Every You, Every Me
Page 8
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“I figured each of our arbitrary anniversaries can have a theme. So this will be our Cat’s Eye anniversary.”
Inside the box was a marble, a bigger-than-usual marble. Completely black glass.
Cat’s Eye.
I gave you everything I’d collected, but none of it seemed to add up to that single marble.
It was a good night. We talked, joked. Jack called a couple of times, but you didn’t answer. Nobody else called. I couldn’t remember anybody else ever calling, except your parents.
Nobody else.
When the time came for us to head home, I noticed that the roses were already wide open. They wouldn’t last much longer than the day.
“Sorry about that,” I said. “They were closed tighter in the shop.”
“That’s okay,” you told me. “I like them better when they’re dried up. I’ll keep them for years. Until our Get Rid of the Roses anniversary.”
And I kept the Cat’s Eye. Until it disappeared.
Did you steal it one day when you were in my room? Or did I lose it? Either way, isn’t it my fault for not noticing?
Why was I thinking about this?
Oh, yes—the roses.
Something to keep.
Something gone.
11
Jack and I had an advantage over the photographer: We had four photographs she didn’t know we had. I was assuming it was a she because handwriting doesn’t lie.
But, of course, the advantage meant nothing if we didn’t know what to do with it.
11A
I took Sparrow’s photo to lunch. There was no way Jack could have asked his friends about it—it would be too out of character; there would be too many questions. So I was left showing it to my friends. They wouldn’t think there was anything out of the ordinary about me being out of the ordinary. I didn’t tell them where I’d gotten it—I just said I was wondering if any of them had seen this guy around. And as they responded, I couldn’t help thinking about you you you and how they knew you.
Matt was actually your first boyfriend—or “first ex-boyfriend,” as you would tease him. In fifth grade. Or maybe sixth. It lasted a few months, just so you could get something from him for Valentine’s Day. I think it was over on February 15th. He would tease you about it, even when you weren’t in the mood for teasing. He couldn’t tell the difference. said, “Dude, look at that hair! I’ve never seen anyone at this school try that out.”
Fiona had been friends with you—maybe even good friends—until you started spending all your time with Jack and, to a lesser extent, me. She was shaken after everything that happened, but not to the point that she felt the guilt as well as the shock. studied the picture for a while. Then she turned it over, read the caption, and handed it back to me. “Nothing,” she said. “Sorry.”
Katie thought you were a downer. She even said it to me once, shortly before: “I just can’t spend too much time with her. She’s a downer.” I give her points for being the one to admit it. But did she ever ask herself why? said, “He kind of looks like you. Not the hair, obviously. But there’s something about him that reminds me of you.”
Charlie was drunk one time and asked me why I wasn’t the one sleeping with you. That’s how he put it. told Katie she was out of her mind. But he didn’t recognize Sparrow, either.
Who else would know? When you were here, in this cafeteria, Please come back. Please. you’d usually sit with Jack and his friends. When he talked to you, you seemed to fit in, but when someone else was talking, or he would be distracted, you just looked lonely over there. At least to me. But whenever I would tell you that, you’d say, “I’m fine. I just slip out of it, you know?” And I’d say, “I’ll catch you,” and you would say, “It’s not the kind of slipping you can catch.”
“Where did you get that?” Fiona asked. She wasn’t staring at the photograph—her green eyes were focused on me, only me. “If it was your photo, you’d know who was in it.”
“I found it,” I said, knowing how lame this sounded. “In the hall. I figured whoever it was would want it back.”
“I still think it looks like you,” Katie said.
“Whatever,” Charlie said.
I felt foolish for trying. And part of me wanted to give in to the foolishness—to make copies of the photos and hang them around the halls like Wanted posters—asking Have you seen this man? Maybe offering a reward. As a way of solving this uncertainty mystery. Only, if I did that, the photographer would know. She would see it, and she would retreat. She’d cover her trail. You and I are walking in the snow. “Why are you walking backwards?” I ask. You point in the direction we came from. “So they’ll think that’s where I’m going.” You point to where we’re going. “And that’s where I’m from.”
