I'm Not Who You Think I Am

by Felicitas Ivey

  “He wouldn’t do that,” I said as I waved Beth over for the bill. “But I don’t want him to worry.”

  “So, was it about a guy?” Beth asked when we paid. “People only look that serous if it’s an issue with a boyfriend or something.”

  Xiu frowned and I shrugged. “In a manner of speaking.”

  Beth nodded sagely. “Men. Can’t live with them and can’t train them like a dog.”

  Xiu burst out into laughter, and I started pushing her out the door as the really late-night crowd was coming in. I was laughing too, and we giggled all the way back to the condo.

  I SHOULDN’T have been surprised I dreamed that night. It was the only way he could bother… communicate with me. I found myself standing with him.

  “There is not much time, since he is actively trying to block me,” Sutekhgen said. “But soon he will move. Be prepared.” He sighed. “There is nothing more I can tell you.”

  I woke up with a start. Angry because I knew what Sutekhgen was telling me was true, but I didn’t know enough to see what he was talking about. I spent the rest of the night staring at the ceiling, aware that Xiu was also awake and neither one of us comfortable with breaking the silence.

  Chapter Thirteen

  THANKFULLY WE managed to get into the Shawmut without the drama we’d had yesterday. Both Xiu and I looked like zombies, I swear, but Uncle Yushua smoothed the way for us by just looking at Gin and bending her to his will.

  We parked ourselves at our table. We’d beaten Kyle in, and Xiu started to go through his stuff.

  “That’s rude,” I scolded.

  “There was something that caught my eye yesterday,” she said. “It’s been bugging me all night.”

  More than one thing, because I’d seen something too that had bothered me in all the books that had been scattered over the table by the three of us. But I wasn’t paying attention enough to remember what it was.

  “At least wait for him to be here before you start digging through his stuff.”

  “I’m here,” he said. “I got a couple more pages for you to read.”

  “Later,” Xiu said. “We just need to look at a couple of things.”

  She selected the books she was interested in, and I nabbed a couple more. We both moved to a different table. I was glad there wasn’t anyone else here. We both frantically flipped pages, because right now neither one of us was interested in taking care. Xiu marked the pages that interested her with scraps of paper. I did the same. After a few minutes we were done.

  Xiu laid out her books, lining up the photos she had been looking for, and I did the same.

  “I thought I was nuts yesterday,” she said. “But with what you said last night…. Here, look at these photos.”

  “And you look at these,” I said.

  We looked at each other’s collection. Xiu’s books were from the first half of the twentieth century and a little earlier. Mine were all from the later half. Most of the pictures Xiu had found were group photos. They were pictures of men who had worked on different digs for the MFA or Harvard. They were all stiff and formal, the men staring out at the camera like they were all in front of a firing squad. They were spread over the decades and scattered all over Egypt.

  I studied them for a couple of minutes, ignoring Kyle staring at us like we were crazy.

  “You see it,” Xiu said, looking up from her own pile. “Because I do.”

  What we had both discovered was that on almost every dig over the decades, there seemed to be two men who were always present. I was just astonished someone hadn’t seen it before. But then I was pretty sure no one would think to look for it. I’d almost missed it. Xiu thankfully had noticed it.

  Harper and Rat seemed to be in all those pictures. I know, that sounded impossible and crazy, but so was an ancient Egyptian bugging you in your dreams.

  Harper was the easiest to find. He seemed to be always front and center in a group. And off to the side, usually, was Rat. Harper, no matter what name he used, always was a leader. Rat was listed as a digger or other support staff, for the most part.

  “What are you looking at?” Kyle demanded when we switched piles.

  I ignored him. The modern photos were all action shots, taken in various stages of a project. Rat was harder to find than Harper here too. He wasn’t even named most of the time. Again, Harper was the star. It was almost like he was daring someone to figure it out. We might not have, if Xiu hadn’t been doing some work for Kyle.

  “You don’t want to know,” Xiu said. “It’s a girl thing.”

