“I didn’t say you undressed me with your eyes. I said you were going through my stuff with your eyes.”
“Oh Jesus. That’s of course what I meant.”
“Who the heck are you?”
“I was about to ask the same question. Only I wasn’t going to use the word heck.”
Okay, so either Poole is an incredible actor or I was 100 percent wrong about this girl.
“Now I’m starting to feel a little idiotic,” I admit.
“I should’ve warned you—it’s contagious.”
“Well, I guess we both have it now.”
She holds out her hand. “I’m Jaiden. But you can call me Library Stalker Girl for short.”
I take her hand and we shake like we’re in business school.
“I’m Nathan. But you can call me Massively Overreacting Library Boy for short.”
“Initial unpleasantness aside, it’s nice to meet you, Massively Overreacting Library Boy.”
“A pleasure, Library Stalker Girl.”
She moves her duffel off the seat next to hers and gestures to the chair like it’s a game show prize. “Care to join me?”
“Beam me up.”
She snorts. “Did you really just say beam me up?”
“Don’t judge.”
“Not judging!”
* * *
—
Since I’ve never been on a date before, I have no idea what exactly counts as a date. Is it goofing around at a library for three hours on a Sunday afternoon? Shooting jokes back and forth, then being the oldest nonparent attendees of story time? If a girl leans against you while a volunteer reads aloud from Last Stop on Market Street, is that as much of a come-on as, say, kissing in an alleyway? If she insists on getting some crayons to do the activity sheet, and then colors in everything you outline, is that a good sign? When, at the end of the three hours, she says, “We have to do this again,” does she intend that to be as specific as it sounds—i.e., We have to hang out at story time at the public library again—or is there some leeway? If you propose going for lunch or dinner or coffee or something else that doesn’t involve young children, are you asking her on a first date or a second? If she says yes, does it even matter?
* * *
—
So I’m happy when I get home. The kind of happiness that I’m a little worried my parents will smell on me. Like, if I told them I met a girl, they’d say, We can’t wait to meet her. But what they’d really mean is We can’t wait to wire her to a lie detector and see what horrible things she’s done in her past, because surely they must be bad if she’s willing to be seen with you.
I take a moment in the car to compose myself, then get out and head to the garage door. I don’t even sense the movement, I’m so in my own head. I don’t know anything’s wrong until I feel the sharp tip of a knife pressing into my back, and hear an angry voice in my ear saying, “From now on, you’re going to do exactly what I tell you to do.”
A
Day 6133 (continued)
I need to talk to you.
Please. Call me.
It’s Poole. He’s here.
Nathan’s messages to Rhiannon aren’t long—but they make their point.
“And you’re sure he doesn’t know you came up here to meet me?” I ask.
“Positive. He knows I was looking for you. He knows I found you. But he doesn’t know you’re here.”
The waitress must wonder what’s going on. We are two teenagers sitting in front of a pizza without taking a bite. This must never happen.
“I have to call him,” Rhiannon says after we look at each other for long enough to realize that looking at each other isn’t going to answer anything. “I can’t just leave him hanging.”
“You have to assume he’s with Poole, even if he says he’s not.”
“I know.”
“I know you know. I just had to say it. I’m nervous.”
“So am I. And I’m not even sure why.”
Before I can explain further about who Poole is and what I think he does, she raises her hand to quiet me. She’s already dialed, and Nathan’s phone is ringing.
“Hi—Nathan? It’s Rhiannon. I got your texts. What’s happening?…Are you okay?…Is he there now? Where are you?…I’m out for pizza with some friends….No, no….I don’t know where A is….Really….What’s the message?…I know you’re supposed to insist on speaking to A, but I have no idea where A is or how to speak to A, so I’m your best bet….Okay, okay, Nathan—calm down….Yes, I understand….When?…Oh….I see….So what does he look like now?…Okay. And he’s not there now. But you have to get back to him tomorrow?…Got it. So here’s what I need you to do….No, listen. I need you to try not to worry right now. I know that’s hard—but it’s out of your hands now. It’s in my hands, okay? There’s nothing you can do. Nothing. I promise I will get back to you tomorrow morning—maybe even tonight. Okay?…That’s right. And, Nathan?…Thank you. You didn’t do anything to deserve this. Nothing. And I promise, we’ll get out of it. We’ll figure something out….I know. I can’t believe it, either. At all….Exactly. I will….Night, Nathan.”