I changed the conversation. I thought I’d gone unnoticed. But after school, Fiona tracked me down.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
I shoved my books in my locker. Closed it.
“What do you mean?” I said.
“You’ve been weird for a week now. Something’s going on.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I mumbled. Then I realized I was staring at the ground, not her. She’d never believe me if I didn’t look at her. So I did, and the expression on her face was part pity, part annoyance, part understanding.
“It’s like—” she said. Then stopped.
“What? What is it like?” I asked.
11B
That night, I broke about a hundred promises to myself and looked at your old online profile. I thought maybe there’d be some answers there. Or evidence.
It said your last log-in was the day in the clearing. You must’ve checked it before we went to school. Before the three of us left to hang out. Before.
Fiona’s expression didn’t change. “It’s like right before it happened with Ariel, Evan. I know I wasn’t there, but I was around it. I saw things. I remember how overwhelmed you were.”
“It’s not like that,” I argued.
It was painful to see you frozen like that, frozen in time. It wasn’t like you were smiling in your profile picture, or even happy—even though there were times you were happy anything something and there were times you were smiling kittens! playing poker!; you just weren’t the type to parade them. Instead it was a shot I had taken of you leaning against my bed, staring me down. I’d been so excited when you chose it for your profile pic. So honored. Ridiculous.
I clicked on that picture to see more pictures.
“Then what’s it like? What’s going on?” Fiona asked.
There was no way for me to tell her. Because I felt that if I told her one thing, I’d have to tell her everything in order to explain it. Everything.
I could feel all the memories pressing against the leaky wall I’d put up to hold them back. The pressure was enormous, and I had to throw my body up against it in my mind, this was all in my mind so the memories didn’t drown me. I was not going to look at the familiar pictures the parties, making faces into the camera phone, the birthdays, the two of us—I was looking for something unfamiliar, something I hadn’t noticed before.
“Evan,” Fiona said, not reaching out with her hand, but with her voice, “I’m on your side.”
“But who’s on the other side, Fiona?” I had to ask. “Is it her? Does that mean you’re against her?”
Fiona pulled back. “Evan, something’s wrong with you. Even if nobody else can see it, I can see it.”
I found one. Three weeks before it happened. A couple of days after the photos we found in your house.
Every You, Every Me
The fingernail wasn’t yours.
But the skin with the heart … the skin with the heart …
“I’m not saying there isn’t something wrong,” I told Fiona. I was tired. It felt like years of tiredness. “But you can’t help.” Because she wasn’t there the last time, was she? “Really, it’s nothing. I really have to go.”
I didn’t know. I couldn’t remember.
Now Fiona risked it. She reached out. Put her hand on my shoulder. Squeezed. Said, “You don’t have to do anything. You don’t. It’s over.”
It was like I had never seen you before. Not in that one spot.
How can we remember every part of the body? Even on someone we love?
Fiona waited for a response. Not even an answer. A response.
There was no tag on the photo. No comments. No signs.
“It’s never over,” I said. “It can’t be.”
And I walked away.
11C
I spent the rest of the night scouring your profile. I didn’t play music or say a word, so the only sounds my parents would hear, if they woke up, would be the light click of my fingers pressing the keys.
I remembered setting up our profiles together. How we had no idea that the random things we typed down in a single moment would then linger for years, mostly because we were too lazy to change them. That one snapshot of favorites, of self-description. For relationship status, we said we were married to each other. But eventually we changed that.
I went through all your other photos, but there weren’t any surprises there. Then I looked at your comments page. Even after what happened, it remained active—in the days and weeks after, people wrote down that they missed you, that they prayed for you, that they remembered you. Even Jack. I was shocked to see his name and face there. And his comments.
FEB 11, 2:12 AM
come home
FEB 15, 12:22 AM
miss you
FEB 25, 3:02 AM
I’m sorry
FEB 25, 3:10 AM
Forgive me
As if you were reading it. Could you see it? Was there any way? As if he was going to get you back. Not Forgive us but Forgive me.
