by Anne Heltzel
“What are you saying?” I feel sorry for her; it’s clear that she loves him despite everything, that maybe she’s even holding on to the hope that he’s alive. It’s a desperate hope—even a crazy one. She’s probably been driven over the edge by grief.
“I’m saying it’s obvious Charlie was full of crap. And I want to know what else he was hiding.” I listen as she fills the space between us with her stories: the time Charlie surprised her with chocolate cake (my favorite), thinking it was her favorite, even though she likes vanilla; the time he’d called her from a New York area code (he’d been meeting me) when he was supposed to be in London; the time he showed up with a toolish yellow polo shirt in his bag (“toolish” according to Lena—I’d always liked that shirt) and blamed it on his then roommate, Liam.
Two hours and several lattes later, we’re still comparing notes. Lena’s question—What else was Charlie hiding?—has opened a Pandora’s box.
“Has it occurred to you that there might be more going on here?” I lean forward, resting my elbows on the table. “I mean, what if we’re only part of the story? What if there’s another girl, or a few?”
Lena laughs, but it has an empty ring to it. “Yeah, I mean, I just don’t think Charlie was that smooth,” she says. “Think how hard it probably was just juggling the two of us.”
“I know what you’re saying, but think about it,” I say carefully. Lena doesn’t seem to realize how manipulative he could be, and I’m not going to tell her. “We might have no idea who he really was. Also—” I stop myself abruptly. I don’t want her to know anything about my last couple of months with Charlie.
“Yeah?” She looks suspicious. “Spit it out, Aubrey. What are you holding back?”
“It’s nothing,” I say, shaking my head. But it’s not nothing. Charlie had something that belonged to me when he disappeared. If I’m lucky, it was inside the plane with him. But if it resurfaces . . .
“What’s wrong?”
I drag my gaze to her face. She’s looking at me strangely. “You look terrible. What is it?” I clamp my mouth shut. I feel faint. If what Charlie stole from me is ever found, my life will be over. For the millionth time, I wonder if it would have been easier to tell someone, but when I consider it, I can barely breathe. “Aubrey. What aren’t you telling me?”
I lie before I can stop myself, fumbling for words. “He just said something weird to me the last time we talked. I don’t even really know what he meant by it,” I try. “He said, ‘Aubrey, there’s something I really need to tell you.’ And I freaked out a little, because I thought he was cheating on me. So maybe that was it.” I laugh awkwardly. I’ve never been good at lying, and I haven’t gotten any better since I started doing it all the time. “He was probably just going to tell me he had another girlfriend.” Out of habit, I reach for my sketchpad, catching myself before I can retrieve it from my bag. I withdraw my hand and struggle to breathe more normally.
“Then what?” Lena’s tone is impatient. I think fast.
“He goes, ‘It’s nothing to worry too much about—it’s just something I’ve been needing to tell you for a long time, since I got back from visiting my parents in London.’ Remember, they were there for a few months, living in a hotel while his dad was leading some kind of training program?” Lena nods, motioning for me to continue. “Then I asked him what it was, and he just told me to stop asking questions, that I’d know in a couple of weeks.” There’s a lot I’m not telling Lena. But it’s nothing she needs to know. Charlie is dead now. And maybe it’s for the best. Charlie’s death is an awful thing. Still, I’m not the grief-stricken girlfriend I’m pretending to be.
“We should go.” Lena’s voice breaks into my thoughts. It’s strained and louder than before. A few people are looking our way again. “We should go to England and figure out what he was up to. We can blow apart his lies. Surely there’s a lot you know that I don’t, and same thing the other way around.”
I pause before answering—I’m not sure what she’s asking me to agree to. “Go where? What exactly are you suggesting?” I’m not comfortable forming the “we” of it.
