Everyone We've Been (19 page)

“I'm so, so sorry. Please don't hate me,” Katy says. “As soon as you told me he worked at the Cineplex and then when you described him, I realized you were seeing
him.
That's why I asked if you'd let me go to my mom. I thought something had gone wrong.”

That's why you started avoiding me,
I think, but don't say the words. I'm leaning forward, head bowed on the steering wheel, eyes closed. Trying to get a grip on reality.

“I hoped it was just a glitch. Just some temporary thing because of hitting your head. After everything we'd done so you could forget what happened, after how devastated it made you, I wasn't just going to blurt the truth out to you. And then you said you'd stopped seeing him and you were feeling better, so I thought it was fine….I don't know.”

I still have a million questions.

Who is he?

What happened?

You knew? All this time I thought I was crazy, and you knew who he was?

How can this be true? How can any of what has happened over the last twenty-four hours be true?

“Who is he?” I ask, deciding to go in order.

“Zach,” she says.

Zach.

The name tugs at something quick and sharp inside me. It's like a jolt of electricity, a pinched nerve.

His name is Zach.

I picture Bus Boy. His weather-inappropriate clothes, his wide smile. His name feels like a balm on a burn.

And yet. Katy hasn't given me much. Who the hell
is
Zach?

“What happened?” I ask.

She is tentative. Unsure. “You were so sad. I had never seen you like that before. It scared me. So when you looked up Overton and you wanted to get your memories of him erased…I mean, it seemed extreme and scary, but I wanted you to be happy. You're my best friend, Addie—I've never been friends with someone as long as I have with you. I supported whatever you wanted.”

I stay silent.

What?

This isn't my life.

It can't be my life.

Who is Zach?

“How did it work?”

“The procedure? I'm not too sure. I know they use electrodes—these black patchy things hooked up to a machine. Or do you mean how we were able to get them to do it without your parents knowing?” She pauses, but I don't answer, so she addresses the latter question. “We used our fake IDs. You had it done as Kathleen Kelly. They thought you were nineteen.”

I glance up at that. So we
did
get use out of them, like she wanted.

“Who was my doctor?” It's such a stupid question. Mundane.

“Overton. The old one.”

Dr. Hunt must have done the procedure when I was twelve. Overton Sr. removed
Zach.
And Overton Jr. really had never met me.

“But how?” I ask again. “Nobody else knew him? My parents have never even mentioned him.
How?
”

“We never told your parents you got the procedure done. You were really upset after everything with him, and they knew that. So when you asked your family not to bring him up again, they were only too happy to agree. None of our friends at school really knew him. The biggest problem was his dumb-ass friends would approach you and try to talk to you—mostly at the beginning.”

People I thought were Katy's friends.

The girl at the mall—Ashley—who said she'd met me.

God.

Oh God.

Still leaning over the steering wheel, I bury my face in my hands and cry. Quiet, heavy tears that start from my chest and weave their way up.

This is not my life.

None of this can be true.

And yet—here are the pieces, falling together, interlocking. Making sense.

My whole life is a lie.

“I'm so sorry,” Katy says. “I only wanted you to not be so sad. I didn't even want you to have the procedure, but you were so sure. I'd never seen you so upset.”

I can't even answer her. I can only continue weeping, shaking silently.

Oh God.

What do I do now?

“I'll tell you everything you want to know,” Katy says, squeezing my shoulder. “Everything I remember. Stuff you told me. I'll tell you how you met and everything you told me.”

Everything
she
remembers.

What about
me
?

Somehow Katy has one giant chunk of my life, and my family has the other. What do I have?

What have I done?

“No,” I say, lifting my head from the steering wheel. I don't want her to tell me what happened.

“O-okay.” Katy seems surprised. “Addie, I'm really, really sorry. I swear I didn't know about Rory. And I should have told you right away when you started seeing the…Zach, but I was just…I didn't know how to handle it or whether it was the right thing.”

I nod, but say nothing.

I feel numb, like a stranger in a completely new and foreign world. Katy gives me the closest thing to a hug she can manage with me sitting catatonic, leaning over the wheel and looking out the windshield.

“Will you be okay?” she asks.

I nod again, and then she is reluctantly opening the door, scrambling out of the car. I stay there for minutes, hours, staring out the window. Trying to make sense, for the second time in twenty-four hours, of an entirely new version of my life.