I scrolled back to before. I saw the comments I’d left.
JAN 11, 6:20 PM
Whatre you doing Saturday? I have something fun we could do.
JAN 13, 11:11 AM
Hey, Drama Girl. This is Comedy Boy telling you to
“turn that frown upside down” (erg erg erg)
JAN 21, 11:13 PM
You still up? Call call call.
JAN 21, 12:05 AM
The sound of your voice = contentment.
If only you knew, Comedy Boy. If only I could tell you.
I looked on the days 11/11, 11/14 when the photos were taken, but there weren’t any comments that were out of the ordinary. Just me and Jack and two from Fiona and one from this guy Kilmer, who was always trying to convince you to leave Jack do yoga with him.
When I felt the comments were going to overwhelm me, I moved on to the friends page. You had 232 friends—maybe half of whom you’d actually met. I was looking for Sparrow, looking for some clue. First I checked out the profiles of the people I knew, the people from our school. Even with my friends, it had been a while since I’d read their whole pages—usually it was just the updates. There were things on there I didn’t know and probably should have—Matt’s favorite bands, or the fact that Fiona used to go to school in Georgia before she moved here. I clicked on all of their photos, hoping for some kind of intersection, but none of the mysterious photos appeared. If there were any pictures of you, they were offhand, refracted. You never looked absolutely the same—it was like every picture brought out a slight variation. I wondered if it was just because it was a different moment, or maybe each photographer brought out a different you—you could not be who you were without taking into account who was watching. I thought of what you’d say every you, every me and then stopped thinking about it. It was too hard.
Instead I thought about the word profile and what a weird double meaning it had. We say we’re looking at a person’s profile online, or say a newspaper is writing a profile on someone, and we assume it’s the whole them we’re seeing. But when a photographer takes a picture of a profile, you’re only seeing half the face. Like with Sparrow, whoever he was. It’s never the way you would remember seeing them. You never remember someone in profile. You remember them looking you in the eye, or talking to you. You remember an image that the subject could never see in a mirror, because you are the mirror. A profile, photographically, is perpendicular to the person you know.
Inside the box was a marble, a bigger-than-usual marble. Completely black glass.
Cat’s Eye.
I gave you everything I’d collected, but none of it seemed to add up to that single marble.
It was a good night. We talked, joked. Jack called a couple of times, but you didn’t answer. Nobody else called. I couldn’t remember anybody else ever calling, except your parents.
Nobody else.
When the time came for us to head home, I noticed that the roses were already wide open. They wouldn’t last much longer than the day.
“Sorry about that,” I said. “They were closed tighter in the shop.”
“That’s okay,” you told me. “I like them better when they’re dried up. I’ll keep them for years. Until our Get Rid of the Roses anniversary.”
And I kept the Cat’s Eye. Until it disappeared.
Did you steal it one day when you were in my room? Or did I lose it? Either way, isn’t it my fault for not noticing?
Why was I thinking about this?
Oh, yes—the roses.
Something to keep.
Something gone.
11
Jack and I had an advantage over the photographer: We had four photographs she didn’t know we had. I was assuming it was a she because handwriting doesn’t lie.
But, of course, the advantage meant nothing if we didn’t know what to do with it.
11A
I took Sparrow’s photo to lunch. There was no way Jack could have asked his friends about it—it would be too out of character; there would be too many questions. So I was left showing it to my friends. They wouldn’t think there was anything out of the ordinary about me being out of the ordinary. I didn’t tell them where I’d gotten it—I just said I was wondering if any of them had seen this guy around. And as they responded, I couldn’t help thinking about you you you and how they knew you.
Matt was actually your first boyfriend—or “first ex-boyfriend,” as you would tease him. In fifth grade. Or maybe sixth. It lasted a few months, just so you could get something from him for Valentine’s Day. I think it was over on February 15th. He would tease you about it, even when you weren’t in the mood for teasing. He couldn’t tell the difference. said, “Dude, look at that hair! I’ve never seen anyone at this school try that out.”