“You should come back to London with me,” she says slowly. “I, for one, want to know who else Charlie was fucking. We can go to all the places where he hung out. What was he doing when he went back there? Seeing friends? We can drop in on them, ask some questions. I knew him when he was in high school there. I know all of his friends there—they’ll talk to me.” She looks truly excited for the first time since we arrived at the café, and I wonder again whether she thinks she’s going to track a living, breathing Charlie down and confront him herself. “We find out what he was hiding,” she goes on. “School doesn’t start back up for me till the last week of August. It’s probably the same for you, right?”
I nod in response to her question. It’s tempting . . . but not for the reasons Lena’s mentioning. I only care a little about what Charlie was hiding. I’ll be happy to put him in my past, to move on from this and have a normal life again. But I do need to know whether my secret—a secret no one in the world knew except Charlie—is safe. Only when I find and destroy the journal will I truly be able to move forward without fear.
It’s horrible the way his death brings me a small measure of comfort. It makes me wonder who I’ve become. There was a time when I thought I might love Charlie. When I met him I thought, Here is someone I could be close to. I used to wonder what he might mean to me someday. I never would have thought that one day I’d face his death and feel only emptiness and relief.
Lena interrupts my train of thought. “What if . . . ?” she trails off, refusing to meet my eyes. “What I’m about to say is totally crazy,” she qualifies. “But I can’t stop thinking it.” I press my lips together and wait. “What if he faked his death? What if he’s alive?”
I stare back at her, incredulous. “Do you know what you’re saying?” I ask. “Staged his death and, what, somehow caused a plane to explode in midair? What about the jacket they found with his blood on it?”
She clamps her mouth shut and her cheeks turn red.
“Listen, Lena,” I say in a softer tone. “I get that it’s hard to let him go. It isn’t like I haven’t hoped the same thing.” I’ve actually hoped for the opposite, but Lena can’t know that. “Of course, I hoped it more so when I didn’t know the truth about you,” I amend. She lets out a bitter laugh and I flush. “But what you’re saying is nuts,” I force myself to finish.
Lena’s eyes darken. Am I the only one concealing something?
“You’re right,” she says finally. “He’s dead. But this thing you say he was going to confess to you and never did. I want to know for sure what he meant. Are you in?”
“No,” I tell her, my heart pounding. “I can’t go with you.” Part of me wants to. I know I’ll never feel truly safe until I have my journal back. Another kind of girl might take Lena up on her offer—follow her boyfriend’s ghost to London like some sort of female crusader team. But I can’t do it. I don’t have the money, for one. And I came to the memorial service for closure. I thought I wanted it. But all this trip has done is thrust me into a spiral of panic and guilt.
“Why don’t you just dig around online?” I ask. “Email his friends, try to figure it out that way?”
Lena shakes her head. “No way,” she says. “It’s too easy to lie in emails. People feel more accountable when they’re faced with a real human.”
Lena didn’t strike me as particularly strategic; she seemed wild and careless. But of course she’s smart. So was Charlie. So am I.
“I’m not coming,” I tell her. “I don’t want to know anything else.” Normality is what I’ve been craving ever since my conversation with Charlie in the hotel that day, months ago. Since before that, really. Since the incident that set it off. I want my old life back.
Lena nods, but she looks disappointed. She digs through her bag, brings out a scrap of paper and a pen, and scribbles something on it. She throws down
a few euros on the table and takes a final sip of her latte. Then she pushes the scrap of paper in my direction.
“In case you change your mind,” she tells me. “I’m due to head back to London on the eight a.m. Eurostar from Gare du Nord tomorrow morning anyway. That’s my train number and my mobile number and that’s my address in the city.”
Then she walks out of the restaurant without looking back. Maybe she can get away with jetting all over Europe, but for me the stakes are higher. I’m not the type to just whisk off to London, throwing down cash and taking risks. I have a family that worries when I’m not around. I barely even got clearance to come to Paris. I crumple up the paper and shove it in my back pocket, willing myself to throw it away.
4
Lena
Truthfully, Aubrey’s kind of lame. I don’t know what Charlie saw in her. She’s pretty, sure. Hotter than me, if I’m honest. But she’s got a stick up her ass like I can’t believe. I can’t believe Charlie cheated on me with her. She was probably awful in bed with their boring, responsible, condom sex. I wonder if Charlie really lost his virginity to me, the way he said. At least if he was telling the truth, I have that on her.
