make him forget.

  I wonder, as his tongue works its way into my mouth, if he wishes that, too.

  And even though I am too wrapped up in him to say it, too out of breath to breathe it, I know there’s a word for how I feel about Zach. Even without my permission, it’s there. Even though we haven’t been together all that long.

  My body works overtime to tell him.

  My heart beats in triplets, in syncopated rhythms, stopping and starting as he kisses me.

  I like your hair, Zach.

  Your smile makes it easier to breathe.

  Everything about you is beautiful.

  I love you, Zach. I really do.

  AFTER

  January

  The real Zach was right in front of me yesterday and I let him slip by.

  “You’ll do it today,” the other Zach—Memory Zach—says from the passenger seat beside me. “He’s not going anywhere.”

  “I know,” I say, but I’m feeling the anxiety bubbling up insi
de me. Both at the prospect of meeting real Zach and at where I’m headed to beforehand.

  I left school today thirty minutes earlier than I did yesterday, skipping last period entirely, and this time I’m driving north instead of south, toward Lyndale Heights Cemetery.

  When I pull into the parking lot of the cemetery, my stomach does a few somersaults. I’ve never been here in my life, only driven past it, either completely unaware of it or with a fleeting thought, sometimes a prayer, that I’d never have to walk through it.

  It hits me even as I think this that remembering has nothing to do with it. I might have been here before, for the burial.

  When I shut off the car, I turn and face Memory Zach. Look into his eyes, which are kind and concerned.

  Come with me, I want to say, but no, I need to talk to my brother on my own.

  Make a joke about concerts for the dead. I want to think about music, the happiest song I know, and I want the little brother I never knew to be hearing it right now, to be somewhere or something that is not dead.

  “I’ll be right back,” I tell Memory Zach.

  He reaches for my hand and squeezes.

  “Okay,” he says, instead of what he must want to say: Don’t forget about me.

  It is a given, by now, that I won’t, so I don’t bother to say it. Just take a deep breath, gently untangle my hand from his, and climb out of my car.

  Some part of me might already know where Rory’s grave is, but if that’s the case, my mind is certainly not in any hurry to share that information as I glance left and right, trying to figure out which direction to go.

  I spot a sign with a map of the cemetery and find the section containing the newer graves. It’s several yards north of where I am. I follow a concrete path to it, then walk between the graves, searching for a stone with his last name. My last name.

  And then I find it.

  I’m expecting his grave to be empty, devoid of flowers, like many of the headstones around it, but a bouquet of fresh hydrangeas sits in front of it. The flowers seem to shiver in the cold.

  I kneel on the ground in front of them.