Who I'm Not

by Ted Staunton

  She opened the envelope as we walked. “You bought it!” She looked at me, brighter. “You could have mailed it.”

  “It wouldn’t be the same. And I wouldn’t know the address.”

  “I’d give it to you, silly.” She opened the card. “But you didn’t sign it.”

  “Aw…” I said.

  “You have to sign it. Come on, over here.” By now we were at the bottom of her street, in the park across from the library. She led me over to a picnic table and put the card down. Buster stopped to do his business. Gillian followed him with a plastic bag from her pocket.

  I got my pen out of my pack and bent over the card, but when Gillian came back I still hadn’t signed. “You don’t have to say anything fancy,” she said.

  I was staring at the blank space. I felt paralyzed. Finally I said, “I can’t sign.” My voice was wobbly.

  “Why not?”

  I forced it out. “I don’t know my name.”

  Gillian touched my back. “What do you mean? Are you okay?”

  It was now or never. “I’m not Danny.”

  She sat beside me. She smiled. “You keep saying that.”

  “I know, but I’m not Danny and I never was. The real Danny disappeared three years ago and never came back. I saw his name somewhere and pretended to be him to get out of some trouble I was in.”

  Her face blanked. She pulled back. “Then who are you?”

  The Question. I swallowed. “I don’t know.”

  “What do you mean, you don’t know?”

  I looked away. The ache in my face got hotter. Buster sniffed around the table. I said, “I don’t know anything. I don’t know who my parents were. I was given up when I was born. They called me a ward of the state and I got put in all these foster homes from when I was a baby. That was the Bad Time. I don’t know my real name. I don’t even know if I have one. Someone picked one. Sometimes people would call me by one they liked better. I don’t even know my birthday for sure. I knew it once, but nothing ever happened on my birthday and then I started lying about it and got confused. Harley—this guy I was with—he got paid to take me from some people who said I ran away. I was with him for a long time. Then he had an accident and died and I was scared I’d go back, and I heard about Danny and I lied, just to get away. I had to—I was scared of the Bad Time. I never thought it would turn into this.” I closed my eyes. “I’m nobody. I’ve done bad stuff. And now I have to go too. I was coming to say goodbye. I can’t do this anymore, and it’s bad to you. You can’t…live a lie.” The last words hurt the worst. I didn’t dare look at her.

  Gillian was quiet for what seemed like a long time, and then she said, “I can tell you who you are. You’re somebody who is smart, and nice to me when nobody else wants to be. You’re the person who makes Shannon and Matt and Brooklynne happy. You take chances. You’re brave. You do things on your own. You don’t care what other people think.”

  “I lie,” I said. “I fake, I cheat, I steal. I…” The sick was bubbling up in me again. “I make…I make people do bad things. Harley had his accident because of me, and once…I made a guy kill himself.”

  “Oh, come on,” Gillian said.

  “The first time you saw me I was stealing, to show off to Matt. You were right. Then I lied to you after.”

  I looked at her then. Her face had fallen. Her hands were in her jacket sleeves. She pushed up her glasses and got to her feet, tugging at Buster’s leash. “Come on,” she said to the dog.

  I’d said too much. It was like a can of soda exploding—I couldn’t stop once I’d started, and now I’d ruined everything. Maybe that was what I deserved, but I didn’t want it to end this way. Maybe Gillian didn’t either, because she didn’t go anywhere. Instead, she said, “Are you lying to me now?”

  “I could be, but I’m not. At school that day, I needed to talk to you so bad.”

  “Because of my name.” I nodded. “Where did you know a Gillian?”

  A month ago, I would have snowed her with a story about a little sister I’d gotten separated from or a best friend in grade one. Now I told her: “She was a girl in a book I read over and over. She kept getting moved around like me, and it never worked out for her either, except once and then she had to leave.”

  “The Great Gilly Hopkins,” Gillian said flatly. “So you never knew her. That’s a lie too.”

