Follow Me

by Kathleen Barber

  I laughed. “Sure. We just met, let’s fly to Asia together! It can be our third date. What could go wrong?”

  He laughed with me, but soon our laughter faded and we were left looking at each other with goofy half smiles on our faces. Max’s tongue darted out to wet his lips, and then he leaned toward me. I closed the distance between us, our lips meeting in the middle. He cupped my face in his hands, the slightly rough pads of his thumbs stroking my cheeks, and warmth spread like molten lava through my limbs. Dimly, I heard the roar of another plane, but all I could focus on was Max, on the connection of our mouths and the smell of his skin.

  Roses are red, violets are blue, some flowers are headless, you could be too.

  I shivered involuntarily as the rhyme resurfaced suddenly and without warning, and Max pulled away, his eyebrows knitted in concern.

  “Is something wrong?”

  I shook my head and reached for him, but he held me off.

  “Are you sure? Was I too forward there? I was just kidding about—”

  “Nothing’s wrong,” I promised. “Just some online stuff I thought about for a second. It’s nothing.”

  “Online stuff?” He tilted his head. “You mean your … what did you call them? Presets?”

  “Not them, actually. I haven’t quite finished them yet. I’m getting close, though. I actually used a trial version when I shared the picture of the picnic earlier.”

  “Really? Can I see?”

  “Sure,” I said, grabbing my phone and opening Instagram. I tapped on the new photo in my grid and started to hand Max the phone, glancing offhandedly at the comments as I did so.

  One in particular caught my attention: Who are you with?

  My skin prickled. I could feel Max’s eyes on me, and, not wanting him to think something was amiss, I quickly deleted the comment and handed over my phone with a bright smile.

  “Here you go. See how bold the colors are? Particularly that blanket.” I winked. “It was a good investment.”

  “I knew it,” he said faux seriously. “But, Audrey, really, this looks incredible. You took my dumb little picnic and made it look like … I don’t know, like art. I can see why you have so many followers.”

  I put on an amused smile, but I couldn’t stop thinking about the Instagram comment. Who are you with? It could be innocuous, but it felt menacing. I rubbed my hands over my arms, quelling the sudden outbreak of gooseflesh, and surreptitiously glanced around. Was someone watching us?

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  HIM

  We had only just sat down to dinner when Arielle placed one of her spray-tanned, acrylic-tipped hands across her flat stomach and said, “No wine for me, thanks. Tag and I are expecting again.” Both of my parents leaped from their chairs with the kind of enthusiasm they reserved exclusively for congratulating inseminated daughters-in-law and began lavishing attention on Arielle, who basked in it. At one point, I swear my mother was petting her like she was some sort of prized cat. I muttered a halfhearted “Congratulations” to Tag and stabbed a fork into my endive salad.

  I should have been grateful that Arielle was commanding all the attention, leaving no one to harass me about my love life, but it was a Pyrrhic victory. Pregnant Arielle was even more insufferable than nonpregnant Arielle. She acted as though she were some sacred vessel, even though I and everyone else in the room knew that Arielle was not the only woman to carry Tag’s progeny. It was an open secret that our father had given Tag’s high school girlfriend an undisclosed sum of money to go away and pretend the baby wasn’t his. It was nausea inducing.

  I tuned them out, hoping I could just get through one dinner unscathed.

  And then I heard Arielle’s voice, dripping with fake sweetness, ask me, “How are things going with your secret girlfriend, Peanut?”

  I glared at Arielle. Her innocent act was such bullshit. My fingers itched to close around my steak knife, to lunge across the table and jam it through the exposed orange flesh of her neck. I could imagine her eyes widening in surprise as the blade plunged in, could almost hear the sound of her skin ripping as I dragged the serrated edge downward. Everyone would back away in shock, and no one would ever, ever interrogate me about my dating habits again.

  “Yeah,” Tag added. “How are things going? Did you ever take my advice to send her flowers?”

  Without meaning to, I burst out laughing.

  Simon and Tag exchanged a look.

  I composed myself and said, “As a matter of fact, yes, I did.”

