Every You, Every Me

by David Levithan

  It had to be her.

  I followed her away from the cafeteria. To her locker, in a corridor far from mine, far from Jack’s. She put down her backpack. She was spinning the combination.

  I didn’t know what I was going to say. I walked right up to her. She turned to look at me.

  It was her. It had to be her.

  “It’s you,” I said.

  “Excuse me?” she replied. She didn’t look exactly the same, but she looked the same enough. She was chewing gum. She didn’t seem to know me.

  “You’re the one who’s been sending us the photos,” I said.

  She looked at me like she didn’t know what I was talking about.

  “I think you have the wrong girl,” she said. She opened her locker.

  “Why are you doing it?” I asked.

  She looked back at me, annoyed.

  “Doing what?”

  “The photos.”

  “What photos?”

  She doesn’t know.

  She knows.

  “Stop it,” I said. “I know who you are.”

  It has to be her.

  “Look, freak,” she said, getting mad now, “I have to go to class. I think you’ve mistaken me for someone else. Because I have no idea what you’re saying.”

  It’s her, right?

  “Ariel,” I said.

  She shook her head. “I’m afraid I’m not Ariel. Sorry.”

  She was taking a book from her locker. She was closing the locker. She was going to go. She was going to vanish again.

  “No—stop,” I said.

  It has to be her.

  “Are you crazy?”

  A girl in the cafeteria. “You must be crazy, too.”

  I didn’t know what I was doing. But I felt I needed to do it.

  I grabbed her backpack and started to run.

  22

  “Hey!” she yelled.

  I ran.

  “I don’t need your help!” you screamed.

  I ran.

  “You’re against me! Both of you—you’re against me.”

  I passed Jack and Katie talking in the hall.

  “I’ll kill myself. I swear, I’ll kill myself,” you threatened.

  I was sure she was running after me.

  “We’re not going to leave you alone,” I said.

  She had to be running after me.

  I am not the center of anything.

  I imagined all the cameras taking pictures of me. Capturing me as I ran. Capturing me, but not catching me.

  I imagined her behind the camera, smiling.

  Out of the school.

  Out into the air.

  “That’s the question, isn’t it?” you said one night. “Does death bring freedom, or is it the end of freedom?”

  Right into the woods.

  Farther.

  Farther.

  Back to where it happened.

  Back.

  Back.

  Hearing them behind me.

  Running out of breath.

  Knowing this had to be the place.

  I followed you into the woods.

  I followed you.

  I would have followed you anywhere.

  I thought that.

  And then you went somewhere I couldn’t follow.

  They followed me.

  “Here,” you said.

  “Take my picture,” you said.

  “What are you doing, Evan?” Jack was yelling.

  “It’s her,” I said, pointing to the girl. “Can’t you see it’s her?”

  “I’m so sorry,” Katie was saying to her.

  “I’m so sorry,” I cried to you. And the way you looked at me, I knew I was never going to see you again.

  “He has my bag,” she said.

  “Evan, give her back her bag,” Jack ordered.

  “Evan, get help. I’ll stay here. You get help.”

  “You need help,” Katie said.

  I pulled at the zipper.

  I opened the bag.

  It has to be her.

  I turned it upside down.

  I turned all our lives over.

  22A

  Notebooks.

  Mechanical pencils.

  Film.

  Assignments.

  And there.

  At the bottom.

  Now at the top.

  You.

  22B

  22C

  We froze.

  For a second, we were all stilled by the sight of you.

  Then I picked up the photo.

  “You put that in there,” the girl said. She turned to Katie and Jack. “He put that in there.”

  “I don’t know what to believe,” Jack said.

  I looked at one of her assignments. Looked at the top.

  “Dana,” I said. “Your name is Dana.”

  “This is insane,” she said. “You can’t just steal my things. I’m going to get the principal.”

  She turned to go.

  Katie blocked her.

  “Sorry,” Katie said, “but … I don’t think you’re going anywhere yet.”

  Dana turned back to me. Made a decision. Stalked over and grabbed the photo out of my hand.

  “You don’t deserve this,” she said. “None of you ever deserved her.”

  Before I could say something else, she went on. “Didn’t you ever ask whose camera it was, Evan? Didn’t you ever wonder? You knew it wasn’t hers.”

  “Let’s go into the woods and take some pictures,” you said. “I found this old camera.”

  “What camera?” Jack asked. “What is she talking about?”

  How is it that this can hurt me the most? The piece I never knew. The piece you never told me.

  “She was there,” I explained. “She was watching.”

  Why didn’t you ever say? Why didn’t you tell us?

  “It was my camera,” she said. “And afterwards, when I wanted it back, her parents gave it to me.”

  Your parents knew her.

  “Who are you?” Jack asked.

  “I’m her best friend,” she said. “Ariel’s best friend.”

  “No,” I said.

  Maybe relationships could have fractals, too. And maybe that sense of loss was when you’re becoming a fractal of what you once were to each other.

  Best friend. Who set up that phrase? Who made it a competition?

  Those nights. The ones when you weren’t with us. I guess you were with her.