She hangs up and gives me a nearly helpless look. “You have no idea how badly I wanted to pass the phone to you. Because, honestly, it was like he was going into season-seven details of a show I’d never seen. But let me try to recap: The reverend is back, and he wants to see you. Only he’s not the reverend anymore. He’s been a few women and a few men in the interim, and some of them have been stalking Nathan. Now he’s a strong jock near our age, and he promised to make Nathan’s life really miserable if he doesn’t deliver you up. Like, the violent kind of miserable. Nathan said he isn’t there now—it sounded like Nathan is safe at home with his parents—but he’s going to contact Nathan tomorrow and is going to expect a meeting with you to have been set up. If Nathan doesn’t do it, he’ll be hurt badly. Nathan believes this. He’s very, very scared. More scared, he says, than when you left him where you left him.”
“So the message was that I have to meet Poole?”
“Oh yeah—that. It was more specific. It was: Listen to me. Listen to all you can do. That’s not ominous at all.”
“It does have a whiff of cult leader, doesn’t it?”
“Or guidance counselor. Same thing.”
I can’t believe I’m laughing. “Why are we joking about this?”
“Because we don’t know what else to do?”
I sit back and sigh. “Oh yeah. That.”
“Nathan sounded really scared.”
“You were good at talking him down.”
“I’m not sure it worked.”
“Want to try it on me?”
“Tell me what you’re feeling.”
I look at her for a second. I don’t think she realizes fully how strange it is—still—to be asked a question like that, and to know that she wants my answer, not Arwyn’s answer.
I don’t hold anything back.
“I’m feeling confused and angry and sad and then confused some more.”
“Okay. Let’s take them one at a time. Why confused?”
“Because I gave Poole an answer. Because I thought we were done. Because it’s like he senses I’m here, even though there’s no way for him to know I’m here.”
“Why angry?”
“Because I just found you again and that’s all I want to be thinking about.”
“Okay. That—I didn’t think it would be that. But yes. Alright. Sad?”
“Sad because I know there’s no way to get out of dealing with it.”
“There are plenty of ways. You’re just not going to choose them. And confused again?”
“Because I have no idea how to deal with it.”
“Why?”
“Because what are the choices
here, really? You weren’t there the first time. You didn’t see his eyes. I don’t know if I can explain it—it was like I could see the pain the body was in, and at the same time I could see his triumph in the middle of that pain. He does all the things I won’t let myself do, and I have to believe one hundred percent in the reasons I don’t let myself do them. So there can be no conversation. No listening, if listening is really what he wants…which it isn’t. He wants me on his path. And I don’t want to be on his path.”
“Staying in the same body?”
“Well, obviously he can change them at will, too. I can’t help but wonder what happened to Reverend Poole after. Is he walking around with this months-long hole in his life? Or is it worse? And what kills me is that this guy—who I still have to call Poole, because what else can I call him?—knows the answers. He could tell me. All of these questions I’ve been dealing with on my own, all these years—he’s the first person who can actually give me a second opinion. But his opinion is destructive, Rhiannon. I know it is. Look at the way he’s bullying Nathan! And what’s so stupid is that if he had just tried to talk to me as one person who goes through this to another, I would have talked to him. I would have…compared notes, I guess. But now—what do I do? If he’s gotten to Nathan, what’s to stop him from getting to you? What would I do then?”
“Whoa—one thing at a time. The only thing we have to figure out right now is how to respond.”
I shake my head. “But can’t you see? One thing leads to the next thing leads to the next thing. And if you don’t try to measure the chain reaction, if you don’t think about the next thing and the next thing, people get hurt. I’ve gotten so many people hurt, Rhiannon, without meaning to. Because there was something I missed. Something I didn’t see.”
“Like what?”
I tell her about Moses, about what happened there.
“I messed up,” I conclude. “And because I messed up, his life could be messed up forever.”
“You can’t attack yourself for that. What you’re asked to do every day is impossible to do perfectly, A. You do realize that, right? To immediately navigate someone else’s life for them—I’m sorry, all of us would mess up in that situation. No matter how many consequences we tried to consider. You could spend your whole life considering consequences. And the only consequence would be that you would have no life whatsoever.”
We’re not arguing, exactly, but it doesn’t feel like we’re agreeing, either.
“I’m just saying, the minute we respond to Nathan, it’s on. We’ve engaged. And then we’ll have to see it through.”
“It’s already on, A. We’re already at the seeing-it-through part.”
The waitress has returned. “Is something wrong?” she asks, gesturing to the pizza.
“No,” Rhiannon tells her. “We just like to talk before we eat. It’s a syndrome.”
“Just checking. Jesus,” the waitress murmurs, walking away.
“We better eat,” Rhiannon says. We help ourselves to slices. We’re not really hungry, but it’s pizza, and the moment we start eating it, it’s guaranteed we’ll keep going at least two slices past where we should.
Rhiannon continues. “So, putting the considerable logistics aside, if you meet up with Poole, what do you think will happen?”
“The same thing as last time. He’ll want me to be his partner in this thing that we do. He’ll want to teach me how to abuse it.”
“And if you say no?”