  “No. I knew her. I can’t—she was just like me. It was like she was my only friend and she got out and it was like if she could, maybe I…I can’t explain.”

  “I get it,” she said, more gently. Then: “Remember what you said to me the first day at school? Be anybody you want? Maybe you get to be.”

  “What?”

  “Be anybody you want. Be someone who doesn’t lie and cheat and steal.”

  I looked at her. For once in my life, I didn’t know what to say. What finally came out was, “Give me a name.”

  She looked off toward the library, then closed her eyes. When she opened them she said, “Adam.”

  “Adam?”

  “It’s the first name. You’re starting at the beginning.”

  “Adam.” It felt right. “Thank you,” I said.

  “Sign the card, Adam,” she said softly.

  I signed. I didn’t know what my signature would look like, but it turned out okay.

  I gave it to Gillian and said, “You can start at the beginning too.”

  “No, I can’t. People in Montreal will know.”

  “But it’s not your fault your father—”

  “Maybe it is. Maybe if I wasn’t so shitty…” She started to cry then. I wanted to touch her so bad. I lifted a hand and stopped.

  “No,” I said. “Listen, I’ve hung with guys like your dad. They’re the jerks and losers.”

  Gillian hit me as I sat there. Buster yelped. On top of Griffin’s backhander, it really hurt. I pushed on anyway. “And I’m no better. I’m one too. You’re the good one.” I grabbed my pack. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I better go.”

  “Are you really going?” She was sobbing.

  “Yes,” I said. Back when I’d let myself feel, I’d felt bad in lots of ways, but never like this.

  “When?”

  I took a deep breath. “Tonight. That cop, Griffin. He’s out to get me.”

  “Tonight? So this is…where will you go?”

  “Just…away,” I said. “Work a traveling carnival.” I didn’t tell her it was the wrong season. “Maybe it’ll come to Montreal.” And then we were just holding each other, my face buried in her jacket. “Anyway,” I said into her shoulder, “I can’t stay here if you’re going to be gone.”

  She held me tighter. I heard her say, “I’ll go with you.”

  It stopped me dead. For an instant, the whole world opened up. Then it shut down. “You can’t. You have to stick with your sister and your mom.”

  “But what about Shan?”

  “If I stay, I’ll bring her more trouble than ever.”

  Gillian let me go. Her glasses were crooked and her face was tear-stained. I looked at her and for the first time since I was little, I thought I was going to cry.

  She straightened her glasses. “Be Adam,” she said.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Now Gillian wiped her face. “I have to go. My mom will be calling any second.” I stood up. She said, “Something fell out of your pack.” Buster was sniffing at whatever it was. She bent down and lifted a folded piece of paper from the grass. It was the page of Young Harley mug shots. Part of one of the photos was showing. Gillian unfolded the paper. “Who is this?”

  “It’s some old pictures of the guy who took me away from the Bad Time. The one who died.”

  “Was he a crook?”

  “Kind of, I guess. Kind of a friend, too.” I’d never thought of Harley that way before, but now, in a way, it felt true.

  Gillian stared at the photos. “That’s wild. Well, I can see why he took you.” She refolded the paper and handed it back to me.
<
br />   “Why? Because they paid him.”

  She squinted at me. “That’s not what I meant. You look just like him.”

  “What?”

  “You do. It’s like an older you, with a moustache and bad hair.”

  I didn’t know what to say. I unfolded the paper and looked at Young Harley. I had no idea what she was talking about. Young Harley gave me the same blank, smart-ass look he always did. Me? That was me? It was too much. I put the paper in my pack and walked back up the hill with Gillian. Just before we got to her place, I tugged at her sleeve. “Gillian.” We stopped and kissed. It was mostly teeth. I was pretty bad at it.

  “Sorry. I’ve never done this before,” I said, and it was true.

  “That’s okay,” Gillian said. “Neither have I.”

  “We could try again.”