The thought of her in bed with him . . . It’s a thought I’ll probably never be able to get rid of.
I take the metro at Odéon and make my way back toward the 10th, where the streets come alive in the vibrant Canal Saint-Martin neighborhood, with its picturesque bridges arching above wide waterways. It’s usually my favorite part of Paris, but today the sight of the canal’s tree-lined banks and iron footbridges does nothing to lift my mood. I’m crashing in the neighborhood with an old friend from boarding school. When my parents heard I was coming here and not staying with my aunt and uncle, they flipped. But my aunt’s worried eyes and my uncle’s hacking cough and the way my cousin Elodie hangs on me would have sent me into a rage spiral.
Carey’s asleep when I walk in. It doesn’t surprise me. Carey’s a stoner type, inherited family money and all that. He’s into the party scene over here, which isn’t all that different from the London scene: all-night raves fueled by E and Special K. Then he comes down from it and lies around smoking pot until he has his energy back up. Carey doesn’t even work. He’s just a useless, lazy bum. And he can afford to be. He’s sprawled out on the leather sofa in only his boxers, his skinny white legs draped over the sofa arm. A trail of drool is trickling from one side of his mouth. Truthfully, I’m always waiting a little anxiously for the day when I get the call that Carey’s in the hospital or in prison. I kick him once, hard. He grunts a little but doesn’t move. I’ve been counting on Carey for distraction, but he’s as useless as always.
It hits me in a wave so forceful that I crumple to the ground next to the sofa, feeling the harsh, splintered wood of the floor snag and rip my tights. Charlie is gone. His hands, weaving through mine. The way he whispered in my ear just before moving to kiss my neck. The muscles of his back under my fingers. His arms wrapped around me on a cold day, the scruff of his facial hair against my cheek, tickling. Making me laugh. Wrapping me into his coat with him in the park, and pulling me down into the snow. His lips on mine as he hovers above me. His nickname for me. All of it, gone. Ripped away. And I didn’t even know he’d been ripping it away slowly all this time. All the times he said he’d meet me and he didn’t, all the phone calls I waited for that never came, the distance: physical and emotional and always brutal.
Charlie’s gone, but he could still be alive. Aubrey thought I was crazy when I said it; but she doesn’t know what I know. And I’m not ready to tell her . . . yet. Not when I don’t trust her. I don’t realize how loudly I’m crying until I feel Carey’s hand on my head, pushing my hair back. He scoots down from the couch and settles next to me on the floor, guiding me into his shoulder.
“You can snot on me if you like,” he says. I look at his bloodshot eyes and laugh over my tears and curl up into his side. He pushes me forward and arranges a pillow behind my back. I nestle my head on his shoulder and begin to fade. Without Carey, I’d never have lasted as long as I did with Charlie. Without him I’d have cracked long ago. This is what I’m thinking as I drift off.
I wake up in Carey’s bed at four a.m. He’s gone—probably back out at whatever party he’s managed to sniff out. It’s actually perfect timing because my train leaves for London at eight, and without coffee I’m hopeless, and I have lots to pack. I take a quick shower in his bathroom, then dig an old towel out of the dirty clothes bin, trying hard to ignore its musty smell. The maid must be due to come any day; Carey never does his own laundry. I scrawl a quick note to him on the corner of a receipt: Thanks, babe. Cookies on the counter. I made my favorite for him yesterday morning before the funeral. Baking is more of a way to calm my nerves than any kind of hospitable gesture, but he won’t know that. I made white chocolate macadamia. Charlie was allergic to macadamias.
I know part of what I’m feeling for Charlie is grief. I’ve lost this love I thought I had, but apparently never did. Grief isn’t what’s driving me to London, though. It’s anger. If Charlie’s alive, he needs to pay for what he’s done to me. If only Aubrey were there, it would be that much sweeter, making him face both of us at once. But either way, I’ll confront him. I’ll make him tell me to my face that he was cheating on me. I’ll find out what the fuck he was lying about besides Aubrey. He doesn’t get to be a coward and leave this mess for us to deal with. He owes me more than that.