“That’s the thing. I’m worried he will create a situation that won’t allow me to say no. Before, I would have been fine. I would have just disappeared.”
“But now?”
“You know exactly why I can’t now.”
She pushes her pizza around a little. “Okay. Let’s look at it a different way. What does he get from having you ‘partner’ with him?”
“Someone to talk to, I guess.”
“Exactly.”
“Exactly?”
“I’m just trying to think this through, okay?”
“Go ahead.”
“I’m just thinking—Poole has to be lonely. Like you were lonely. I think you’re right—he wants someone to talk to. He’s been looking for someone like him for a while. Then he found you. And lost you. Now he wants you back. So he won’t be alone.”
“But even if that’s true, how does it help? He still won’t take no for an answer.”
“It helps because it means you have leverage.”
“How?”
“Because he wants more from you than you want from him. That means you have the leverage. That’s how relationships work.”
“That’s cynical.”
“It isn’t. Because most of the time, the balance is always shifting, and the difference isn’t that significant. But in this case…you definitely have the upper hand.”
“But he’s willing to hurt people!”
“Don’t mistake evil for power. That’s a bad mistake we all make. Thinking that it takes more strength to break the rules of human decency than to follow them, and therefore if we follow them, we have to be the weaker ones. Bullshit. Yes, he’s scary. But the fact that he wants you to listen means he’s dying to talk to someone who understands what he’s talking about. It makes sense. We seek out the people who understand us. We are scared and suspicious of the people who understand us, but we also need them in our lives.”
“How do you figure out these things?”
“Bad relationships. Good relationships. Being with people who don’t understand you. Finding people who do.”
“Is that what happened with us? How can we understand each other when our lives are so different?”
“Because we want to see the world the same way, I think. I’m not sure. Honestly, I’ve never been sure.”
“I don’t understand how anything works. I don’t understand how you can randomly fall into my life one day and now here we are, in New York City, telling the truth in a way that I never, ever thought I’d tell the truth.”
“If I ever get a tattoo, that might have to be it: I don’t understand how anything works. I just have faith that it would be much worse to think you actually knew how anything worked.”
“He can’t give me any answers, can he?”
“I have no idea. But I’m pretty sure that he can’t give you many answers you can actually use.”
“But still…”
“But still, we’re going to have to find a way to deal with him. Because we owe that to Nathan, who never did anything to deserve getting caught up in all this.”
* * *
—
We eat more pizza. We don’t come up with a plan.
Arwyn is going to need to go home soon. And Rhiannon is going to need to go—
I’m not exactly sure where.
“Do you want to come back with me? To their apartment? I’m sure we can come up with a story….”
“And what if they wake up in the middle of the night and wonder who the girl sleeping on their floor is?”
“You wouldn’t be sleeping on the floor.”
“Stop. You know what I mean.” She looks out the window. “The roads actually look pretty clear. I should try.”
Now I actually feel the despair widening within me. “No. Please. Stay.”
“A. I’m going to have to go back home.”
“Then I have to go back with you.”
“Oh, great—do you want me to drive? I think there’s a word for driving someone somewhere else without them knowing about it. Kidnapping, I think?”
“What if I drive?”
“Arwyn is from New York City. Don’t think for a second they have a license.”
“I’m serious. I should come with you.”
RHIANNON
I don’t understand how I can be this far
in, and still not know what I want.
I want to stay like this. In the city. The two of us.
It feels like a believable now.
But back in my regular life. With my friends. My family. Where we used to be—
I can’t imagine it. It doesn’t feel like a believable future.
Which feels like a cop-out. Because who wants to end up with a future that was always believable?
“We have time,” I tell A, because I want that to be both believable and true. “The only pressing thing right now is Nathan. We have to get back to Nathan. I vote for giving Poole some of what he wants, but not all of it. Tell him you’re considering meeting with him, but aren’t sure. Make him want it more. Then we wait for the opportunity for you to get down to Maryland in the same way that you made it to New York. Or we get everyone up here. Let’s just see how it plays out a little.”
“Okay.”
“That’s it? Okay?”
“I’ll do whatever you tell me to do.”
“No. That sounds like something someone would want to hear, but it’s not actually something I want to hear, and you wouldn’t want to be with me if it was.”
A nods, gets it. “Fair. But in this case, what you’re saying makes sense. There’s just one change I want to make.”
“Which is?”
“At least stay ’til midnight.”
“Okay.”
Someone: I would walk around, and I would think, I am lost.
I would know exactly where I was, and I would think, I am lost.
I would look at my own body, and I would think, I am lost.
You have to believe that the opposites reach for each other. I had to understand that when I was thinking I am lost, I was actually finding that I was lost. The two opposite things were true at the same time: found and lost.
What was it with you?
Someday Page 21