  It was better the second time. Gillian’s cell phone rang in her pocket. We stopped kissing. “That’ll be my mom,” she said. “I have to go.” Up at her house, I could see the front door was open.

  “I have your email,” I said. “I have your cell.”

  She nodded. I patted Buster and she was gone.

  I watched from the shadows until Gillian and her mom were inside. Then I walked; I had to keep moving. I told myself I was making a plan for how to get away as fast as I could, but I was tired and wired and my mind kept drifting. To Gillian. To Michael Bennett Davidson, 61472, out of Dayton, Ohio; arrests in San Fran and Portland, might have lived in Portland for a while. To me shouting and Harley lying in the parking lot, his head in that red puddle. To Ty. And then I’d start trembling. I told myself it was getting cold. I started for the little railway station, thinking I could just hang there until the morning train. I knew it would be deserted at night: there were only two trains a day that stopped in town. But when I got there, a police cruiser was idling in the parking lot, and I flashed crazily that Griffin had ratted me out. I turned away. I’d known where I had to go all along.

  THIRTY-SIX

  I went back to the park and wrote a note, but I knew it wasn’t good enough. I put it in my pocket anyway. When I got to Shan’s house, Gram and Grampy’s RV was parked in the driveway. The house was dark except for the glow from the stove light in the kitchen. I knew she’d be in there. I knew it wasn’t the first time and probably wouldn’t be the last that Shan would be sitting up alone in the kitchen, waiting for someone to come home. Sure enough, when I went around and slipped through the kitchen door, she was sitting at the table in her pink fluffy housecoat, the cordless phone and her World’s Best Mom mug in front of her. I stayed in the doorway.

  “Gram and Grampy are here?”

  “They’re asleep in the RV.”

  I nodded. Shan said, “You’re not coming in, are you?” Her lip trembled.

  “Something bad happened,” I said. “I have to go.”

  She looked down. “Don’t tell me anything. I don’t want to know.”

  “I—”

  “No,” she said. “Don’t. Please.” She gripped her mug with both hands.

  “Shan—”

  “NO!” She slammed the mug down on the table. It shattered. What was left of her tea splashed out, and a line of red began to trickle across one of her thumbs. I tore some paper towels from the holder under the kitchen cupboard. She wrapped them around her thumb and put her hands in her lap. She was crying now, but silently, her eyes screwed shut and her shoulders shaking.

  I sat down at the table, across from her. “Will you tell me something? You don’t have to.”

  She didn’t answer for a long time. Then she said, “What?”

  I knew what I wanted to ask, but I didn’t know how to ask it. “Did…Do you…”

  Shan looked up at me. Her cheeks were streaked with wet. “I just wanted everything to be right.”

  It was all I was going to get. Maybe I didn’t need any more. I reached over and pushed at the pieces of broken mug in their tea puddle.

  “You really are…” I said.

  “Wh-what?”

  “That.” I pushed the shard of mug toward her that said World’s Best. “Thank you,” I said. “I wish I could stay.”

  “Then why don’t you?” It was her last shot.

  It took me a long time to find an answer. Finally I said, “I’m a different person now.”

  Shan closed her eyes. Outside, a car rolled by. Across the kitchen, the tap dripped. Time leaking down the drain. She nodded.

  I stood up. “I won’t take anything,” I said.

  She looked at me. “Where—no, I don’t want to know. How?”

  I shrugged. “I’ll just go.”

  “That’s—” She shook her head, pulling herself back together. “No, there’s a way.” Now she looked right at me, a look as sharp as the shards of mug on the table. I nodded. I’d had the same idea. “All right,” she said. “Leave a note.”