  Kyle snorted. “And I’m the prince of Egypt.”

  “Great musical,” I said absentmindedly, wondering at Harper’s ego for him to be this notable for as long as he was and no one noticing it. And wondering why he had done it. Many faces…. Many times. Sutekhgen’s warning echoed in my mind. “Good animation. Sing a few songs for us, please.”

  Kyle huffed and opened his laptop. “Tell me when the hormones pass, so you’ll be sensible again.”

  “Not very nice,” Xiu scolded.

  “So isn’t…,” Kyle started. “I feel like I’m in high school again and you’re the cool kids.” He sighed. “I was never one of the cool kids.”

  “Neither are we,” Xiu said. “You don’t want to hear about it.”

  “Uncle mentioned a meeting at breakfast, so he won’t be around,” I muttered. “Bother.”

  Xiu shrugged, trying to be zen and in control. “It’s waited this long, I don’t think it’s going to blow up in the next few minutes.”

  I pulled out my phone in frustration and then put it away. “I guess so.”

  Xiu grinned. “I know so.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  “I’M HUNGRY,” Xiu announced, ignoring Kyle’s glare. He wasn’t too happy we weren’t sharing with him what we had found. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust Kyle; it was to protect him.

  “I’m so glad to meet you,” I drawled.

  Xiu’d been restless for the last hour or so, since we’d discovered those pictures. I didn’t blame her, since my concentration was shot, wondering how I could explain them to Uncle. I could be wrong about my suspicions and wanted to think about it some more. That he’d gone over to Harvard for a meeting gave me time to think about what to tell him, since Harper and Rat were close to him, and finding this out would hurt him too.

  “And you need to get out of here, you know, see sunshine. Get some fresh air. Do nonbook-geeky things,” she continued.

  Like get out of here and away from trouble. Because we might get trapped here. I’d been scanning everyone who’d come near us.

  “Hey!” Kyle protested.

  “My-My, you’re so pale, you could be a white girl,” Xiu said seriously. “You’ve spent too much time with these books.”

  “That’s just being racist,” Kyle complained. Thankfully he wasn’t jumping at us anymore, thinking Uncle Yushua would kick him out of here for bothering me. Using Xiu as a book runner and beta reader had helped. “Us pale geeky guys are chick magnets, don’t you know?”

  Xiu and I laughed, cutting it off quickly when the few other people around glared at us.

  “I’d like to point out, you’re sitting at my table,” Kyle said, sounding sad, even though he was smiling.

  Xiu made a show of examining the table. It was scratched up with decades of use, made of some sort of heavy wood. No names were carved on it, but there were some weird ink stains.

  “I don’t see your name on it,” she drawled sarcastically.

  Kyle looked also, studying it carefully. “You may be right,” he agreed after a pause. “But, you sat here even knowing I was sitting here, because here is my big pile of books.”

  “Which also don’t have your name on them,” Xiu said, her eyes bright and teasing, which didn’t match the tone of her voice.

  “I’m the go-to guy for you to get books,” Kyle protested. “You know, if you actually needed any.”

  “A walk sounds like an idea,
” I said. Part of my brain was screaming, “Escape,” even if I didn’t know what else to do. “But I don’t know about food. Where’s the closest place to eat here?”

  “There’s a sandwich shop in the apartment complex on the Old Harbor side,” Kyle said. “Does a great Italian.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Xiu said brightly. “Food is everyone’s friend.”

  “You know it’s barely ten in the morning. It might not be open,” I pointed out.

  “It’s a walk out of here,” Xiu whined. “I promise I’ll be good if we get some fresh air.”

  “I’ve met you. That’s not going to happen.”

  But I wanted to take a walk and get out of here. See if I could send Xiu to her cousins’ place to get her out of danger. Figure out what I needed to tell Uncle Yushua. Move and not sit like a scribe, recording false history. And now I knew I needed a walk if I was thinking like this.

  I grabbed my purse and smiled at Kyle. “Mind our stuff?”

  “I promise,” he said. “And I might get some more writing done for Xiu to tear apart.”

