Maybe I was a fractal. Maybe the photographer was a fractal.
Maybe we were all fractals.
12I
Matt was talking to me. For a moment I didn’t recognize him.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“I don’t know what okay is,” I said.
“What?”
“I mean … I don’t know what okay means. No, not what it means. Where it comes from. Where does okay come from?”
We looked it up.
The answer: Nobody knows. They think it is a misspelled variation of all correct—either oll korrect or ole kurreck—but they’re not really sure.
Meaning divorced from origin. And it’s okay.
“Weird,” Matt said.
“Yeah,” I agreed.
He never noticed that I hadn’t answered his first question.
12J
I wondered if this was how you’d felt.
I wondered if I was making myself feel how you’d felt.
I knew it wasn’t a choice. It was just what my mind was doing.
Although I could’ve been fighting it more.
12K
What if Jack is right? What if all these things that appear connected aren’t really connected? What if none of us are connected?
Then I opened my locker after school and found another photo waiting for me.
13
Every You, Every Me
13A
On the back, someone—presumably the photographer—had written 4:00.
Was that when the photo had been taken?
Or was that when I was supposed to be there?
I saw the skulls on her vest.
A coincidence?
A sign?
I had to find Jack, then find out.
13B
It was like the day hadn’t happened. Or that it had only happened to me. He was out on the patio, talking to Miranda. She was laughing. He was smiling. They looked like they were happy vulnerable flirting together. It stopped me. In my mind, they were kissing, they had their hands all over each other. But then I blinked, and they were just standing there, talking. It was nothing. I didn’t want you to know about this. I watched for another minute. They didn’t do anything wrong. I knew I’d be interrupting, but that didn’t seem wrong, either. Jack would want to know.
“Hey, Jack,” I said, stepping close enough for him to hear, but not in their space yet. “Hey, Miranda.”
“Hey,” Miranda said.
“What’s up, Ev?” Jack asked.
“Can I talk to you for a second?” I said, leaving the alone implied.
Miranda heard it.
“I’ll just go get my stuff, okay?” she said. “Good to see you, Ev.”
You didn’t even know my name, I thought. You’re just repeating what he said.
When she was gone, I took out the picture.
“It was in my locker. It has a time on the back. I think we’re supposed to meet her or something. It’s three now. We have an hour.”
“Whoa, Evan. Just stop for a second.”
I never said a bad word about him. The whole time the two of you were together. Not one bad thing.
“I know,” I said. “It’s a long stretch of railroad track. But I think she wants us to find her, so it’s probably close by. And if you look in the back, there’s a spot where the brown dirt turns into gray gravel, and there’s also a kind of green post on the left side. We can look for those.”
“Come on,” Jack said. And I honestly thought we were setting off right away. But instead he was taking me to the ledge of the patio and sitting down. He patted the space next to him.
He was attractive. I knew that. And I knew that attractive people always got away with things. But I never said a bad word about him.
“I think we need to talk,” he said.
Because he meant something to you. He did.
“Because I think you need to let this go.”
“What?” I didn’t understand.
“I said, I think you need to let this go.”
He had been there.
With me.
He had been there with me.
“Not now!” I argued. “We’re so close.”
He shook his head. “I have something else I have to do.”
“What?” I said. Then I pointed to the direction Miranda had walked off. “Her?”
“Not just her. Life, Evan. We have to go back to life. We have to let this go.”
“Let go!” she screamed. “Let go of me!”
I wanted to cover my ears.
Jack went on. “I’m genuinely worried about you, Evan. Whoever’s doing this with the photos is playing a sick joke on us, and you’re falling for it. It’s messed up and it has to stop. But it’s not going to stop until we act like we don’t care. It’s not going to go away. We’re not going to be able to move on.”
“What?” I yelled back at him. “Do we just forget that she ever existed? Forget what happened?”
Jack shook his head. So sad. “No. That’s not what I mean.”
“Then what do you mean? Letting go. Do you really think it’s there because we’re holding on to it? Do you really think it’s that easy? I’m not holding on to it, Jack. It’s holding on to me. And it’s holding on to you, whether you ignore it or not.”
Jack’s right hand curled into a fist. Not to hit me—just to be a fist.
“Look, Evan—I wasn’t good at this with her, and I’m not good at it with you. I can’t fight you over it. I can’t. Call me whatever you want—heartless was a favorite of hers. And you know what, I’ll have to take it. But I’d rather be called heartless than keep living in this mess she created. I thought it was going away, and now this evil girl is doing whatever she’s doing with the photos and trying to pull it all back. But I can’t play that game. It’s a game, Evan. And sometimes you have to walk away. Don’t play it.”