At six o’clock, I throw my duffel over my shoulder and make my way out the door, pulling it shut behind me. I stop in quickly at the boulangerie on the corner. When I open the door to the shop, I’m assaulted by a fresh, yeasty smell, left over from the morning’s baking. I buy a café and an almond croissant, my favorite when I’m in Paris. The croissant is still warm when I bite into it, but as with the canals, it’s hard to take joy in the simple Parisian pleasures I usually treasure. Then I take off in the direction of Gare du Nord. I haven’t thought much more about what I’ll do when I get back to London. I haven’t thought about much at all since Aubrey and I parted.
I was hoping Aubrey would show up before I left. I gave her my cell phone number and Carey’s address, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t wait an extra ten minutes before leaving for the station or check my phone obsessively for unfamiliar numbers.
I know I can track down Charlie’s skeletons without Aubrey’s help. But beyond the satisfaction of seeing his face when he sees both of us together—if we find him and force him to own up—something Aubrey said yesterday hit me hard. Charlie never mentioned you. So if he didn’t mention me—the girl he spent three years of his life with, including one year when we were practically inseparable—what did he talk about? Who was he? I only know Charlie as an extension of myself, and I need to find out who the hell this other Charlie was. Because apparently I’ve had no fucking idea. I saw one angle, the one he chose to show me. Now I need the rest. And she holds the key to at least another cache of something important. I can interview his friends, his teachers, all I want. But I’ll only be able to detect the lies that conflict with my Charlie. I’ll never be able to tell about all the rest, not without her help.
Charlie always liked to have the last word.
But not anymore, not in this.
I pass through the crowds quickly, stopping only to validate my ticket. Gare du Nord has an impressive arched and pillared exterior, but the inside is an ugly place, a great big mix of travelers and beggars and shopkeepers. There’s a little stall selling “Manhattan hotdogs” for five euros each. There are train times and destinations digitally projected onto a large screen that hovers in front of me and at least a dozen tracks with trains waiting to depart. I find my train to London St Pancras Station on the board and work my way over to track 6, nearly stumbling over a baby stroller. “Pardon,” I say to the baby’s mother, but she fixes me with a stiff glare. I’m heading to car 15 when I feel a hand on my wrist. Fingernails dig hard, piercing my skin. I jump and swivel. Eve
rything I’ve been feeling this weekend bubbles to the surface.
“Christ!” I yell at Aubrey, causing several other travelers to turn our way. “You can’t just grab me like that.” I’m breathing hard, stooping over my knees. Somehow the encounter has shaken me up in a big way.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “Seriously, I just wanted to get your attention.”
“Well, you did,” I tell her in a hard voice. “Congrats on that. What are you doing here?”
She responds by waving her ticket in my face. I squint at the small type, doubting her up to the moment I see confirmation of a single journey to London St Pancras.
“You changed your mind?”
“I want to know what else Charlie was hiding,” she says. Her voice is cold. My eyes meet hers. She’s unwavering—calmer and more confident than yesterday. “Here’s the deal,” she continues. “I have, like, a few hundred dollars. That’s it. I can’t come for long. So we’d better make this worth it. And—” Her voice cracks. She shakes her head like she doesn’t want to say more.
“What?” I challenge.
“He had something of mine. My journal. I want it back.”
Now it’s my turn to nod, just as the last bell rings to signal the train’s departure. If some stupid journal is what’s bringing her with me, then fine. “Okay, then. I guess I’ll see you in London.”
“See you in London,” she agrees. Her mouth is drawn in a cool line, and with a night’s sleep, some of her sharp, cold beauty is back. Then she turns, and we both part for our separate cars.
I’ve almost reached mine when I turn to watch her recede into the crowd. The thing I can’t figure out—the thing this whole crazy idea I had depends on—is whether I can trust her.