The Girl with the Wrong Name

by Barnabas Miller

  “Questions about you?”

  “Yes, questions about me, about us, about our history. Questions only I’d know the answer to. Like, ask me when we first met.”

  “Okay, when did we first—?”

  “It was in the math lab in eighth grade. You asked me if I knew some math whiz dude named Theo, because this Theo guy was supposed to tutor you.”

  “Oh, shit, I forgot about that! And you played along for, like, ten minutes. You said this ‘Theo guy’ was a notoriously sadistic psycho who tutored with an iron fist.”

  “Right, and he weighed three hundred pounds, and he insisted all his students call him Keyser Söze.”

  “Right, right.” Max sat up straight, laughing. “And I shouldn’t be afraid when he brought out his bloodstained training hammer Petey.”

  “Yeah, and he ate entire wheels of smoked Gouda during sessions.” I began to smile, too. “And he practiced ‘enhanced interrogation techniques,’ forcing his students to answer rapid-fire algebra questions while listening to Slipknot and Nickelback.”

  “Yes. See?” He leaned closer. “You’re you. You’re definitely you. No one else could have known about the Gouda.”

  I nodded. And in that instant, the day’s fatigue took hold of my body, and I fell onto his pillow, flat on my back, head slipping back into the hood. I rested my hands on my stomach and closed my eyes like a corpse in an open casket.

  “Give me another one,” I said.

  “Okay.” The sound of his voice carried me through two more deep and easy breaths as he thought of his next question. “Okay, what was the first thing I asked you at our first tutoring session at your apartment?”

  “Easy. Mom brought us bergamot tea, and you asked me if she’d ever tried to poison a boy who came over.”

  “Correct,” Max said. “And what did you say?”

  “I said I hadn’t had a boy over since the fourth grade. Then I tested the tea for poison.”

  “See, you still have the best memory of anyone I know.”

  “Yeah, I’m not sure about that one.” The pale blue ceiling was beginning to fade.

  “Okay, last question. For the big money.”

  “Go,” I mumbled.

  “When you came to my last game, what was the final score?”

  “It’s a trick question,” I said sleepily. “I’ve never been to any of your games. Can’t take the stench of that many stools in one room.”

  “See?” He grinned. “I knew you were you. I even know you when you’re pretending to be someone else.”

  My eyes snapped back open. “What are you talking about? When did I do that?”

  “Sorry,” he said. “We don’t have to talk about that now. Try to get some sleep.”

  “No, I don’t need sleep.” I sat up so quickly that Max slid back in his chair. “Tell me. When did I pretend to be someone else?”

  “Come on, Thee, it’s just us here. You seriously want to tell me you had nothing to do with the letter?”

  “What letter?”

  He sighed, reached into his track pants pocket, and pulled out a wrinkled square of college-ruled paper. He unfolded it and began to read aloud. “A Declaration of Romantic Intent. Dear, M. I really need to talk to you. Please don’t be alarmed by the heading of this letter, but our time is running out here at Sherman, and I couldn’t forgive myself if I didn’t tell you how I truly feel . . .”

  I’d never felt so stupid in my life. No, not stupid, ignorant. Too oblivious to see the blatantly obvious.

  No. Stupid. I felt really stupid.

  Dear M. I had written “M” for Mike. Hadn’t Lou and I been writing that letter to Mike DeMonaco? No, apparently not. And the more Max read from Lou’s—my—letter, the clearer it all became: those nine million urgent texts they’d sent me; Max so desperate for a session that he’d braved an hour of Beowulf Book Club with Mom and Todd; Lou’s tired, angry eyes when she confronted me on the street. She wasn’t afraid I’d ruined our five-year friendship with Max, she was jealous. She thought I was trying to steal him away right after I’d helped write her Declaration of Romantic Intent.

  Max continued. “I know you’ve only seen me as one thing for the past five years, and I know that people sometimes only see you as one thing, too. They see a dude’s dude. They see another jock in a jersey who cracks a lot of jokes and has a strict cheerleader-only hookup policy . . .” He looked up. “Okay, that’s not fair.”