  “A well-written dissertation is one that gets you your pretty PhD,” Xiu scolded. “You should see what my mom says to some of her students. I was letting you off easily, trust me.”

  “Lit prof,” I explained at Kyle’s confused look.

  “Okay.” He nodded. “But a walk is what the two of you need. You wanted to jump out of your skin all morning, I swear.”

  We got outdoors, and I searched for the nearest sandwich place on my phone. It was good to be in the sun. I knew I was going to have a hard time going back. The shop was at the edge of the complex, off one of the streets leading to the Shawmut and the university.

  “If you want your mother to lose her mind, tell her the next time she calls you’re thinking of doing a theater arts major at this university,” Xiu said as we walked.

  I snorted. “That’s too mean, even for you.”

  Xiu grinned like a shark. “It’s not like I have to live with her.” She sobered. “I know that would drive my parents to drink. The major, not where I took it. All Nainai cares is that I go someplace where there’s family to keep me out of trouble.”

  I laughed. “Like that is ever going to happen.”

  “And you used to be such a good influence on me,” she intoned.

  We headed over to the trail that snaked around the harbor, because I was in no hurry to get back. We’d walked for a couple of minutes when I decided to call Uncle Yushua and tell him we were wandering about. Now that I was out of the Shawmut, not going back in there sounded like the best idea. We could find someplace to hang out over near Harvard if we had to, depending on when he was getting out of that meeting.

  I pulled out my phone to call him and then stared at it in confusion when I saw there were no bars for signal. In fact, the screen was doing some sort of wavy thing, like the phone was dying. I shut it off.

  I turned to Xiu and asked, “Is your phone work….”

  I then noticed how quiet it was. I wasn’t hearing the jets to the airport overhead or the sounds of the city or the people who lived in the area. It was like someone had put a glass bowl over us.

  I turned and saw Sutekhgen behind us. He was dressed in a black loincloth down to his knees and armed with a copper sickle-shaped sword, and he was wearing leather wrist guards. He looked good, and I wondered why I even cared, because wherever he showed up, trouble was soon to follow.

  Xiu had noticed the cessation of sound, and was looking around frantically, trying to figure things out.

  “Get ready to run,” I murmured.

  “Why is the gwáilóu here?” Xiu demanded, her gaze following mine. “Doesn’t he have anything better to do?” she grumped, figuring out what my problem was.

  “I can ask him,” I said. “But I think we’re going to have a different conversation.”

  Sutekhgen walked up to us, stopping just outside touching distance. He looked around, taking in the view of Boston off in the distance, the skyscrapers wavy and out of focus for some reason.

  “This is very unlike what I know,” he murmured, sounding impressed and uneasy at the same time.

  “I thought this wasn’t the best idea?” I asked, wanting to know why he was here.

  We seemed to be unnoticed by the people who were moving around us, enjoying the summer morning. It was strange, but we were just avoided by them. They all swerved around us at the last minute, which was starting to weird me out.

  “Are you sure he isn’t an unquiet ghost or something?” Xiu asked. “Aside from being a presumptuous bastard with a male-privilege entitlement complex in abundance thinking that he can just pop into your life whenever he wants to.”

  I couldn’t help it, I laughed. Sutekhgen looked confused, wondering what was so funny. That was the usual reaction when Xiu started one of her rants. And the language barrier wasn’t helping, since she was mixing English and Mandarin.

  “In fact,” she continued, “he’s everything for a girl not to want. Even those girls who think creepy stalkers are romantic wouldn’t date him—”

  “You’re giving lesbians a bad name,” I interrupted, trying not to smile. “About man hating and other such nonsense.”

  Xiu sniffed. “Men are useful, just not for sex. This one is thinking with his Y chromosome, so he’s useless.”

  “That’s never attractive,” I agreed. “But you do know men just think they’re a superior being.”

  “Beloved, what is your companion saying?” Sutekhgen asked. “Since it seems to be so amusing for the two of you.”