“You’re not heartless,” I said. “She never called you heartless.”
The fist unclenched, then went back to being a fist.
“Of course she did, Evan! I was there. There are times you have no idea about. You weren’t always there. Just like I wasn’t there when she was alone with you. She would disappear in front of me. And then she’d reappear and she’d say the most awful things—about me, about herself. Mostly about herself. Of course, now I know what it was, but I didn’t know then. I was too caught by it. It hurt to hear those things, Evan. She would tear it all apart to find her ‘truth.’ If I tried to hold her, she’d tell me to get off. And if I just sat there, she’d say, ‘Why aren’t you holding me?’ Long hours of this. And I’d be afraid to go, and I’d be afraid to stay. ‘Just moods,’ she’d finally say. ‘I’m sorry—I was in a mood.’ Well, yeah. That’s what we both thought. That’s what all of us thought, right? Because we didn’t want to believe anything else.”
“But, Jack—”
“No—let me finish. It’s time we had this conversation. Because I don’t think you’ve been angry at her yet—and you need to be angry at her. You think it’s about what you didn’t do and what I didn’t do and maybe what her parents didn’t do and what her other friends, whoever they were, didn’t do. You might even think it’s about what she didn’t do. But mostly it’s about what she did. Whether or not it was under her control, she did it. And if you’ve done any reading about it, you’ll know that there isn’t anything we could have done to stop it. It was inevitable. We were just lucky—or unlucky—enough to be there when all the pieces fell apart from each other.”
A fractal is generally a rough or fragmented geometric shape that can be broken into parts, each of which is (at least approximately) a reduced-size copy of the whole.
“Evan, listen to me. I don’t want you to fall apart, too. You understand? If this photographer shows up, I will gladly put her in her place. But you can’t let it happen. And if you follow her, you’re letting it happen. You are.”
His voice was trying to be calm, but I could hear the fractures, I could feel him gluing the calmness together. I wanted to say I need you, but I figured you’d said that, too. I wanted to say This has to be done, but I knew it didn’t have to be. Not to him. Because he was separating himself. And I couldn’t.
“I’ll go without you,” I told him, gambling that he wouldn’t let me go alone.
He tilted his head, disappointed. Then he slapped his hands on his thighs before standing up.
“You’ll do what you’re going to do,” he said. “I’m not going to stop you. I just want you to realize that I tried. And that you can stop playing the game at any time. I can help you with that. But I can’t help you play it. Not anymore.”
“Is this because of Miranda?” I asked, not getting up.
“No,” he said. “I had to let go of some of it before I could even talk to Miranda. I don’t want you to think I got through this undamaged, okay? But I’m learning to live with it. Because otherwise, the damage is all you are.”
Now I stood up.
“I’m going,” I said.
“Fine,” Jack said. “Just do me a favor. Whatever you find—don’t let me know. Don’t. I’m done.”
I was still thinking he might come with me. Even after he left.
14
Heartless. Heartless. Heartless.
You’d never called me that. Never.
But.
I was there for you. I was the one you trusted.
But.
I knew you.
“You can’t know me.”
I did.
“You know one me. Just like I know one you. But you can’t know every me, Evan. And I can’t know every you.”
I didn’t want this to be coming back. I didn’t want to be having these conversations in my head.
“It’s not a conversation. You’re the only one here.”
I wanted to find the spot on the train tracks. I was walking along the train tracks. Looking for that spot.
“Fill your head with the right pictures of me. Fill your head with the ones you’d hang on a wall.”
Every now and then, a train would go by. But not too often. It wasn’t rush hour yet.
“I’m still here. I’m just unreachable.”
“Stop!” I yelled. “Just stop it!”
I knew Jack was right, but I also knew it didn’t matter.
I had to see it through to the end. Because the end could be better. It couldn’t be worse than this.
14A
3:30.
Walking.
3:45.
Blanking.
3:50.
Looking.
3:55.
There.
I didn’t even have to see the change from dirt to gravel or the green post.
Because there they were.
Photographs. Taped lightly to the rails.
3:57.
I was within a hundred feet. And then I saw it.
The train.
Coming.
I ran.
Because the train would destroy the photographs.
I ran.
The noise of the train.
The first photo.
I shouldn’t have taken the time to look. But I looked.
Every You, Every Me
And then, written on the rail underneath:
I SAW
The second photo was four rails down.
I could feel the ground shaking.
The train coming.
I jumped over.
Every You, Every Me
Underneath:
WHAT YOU DID
The train almost here.
The train.
The whistle.
The warning.
A screech.
The third photo.
The third.
In my fingers.
I could feel the train pushing the air.
Hear the howl.
I didn’t look. I just read underneath—