  He waited for me to provide an amen, but I remained silent. He frowned and kept reading. “But I know there’s a whole other side to you. A romantic side. A heroic side that you’re too embarrassed to show anyone. I see the real you in little bits and pieces every day, even if no one else can.

  “All I’m asking is for you to wake up and see that there’s another side to me, too. Sometimes I don’t even think you see me as a girl. Who knows—maybe sometimes I haven’t wanted to be one. But I swear, I’m not asking for some big romantic epiphany. All I’m asking is this: When you see me tomorrow, look again. Erase every single memory you have of me for the last five years and pretend you’ve never met me before. Look at me and pretend I’m a girl.

  “If you follow these instructions—if you follow them just exactly as I’ve instructed—then I think you’ll see it. I think you’ll see what we could be.

  “Love (not to be confused with IN love just yet),

  Lou”

  Max tossed the letter across the bed and stared at me.

  “What?” I asked, unsure what I was even doing here anymore.

  “It’s a good letter,” he said.

  “I agree.”

  “But it doesn’t really sound like Lou.”

  “I disagree. I think it sounds just like her. Why? What did she say to you?”

  “I haven’t talked to her yet. I’ve been avoiding her since she handed it to me. I wanted to talk to you first.”

  “Why?”

  “Thee.”

  “What?”

  “Seriously? I’ve been in the room at least twice when you’ve helped her with a Cyrano letter. This whole letter is you. It even uses all caps for emphasis.”

  “Okay, fine, so I helped her write the letter.”

  “And?”

  “And what?”

  “Dude.” He jumped off the chair and flopped down beside me in our Freudian position. I let him; maybe I was too tired to protest. “I know I’m not the sharpest tool in the shed, but I did read that Cyrano play.”

  “You read a whole play?”

  “Fine, the CliffsNotes helped, but I watched that Gerard Depardieu movie with you, and for someone obsessed with Cyrano, I think you’re missing the point.”

  “Oh, really? And what exactly is the point, Max?”

  He let out a caveman grunt, grabbed one of his pillows, and crushed it over his head. I had to strain to hear his muffled voice through the small opening under his pillow. “The point is, Cyrano didn’t just write Christian’s letters as a favor to his buddy—he wrote them because he was trying to say something to Roxane.”

  “Now I literally can’t hear what you’re saying. What are you trying to say?”

  He ripped the pillow off his head and pushed himself up, putting us face-to-face. “That’s what I’m asking you,” he said, probing my eyes at close range.

  “Max, what are you doing?”

  “I’m not doing anything. I’m just asking if there’s anything you want to say to me.”

  His eyes wouldn’t let mine escape. They were bluer than neon blue. Bluer than the aqua blue walls and the digital fish tank. They kept getting bluer as they came closer, searching my eyes. Bluer and closer. Bluer and closer . . .

  “OKAY, WHAT IS GOING ON TONIGHT?”

  I howled it to the ceiling or to God, to nobody or to whoever was listening. I grabbed the drawstrings of m
y hood and pulled them as tightly as I could, nearly strangling myself. The hood shrank down over all but my eyes, nose, and upper lip.

  Max jumped off the bed and backed away, almost tripping over his desk chair. “Jesus, what is wrong with you?”

  “Why were you looking at me like that?” I shot back.

  “You were looking at me, too.”

  “Yes, I was looking at you, but I wasn’t looking at you. You were looking at me like—like a boy would look at . . .”

  “A girl? Like a boy would look at a girl? Is that what you’re trying to say?”

  “No. You were looking at me like a boy would look at her. Everybody’s looking at me the way they’d look at her.”

  “Who?”

  “Sarah.”

  “Who the hell is Sarah?”

  “Maybe I am. I don’t know!”

  “I thought we’d established that you were you.”

  “I know that.”

  I thought he’d take a step toward me. He always came closer when I was struggling. But tonight, he took two steps back.

  “I was just trying to do the thing,” he muttered.

  “What thing?”