Fiona had been friends with you—maybe even good friends—until you started spending all your time with Jack and, to a lesser extent, me. She was shaken after everything that happened, but not to the point that she felt the guilt as well as the shock. studied the picture for a while. Then she turned it over, read the caption, and handed it back to me. “Nothing,” she said. “Sorry.”
Katie thought you were a downer. She even said it to me once, shortly before: “I just can’t spend too much time with her. She’s a downer.” I give her points for being the one to admit it. But did she ever ask herself why? said, “He kind of looks like you. Not the hair, obviously. But there’s something about him that reminds me of you.”
Charlie was drunk one time and asked me why I wasn’t the one sleeping with you. That’s how he put it. told Katie she was out of her mind. But he didn’t recognize Sparrow, either.
Who else would know? When you were here, in this cafeteria, Please come back. Please. you’d usually sit with Jack and his friends. When he talked to you, you seemed to fit in, but when someone else was talking, or he would be distracted, you just looked lonely over there. At least to me. But whenever I would tell you that, you’d say, “I’m fine. I just slip out of it, you know?” And I’d say, “I’ll catch you,” and you would say, “It’s not the kind of slipping you can catch.”
“Where did you get that?” Fiona asked. She wasn’t staring at the photograph—her green eyes were focused on me, only me. “If it was your photo, you’d know who was in it.”
“I found it,” I said, knowing how lame this sounded. “In the hall. I figured whoever it was would want it back.”
“I still think it looks like you,” Katie said.
“Whatever,” Charlie said.
I felt foolish for trying. And part of me wanted to give in to the foolishness—to make copies of the photos and hang them around the halls like Wanted posters—asking Have you seen this man? Maybe offering a reward. As a way of solving this uncertainty mystery. Only, if I did that, the photographer would know. She would see it, and she would retreat. She’d cover her trail. You and I are walking in the snow. “Why are you walking backwards?” I ask. You point in the direction we came from. “So they’ll think that’s where I’m going.” You point to where we’re going. “And that’s where I’m from.”
I changed the conversation. I thought I’d gone unnoticed. But after school, Fiona tracked me down.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
I shoved my books in my locker. Closed it.
“What do you mean?” I said.
“You’ve been weird for a week now. Something’s going on.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I mumbled. Then I realized I was staring at the ground, not her. She’d never believe me if I didn’t look at her. So I did, and the expression on her face was part pity, part annoyance, part understanding.
“It’s like—” she said. Then stopped.
“What? What is it like?” I asked.
11B
That night, I broke about a hundred promises to myself and looked at your old online profile. I thought maybe there’d be some answers there. Or evidence.
It said your last log-in was the day in the clearing. You must’ve checked it before we went to school. Before the three of us left to hang out. Before.
Fiona’s expression didn’t change. “It’s like right before it happened with Ariel, Evan. I know I wasn’t there, but I was around it. I saw things. I remember how overwhelmed you were.”
“It’s not like that,” I argued.
It was painful to see you frozen like that, frozen in time. It wasn’t like you were smiling in your profile picture, or even happy—even though there were times you were happy anything something and there were times you were smiling kittens! playing poker!; you just weren’t the type to parade them. Instead it was a shot I had taken of you leaning against my bed, staring me down. I’d been so excited when you chose it for your profile pic. So honored. Ridiculous.
I clicked on that picture to see more pictures.
“Then what’s it like? What’s going on?” Fiona asked.
There was no way for me to tell her. Because I felt that if I told her one thing, I’d have to tell her everything in order to explain it. Everything.
I could feel all the memories pressing against the leaky wall I’d put up to hold them back. The pressure was enormous, and I had to throw my body up against it in my mind, this was all in my mind so the memories didn’t drown me. I was not going to look at the familiar pictures the parties, making faces into the camera phone, the birthdays, the two of us—I was looking for something unfamiliar, something I hadn’t noticed before.
“Evan,” Fiona said, not reaching out with her hand, but with her voice, “I’m on your side.”
“But who’s on the other side, Fiona?” I had to ask. “Is it her? Does that mean you’re against her?”
