The History of Jane Doe

by Michael Belanger

  He walked away, and I was left feeling like I’d suddenly earned entrance into another world.

  * * *

  • • •

  That same week, Jane called me and asked if I wanted to go on a hike in the Lost Woods.

  “It’s time to cross another spot off the list,” she said. She sounded serious, like it was some sort of religious obligation.

  “I’m always ready to journey into Burgerville’s history,” I said. “Let me just see what Simon’s up to.”

  “Maybe it should just be me and you today.”

  I almost dropped the phone. My brain couldn’t process the sudden turn of events. I took a deep breath, trying my best to sound casual. “Oh, okay, yeah, sounds good, why not?” When Jane didn’t say anything—I mean, was she supposed to? Or maybe I didn’t give the proper response time?—I kept going: “Cool, I’m down, whatever”—Was I being enthusiastic enough?—“I’d love to go hiking with you.”

  I called Simon on the way over to ask for advice.

  “She wants to go hiking with you?”

  I heard a keyboard in the background.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m searching the internet to see if hiking is really code for ‘let’s go make out in the woods.’”

  “And?”

  “It just means hiking. Unless she said ‘take a hike.’ In which case you really misinterpreted her phone call.”

  “I think I’m in over my head.”

  Simon agreed.

  “No, you’re supposed to be giving me a pep talk. Tell me how great I am. To just be myself and have fun and all that stuff.”

  “Look, you’ve already gone way further than anyone would’ve ever predicted.”

  “Thanks?”

  “I’ll be honest, part of me thought that Jane might have befriended you because your mom was paying her off. I’m not proud of it, but I think now’s the time to put all of our cards on the table. You’re a nice guy and all, but the history stuff isn’t for everyone, not to mention your acne has really flared up in the past few weeks and—”

  “This isn’t helping, Simon.”

  “What I’m saying is, this kind of thing doesn’t happen every day for guys like us. Something weird has been going on these past few weeks. Maybe . . .”

  “Simon’s Law?”

  “Dammit, Ray. Don’t jinx it.” Then, like he was reading off a cue card: “Just remember: You’re great. Have fun and be yourself. Did I miss anything?”

  “Thanks, Simon. I needed that.”

  “And if you do something really horrible like accidentally insult her mother or clog her toilet—I mean, I’m sure you’ll do great—but if you do totally mess it up, try to subtly hint that I might like her too.”

  “Good talk,” I said.

  * * *

  • • •

  As I drove down Jane’s driveway, the front door opened. Mr. and Mrs. Doe waited in the entrance.

  I parked the car and thought about Simon’s Law. Maybe it was just a question of perspective. The more you focused on the good things, the more you noticed them. And vice versa. I took a deep breath and got out of the car.

  “There he is,” Mr. Doe said as I made my way to the porch.

  “The history buff,” Mrs. Doe said.

  As I walked inside, Grandma Irene greeted me from her perch at the top of the stairs, somehow looking even sadder than last time.

  There were papers strewn about the family room. A large map of the world hung on the wall, red tacks poked through capitals with lines of string connecting them.

  “Sorry about the mess,” Mr. Doe said. “We’re moving to Europe.”

  I had a mini panic attack as I tried to figure out what he meant. The Does were moving?

  Mrs. Doe must have been able to read the expression on my face, because she quickly added, “Our company. Our company’s going international.”

  “Thank god . . .” I accidentally said. I stretched out the end, trying to recover. “. . . That your company’s doing so well. Praise the Lord.”

  “I didn’t know you were so religious, Ray,” Mr. Doe said.

  “Might as well hedge your bets,” I said.

  Mr. Doe looked at me funny.

  I coughed to take the attention off my awkwardness. “So what’s your company do?”

  “The short explanation, sweetie,” Mrs. Doe said.

  “So no PowerPoint?” He smiled. “Kidding. I’m kidding. I’ve always loved to travel, and they don’t make it easy for . . .” His voice trailed off. I tried not to look at his legs. “Well, they don’t make it easy for anyone. So a few years ago, I got together with some computer friends of mine and we created a website to help change that. All you have to do is answer a few questions about your trip and then our algorithms do the work. Put in info about allergies, kids, transportation needs, whatever, and then we create a personalized itinerary based on information from other users. And it’s always being updated. Kind of like Waze, but for vacationing.”

  “But we were first,” Mrs. Doe said.

  “And our app just won an award from the Travel Channel,” Mr. Doe said.

  “Wow,” I said.

  Jane appeared beneath her grandmother’s portrait, her heavy black boots thudding on the steps as she made her way down the stairs. She had on a flannel shirt and cargo pants. Outdoorsy Jane.

  “Not the app,” Jane said. “Anything but the app.”

  “It’s going to change travel as we know it,” Mr. Doe said confidently.

  “I’m sure it will, but we only have so much daylight.” Jane reached the bottom of the stairs. “And we’ve got a hike planned.”

  “Be careful out there,” Mrs. Doe said. “It’s really easy to get lost in the Lost Woods.”

  “Who would’ve thought,” Jane said.