  “Yes. We hung out all the time. Took pictures together. She even flirted with my cousin when he came to visit. You know him—I think you’ve sent him emails. Alex?”

  All this time. All this time.

  “She didn’t—” Jack said.

  “How do you know what she did or didn’t do? You didn’t even know I existed, did you?” She actually smiled at that. “Our little secret. I loved that.”

  “Our little secret.” You used to tell me that all the time. Something we kept from your parents. Or something we kept from Jack. Or something we kept from the world.

  “You have no idea what you’re talking about,” Jack said.

  But she did. She had more than an idea. I could see that. It was there in her voice. That knowledge of you. That knowledge.

  She turned on him with an echo of your indignation. “I know exactly what I’m talking about. Were you with her all the time, Jack? Did you know everything about her? I’m walking proof that you didn’t. But she’d tell me about you, Jack. Where you had your first kiss—did you like that part, Jack? Where you’d go. What you’d do. How you didn’t understand what she was going through. She told me because I did understand what she was going through. We would hang out, mostly at night. We’d just wander around, and she’d tell me all of her dark things and I’d tell her mine. She saw things neither of you could see. I guess that scared you. But it didn’t scare me. And in the end, I was the only one who didn’t betray her. You guys did that.”

  And there it was.

>   Right there.

  “You really have no idea what you’re talking about,” Jack said.

  “I saw you do it. I saw you destroy her.”

  “We saved her,” I said.

  Dana looked at me like I was the biggest fool in the world.

  “No,” she said. “You destroyed her. She wanted to die, and you didn’t let her.”

  “How can you say that?” Katie asked. “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Take my picture,” you said.

  So I lined up the old camera.

  “Is there film in this?” I asked.

  “This way, you’ll have me for posterity,” you said.

  “She was supposed to go out with me. I’d given her my camera. Then I couldn’t do it, and she asked you guys. Or at least you, Evan. I ended up being free, so when the time came, I followed you. With my real camera. I thought she’d get a kick out of that—me taking pictures of her taking pictures. We did that all the time with each other. But she never got to take a picture that day, did she? You guys had other plans.”

  “It wasn’t planned,” I said.

  “Maybe not for you. For her, I think it was. It was a test. And you failed.”

  “Shut up,” Jack said.

  She shook her head. “Too late. You can’t shut either of us up, no matter how hard you try.”

  “How could you have watched?” I asked. “How could you have just stood there and watched?”

  “What do you mean?” I asked. I wasn’t sure there was any film.

  “Evan, I can’t take it right now. I just can’t take it.”

  “Take what?”

  “Take the picture.”

  “What?”

  “I said, take the picture.”

  “What was I going to do?” Dana shot back. “There was no way to free her. You always wanted to clip her wings. And then you did it. All of you.”

  But I put the camera down.

  “Tell me,” I said.

  “I want a gun, Evan. I’m telling you, I want a gun.”

  “How can you say that?” Jack yelled. “We weren’t destroying her. She was destroying herself.”

  “I’m not getting you a gun,” I said, knowing it wasn’t a joke.

  “It won’t even matter whether you do or not. I can’t take it anymore.”

  “Stop it,” I said.

  “I can’t.” You were starting to cry. “I just can’t.”

  And then you started screaming.

  “You’re crazy,” Jack said to her.

  “Oh, is that right?” Dana said. “Just like she was crazy. I’ll bet you told her that all the time.”

  “No,” I said.

  “No?”

  “No. Because we didn’t see it until it was too late.”

  I couldn’t make you stop.

  I called Jack.

  “You have to help me,” I said to him. “We have to help her.”

  You wouldn’t let me near you. You wouldn’t let me touch you. You were ripping at yourself. You were trying to tear yourself apart.

  “She isn’t crazy,” Dana said. “She sees through all the phoniness. She sees what the world is really like. And the world can’t stand girls like that. The world has to put them in their place, put them away. You wanted her to be this uncomplicated girl, but by trying to force her to be that girl, you unraveled her.”

  When Jack got there, he didn’t even ask me what was going on. He went right to you. Grabbed you. Tried to ground you. And you slapped him. Slapped him slapped him slapped him.

  “She was psychotic!” Jack yelled. “She was in the middle of a breakdown!”

  “Evan, get help. I’ll stay here. You get help.”

  But I wanted to be the one to stay.

  “You took away her right to be herself,” Dana yelled back. “When she was with me, she wasn’t like that.”

  “I don’t need your help!” you screamed.

  “Yes, you do,” he told you. “Evan and I both think that.”

  “You’re against me! Both of you—you’re against me.”

  “Don’t you wonder why she doesn’t want to see you?”

  “That’s not it,” I said. “That’s not it at all.” But I wasn’t sure you could hear me over your crying.

  “Don’t you wonder why she hates you?”

  “They’ll be here soon,” Jack said. “It’s for the best.”

  I was glad he sounded so confident. Because I was starting to wonder whether we’d done the right thing.

  “I’ll kill myself. I swear, I’ll kill myself,” you threatened.

  “We’re not going to leave you alone,” I said.