Zach is working today, and I've just ridden over from my viola lesson. Since his dad is at a dentist's appointment and the store is dead, I am sitting cross-legged on the counter, wistfully scrolling through the latest pictures Katy has sent of her trip.

“Did your dad always want to own a movie store?” I ask as Zach works on the computer a few feet away. He's ordering some new horrodies.

“No way,” he says. “We used to sell mostly music back in the day, but the only thing selling worse than DVDs is CDs. It's all digital.”

Then he points at the screen and says, “Look at this one.” I squint at a picture of a man in a business suit, his pants rolled up to the knees, holding a briefcase and standing in a literal pool of what is quite obviously ketchup. Of course.

“It's by a British dude named Moyer. He was number one on
Cinema Tomorrow
's list of up-and-coming directors, and his first film was pretty good, but obviously not as good as what Ciano was making when
he
first started. Do you know what's so great about Ciano, like, specifically?” Zach says.

“What is so great about Ciano, like, specifically?” I ask.

“He nearly died.” Which is not what I'm expecting him to say. “
Rotary Windclock—
you know, the third one I gave you—was inspired by it. When he was nineteen and in college, he was out late one night alone when he got jumped by four guys, mugged, beaten to a pulp, and left for dead.”

“Holy crap,” I say.

“I know. There was no one around, and by the time they found him, he was unconscious. He had to relearn how to walk. Like, he still walks with a cane because of it.

“Anyway, the point is that when he made it into a movie, he decided not to make it heartwarming or depressing or a story about overcoming or whatever. He didn't even aim for funny, which is at least the respectable cousin of silly.” Zach opens up another web page while he talks, pauses to read its synopsis of a movie, then closes it. “He said in an interview that his producing partner wanted him to do a documentary about his journey back, like regaining his locomotion and stuff, but he refused.”

“That might actually have been pretty interesting,” I say.

“Yeah, but that's his point.” Zach focuses on me now, his eyes intense, voice passionate, the way he always gets when he talks movies. “That was his
power.
You take the worst thing that's ever happened to you and you tell it any way you want to. You make it silly. You reclaim it. The point is that it's
yours.
And everything that happens to you, not just the bad stuff, is like that. Make it whatever the hell you want it to be. The entire interview is a fucking revelation. I should find the article and email it to you,” he says.

“Do it,” I say, reaching for my phone, which has just vibrated in my pocket.

I show Zach the picture Katy sent. “They were
literally
outside Carnegie Hall.”

Zach squints at my phone, then stands and stretches. His T-shirt jumps up, revealing his stomach and the waistband of his underwear peeking just above his jeans.

“You're making yourself miserable,” he says, playing with a strand of my hair. I untuck my feet and let them dangle so Zach is standing between my legs. “Maybe
Katy
is having a horrible time but she's taking Ciano's advice and making it sound wonderful.”

I roll my eyes at him but hold his shirt between my fingers and pull him in closer.

“I'm not that miserable,” I breathe against his lips.

“Now,”
he says, smiling. His lips are so soft, his tongue warm inside my mouth. His breath is a little cigarette-y, but he's always chewing mint gum lately to decrease the taste. I wrap my legs around him and kiss him harder. If this is misery, I want to be miserable for the rest of my life,
die
miserable.

We are tangled all around each other when the door of the store suddenly bursts open, a faint breeze—the first real hint of summer passing—wafting in.

I twist my upper body around to find Raj gaping at us, his jaw a few inches lower than normal.

“Hey, dude,” Zach says casually.

I spin around so my legs are on the counter again, no longer locking Zach's body around me. “Hey, Raj.”

He stands there for a good thirty seconds, not speaking, before he says, “So I hit an electrical pole on my way over.”

“Holy shit. Is your mom's car okay?” Zach asks.

“I was on foot,” Raj says, speaking in this slow, dazed way I've never heard from him before. “Anyway, now I realize it must have been a person.”

Zach and I exchange perplexed looks.

“A person,” Raj repeats. “Because my glasses are old and my eyes keep playing tricks on me. It's happening right
now.
” Oh—he's talking about us. I guess Zach hasn't yet told Raj that we are more than friends.

Zach evades his friend's eyes, looks down at his computer, and says with no emotion in his voice, “Really.”

“Really,” Raj echoes, still looking at me, stupefied. I feel my ears get a little hot. And then he seems to shake off the bewilderment and strides toward the counter. “I was playing
Dungeon World 2
last night, and I think I have a new idea for our next film.”