  “I don’t know what to—”

  “For Christ’s sake,” she snapped. “Leave a note. Tell the kids you’ll miss them. Tell—leave me a note.” She stood up and moved to the counter, scrounged up a pen and paper and pushed them at me. This time I wrote:

  Dear Shan and everybody

  Im sorry but I have to go. I have tried hard but Ive been so long away that I cant fit here anymore. Maybe it doesn’t help but I told you a lie about what happened to me. I didnt get taken. I ran. It was bad with Ty and Momma before and I couldn’t take it any more. I didn’t want to say that when I came back. Some bad things happened to me while I was away but nothing I couldnt handle. Being away is what I am used to now. Please don’t come after me it is better this way. Im sorry if I hurt you.

  love

  Danny

  When I was done, I folded it up and gave it to Shan. She didn’t try to read it. “Now,” she said. “Go up and get some sleep. I’ll call you.”

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  The next morning, Gram and Grampy stopped for coffee and a washroom break right across the border, in Watertown, New York. When I guessed they’d be well away from the RV, I let myself out of the little closet near the back that I’d crammed into as they’d had breakfast in Shan’s kitchen. I needed to go pretty bad myself. It was a bright fall day as I slipped away. I had my pack with some clothes, Griffin’s money, Harley’s mug shots and a couple books. Danny’s neck chain I’d slipped into Shan’s purse, on top of her car keys. Gillian’s email address and cell number were in my head.

  I’m not going to tell you where I am now. I’m not going to tell you how much time has gone by. Let’s just say I’m all right and I’m in the territories. If you ever read Huckleberry Finn, you’ll know what I mean. Maybe you’ve even been there.

  Sometimes it’s been scary and sometimes okay. I’ve served your burgers and poured your coffee and loaded your shopping cart. I’ve shared a squat with you. I’ve sold you clothes and books. I’ve lined up with you at food banks and shelters and bus stops and libraries and clinics. I’ve sat beside you in freshman English, said yes to you in improv class, even been in a TV commercial you saw and two plays you didn’t. I’ve taken your drinks order and recommended a wine. I’ve done a lot of things, including some I’m not proud of. I’ve never forgotten.

  I might be called Adam Davidson, Ben Adams, David Adamson, Adam Gillian, Gill Adams. Or Sean Callahan. Or Frank Rolfe. The name doesn’t really matter, does it? I’m short. I’m a pretty fast runner. I don’t like marshmallows. I keep to myself. I try not to take dumb chances, just do what I have to do. I think I’m loyal. I think I know what’s true. I know where I’ve been. I know where I want to go. Montreal is on that list. One day I’m going to Portland, Oregon, to check the birth records for March 29, 19— well, never mind the year. In the meantime, I send birthday emails to Shan and Gillian. I miss them.

  Maybe you’ll meet me. Maybe we’ve already met. It doesn’t matter. I could be anybody, but I’ll know who I am.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. The characters and incidents I describe are
purely imaginary. However, the situation at the heart of my story—an imposter claiming to be a missing child—does come from real life. I stumbled upon it in an article by the American journalist David Grann, “The Chameleon,” which appeared in the August 11 & 18, 2008, issue of The New Yorker. In it, Grann told the almost unbelievable story of a Frenchman in his twenties who, in 1997, impersonated a missing teen from San Antonio, Texas. Anyone looking for proof that truth is stranger than fiction need look no further than Grann’s reporting. (The story became the subject of a British documentary film, The Imposter, released in 2012, which at the time of this writing I have not seen.)

  Grann’s reporting led me to wonder about a character who’s not just an adept imposter, but someone who literally doesn’t know who he is—a kind of permanent imposter. My story took its own path from there.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  As I mention in my author’s note, the spark for this novel came from David Grann’s superb non-fiction piece in The New Yorker. Without that to fire my imagination, there’d be no Who I’m Not. My thanks to him.

  I also owe a big debt to many people closer to home for their support, encouragement and willingness to be pestered while I was writing a book that was more than a small change of pace for me. My longtime friend and colleague Peter Carver stands in the front rank.

  My thanks as well to David Bennett at the Transatlantic Agency for his enthusiasm and energy on behalf of the book, and for two key insights that became crucial to shaping my story.