Why Can't I Be You (11 page)

“Whatever,” he said, and wiped his hands on his napkin. “I gotta go see a man about a horse.”

“Charming,” I said, before I could stop myself.

Fish gave me that look again, the warning one that made my pulse charge through my veins. It wasn’t a bad feeling.

“You guys,” Myra said, wadding up her napkin and tossing it on her empty plate. “One, I don’t think John’s coming tonight.” She took a sip of her soda. “And
b
I have to go finish setting up for the reunion tomorrow.”

I thought she was really drunk, but then Robbie pointed at me and said, “Oh my God! Ha! Remember, you always used to do that? ‘One’ and
b
, or
a
and ‘two,’ whenever you had a list of things. Like you couldn’t remember which you were using.”

“One, totally. And
b
I’m sure it was intentional,” I said, defending myself or Jessie or I don’t even know who.

“Yeah,” Robbie said, getting up and putting his arms around me and Heather. “Keep telling yourself that, Jesseroo.” He grabbed my face with his hand and smushed my cheeks. “Look at this face,” he said to Heather. “Just precious!”

“Look at this face,” Heather said, smushing Robbie’s cheeks while he was still holding mine. “You guys are goons.”

W
e all piled
into the reunion banquet room to help Myra finish getting ready.

Fish grabbed a wound-up wad of twinkle lights from Myra’s decorations box and sat on a table in the corner by himself to untangle them.

Myra put Heather and Robbie to work blowing up red and white balloons with a helium tank. Robbie blew them up, and Heather tied ribbons on the ends. They were a well-oiled machine. Robbie sang, “Ninety-nine red balloons, ninety-nine red balloons, ninety-nine red balloons, ninety-nine red balloons.”

Myra and I laughed.

“Oh my God!” Heather said. “That song does have other words.”

“Yeah,” Robbie said, holding up a finished balloon and hitting it across the room like he was serving a volleyball, “but I don’t know what they are.”

I kicked my heels off and stood on a table while Myra handed me a cascade of streamers to hang over the DJ booth. “A little bit this way,” she said, and I moved them toward her. “No, to the left now.”

“Ninety-nine . . .” Robbie stopped. We heard him suck helium from one of the balloons. “Red balloons.” His voice had gone munchkin. “Ninety-nine red balloons.”

Myra turned her back to Robbie. “Oh my God!” she mouthed to me, laughing so hard her face turned red.

Her laugh made me laugh harder. I tried to keep my head down so Robbie wouldn’t see.

“We can’t encourage him,” she whispered, shaking her head. “He’ll never stop.”

“Robert!” Heather yelled. “You’re killing brain cells.”

“I didn’t have that many to begin with,” Robbie said, his voice slipping from cartoon character back to normal.

“That’s why we have to be extra careful, sweetheart,” Heather said, kissing him. “You’re such a dork.”

“Oh my God,” Myra said, taking a deep breath. “Okay, a little to the left.” Her voice wobbled on the edge of giggles. I stepped to the far corner of the table, but I couldn’t quite reach the right spot.

“Fish!” Myra yelled. “Get over here!”

“What?” Fish said, making no effort to get up.

“Help Jessie.”

Fish gave her a pained look.

“Oh, grow a pair,” Myra said, and walked away.

Fish sighed and jumped up on the table next to me.

“Hi,” I said. “Just a little bit farther over . . .” I stretched my arm out as far as I could. He grabbed the bunch of streamers from me and smacked them up without really looking at where they were supposed to go.

He jumped down from the table. “I’m going to head home,” he yelled to Myra. He kissed her on the cheek, whispered something to her, and then walked to the door without even saying good-bye to me.

“Hey,” Robbie said. “Don’t leave me here, man! They’ll make me glue glitter on doilies or something. Drop me off on your way.”

“Fine,” Fish said, without looking back.

Robbie ran over and handed his keys to Heather. “Drive Myra home.”

“I’m sobered up,” Myra said.

“Drive Myra home,” Robbie said again, loudly.

“Love you,
Dad
,” Myra yelled after Robbie, as he jogged out of the room to catch up with Fish.

“Love you, ladies! Behave yourselves!” he yelled over his shoulder as he left.

“Thanks for staying with me, girls,” Myra said. She sat down and started making loops out of red, white, and gray streamers. “You’re saving my ass.” Her hands moved so fast, and then all of a sudden there was a perfect bow in front of her. She started in on another one.

