I turned to the people I didn’t know on your profile. People you had once known who’d moved away. Or people you’d met over summers, or online. You could have one conversation with someone because you liked the same band, and then they’d linger on, attached to you, forever. I read where they lived California London Florida Montreal Chicago, and even though I knew they wouldn’t have flown in to leave photos in my locker, I checked out who their friends were and what their photo albums looked like. I should have felt like I was knowing you more by learning about all these people, but instead I felt I was knowing you less and less. She might not have really known these people, I tried to convince remind myself.
It was three in the morning, and I was looking at the profile for a girl named Kelly in California. She loved the Beatles, Alice Walker, her two cats, and a mix of bad teen drama and bad reality TV. I clicked on her friends, moved to the second page … and there he was.
11D
Every You, Every Me
11E
Sparrow. Only that wasn’t the name underneath.
It was Alex.
I clicked on Alex’s profile. It said he lived in the same town in California as Kelly. That made no sense to me. Hadn’t he been here? I clicked on another of his friends. Same school, same town. So it couldn’t be a lie.
Then I clicked on his photos.
And I found you.
And him.
And her.
11F
Every You, Every Me
11G
Every You, Every Me
11H
Every You, Every Me
11I
Every You, Every Me
11J
Ariel, look at me.
Look at me.
Look at me.
11K
I sat there in the dark, staring at you. The screen was the only light on in the room, so I imagined your image projected into every corner. I was seeing it, but I was also within it. That last photo, you a blur. I was a blur, too. I was being erased because I would not stop for time.
11L
You see a photograph and you try to make yourself be there. But you can’t. Even if you were there. You can’t.
And if you weren’t there, you retreat into desperate invention. You weave your own fiction and try to convince yourself it’s fact.
It doesn’t work.
A photograph is a souvenir of a moment.
It is not a moment.
It is the looking at the photograph that becomes the moment. Your own moment.
I was losing myself in there.
Because.
Because.
Because you were everlasting in sunshine curious all right the kind of beautiful that I remembered.
“Let’s go into the woods and take some pictures,” you said. “I found this old camera.”
“Let go!” you screamed. “Let go of me!”
“You have to let go,” the counselor told me. “Let go of what you’re holding inside.”
I can touch the picture but it’s not your face.
I can touch the screen but it’s not your face.
Let go.
11M
I pulled back and remembered what I was doing. Investing Investigating.
I looked at the dates Alex/Sparrow had posted the photo—11/13.
And there she was.
The photographer. Untagged. Nameless.
And I had no idea
none
who she was.
All this time, I thought if I could glimpse her, I would know.
I checked all of Alex/Sparrow’s profile. I checked all of his friends for someone who looked like her. I went back and checked all of Ariel’s pictures, all of Ariel’s friends.
No recognition.
No similarities.
She knew me, but I didn’t know her.
So then I did something stupid. I didn’t think about it. I just did it.
I sent Alex/Sparrow a message.
11N
How do you know Ariel?
11O
It was morning already. At least where I was.
In California, I imagined Alex/Sparrow was still sleeping, postponing all my answers with his dreams.
12
I was waiting for Jack with printouts the next morning.
He looked annoyed to see me there in the smoking section, outside school. He checked for permission and lit his cigarette before saying anything.
“What is it now?” he finally asked.
I wondered what would have happened if we’d met up like this before you went over the edge. Would we have been able to stop you if we’d talked about it?
“I think I know who the photographer is,” I told him.
I showed him the photos.
“Who is she?” he said.
“I don’t know.”
He looked at me hard. “I thought you just said you knew.”
“Well, I know what she looks like. She’s right there. Do you recognize her?”
“She looks familiar.” He studied the photo some more. “But I couldn’t tell you where from. Maybe she goes here. But maybe she just reminds me of someone.”
I thought of Venn diagrams, those two overlapping circles. And how the translation of “You remind me of someone” is that piece in between, that common space that’s the only piece we’re seeing.
“I didn’t sleep last night,” I told him. “I was up all night looking at her profile. Looking for Sparrow and this girl.”
“I don’t know who she is,” Jack said, handing the photo back to me. “Sorry.”
I found myself saying, “I wish she had a sister.”
“What?”
I didn’t know why I’d thought Jack would understand. Too often I thought he’d have the same impulses as me, just because we’d both loved you.
“If Ariel had a sister,” I explained, “we could ask her. Show her the photos. Because we can’t do that with her parents. They hate us.”
“I don’t think they—”
“They do, Jack. They hate us.”
