I wanted to say I had once thought the two of us were inseparable.
But that would have only proven your point.
We didn’t talk on the way over. All the things I didn’t want to ask him and all the things he didn’t want to tell me added up to an unhelpful silence.
For a second, I pictured the two of you kissing. One time I saw you. It was Gabe Weismann’s party and you’d skipped to the backyard. I had gotten you a drink, even though you hadn’t asked me to. I was looking for you, just to give you the drink. I didn’t see you in the shadows at first. You were kissing. It wasn’t anything more than that. I felt so invisible. Because neither of you was seeing me. You were lost in each other. Not just the sight of each other. The feel. The taste. The contact. I was outside of it.
I wondered if Jack remembered that. I wondered if things like that haunted him now. I wondered what happened to kisses when they were over.
It’s not like I could ask him this.
Finally, as we passed through the cemetery entrance, I said, “Tell me.”
“Tell you what?”
“The story. You and Ariel. The first kiss. That’s what this is about, isn’t it?”
He sighed. I was sure there were moments when he hated me. “It seems like a really long time ago, right?”
I nodded.
“But I remember it. I don’t know if that matters now.”
“Tell me.”
Why was I being so insistent? Mostly because it was making him so uncomfortable. Mostly because I’d never been sure if he’d registered any of it. I always felt it was unfair that even though both of us did what we did, I was the one who took on the suffering afterwards. Do you blame us equally?
“There’s not much to tell you,” he said now, leading me to the gravestone in the picture. “She was having one of her up nights—she was all energy, bouncing around and telling me how happy she was. It felt good, you know? To be the guy making her happy. We’d gone to the movies, and then she said she’d walk me home. When we got to my house, she said she didn’t want it to be over yet. She asked me what was around, and when I told her the cemetery, she said that was perfect. We got in here—just hopped over the wall; it’s not that high. And she started running around, reading all of the inscriptions to me. Beloved wife and mother, that kind of thing. I tried to catch up with her, but when she was in one of those moods, it was impossible to catch up with her. Right? I’d chime in every now and then, but mostly it was her show. Then we got to this one, and she got quiet.”
We were in front of the gravestone from the photo now. I tried to read it, but I couldn’t. Time had worn away all of the words. Some light green moss grew on it instead.
“You can’t read it anymore,” I said. “That’s what upset her.”
Jack nodded. “She kept saying, ‘What’s the point? All this, and what’s the point?’ And I don’t know—I just wanted to kiss her so much then. I wanted it, and she needed it. So I held her, and I kissed her, and we just started making out in the middle of a graveyard.”
“That’s so romantic,” I said.
“What do you know about romance, Ev? I mean, really.”
It took me by surprise, his anger. I hadn’t realized he cared enough to be angry with me.
He took out a cigarette, looked at me for my permission, then lit it.
“Runner like you shouldn’t dabble in cancer,” I said, pressing my luck.
“You sound like her,” he said, then let it hang there, like the smoke.
I looked around the gravestone for another envelope, but didn’t find anything.
“Are you watching us?” I called out. “Anyone there?”
“This time of night,” Jack said between drags, “they’d need a flash.”
“He’d need a flash,” I said. “Or she’d.”
“Who is it, Evan? If it’s not you and not me, who is it?”
“Do you think there was someone else? Do you think she was cheating on you?”
“No. Did she have any other friends she would’ve told? Do you think she was cheating on you?”
Between us, we were supposed to know you. Between us, we were supposed to know everything.
“You have to help me,” I said to him. “We have to help her.”
“We would joke about it,” he continued. “That first kiss. How weird it was. I was going to find out whose grave it was. I was going to find out, and then on our anniversary, I was going to write the name back on. I thought she’d like that.”
I looked down at the anonymous stone. I couldn’t meet his eye.
“She needed help,” I told him.
“Shame we couldn’t give it to her.”
I lifted my head to stare at him in the darkness, over the gravestone.
“Do you really believe that?” I asked.
“Some days I do. Some days I don’t.”
“She was breaking,” I told him. “We had to.”
“I’m not convinced we didn’t break her more,” he replied.
“You can’t break someone by caring.”
“Are you really sure about that?”
“I don’t need your help!” you screamed.
“Yes, you do,” he told you. “Evan and I both think that.”
“You’re against me! Both of you—you’re against me.”
“That’s not it,” I said. “That’s not it at all.” But I wasn’t sure you could hear me over your own crying.
“They’ll be here soon,” Jack said. “It’s for the best.”
I was glad he sounded so confident. Because I was starting to wonder whether we’d done the right thing.
“I’ll kill myself. I swear, I’ll kill myself,” you threatened.
“We’re not going to leave you alone,” I said.
But we had to, eventually.
After all, people are always separable.
“Evan?” Jack said to me now. “You there?”
“As much as I ever am.”