“No problem,” I said. I tried to copy Myra’s loops, but I kept stretching the crepe paper out too much, and the resulting bow looked floppy and pathetic.

“Of course! I wouldn’t miss this,” Heather said.

“Actually.” Myra raised an eyebrow. “I think technically we’re saving your big fraud of an ass.”

“What do you mean?” I said. My heart didn’t pound as hard this time. There are only so many times you can deal with about-to-be-found-out shock before you either die or adapt.

“Ms. Class President,” Myra said, smirking at me.

Thankfully, I bit my tongue before I said, “Really?” From what I knew of Jessie Morgan, she didn’t seem like the class-president type. I didn’t say anything. I just smiled.

“Just think,” Heather said. “If Robert Pierce had done his platform speech while wearing a spandex miniskirt and a tube top, he’d be here making crepe-paper bows instead.” She finished a bow that was only slightly better than mine. “Remember your red patent-leather stilettos? I still don’t know how you could walk in those things.”

“God,” I said, cringing at the idea of some little tart winning a high school election that way. “I can’t believe—I can’t believe I did that!”

“Yeah,” Myra said. “And you got all the glory while I did all the grunt work. That’s why we’re having a thirteen-year reunion, by the way. It’s your fault. Everyone waited for you to emerge from the ether to plan the ten-year, and it never happened.”

“I’m so sorry,” I said.

“Hey,” Myra said, “homecoming dance, winter formal, and prom. I learned how to make a mean crepe-paper bow.” She seemed a little annoyed, but then she looked at me and her face softened. “And, you know, we don’t love you because you’ve always been a straight arrow. Plus I’m sure we’re all way more interesting now than we were three years ago anyway.” She scrunched up her face like she was being super serious and handed me a bow. “Go hang it somewhere. Do your job, Madam President.” She laughed.

I hung bows around the stage with rolled-up strips of tape. I watched Myra and Heather as I worked. Myra stuck a bow in Heather’s hair. Heather crossed her eyes and stuck her tongue out.

“You look lovely, darling, don’t you?” Myra said, in a terrible British accent.

“Yes, yes,” Heather said, sticking a bow on Myra’s head too. “And you look simply smashing. Jessie, do be a dear and come look ridiculous with us, will you?”

“But of course,” I said, and jogged across the room to join them.

When we finished the bows, we moved on to name tags. Myra had cards made up with everyone’s high school yearbook pictures on them, but we had to get them in plastic sleeves and set them up in alphabetical order on the table by the door.

Myra handed me a card for Jessie. “I made this one on my computer this morning. I figure if we have to wear dorky name tags, you do too.”

“Ha!” Heather said, holding one of the cards to her chest to hide it from us. “Brad Wilson. Do you remember how cool we thought he was?”

I smiled and nodded.

Myra held the back of her hand to her forehead, like she was swooning.

“And, here it is,” Heather said, turning the tag out to face us.

Brad Wilson was a scrawny little baby of a kid with hockey hair.

Myra laughed so hard that actual tears rolled down her cheeks. “We wasted our youth mooning over a guy with a mullet!”

We stayed up way later than we should have, playing “cool or not cool?” with the name tags until well after midnight.

Myra yawned, and then Heather and I followed. “You know,” Heather said, “if I stay any later, I’m going to be too tired to drive.”

“Yeah,” Myra said, stretching out her arms and yawning again. “We should get going.”

“I’m just going to run to the ladies’ and then I’m good to go,” Heather said, and did a quick little jog for the door.

“You know,” Myra said, laying her head on her arm to look at me. “You could stay with me next week.”

“Oh,” I said. “I don’t—”

“You told me you were going to spend next week with Deagan. You already have the time off.”

“I mean, I should really—”

“Seriously, Jess,” she said, sitting up and reaching for her purse. “You should really stay.”

“I’m not sure everyone’s happy to have me here.”

“Fish, you mean?”

“Yeah,” I said, running my hand through my hair. I still wasn’t used to how short it was.

“I think he’ll warm up. He just needs a little time. You broke his heart.”

“Really?”

“God, Jess! Sometimes you can be so dense!” She laughed and smacked her palm to her forehead. “He told you he loved you after graduation, and you ran into the bathroom and then basically disappeared forever. You think maybe that might bruise a guy’s ego a little? Maybe? Possibly?”