Fiona pulled back. “Evan, something’s wrong with you. Even if nobody else can see it, I can see it.”
I found one. Three weeks before it happened. A couple of days after the photos we found in your house.
Every You, Every Me
The fingernail wasn’t yours.
But the skin with the heart … the skin with the heart …
“I’m not saying there isn’t something wrong,” I told Fiona. I was tired. It felt like years of tiredness. “But you can’t help.” Because she wasn’t there the last time, was she? “Really, it’s nothing. I really have to go.”
I didn’t know. I couldn’t remember.
Now Fiona risked it. She reached out. Put her hand on my shoulder. Squeezed. Said, “You don’t have to do anything. You don’t. It’s over.”
It was like I had never seen you before. Not in that one spot.
How can we remember every part of the body? Even on someone we love?
Fiona waited for a response. Not even an answer. A response.
There was no tag on the photo. No comments. No signs.
“It’s never over,” I said. “It can’t be.”
And I walked away.
11C
I spent the rest of the night scouring your profile. I didn’t play music or say a word, so the only sounds my parents would hear, if they woke up, would be the light click of my fingers pressing the keys.
I remembered setting up our profiles together. How we had no idea that the random things we typed down in a single moment would then linger for years, mostly because we were too lazy to change them. That one snapshot of favorites, of self-description. For relationship status, we said we were married to each other. But eventually we changed that.
I went through all your other photos, but there weren’t any surprises there. Then I looked at your comments page. Even after what happened, it remained active—in the days and weeks after, people wrote down that they missed you, that they prayed for you, that they remembered you. Even Jack. I was shocked to see his name and face there. And his comments.
FEB 11, 2:12 AM
come home
FEB 15, 12:22 AM
miss you
FEB 25, 3:02 AM
I’m sorry
FEB 25, 3:10 AM
Forgive me
As if you were reading it. Could you see it? Was there any way? As if he was going to get you back. Not Forgive us but Forgive me.
I scrolled back to before. I saw the comments I’d left.
JAN 11, 6:20 PM
Whatre you doing Saturday? I have something fun we could do.
JAN 13, 11:11 AM
Hey, Drama Girl. This is Comedy Boy telling you to
“turn that frown upside down” (erg erg erg)
JAN 21, 11:13 PM
You still up? Call call call.
JAN 21, 12:05 AM
The sound of your voice = contentment.
If only you knew, Comedy Boy. If only I could tell you.
I looked on the days 11/11, 11/14 when the photos were taken, but there weren’t any comments that were out of the ordinary. Just me and Jack and two from Fiona and one from this guy Kilmer, who was always trying to convince you to leave Jack do yoga with him.
When I felt the comments were going to overwhelm me, I moved on to the friends page. You had 232 friends—maybe half of whom you’d actually met. I was looking for Sparrow, looking for some clue. First I checked out the profiles of the people I knew, the people from our school. Even with my friends, it had been a while since I’d read their whole pages—usually it was just the updates. There were things on there I didn’t know and probably should have—Matt’s favorite bands, or the fact that Fiona used to go to school in Georgia before she moved here. I clicked on all of their photos, hoping for some kind of intersection, but none of the mysterious photos appeared. If there were any pictures of you, they were offhand, refracted. You never looked absolutely the same—it was like every picture brought out a slight variation. I wondered if it was just because it was a different moment, or maybe each photographer brought out a different you—you could not be who you were without taking into account who was watching. I thought of what you’d say every you, every me and then stopped thinking about it. It was too hard.
Instead I thought about the word profile and what a weird double meaning it had. We say we’re looking at a person’s profile online, or say a newspaper is writing a profile on someone, and we assume it’s the whole them we’re seeing. But when a photographer takes a picture of a profile, you’re only seeing half the face. Like with Sparrow, whoever he was. It’s never the way you would remember seeing them. You never remember someone in profile. You remember them looking you in the eye, or talking to you. You remember an image that the subject could never see in a mirror, because you are the mirror. A profile, photographically, is perpendicular to the person you know.