  * * *

  • • •

  Outside, the sky was a pale gray. It looked like all the color had been scraped out of it.

  Jane motioned to a path at the edge of her backyard where the lawn stopped. “Shall we?”

  We walked along the path, journeying into the heart of the Lost Woods. The trees had already lost most of their leaves. The few remaining barely held on, and every so often, a breeze would send one of the final holdouts swirling in the air.

  The path splintered in two directions. “Which way?”

  “We don’t have much of a choice,” Jane said. “See?” She motioned to the path that forked left. There was a small wooden bridge a few yards ahead. The middle of the bridge was gone, two wooden ends with nothing in between. I walked closer. Jane joined me and together we stood at the edge.

  Something flew across the water, the branches shaking, leaves scattering around us.

  “The Flying Possum of Williamsburg,” Jane said matter-of-factly.

  “The what?” I thought back to the sweatshirt Jane was wearing the night we played Never Have I Ever.

  “You don’t know the story of the Flying Possum of Williamsburg?”

  I shook my head.

  “Damn.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Ellie and I made it up. Back in Brooklyn. We’d seen so many ridiculous conspiracy theories spread around the internet, we decided to create one ourselves. We came up with this vicious flying possum engineered in a government lab in Brooklyn to help with the rodent infestation. And then we went to work. Started talking about it in public. Posted a few things on the internet. Ellie even had shirts and sweatshirts made. But so far, no luck.”

  “Taking after Earl Beddington, I see.”

  “Sort of. Except I don’t actually believe there’s a flying possum.”

  I stared at her.

  “Okay, maybe just a tiny bit.”

  She turned to me and smiled, the same smile I
saw on her first day of school, like she knew what I was thinking. And in that moment, I was thinking that I loved her—how everything she said was magnified, how I wanted to know her whole history, from the big events to the smallest details.

  We slipped through a thicket of bushes to the other trail and walked in silence for a few minutes.

  “Thanks for humoring my dad,” Jane said. “Once he gets talking about the app, there’s no stopping him. After his accident, he kind of got the travel bug.”

  “What happened?” I asked hesitantly.

  Jane took a while to respond. We kept walking. The sound of leaves crunching underfoot. Puddles of light breaking up the shadows.

  “It was a car accident,” Jane finally answered. “I was only five years old. We were visiting my grandparents in Pennsylvania. There was this ice cream shop I loved and my dad promised he’d pick us up some after dinner. There was a bad storm, and I remember him saying we’d have to wait till tomorrow. Five-year-old Jane didn’t like that, so he went anyway.”

  She lowered her gaze to the ground.

  “You were just a kid,” I said.

  “Believe me, I’ve heard that a million times.”

  Jane began to walk faster. I matched her pace, trying to navigate the rocky terrain. My study of history was so objective, I’d sometimes forget how the past could haunt you. Of course, now I know.

  We turned down yet another path. I got the distinct feeling that the woods were guiding us, turning us this way and that.

  “These paths were used to send messages during the Revolutionary War,” I said.

  “Alert, alert,” Jane said. “Historical anecdote coming.”

  “I didn’t know you found my stories so exciting,” I said. “But if you insist. During the Revolutionary War, one of the British soldiers, Colonel John Hutchinson, stumbled onto these paths. He couldn’t wait to tell his superiors. He thought he was gonna be the reason the British won the war. But unfortunately for him, he ended up getting lost.”

  “And so let me guess . . . his spirit haunts the woods?”

  “Not exactly. By the time they found him, the war was over, but the poor guy had already lost his mind, muttering about King George and the colonists, how everyone was going to be tarred and feathered, maybe hanged. His rescuers were so annoyed with him, they just left him there. Ever since then, the woods kind of got a bad reputation, partly because people thought the woods had special powers, but mostly because the trees are so thick, they block out most of the stars, the preferred navigation system for most of the nineteenth century.”

  “People don’t like simple explanations,” Jane said. “It kind of takes the magic out of life. No aliens, no ghosts, no magical woods, no green cows . . .”

  “No flying possums,” I said.

  “I didn’t say that,” Jane said.

  We reached a small clearing where six stones were arranged in a circle. It must have been an old campground. We sat down next to each other. Branches hung overhead, reaching into the gray, colorless landscape above.

  Jane picked a leaf up off the ground and began tearing it into pieces. “So why don’t you and your dad talk anymore?”

  I sighed. The why was getting more and more confusing as time passed.

  “The day he left, I came home and saw a bunch of suitcases by the door. He must have been rehearsing his good-bye speech for a while, because the second I walked in, he started spouting out all these cliché lines. Telling me that we’d still be a family. He loved me. I could visit him whenever I want. But the whole time he was talking, all I could really focus on was my mom. She was standing in the kitchen, just glaring at him. Every so often she’d let out this sound, kind of like a snort, but a bunch in a row, like she couldn’t breathe. So instead of shaking his hand or hugging him before he left, I told him I didn’t ever want to see him again.”

  I gazed up at the sky, listening to the sound of crickets grow louder, and then looked over at Jane, her eyes practically glowing in the dusk as she moved closer to me.