  “That’s great,” Simon said. “What did she say?”

  “She definitely took notice.”

  “So what’s the harm in telling us about her?” Arielle pressed. She threw a look at Leigh and added, “Is it someone we already know?”

  I pressed my lips into a thin line, and Arielle laughed. “Is that a yes?”

  Leigh cut her pale eyes at Arielle and shook her head. Sometimes, when I imagined slicing open every one of their worthless torsos and stringing their entrails along the banister like a festive garland, I spared Leigh. She was the only one of the lot with a single kind bone in her body.

  I turned my attention back to my dinner, keeping my face tilted to my plate and chewing diligently, and eventually they moved on to other topics that weren’t me. It didn’t take long. Narcissists can’t help but talk about themselves.

  * * *

  AS MY MOTHER led everyone out to the porch for after-dinner drinks, Leigh pulled me aside in the hallway. She pushed her mousy brown hair behind her ears and drew her thin face into a worried expression before saying quietly, “I know you saw Aly.”

  Her pale eyes searched mine, plainly looking for some sign of guilt, some admission that I’d done something wrong. I wouldn’t give her that satisfaction.

  “Yeah. So?”

  Leigh shifted, looking uncomfortable. “You know Aly doesn’t want to see you.”

  “Then why did she call me?” I challenged.

  “Oh, Peanut,” she sighed. “Aly didn’t call you. Don’t forget that she and I are friends; she told me all about you going to her house.”

  “She did call me,” I insisted. “Yeah, I stopped by her house the other day and she told me she didn’t want to talk, so I left. But she called me yesterday morning and asked to grab coffee.”

  Leigh stared at me, her expression unreadable. I stared back, daring her to call me a liar. I knew she wouldn’t. She was too sweet. There was a reason Leigh was the only member of this family I would spare in a massacre.

  But I understood her doubt. Leigh had set us up, and Aly had always run to her with all sorts of complaints about me, from my alleged clinginess to the time I shattered her bathroom mirror. (The latter was a simple misunderstanding, but that hadn’t stopped Aly from spinning a tale for Leigh about my supposed rage issues.) I was sure Aly had called Leigh to report my uninvited appearance, but hadn’t bothered to later correct the record when she called me. Because she had called. Saturday morning, her voice supplicating, Aly had phoned and asked if I still wanted to talk. When I said of course, she suggested meeting at a coffee shop. Neutral territory, she’d said.

  Territory. As though we were warring nations rather than onetime lovers who had drifted apart. Christ, Aly could be so dramatic.

  She met me at the coffee shop wearing white, something that irritated me for its connotations of purity. Aly was not the innocent one here, and I was about to tell her so when she opened her mouth and apologized.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, looking me straight in the eye. “I’ve thought about it, and I think I overreacted. I was surprised to see you, that’s all. After how we left things.”

  And I smiled. How had I forgotten that while Aly could be theatrical and irrational, she was also quick to say she was sorry? I graciously accepted her apology and offered my own for not calling ahead, all the while hoping she would give me what I really wanted: a playbook to help ensure I didn’t make the same mistakes with Audrey, didn’t drive Audrey away like
my family thought I did Aly.

  But Aly had nothing to say she hadn’t said already, just one more chorus in the song of “it wasn’t meant to be.” Why had she called me, then? To assuage her own guilt? What a self-serving waste of time.

  Sitting across from me, she had smiled encouragingly, her too-pink lipstick clashing with her olive complexion. “You’ll find someone someday. I know you will.”

  I bit my cheek hard enough to draw blood, and smiled at her while the inside of my mouth went copper. If only she knew.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  AUDREY

  I sat straight up in bed, blinking my eyes in the dark as my heart thundered against my rib cage. What was that? I remained perfectly still, not even breathing as I listened for whatever had awakened me. Nothing. Carefully, I pushed myself out of bed and padded to the window. I lifted the edge of the curtain and looked out into the alley. It was empty. I exhaled, sagging with relief.

