I enter in my Sudoku number and hand Garrett the book. He very quickly enters in another and hands it back to me. We go back and forth like this for a while, taking longer and longer amounts of time to postulate an answer.
It’s my turn with the puzzle, and I’m weighing my options when the bus goes into a seemingly eternal right turn, spiraling downward toward a toll plaza—a Fibonacci spiral, probably—and I realize we’re about to enter the Lincoln Tunnel. I feel like we should take a moment to be awed by this thing, a pathway under the bottom of a river. Really, the only cool aspect of taking the bus.
My father and I take the train when we go to the city to visit the museum or attend performances and literary readings. “There’s no poetry in a bus,” he said once. He likes arriving at Grand Central, with the starry ceiling and the shiny, four-sided clock on top of the information booth smack in the center of the big hall. The steady but frenetic pace of the commuters, walking a straight line in a firm direction. I follow the hunch of his back through the crowd; he always assumes I am right behind him. When we lived in Paris, we’d take the Métro and he’d hold my hand—tug it, really—and I loved how it hurt just a little. A good hurt. But now, I guess, I’m too old for that.
He doesn’t know that I can’t be on a train without picturing my mother that day she left us. I imagine her with red, bloodshot eyes, the dried tears still sticky on her cheeks. She’s writing me that letter on a rickety tray table, struggling to keep her hand steady despite the train’s movement. It takes her the whole trip to finish it, to say what she wants to say the way she wants to say it. Does she know it’s a letter I’ll read every night for three months, until the next one comes?
Did she do that herself, with the letters I wrote back to her? And why hasn’t she written in over a year?
The bus comes out into daylight again and I see people starting to pack up their belongings. I know we must be close. Sure enough, two blocks later, the driver comes back on the PA system, thanking us for riding with him today. I watch to see which people like to jump up the second the bus stops moving.
Garrett is not one of those people. He just sits back, all the time in the world.
“Is Mary-Kate meeting you here?” I ask.
He looks perplexed for a moment, then says, “Oh, no . . . I’m supposed to call her when I’m in and she’ll tell me where to meet her.”
He takes out his phone and dials a number. I hear a woman’s recorded voice, then a beep.
“Hey, it’s me,” says Garrett. “I’m here. Call me!” He seems awkward, nervous. I grow more suspicious that Mary-Kate hangs out with Rayanne in the Imaginary People lounge.
After he hangs up, I hand him back his Sudoku puzzle. “Too bad we didn’t get to finish,” I say. And I mean it, because it really bugs me to leave a puzzle unfinished. Especially a hard one like this, which we seem so close to cracking.
Garrett takes the book without a word and stuffs it into his briefcase, stands and grabs the jean jacket out of the overhead bin. He then steps forward into the aisle, moving toward the door. I follow him, not sure if that’s it. Are we not supposed to say good-bye? Did he not feel what I did, and is this the downside of a hopped-up imagination?
But when I start to climb down the steps of the bus, I see he’s waiting for me, holding out his hand to help me down. I take it and smile, and his fingers are warm, so warm. I reluctantly let go when I’m supposed to, and we walk side by side through the door to the terminal. Any stranger watching us would think maybe we were a couple, although I don’t think any stranger is bothering.
At the bottom of the escalators up to the street level, Garrett stops.
“Hey, what are you doing right now? Are you going straight to your mom’s?”
“I was planning on it,” I say. I don’t know what I was planning. I am pretty sure, however, that I’m not yet ready to knock on that door. The projected thrill of being in the city, anonymous, alone, is not so thrilling now that I’m facing the reality of it. “But I don’t have to,” I add casually. “It is early.”
Inside, I am thinking, Mary-Kate does not exist and you need to hang out with me.
“Let’s go get something to eat and finish the puzzle,” he says. “I have to wait for Mary-Kate to call me back, and I’d love the company.”
Then he smiles and runs his fingers through his hair again, acting as if he didn’t just read my mind.
We’re at the far end of a corridor-shaped restaurant called Café Miko, sitting down with coffee and bagels. Garrett surprised me by getting a cinnamon raisin; I got an everything because I think it’s quietly hilarious to order an “everything bagel.” Garrett places the Sudoku book on the tiny, wobbly Formica table between us.
This is why I’ve agreed to join him, I tell myself. Not because I might be seeing my mother today, or because I want to keep being with Garrett as Rayanne. Definitely, absolutely not because I want to keep being with Garrett, period.
Garrett’s phone chirps and he glances at it. “My sister,” he says.
I try to push the thought away. Too late; it’s here. The recorded voice I heard before could have been Garrett’s sister, and this could be who he’s meeting in the city.
Garrett picks up his phone, types something, then puts it back down with a sigh. “She uses way too many exclamation points when she texts. As a writer, I take issue with that.”
“Does she use exclamation points when she talks?” I ask, thinking of Izzy and Claire and their overzealous punctuation in writing and speaking. With my friends, everything is so energetic! And if I don’t do it too, they’ll think I’m pissed off or depressed!
“No,” he replies, lighting up. “That’s exactly it. She doesn’t. So why does she text and email like she’s shouting?”