  “The thing you asked me to do in the letter. I was just trying to do it. Trying to pretend it was the first time I’d ever—”

  “I wasn’t asking you to do anything. That was Lou’s letter. I didn’t even know we were writing it to you. I thought we were writing it to Mike ‘Me Like’ DeMonaco!”

  “Oh.” Max’s entire body seemed to deflate. He drew in a deep breath and took another step back toward his TV. He examined its edges for nicks and scratches. “Okay. Can we just, like, strike this whole thing from the record? Can we just erase it and go back to the moment right before I said it?”

  “Yeah,” I said, looking down at my sneakers. “We can do that.” I shouldn’t have gotten into his bed with my sneakers on. That was rude. Why did I do that?

  “Cool,” Max said.

  We looked at anything but each other until our eyes accidentally met again. I found myself searching for physical ways to recede farther into the sweatshirt. I wish I’d had six more sweatshirts to throw on, one after the other, till I looked like a puffer fish. This was supposed to be the safe place. But now I was drowning all alone on the bed. My mattress was sinking, and Max was the only tall ship for miles.

  “Max,” I said to my sneakers.

  “Are you hungry?” He started walking quickly to the door. “Maybe I should make us some—”

  “Max, do you think there is any possible way that I could ask you to hold me for a few minutes? But without it evoking any of the clichés of girls asking guys to hold them, and without it being sexually suggestive in any way, or implying that it might become sexually suggestive a few hours later after I’ve passed out, which I’m about to do, and we accidentally wake up face-to-face, or in some other entirely unintentional romantic configuration?”

  Max took his time and considered my question. “Yes, I think I can do that.”

  “Okay,” I said. I waited for him to come back to the bed.

  “Oh, now?”

  “Yeah, now.”

  I lay back down on my side and faced the window, shutting my eyes. I felt Max climb slowly onto the bed and reach carefully around my waist, searching for the least suggestive place to put his arm. He settled on cupping my shoulder with his hand, and we lay there in suspended animation for a few seconds.

  “No, too weird,” I muttered, sitting back up.

  “Yeah, weird,” Max agreed.

  “Maybe just the hand,” I said. We lay down on our backs, and he took hold of my hand at the center of the bed.

  “No, still too weird,” I said. He began to slide away. “No, stay close!”

  He froze in place. “Like here?” he asked.

  “Yeah, okay, there,” I said. “Yeah, I think there’s good.”

  I lay back down on the pillow. We were back in the Freudian position, both on our backs now, staring up at the ceiling—each with our own side of the mattress staked out, just like every other session we’d ever had. I fell asleep almost instantly.

  Chapter Eleven

  5:42 a.m. Max had kept his promise. He was still asleep when the sun opened my eyes, but the line down the bed had stayed intact. No accidental spooning or entangled limbs. I had slept so hard and so deep, I’d never even shifted onto my side.

  I’d slept. I couldn’t believe I’d slept. I hadn’t slept for more than two hours in as many weeks, and that stuff had barely counted as sleep. Now I remembered what real sleep felt like. Maybe that was why my head finally felt a little clearer.

  I watched Max’s chest rise and fall, taking in his stubbly profile. Dawn was creeping through the huge windows, bathing everything in a pink-orange light. Yesterday already felt like a distant memory, like another life.

  All except for my guilty thoughts of Andy.

  I’d left him in my room, no doubt as freaked out and confused as I was. I wondered where he’d gone after I took off. I wondered what he’d done. I climbed over Max, careful not to wake him. Within seconds I’d snuck out of his apartment and was on the street, making my way home. If I could get back soon enough, I could make it into my own bed before Mom and Todd woke up and turned on NPR.

  The apartment was lifeless. All the lights were out. The only sound in the kitchen was the hum of the refrigerator. Todd’s laptop was still asleep on the table, which meant they hadn’t even gotten to the Huffington-Post-and-soft-boiled-eggs stage yet. I tiptoed through the dining room, watching for any sudden lamplight in the hallway.

  On the third step, I somehow tripped the Complete-and-Utter-Chaos Alarm.