  Maybe I’m just talking to myself again, I thought as I reached for my phone to check the Luna Listen app. Only after I had opened it did I realize I hadn’t set it. I was about to put down the phone when I noticed two unheard recordings from weeks ago, both from the same date: the day The Life and Death of Rosalind Rose opened. Between the thrill of finally sharing the dioramas with the public, the confrontation I’d had with Lawrence, and the unexpected visit from Nick, that day had been a whirlwind—I couldn’t imagine what kind of nonsense I would be mumbling about in my sleep.

  Curious, I pressed “play.” The recording started with a muffled thud followed by a series of soft taps. Footsteps? I shuddered before I remembered that I was listening to a recording of the inside of my apartment. The footsteps had to belong to me. That’s new, I thought. No one’s ever accused me of sleepwalking.

  But then I remembered swallowing a sleeping pill late that night, and also an article I’d once read listing some genuinely strange things people had done after taking sleeping pills: calling friends, eating, having sex, even driving. Apparently I was a sleepwalker when under the influence of sleeping pills. Who knew? I turned up the volume on my phone, wondering what else I might hear.

  “Hi.”

  My voice on the recording was so loud and clear I almost laughed. Most of the nocturnal chatter I’d captured with the Luna Listen app had been either sleepy murmurs or terrified shouts. This was a chipper, wide-awake greeting.

  Then I heard something else, something that stripped the smile from my face. A shushing noise, possibly rustling of some sort? I rewound the recording and listened, trying to determine if it was more movement or perhaps just me in my sheets. I had to listen to it twice more before I realized what it was, and when I did, I dropped my phone in horror.

  A voice, low and hushed, saying, “You’re dreaming.”

  Someone had been in the apartment with me.

  * * *

  THERE WAS NO CHANCE of sleep. With my sharpest knife—a beautiful, shiny butcher’s knife I’d purchased purely for the aesthetics and had used only once for a staged photo of slicing fresh veggies—clutched in my hand, I ripped my apartment to pieces, searching every nook, cranny, and possible hiding place. I pushed open the bathroom door and froze, my eyes fixed on a shadow on the shower curtain. Someone is in there. I nearly blacked out with fear, but gripped the knife and forced myself into action. With a primal yell and my arm poised and ready to stab the hell out of an intruder, I thrust the curtain aside to find the shower empty. I staggered out of the bathroom and collapsed in the beanbag chair, surveying the apartment.

  There was no one there but me … at the moment.

  You’re dreaming.

  Just remembering those words made me feel like I’d been dipped in ice water. Who had been in my apartment? And what had they wanted? After hearing that muted voice, I forced myself to keep listening, terrified of what I might hear, but there was nothing else on that recording. The second recording, time-stamped just over an hour later, was brief and familiar: the same soft taps followed by the same muffled thud. As incomprehensible as it sounded, it seemed someone had come inside and watched me sleep.

  But what kind of sicko would do something like that?

  Ryan, I thought immediately. It had to be Ryan. I hadn’t seen any indication of a break-in, and no one else had access to the keys. There was no other …

  Oh, I thought, suddenly remembering what had happened after Nick left. I’d heard the footsteps in the alley and had gone to explore. Exhausted and distracted, I must not have locked the door. I’d practically invited the intruder in. But what kind of intruder just came in to watch you sleep?

  The kind that wants to be sleeping with you.

  I shook my head to clear the thought. I knew Cat thought Nick was the one who left those headless flowers that night, but she was wrong. That wasn’t the kind of thing he would do, and he certainly wouldn’t break into my apartment to watch me sleep. It couldn’t be Nick … could it?

  * * *

  NICK WAS WAITING for me in the Hirshhorn lobby, lounging in one of the sleek chairs as he typed on his phone. Light poured in from the huge windows, illuminating golden highlights in his hair, and my stomach twisted. This was Nick—Nick, a man I’d slept beside hundreds of times, a man who’d held my hand through tattoos and turbulence, weddings and funerals. I couldn’t believe that I was about to accuse him of something so deranged it seemed ripped from a horror movie. The idea should have been laughable, but things had gotten weird between us since I had moved to DC.