We went to your house the week after. To hear the news firsthand, instead of through gossip and rumors. They let us into the house, but it was clear that they didn’t want us to stay there. They told us what the doctors said. It was what we’d already feared.
Jack ground out his cigarette and put his hand on my shoulder.
“Ev, I don’t know what to tell you. We don’t even know if it’s the same girl who’s leaving the pictures for us. Don’t you think if these people were really important to Ariel, she would’ve told us about them?”
I was calmer now that he was using words like we and us.
I’d felt that way with you, too. Whenever you talked about we and us, I felt things made sense, that we were going through everything together, that if I could take it, then I could carry you through. It was only when you splintered off into your own lost I that things became complicated, overwhelming.
“I don’t know where I am, Evan.”
“I’m seeing red everywhere. It’s just … everywhere.”
“I am underwater right now. You don’t understand. I’m underwater.”
“I need a gun.”
“Evan? I need—”
“Evan?”
Jack was waving his hand in front of me.
“Evan.”
“What?”
“Don’t do that!” He was angry. “Jesus, not you, too, okay? Not you, too.”
We just stood there for a moment, neither of us knowing what to say next. Just like old times. And then a girl asked, “Is this a bad time?”
“Hey, Miranda,” Jack said, his tone lightening.
I didn’t know whether to say hi or not. Miranda Lee wasn’t someone I usually said hi to. She’d never been mean to me or nice to me or anything. She’d never been anything to me. She was one year younger than us and played sports, which was probably how Jack knew her.
“Hi,” she said to both of us. “What’s going on?”
I still had the photos out. I quickly put them back in my bag.
“Evan was just showing me some of his pictures,” Jack explained smoothly keeping you a secret. “He’s working on a project. It’s pretty cool.”
“Cool,” Miranda echoed.
“Yeah, thanks,” I said. “Anyway, thanks for taking a look, Jack. I guess I’ll be going. I mean, I was already going, so it’s not you that’s making me go, Miranda. I don’t want you to think that.”
“Oh, good,” Miranda said. She didn’t sound sarcastic. If I’d said something like that to you, you would have been merciless. You had no use for sputtering.
I spent the next fifteen minutes before school walking the halls, looking for the photographer. I saw girls with similar hair or similar clothes or similar features, but never at the same time. Either she wasn’t here, or she was hiding, or I wasn’t looking right.
I had no way to know.
12A
When I walked through the halls, I thought of you. I wondered what you thought of this school now. This building. Was it a shelter against everything else? Could you be happy here? Or was it just another form of prison, just another place where you felt the weight of all the stones, all the people, all the thoughts?
I wish I’d known what was wrong with you.
I still wish I knew what was wrong with you.
12B
I felt weird asking my friends at lunch about another photo, when I’d just cross-examined them about Sparrow the day before. So I decided to wait.
Fiona, though, brought the whole thing up.
“Did you find Mr. Mohawk?” she asked.
“I think he’s in California,” I mumbled.
“You sent the detectives all the way to California?” Charlie joked.
“No, I found him online.”
That should have been the end of the conversation. And it was—for everyone except Fiona.
“Who is he?” she asked.
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. Then I stood up from the table. “I have to run to the library. I almost forgot.”
Fiona looked at my tray. “You haven’t eaten anything.”
I shrugged. “I’m not really hungry.”
12C
Really: I was hungry. And I was remembering one of the things you had said. Not the last day in the woods, but maybe three days before. Everyone was supposed to hang out together, but you didn’t want to go.
“Why?” I’d asked.
“I don’t trust any of them,” you’d said. “I don’t trust Fiona. I don’t want to see them. They think they know the truth, but they don’t. I know the truth. They don’t.”
The truth. Really the Truth.
I should have been concerned. But then you’d said, “You’re the one I trust. You.” And that’s what I felt. That’s what I remembered.
12D
The day it happened, the week after it happened—those were not times I wanted to go back to. How I felt like I was trapped in a chamber of my own noise. Sitting in class and not being there at all. Sitting in a chair and fragmenting at the same time. Clutching to the random facts. Thinking the concept of a fact was itself a fiction. Because we live in a blur. All of us live in a blur.
I was starting to feel it again. Only this time no one was really watching.
12E
“What is the answer, Evan?” Ms. Granger asked.
Giraffe, I wanted to answer. It was on the tip of my tongue. Giraffe.
This was in math class.
12F
“Where is your homework?” Mr. McNulty asked.
It’s with Ariel.
“There is no such thing as homework,” I said.
“What?”
“I mean, I left it at home.”
12G
If the photographer existed, I had to be able to find her.
But I couldn’t find you, could I?
12H
You existed. You existed now as a fractal.
Definition:
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.