“Sweet. What is it?” Zach asks.

Raj launches into a tale about dragons and a mall cop and a blood-vomiting sea animal with the ability to exist on land so long as it has mated.

“That's really disturbing,” I say, glancing up from the exclamation-laden text (
Omg, so cool!!! You must be having the BEST time!!!! 
) I'm sending back to Katy.

“Right?” Raj says, misunderstanding my use of the word “disturbing.” “It's genius.”

“It's almost the exact same plot as that Van Durgen movie
Truth or Troll,
” Zach says.

“That movie was shit,” Raj says, and I'm not a hundred percent sure, but I think he means it as an insult.

“And still the highest-grossing Swedish movie last year.”

“So that's a no?” Raj asks sadly.

“That's a definite no. If we're going to follow in the footsteps of someone, we could aim a little higher than Van Durgen. Especially if we have a CXX in September,” Zach says.

“Whoa, you're down to two cigarettes a day already?” Raj asks.

“Working on it,” Zach says.

“Nice.” Raj nods. “But seriously. Unequivocal no to that idea?”

“Unequivocally,” Zach says. “Sorry.”

The phone starts ringing then, and Zach turns to get it. “Sure” he says, “let me see if we have that.” He heads to the back of the store. I'm still staring at my phone when I feel Raj's eyes on me.

“What's up, Raj?” I ask pointedly.

“So you and Zach, huh?” he asks.

“Yeah,” I say, fighting the twitch of a smile in the corners of my mouth. “You seem…shocked?”

“Yes and no,” he says, then shrugs. “No, because that kid is not subtle. I knew he liked you from the second he told me he was thinking of asking you to join our movie. And he was
jealous
of your viola.”

I laugh. “Yes, because?”

“Yes, because I wasn't sure we'd live to see a Lindsay-less day. Even when Zach went to Fincher for a year, they were solid.”

This information is not exactly surprising, but I still flinch a little at her name. Why does she always seem to come up?

“You don't seem to like her very much,” I tell Raj as Zach's voice on the phone carries to where we are.

“
She's
the one who doesn't like
me.
I mean, whatever, we're friendly. It's fine. But she doesn't like me or Kevin or any of Zach's friends. She doesn't even like horrodies.”

“But she's starred in almost all Zach's movies,” I point out. And how does she not like Kevin? He's Zach's
brother.

“For the acting experience and because she respects his work ethic when it comes to movies. She actually said that.” Raj shakes his head. “She hates
Dungeon World 2,
the smell of Indian food, and puppies.”

“Puppies?” I repeat, incredulous.

“Fine, not the last thing.”

Now I'm frowning, leaning forward on the counter. “Then…what did Zach ever see in her?”

I'm expecting him to say that only God knows, but Raj sighs. “It's not like she's a bad person. She just doesn't give things a chance. She's very quick to form an opinion, and then she doesn't change it.” I suddenly remember what Zach said at Schiavoni's. That he liked that I tried new things, that I hadn't made up my mind about every single thing. Unlike Lindsay?

“And then she's also convinced she's just a little bit better, more mature, than everyone else. She thinks
we're
bad influences on Zach, when—for the record—she smoked all the time with him.”

“Lindsay smokes?” I don't know why this shocks me.

Raj nods. “Where there's smoke, there's Lindsay. She thinks it's sophisticated or something. And she likes that it makes her voice raspy.”

“Wow.”

Before I can ask more, Zach reappears. “They're coming to upgrade our systems next week. Dad finally put together enough money to make the jump.”

Zach pulls up a few more movies he's thinking about ordering and reads out their synopses. After a few minutes, Raj heaves a heavy sigh and asks if he can open a bag of cotton candy.

While he goes to grab it, Zach leans toward me and kisses the flap of my earlobe. Every inch of my body tickles.

“Stop.” I writhe, giggling.

“Do you know you tug at your ears when you're feeling shy?” he whispers. I didn't, but it's because they constantly heat up when anything remotely exciting happens. Katy thinks it's a condition.

They warm when I'm angry or embarrassed.
When you look at me,
I think.
When you touch me.

I think now about what Raj just told me, and I wonder whether I make Zach forget her—Lindsay. And whether I like or hate that.

But what I say is, “You're the first person ever to notice that.”