I half expected him to follow up with You okay? But instead he started walking back home.
“There’s nothing for us here,” he called back to me. “I guess we’ll just see what happens next.”
“I’m not okay,” I said.
But he was already too far away to hear me.
8
We had to face the fact: Someone else knew you. Maybe not another boyfriend or another best friend. But someone who would have known where you and Jack had your first kiss. Someone who would have followed you to the spot where it all happened. And took pictures.
8A
It wasn’t like we didn’t know other people. It wasn’t like I sat alone at lunch now. But there are people you know, and there are people you have a connection with, and I had thought that you’d only had a connection with me and Jack. Wasn’t that what made us feel responsible—not for what happened, but responsible for you? We always felt responsible for you. That’s the nature of connection—not just the attachment, but the responsibility.
At lunch, I sat with people from class at a different table from the one I sat at with you. It was easier that way. Strangers were more difficult. One time, there was a field trip, and Matt, who I usually ate with, wasn’t there. I sat at our usual table, and this girl sat down, looked at me, and said, “You were friends with the crazy girl, weren’t you?” And I didn’t know what to say. I kept eating, pretending I hadn’t heard her. Finally she said, “You must be crazy, too,” and then left to sit somewhere else.
The whole time, I didn’t look up. But under the table, I crossed my legs so hard it hurt. I was using all the strength it would take to run away, only to stay still.
Was that how you felt?
8B
There weren’t any new photos over the weekend, and there weren’t any on Monday morning, either. I felt like I was missing something. Missing you more. Missing whatever was going to happen next.
Monday at lunch I followed Matt from calculus, talking about homework and our history test and nothing that mattered. You and I never talked about calculus. There were football players sitting at our table, so Matt led me over to where Katie and that group were sitting. Katie had a camera out.
“What’s that for?” I asked her.
She looked at me strangely. “For taking pictures? For art class?”
Charlie chimed in with, “Do you want her to take your picture?”
“Oh, cut it out,” Fiona said. “It was a perfectly valid question.”
Katie’s camera was new and digital and small—not the kind of camera I imagined had taken the photographs that Jack and I had gotten. So I didn’t know how valid a question it had actually been.
Valid questions:
Why am I still here?
Who are these people?
What should I say next?
Are they expecting me to say something next?
Katie and Charlie were eating from the same cardboard boat of French fries. Matt was talking to Rich, another refugee from our usual table, about World of Warcraft. Fiona would take a look at us all, then take a bite of her sandwich, then take another look at us all. Which was pretty much the same thing I was doing, only I was eating a square slice of pizza.
She and I didn’t have any classes together, so I didn’t know what we could talk about.
“Do you like to take pictures?” she asked me.
“No,” I said. Then I realized too late that I’d shut down the conversation. I had to think of something else to say.
“Do you?” I asked.
She shrugged. “When the mood hits me, I guess.”
“When does the mood hit you?”
“I don’t know. It’s a mood.”
I thought: You don’t understand that talking is hard for me. I watch all of you doing it, but I just can’t. I could with her. But I can’t now.
“Evan?”
I looked up at Fiona. I hadn’t realized I’d looked down. I hadn’t realized she wanted me to say something else.
“Sorry,” I said. “I was just … thinking.”
“About what?”
“Nothing, really.”
She looked disappointed.
“I’m sorry,” I said again.
She smiled. “What do you have to be sorry about?”
Ariel. The fact that I can’t talk to you normally. The fact that you’re being nice and I can’t be nice back—not because I don’t want to. I want to be nice. But my mind won’t let me speak. My body won’t let me speak. It’s too uncomfortable.
“Lots,” I said.
Now Fiona looked at me a different way, and I wondered if this was how I used to look at you, the barely masked concern that lands like pity.
What was weird was: I thought I’d hidden it so well. I thought, to them, I was just quiet Evan, shy Evan, plain Evan. I was the orphan sidekick, the trusty wallflower.
“I gotta go,” I said, even though my lunch wasn’t finished and there were still at least fifteen minutes to go before next period. As I stood up, I had the strangest sensation that this would be the moment that someone would take a picture of, because this was the moment I’d least want to be captured.
You said that once, didn’t you? I remembered it. One morning, I was at your locker and you were just staring inside it, as if there was a mirror there. “Ariel?” I asked. And you said, “Why is it that I’m always forced to see people at the exact time I don’t want anyone to see me? Why is life that cruel?” Jack might have made a joke about it, but I took it seriously.
“Bye,” Fiona said, and I managed to say it back. Even Matt was looking at me a little weirdly as I left; he’d noticed me talking to Fiona, and it was clear he thought it was a good thing, which I was now messing up. This only made me want to leave faster, and I almost spilled my soda on Katie’s head as I swerved away. I liked them all, but I was going, and the only person I blamed was myself.