  “Don’t you feel guilty about what you’ve done?”

  But then I did leave. I had to leave. Because I couldn’t find your phone. I didn’t know how to reach your mother. So I ran. I ran to your house. I pounded on the door. And when your mother answered, I told her that she had to come with me now. She didn’t understand. I made her.

  “Because you should feel guilty. You might as well have tied the straitjacket yourself.”

  We got there. Your mother screamed. It looked like Jack was doing something wrong. He’d tackled you. He was pinning you down. You were biting at him, screaming at him to get off.

  But when you saw your mother, you stopped fighting. You stopped living. You gave up on all of us.

  Someone was grabbing me. Katie.

  “Evan, stop it. Please, stop it.”

  And then I realized—I’d been screaming. The same scream. Your scream. That loud, inarticulate howl at the unfairness of the world.

  It had stopped Dana. Stopped Jack.

  Dana, who had been there. Dana, your avenger.

  I remembered your last words to me.

  “So it’s all come full circle.”

  I didn’t know what you meant.

  Only that, in your head, it made sense.

  My response had been, “I love you so much.”

  But the circle had already closed.

  “I don’t understand,” I said.

  “You destroyed her,” Dana said. “You’re the reason they took her away.”

  That was undeniable. But the question was whether it had been necessary.

  It had been necessary.

  I had to believe it had been necessary.

  Betrayal or rescue?

  Harm or help?

  I was living in the space between the options. The uncertainty.

  I looked at Dana. Which Ariel had she known? Which me did she think she knew?

  They packed you away. They told us we couldn’t see you. They said you had to forget.

  They wouldn’t tell us where you were.

  “Have you seen her?” I whispered.

  I could see: Dana wanted to lie. She wanted desperately to give me a convincing yes. But instead she shook her head.

  Now it was Jack next to me. Jack putting his hand on my shoulder. Jack saying, “I’m sorry, Evan. I’m so sorry.”

  Sorry. Sad. Mad. Sorry. Every day it’s this cycle. Every hour it’s this cycle. Sometimes every minute.

  Don’t you understand, Ariel? I knew the right answer, but I didn’t feel it. I knew we were supposed to stop you, but I didn’t feel it. Because it wasn’t what you wanted. You wanted to die, and I wouldn’t let you. The only thing I wouldn’t let you do. And it felt selfish. Ridiculously selfish.

  Why couldn’t you have felt like this? I had wanted to fall right into the earth, but now I was grabbing hold of the nearest person who cared. I was holding tight. I was finding strength in that.

  And Jack. Jack held on, too. Jack was sorry, too.

  Dana was starting to throw her things back in her bag.

  “You’ll always have Ariel on your conscience,” she said. “Anything I did was just to make you feel her there. My birthday present. You have no idea how much I think about her. I can’t go a minute without thinking about her. And what you did to her. If it weren’t for you, she’d still be here now. She was
drifting away from you. She was drifting toward me. I know that. And I know she wouldn’t have wanted you to get away with it.”

  “No,” Katie said. She reached down and took back the photograph of Ariel. “You can’t speak for her any longer. Nobody can. That’s her job.”

  “Give that back to me,” Dana demanded.

  “You have to answer a simple question first.”

  “What?”

  “Did you want her dead? That’s the choice. Alive or dead.”

  “It’s not that simple.”

  “Oh, yes it is. Dead is dead. For whatever reason. And in a choice between life and death, there is no other choice. It’s life or death, period. These guys chose life. Are you saying you’d have chosen death?”

  “I’m telling you, it’s not that simple. You’re ignoring what she wanted.”

  “She wanted help. Not death.”

  You were always changing your mind. I wanted you to have the opportunity to change your mind.

  “She didn’t want help. She wanted freedom.”

  But death is not freedom. For a moment, it can look like freedom. But then it’s death.

  Anything.

  Something.

  Nothing.

  I moved forward. It almost felt like you were with me now.

  “We did the right thing,” I told Dana. I needed to say it out loud. “We knew her. Yes, she wanted freedom from her pain. But she didn’t want to die. There’s a difference.”

  Now I saw you nodding. All the moments you were happy. All the things you wouldn’t have wanted to lose.

  Maybe Dana loved you for your pain.

  I loved you for everything.

  “What do you know?” Dana asked.

  I shook my head.

  “I know you can’t hurt us anymore. I know it doesn’t matter what you think. At least now I have more photos of her. Thank you for that. We don’t need you to remind us of what happened, or when her birthday is. We remember just fine.”

  It was then that I felt you there. Not in the way you’d been that day—pleading, yelling, angry, full of doubt. But in the other way. The person I’d loved. I could feel you watching us, taking the snapshot of what we’d become. Four people in the woods, arguing over you. Clutching on to our versions. Yelling uncertainties. And I laughed, seeing it. Because I knew you would’ve laughed.

  “What’s so funny?” Jack asked.

  “Look at us,” I said. “Just look at us.”

  He didn’t start laughing. Neither did Katie or Dana. But that was okay. It was fine if I was the only one who understood it.