  “You wouldn’t understand it,” I said in Egyptian. “It’s a cultural thing. Like boundaries. But you’re starting to get those, so you might be trainable. Just stop calling me Beloved.”

  Where had that come from? Xiu was rubbing off on me, and not in a good way.

  “And using your words,” he said dryly, quoting me, but not upset. “She seems to be full of them.”

  Give Xiu an opening and she would keep talking. It was soothing to me. I just had to be very aware of what she was saying most of the time or we ended up in trouble.

  “She is extolling your virtues,” I said. That wasn’t a lie. They were just bad virtues, more like vices really.

  Sutekhgen shook his head, obviously knowing I was hiding something from him. “She is dear to you.”

  “A friend for most of my life,” I said, wondering what he was driving at.

  Xiu glared at him. “Buddha help me, stop bothering her.”

  “He’s just talking,” I protested.

  “He’s missing the mustache to twirl, but he’s threatening me, isn’t he?” Xiu marched up and poked a finger in his chest. “Killing off the perceived rival never works,” she proclaimed. “And I’m the bouncy, happy sidekick in this mess!”

  “You’re not!” I protested.

  Xiu looked over at me while driving her nail into Sutekhgen’s bare chest a few more times, either to make her point or to annoy him. “Next time I’ll be the damsel in distress and you get to play the sidekick. Be one of the useful ones and cook a lot on the adventure.”

  Sutekhgen winced and stepped out of poking range. “Her claws are sharper than Sekhmat’s. And she rages like her also.”

  She was the Egyptian lioness goddess of war. It was a good comparison for Xiu. I smiled. “She’s fierce in defense of those she loves. She is like a sister to me.”

  “You protect her from me by not naming her.” Sutekhgen smiled, all teeth and threats.

  “She is standing right here!” Xiu proclaimed. “And this sucks! Why do you think I jumped on the chance to learn Mandarin? I wanted to know what my parents were talking about when they reverted to it.”

  “Do you want him to give you the language the same way I got it?” I asked sweetly.

  “Ugh! Boy cooties are so not worth it.” Xiu shuddered. “He’s not being my first kiss….”

  Her voice trailed off, and then she balled up her right hand into a fis
t, reached up, and smashed it into the side of Sutekhgen’s face before I could say anything. He fell back with a shocked look on his face, rubbing where she had hit him. I lunged at Xiu and dragged her out of hitting range, making sure my body was between the two of them. I didn’t want Sutekhgen to retaliate for what Xiu had done. She occasionally was too impulsive, and it usually was at the worst time.

  “This isn’t a K-drama or a shojo manga,” I snapped. “My first kiss isn’t something I was ever going to sigh over.”

  I was too practical for that. Besides, I’d never thought I was going to be kissed.

  “But it turned out to be icky!” she insisted. “He didn’t ask.” That came out more mournful than angry.

  “Beating him up to defend my honor isn’t the best thing to do,” I said. “But thank you.”

  “You cannot tell me this is a ‘cultural thing,’” Sutekhgen said, rubbing his jaw.

  I turned to face him, shoving Xiu behind me. “That actually was. You stole my ‘first kiss,’ which is important for a girl, according to all the shojo manga and K-dramas we’ve read and watched. Please don’t be too upset…. She really means well, just isn’t too good with people-reading most… all right, all of the time.”

  “I’m not going to eat her,” Sutekhgen said. “Stop acting like I’m a threat to her. And it was you who brought her into this.”

  That was the right thing to say to me, because my stomach curdled from guilt. I could almost hear my mother in his words too. It was my fault because… and then fill in the blank for whatever reason Mother was scolding me.

  “When did he start channeling your mother?” Xiu muttered, echoing my thoughts. “I don’t understand what he’s saying, and I still pegged that he sounds like your mother doing her ‘why can’t you love science’ routine. This just got even ickier with the kiss and all.”

  That made me laugh again, and I felt better almost immediately.

  Sutekhgen frowned, obviously confused about my mood change. “What did she just say?”

  “You really don’t want to know.”