  “It’s stupid,” I said. “I know a lot of people have it way worse.”

  “It’s not a competition,” she said.

  “I know.”

  “Hey,” Jane said. “The Abominable Snowman taking a selfie for his Facebook profile pic.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “I already feel better.”

  Jane was tapping her foot, looking all around.

  “Is everything okay?”

  “There’s something I have to show you,” she said. She rolled up her sleeve and carefully peeled back her bracelets. I could see a thick scar.

  “I don’t want you to be freaked out,” she said.

  I held her wrist in my hand, staring down at the raised skin. I ran my finger over it. At first Jane’s body jolted, like the wound was still open. But then I felt her relax. The skin was rough, craggy, torn up; holding her small wrist, I realized she wasn’t invincible like I’d first thought.

  “Promise me you’ll never do that again,” I said.

  When Jane didn’t say anything, I pulled her closer. “Jane?”

  She shook her head. “I can’t change what happened and I don’t want to talk about it, but I really like you, and I don’t want you to think of me any differently.”

  She really likes me. I tried to stay in the moment. “One thing doesn’t define you. It’s just part of the truth.”

  “I just want you to understand why I need to move slow.” She slid her bracelets back over her scar.

  I nodded. For someone who’d lived his whole life moving backward, slow felt like a hundred miles an hour. But still, there were a lot of things I didn’t understand. That I still don’t understand.

  We held hands and sat there until dark, the gray sky turning a fiery shade of orange before the sun went down.

  191 DAYS AFTER

  BRAIN CLEANING

  At my last session, Rich gave me another one of his “little steps” to take, an activity he calls “Brain Cleaning,” a nice euphemism for brainwashing. I take a situation, record my response to it, and then think of a better, healthier response. Rinse and repeat.

  Situation #1: I’m sitting at lunch with Simon when he starts talking about seeing his favorite vampire author speak. After an extremely long plot synopsis of one of her books—Air Force Blood, a dystopian novel about the president being a vampire—Simon steers the conversation into college talk, as if my mom’s gotten to him, and the two of them are teaming up to get me to start filling out applications. After all, what college wouldn’t want a spelling bee champ with at least three hours of community service under their belt?

  My Response: I want to ask him how he can talk so much about the future, about a world without Jane, but instead I say, “Can we change the subject?”

  And he says, “Sure, I just thought—”

  But I interrupt and say, “I don’t want to hear about college.”

  And he asks, “Are you gonna drink your milk?”

  And for some reason that bothers me, so I kind of slide the carton across the table and it spills.

  And as the milk begins cascading onto the floor and Simon laps up whatever bit he can, I say, “I don’t understand how you can talk about college.”

  And Simon says, “Jane would have wanted us to go to college.”

  And I say, “You don’t have a clue what Jane wanted. Neither of us did.” Then I storm off, into the historical dead zone of Mr. Hillman’s class, to listen to him ramble on about how he somehow contributed to the fall of the Berlin Wall.

  Brain Cleaning: I should have said, “I appreciate you trying to help, Simon, but I’m just not ready. It’s like making plans for the future means I’m letting go of Jane and erasing our history together. And I’d love to give you my milk. You are, after all, still growing.”

  Situation #2: My dad leaves a voicemail
on my phone. “Just calling to check in,” he says. “Your mom’s worried about you.”

  My Response: I consider throwing my phone against the wall. Instead, I run down the stairs and calmly tell my mom—okay, my voice may have been slightly raised—to stop trying to fix me. And to leave my dad out of it. And maybe something about hating her. To which she responds, “He’s your father.”

  And I say, “Then maybe he shouldn’t have moved to Florida.”

  And she says, “He wanted a fresh start.”

  And then I say, even though I know I shouldn’t have, “He left you too.”

  She glares at me, but only says, “I know you’re just saying that because you miss her.”

  And I scream and run up the stairs.

  Brain Cleaning: I should have written my dad a letter about how I appreciate his concern but I’m just not quite ready to talk yet. Maybe include a fun anecdote about playing catch and how the Yankees are doing and how Mom’s dating Tim (okay, maybe leave that part out). And then I should have calmly walked down the stairs and had a frank discussion with my mom about teenage depression, how I’m trying to get better, and I appreciate all of her concern. And hey, maybe Tim and I can grab pizza sometime.

  Situation #3: Rich gives me an assignment called “Brain Cleaning.”

  My Response: It feels like homework. And I’m not even doing homework for school, so I tell him, “This feels like I’m doing your job for you.”

  And he asks, “What if Brain Cleaning actually works?”

  And I say, “Then you’re going to have a lot of free time on your hands.”

  Brain Cleaning: I should have said, “Thank you, Rich, in your infinite wisdom for giving me this fun, yet educational activity. I’m sure this list will help me contend with life’s big philosophical conundrums and I’ll have you to thank for it.”

  181–168 DAYS BEFORE

  THE OTHER BEDDINGTON

  After our walk through the Lost Woods, Jane would often text me in the middle of the night. It was a collection of random thoughts, musings at an hour when most of the world slept, the texts somehow forming a tapestry of Jane.