“People are weird like that,” I say. “My brother only writes in lowercase with no punctuation, but he’s a lawyer.”
Whoa. Where did that come from? Okay, Rayanne has a brother who is a lawyer. His name is . . . Daniel.
Garrett shakes his head. “It’s the worst. Why would you write differently on a device than you do in regular life? Are you trying to be someone else, or are you showing your true colors?”
I have asked myself that so many times. “They probably don’t know the answer, which is why they keep doing it.”
Garrett looks intensely at me for a moment, his head tilted, as if seeing something he hadn’t noticed before. “You’re comfortable with who you are, aren’t you? You don’t post things online, trying to impress friends from high school with how fabulous your college life is. You don’t share a status update every time you eat a burrito or wake up exhausted from a late night. Am I correct?”
How should I answer here? I don’t know Rayanne well enough to make a call on that. As for me, however. It’s complicated. I don’t do these things he’s mentioned. But that doesn’t mean I don’t think carefully about everything I share with the world, especially after Five at Eleven.
You’re comfortable with who you are. How can he say that to anyone, let alone me? He must see the cappuccino in Rayanne’s skin tone, her dark, dark, curly hair. The parts of her, of me, that have always inspired people to do things like walk up and start speaking Spanish, or bluntly ask, “What race are you?” (To which I’d always answer, “The human race.” Thanks, Mom, for suggesting that line.) Even in Paris, nobody guessed at first that I was American. They thought I was maybe from Senegal, or an island off the coast of Greece. It was only when I spoke in my halting East Coast–accented French that people knew.
It has always been so much easier to be whatever people wanted to see in me. You avoid a lot of decisions that way.
We came back to Mountain Ridge from Paris a week before ninth grade. Dad was at his office on campus and I was bored, so I walked into one of the pizza places in town. I was sitting there with a book when Izzy and Claire came in, and they complimented me on my purse. It was something I bought at the Les Puces flea market.
“It�
�s Keira, right?” asked Izzy, as if we hadn’t been in the same ballet class together for three years. “We thought you moved to Paris.”
“I did. I’m back.”
Izzy looked me over from head to toe, my leather sneakers and plaid capris and maybe the cleanness of my ponytail, then exchanged a glance with Claire before saying, “Oh. Welcome home, then. Wanna sit with us?”
What they saw that day was someone who’d been out in the world and returned, someone maybe wiser or at least cooler, someone with something that might rub off on them. I would probably have seen it too, if I were them. All I saw in the mirror was a girl with eyes just like her mom’s, and maybe that’s why her father wouldn’t look at her. I wanted to see something else, so I chose to see what they did. I chose to sit with them that day, and the next three days at the town pool, and in the cafeteria the first day of school. Sure, they were judgey and gossipy in a way my friends in Paris had never been, but they were also funny and adventurous, and I thought, Okay, we’re in high school. We’re all supposed to be like this.
Rayanne’s friends are different, I decide as I spread cream cheese on my everything bagel. Rayanne’s friends don’t like to gossip. They’ve moved beyond that.
“I just try to be myself,” I finally say. It’s not a lie. I am trying. I’m just not succeeding, or even understanding how to succeed.
Garrett smiles, then narrows his eyes. “And who, exactly, are you, Rayanne? If I had to describe you in one intro sentence in an article about you, what would I write?”
I have been described in single sentences before. Sentences that include: “Keira, the only child of two college professors,” and “The beautiful, preternaturally elegant and quietly sad overachiever.” Yes, I’ve memorized them. You would too, if they published stuff like this about you. I used to try them on like jackets, trying to see which hung just right on me. Which was the perfect fit.
Now Garrett wants to reduce Rayanne to this as well, and seeing as Rayanne is a fictional person, I can’t exactly get all indignant about how unfair that is.
“I don’t know. People aren’t supposed to describe themselves in one sentence, unless they’re writing a personal ad.”
“Well, let’s say you had to come up with a fun bio for a book you’ve written about math. What would you say?”
If Mary-Kate did exist, and by now I’m fairly certain she doesn’t, she’d be a little alarmed at how personal this conversation is getting.
Before I can answer, Garrett’s phone chirps and he peeks at it, raises his eyebrows.
“Okay, then,” he says. “She wants me to meet her up at Columbus Circle.”
I can’t help myself. I lean forward to reach for my coffee cup and pretend like I’m shifting in my seat, but really I’m glancing at Garrett’s phone. I see the name “Mary-Kate” above the message, before he picks it up and starts typing a reply.
Oh. Okay. Perhaps Mary-Kate is his sister’s name, and it was the easiest name to use for a fictional girlfriend. Or Mary-Kate is real and he’s not a royal bullshitter like some people at this table.
After Garrett finishes with his phone, he slaps his hands down on his legs and looks intently at me.
“Okay, then. I should get going. You gonna be all right until you meet your mom?”
“What?” I ask, taken aback, then remember what the situation is supposed to be. I’m meeting my mom, as in the kind of meeting you do with someone you see on a regular basis, at a mutually arranged time and location. It does not mean showing up unannounced on a doorstep that could belong to the parent you haven’t seen in five years, or could actually belong to a total stranger, and you’re not sure which is going to be worse.