  I had to ask, and I had to ask him face-to-face. I’d known Nick long enough to tell when he was lying (tugging on his right ear while saying “No, Audrey, I didn’t sleep with that freshman” meant “Yes, Audrey, I did sleep with that freshman—more than once, in fact”), and I needed to watch his reaction.

  “Hey,” I greeted him, my bitter anxiety making my throat feel tight and constricted. “Thanks for meeting me.”

  “Sure thing, babe,” Nick said, looking up from his phone with an easy grin. He clocked my expression and his smile faded. “What’s wrong?”

  You’re being crazy, my inner voice scolded. Nick is your friend. Don’t accuse him of this.

  But I’d come this far, and so I took a deep breath and lowered myself into the chair beside him. “I need you to be honest with me, okay?”

  “Always.”

  “The other week, that night I wouldn’t let you stay over—”

  “You’ve come to your senses and want to apologize?” he broke in, cracking a smile. “It’s okay; I forgive you. You didn’t need to call a summit for that.”

  He paused, clearly expecting me to laugh. Any other time I would have, but instead I shook my head and said, “Let me finish. After you left, you went home, right?”

  He cocked his head to the side. “Are you asking me if I hooked up with someone else?”

  “No, I don’t care about that.” Nick looked offended and opened his mouth to say something, but I cut him off. “Wherever you went when you left. You didn’t come back, right?”

  “No, of course not. You know I didn’t.”

  The tightness in my body started to subside. There was no ear tugging, no shiftiness, no indication he was lying. Nick’s face was an open book—a confused book, but an open one nonetheless. He had no idea what I was talking about.

  “And you didn’t … linger in the alley before you left?”

  “What? Why would I do that?”

  “And the flowers …”

  “Audrey, what’s going on?”

  “Something really weird happened,” I admitted, pulling my phone from my bag and opening the Luna Listen app. “Here. Listen.”

  Nick clicked the “play” button and held the phone between us. The thump of the door sounded, followed by a brief silence.

  He turned to me curiously. “What is this?”

  I shushed him as the footsteps started.

  Hi, my voice said on the recording, loud enough to make my body erupt in goose bumps. I would never ge
t used to hearing myself talk in my sleep.

  “That’s you,” he said. He glanced down at the app’s interface and started to smile. “Wait a minute, I know what this is. This is one of those sleep-tracking apps. Are you sleep—”

  “Listen,” I commanded.

  You’re dreaming, the soft voice said. My stomach rolled unpleasantly and I looked to Nick, but he didn’t even flinch.

  Oh, my voice said.

  “There you are again,” Nick said. He smiled triumphantly and pumped his fist. “I’ve been telling you for years that you talk in your sleep. Vindication at last!”

  Too preoccupied to correct him that I’d never doubted I talked in my sleep, only that I said the filthy things he claimed I did, I said, “You didn’t hear it?”

  “Hear what?”

  “Really listen this time,” I admonished him, using my finger to rewind the audio and restart it.

  Nick gave me a strange look but obeyed. When the recording finished, he looked at me and shrugged. “I don’t know. All I hear is some noise, and then you saying ‘hi’ and ‘oh.’ ”

  “You heard nothing between my words? Nothing at all?”

  “Maybe some mumbling, I guess. Nothing clear.” He frowned. “Was I supposed to hear something?”

  “You have to listen again,” I said, starting to rewind it once more.

  “Audrey.”

  I startled when I heard my name behind me, suddenly aware that I was in the lobby of my place of employment, playing a recording of me talking in my sleep for anyone within listening distance to hear. I swiveled in my chair to find Lawrence hovering behind me. He was staring hard at my phone, and the expression on his face made my skin crawl.

  “Sorry to interrupt,” he said, looking pointedly at Nick. “But do you have a minute?”

  “Not right now,” I said, struggling to modulate my tone of voice. Even though I hadn’t forgiven Lawrence for the way he’d behaved at the preview, I was trying to maintain a professional relationship with him. “But I’ll come find you when I do, okay?”