I leaned on my elbows and covered my face with my hands. I didn’t know what to say, and I was feeling overwhelmed.

“Hey,” Myra said. She patted my arm. “He has to get it out of his system, you know? Make sure you know that he was hurt. He’ll warm up. I’ve watched him watching you when you’re not looking.”

“Really?”

“It’s Fish,” Myra said. “He has to watch you. It’s like what he was put on earth to do. Stay. Make up with him. After everything you guys went through, don’t leave without patching things up.”

“I have the trip all booked,” I said. “I’m not sure if it’s refundable.” I wasn’t going to stay at Myra’s house. That was a line too crazy to cross.

“Well, the offer is there,” she said, reaching across the table to squeeze my hand.

After Myra and Heather left, I wandered around the room, looking for Fish’s picture on the yearbook page posters. I didn’t even know what his real name was. Myra or Heather must have gotten his name tag.

I started at the beginning of the yearbook pictures and worked my way around the room until I found a picture I was sure was Fish. Gilbert Warren Foster. He was wearing a plaid shirt, open, over a Pearl Jam T-shirt, and even though he was blinking funny in the picture, I would have thought he was cool when I was in high school. I would have bought a Pearl Jam CD for an excuse to talk to him, and I might have even worked up the nerve to actually say something.

I found Robbie, who had massive aviator eyeglasses sliding halfway down his nose, a big warm smile, and the same deep dimples. I wouldn’t have recognized Heather if she’d had a nickname like Fish, but I could pick her out from the narrowed-down sea of Heathers. She was pudgy with mud-colored frizzy hair pulled into a side ponytail and fastened in place with a big white scrunchie. She wasn’t what anyone in high school would have thought of as pretty, but she had a hopeful smile and an awkward sweetness.

I’m sure if my face had been up there with everyone else’s, it would have had that same raw promise. We can’t see how beautiful it is when we’re young and nervous and think everyone else knows just how awful we feel about ourselves. I wasn’t that different from them. But what I never had is what was most beautiful about Fish and Heather and Myra and Robbie—they were people who were cared about. You could see it in their faces. You could still see it. They were secure in knowing they had friends. They were loved, and they always would be. I choked back tears.

I looked at Jessie Morgan’s picture again and wondered what kind of person would ever leave friends like these.

S
o, it turns
out that you can’t just type “Jessica Elizabeth Morgan” into Google and expect to get the Jessica Elizabeth Morgan you’re looking for right up top, or even expect to find her in the first five hundred results. I know this, because instead of going to bed after a long night of mojitos and meeting Fish and decorating, I stayed up until the wee hours of the morning convinced that the next link I clicked would lead to her. And every time it didn’t, I’d say, “Okay, one more,” and hold out hope that the next one I clicked would show a picture of someone who looked like me, but with a bigger nose, or race stats from a 5K fundraiser and the woman mentioned would be exactly Jessie Morgan’s age.

I knew she hadn’t gone to Florida State or the U of O, which I assumed meant Oregon. I wracked my brain to try to remember if Myra had mentioned any of the other schools Jessie applied to, but I didn’t think she had. And it’s not like I could have asked her, “Hey, so where did I apply to college?”

I looked on Facebook for Jessica Morgans who had gone to party schools. Someplace like Arizona or Southern California. Bikinis and sun and cute boys—a place to wear her tube top. But there wasn’t a single thirty-one-year-old Jessica Morgan who looked the slightest bit like me anywhere.

Then it occurred to me that maybe she wasn’t even Jessie Morgan anymore. Maybe she had a married name. Maybe she changed her name. Maybe there was a real reason Jessie left Mount Si and never came back. She dashed into a bathroom and then she disappeared. Maybe she was in the witness-protection program. The FBI or the CIA or whoever relocates witnesses let her walk at graduation and then swooped her away to be a dry cleaner in Lansing or a bartender in Kansas City. Maybe there was a good reason Myra had never been able to find her.

At around 4:00 a.m., the sheer stupidity and awfulness of what I was doing hit me. I started to sweat. My hands shook, and I couldn’t get enough air. I grabbed my inhaler and went outside to sit on the balcony, with the comforter wrapped around me, and listened to the rush of the falls as I tried to calm myself down.