“Oh. Yes. I’m good.”
I am so not.
Garrett stands up and collects our plates, cups, and napkins, then dumps them in a trash can. He grabs a fresh napkin from the counter and carefully wipes the table, scooping crumbs into his curled palm.
“You don’t have to do that,” I say.
“I do it anyway,” he says firmly. I get the sense he’s heard it before.
He walks toward the door and waves a thank-you to the guy behind the counter, who nods back. I follow him outside.
We step onto the sidewalk, where there are patches of sun breaking past the buildings.
“Which direction you headed?” asks Garrett. “I’m going uptown.”
“Me too,” I say, remembering the map I studied. “Just a few blocks.”
Garrett holds out his arm to indicate we should walk, and hangs back to let me step first in what seems like a really chivalrous movement. College guys. They know shit.
I’m waiting for him to start another conversation, to ask me some challenging question or bring my attention to something around us. Then I think, Wait a minute. Maybe I should be the one to spark a dialogue. I should make the comment that forces him to think. But what?
We fall into pace, and something just drops out of my mouth. “Do you think about where you’re going to be in five years?”
I’ve been asked that question by Lance and Leslie, the producers of the Five At films. I’ve been waiting for them to ask it again, but we haven’t gotten that far in the shooting this time. I haven’t formulated my answer yet. Maybe I’m asking Garrett so I can just steal what he says.
Garrett laughs a bit and says, “I think about it all the time. But it keeps changing. Like, one day I’m pretty sure I’m going to be living here, in Manhattan, working as a writer . . . then I wake up depressed and I’m convinced I’m going to be occupying my parents’ basement. I don’t know what’s worse: locking on to a vision of the future and not wavering from it, even when it’s looking like that’s not the best scene for you, or being so uncommitted to it that you can’t decide on a path.”
“It’s all just wishful thinking, isn’t it?” I say, trying not to let any of my cynicism peek through. “We have to dream about something.”
“You think there’s a difference between dreams and plans, and the two can never overlap?”
“I think there’s a line where you’re outside the bounds of reality. Then you’re just setting yourself up for disappointment.”
Suddenly, there’s a loud honk and a hand grabbing my arm and someone shouting, “Keira!”
Garrett pulls me back toward the curb. The car that I’ve almost walked right in front of slows as it passes, the driver scowling at me.
“You okay?” asks Garrett.
Blood is pounding in my ears but I can still hear it. Keira! Garrett had shouted my name. My real name.
I look at him now, at the guilty expression on his face, the hunch of his head and shoulders as if he’s waiting for the blow.
“You called me Keira,” I say.
“I’m sorry,” he says, wincing.
“You know who I really am.” I try to think of something else to add here, because maybe if I keep talking, keep stating the obvious, I won’t feel the wave of total mortification that’s about to crash down on me.
“I do,” he says. “When you stepped off the curb, it just came out.”
“How long have you known?”
“Since the first minute I was on the bus with you.”
I step away from him and lean my forehead against the brick wall of the building on the corner. It’s dirty, but so, so solid. It’s seen it all. It doesn’t judge me.
“I am really, really sorry,” I say. “If you could just leave now, maybe I won’t need to shrivel up in shame.”
Garrett actually laughs. “I’m sorry too. I should have said something right away . . . but I was so surprised when you told me your name was Rayanne, I wasn’t thinking.”
He pauses, and I don’t move. The brick is cool. I can feel its texture pressing a pattern into my skin. It’s going to look weird when I finally break free of this position. Now, the sensation of Garrett’s hand on my shoulder. The fire inside me races toward that spot, neurons dancing.
I don’t want to be mortified. I
want to be angry. I brush off his hand, but don’t look at him.
“So, you know the films.”
“Seen them both. And I sat two tables over from you and your dad at the Bistro last year; I recognized you then and I recognized you now.”
“You should have said something when you introduced yourself,” I say into the wall.
“I know. But when? My window vanished after, like, five seconds. And then it seemed like you really needed to be Rayanne, and I thought about it and I understood, and I figured, what’s the harm?”
“The harm?” I turn around now. I can commit to this anger. “The harm is that you mentioned the films and even encouraged me to hang out with you to see how many more lies I could come up with. Plus, it’s just creepy.” Something occurs to me. “This is going to make a great story, isn’t it? For the Signet. You could win some major student-journalism awards with it.”
“I have no desire to write about this, Keira. And yes, it’s creepy, but it wasn’t on purpose. Really.”
“Mary-Kate is a real person?”
Garrett laughs again. “Yes.”
“She’s really your girlfriend?”
He pauses now, and I glance at him. His face is more serious. “Yes, she’s my girlfriend. I’m not sure for how much longer, but I told you the truth about everything with her.”
“Unlike me.”
“I told you, I understood.”
I have to get out of this situation. I did not escape from one really screwed-up scenario just to find myself in another. This is why I don’t let my guard down. This is why the Ice Queen is the way to go, always.
“Well, it was nice being completely humiliated by you, Garrett,” I say, offering my hand for him to shake. “Have fun with your soon-to-be ex.”
Playing Keira Page 3