  A horrid folk song filled my ears. It was a girl (maybe two?) and guitar: a poor woman’s Joni Mitchell, but happy. Pop-Tart commercials/Disney Family Channel happy. The music stopped. Two spindly arms grabbed me from behind. I let out a strangled shriek as they swallowed me.

  “Oh, thank God,” Mom cried. Her body was shaking.

  A door burst open, and I screamed again. Todd flew out of their bedroom, wielding a squash racket over his head, poised to strike. “What the—I heard screaming.”

  His Breathe Right nasal strip was still pasted over his nose. Aside from that, he wore too-short pajama pants puffed out like old-timey bloomers. I wondered if he’d seen a late night infomercial for “Pajoomers” and just gone for it. I’d say he was the third shirtless man I’d seen in less than twelve hours, but his chest and shoulders were covered in coarse white yak hair. He was, pretty much, wearing a shirt.

  “She came back,” Mom sniffled, not letting me go. “Todd, she came back.”

  My mother was hugging me. Not just hugging me, embracing me. Passionately, urgently. Maybe this still wasn’t my life? She pulled back and shouted in my face, shaking my shoulders, “Where the hell were you?”

  Okay, more like my life. Except that she had on these big, chunky headphones, the cord dangling down her flannel robe, pockets stuffed to the brim with used tissues. She must have accidentally pulled out the cord when she ran to me.

  Todd exhaled and slumped against the wall, finally lowering his squash racket. “I told you she’d be back by morning, Meg. Welcome home, Theodore. I’m going to make us all some soft-boiled eggs. And how about some whole-grain Swedish limpa toast?”

  I stared at him. “I don’t know what that is, but okay,” I managed.

  “Coming right up.”

  Todd trotted down to the kitchen. Mom ripped off her headphones and tossed them on the dining table next to her laptop. She escorted me into my bedroom and shut the door behind us.

  “Were you just listening to folk music?” I asked with disbelief.

  “It was helping to calm me,” she snapped. She must have finally gone haywire with fall semester stress because even with her blood boiling and her ja
w clenched, there was . . . There wasn’t another word for it. Love. There was love in her eyes. Actual, visible love. I suppose I couldn’t be sure, given how seldom I’d seen it before. “Theo, you have to tell me everything. You have to tell me everything about him.”

  My spine stiffened. “Who?” I asked.

  “The boy.”

  “What boy?”

  “Theodore, there can’t be any more bullshit between us. This is too important!”

  My jaw nearly fell off its hinges. My mother just cursed. She must have found Andy. “It—it’s not bullshit,” I stammered.

  “I see,” she said, crossing her arms. “So you went to a semiformal party last night and drank pink champagne all alone?”

  “How did you know?” I saw the mop and bucket sitting in my bathroom doorway. The floor was sparkling clean now. She’d cleaned up my entire mess. Or maybe Andy had? There was a trash bag next to the bucket, which surely contained my puke-stained dress, reeking of champagne. Oh, God, was Andy’s shirt in there, too? Had she spent the whole night interrogating him? Was she testing me to see if I’d confess?

  “You can’t drink on your Lexapro. You know that. It’s not safe. How many times has Dr. Silver warned you about the side effects? Why do you think you got so sick?”

  “You’re right,” I said. “I shouldn’t have had that drink. I shouldn’t have messed with my meds, but there’s no boy, Mom.” My eyes darted to the corners of the room, searching for signs of Andy—under the bed, behind the newspaper stacks. “I just went to Lou’s second performance, and then I came back here to change. That’s when I got sick, but I still wanted to meet everyone after the recital, so I went back out to meet them, and I ended up falling asleep at Lou’s.”

  I knew she wasn’t buying it. I wasn’t even sure it made sense. But at least I knew she hadn’t found Andy.

  “I still feel pretty sick,” I added. “And I’m so grimy. I’ve got to take a shower.”

  She shook her head. “Get yourself cleaned up. Todd will finish making breakfast. And then you’re going to tell me where you really went last night and with whom, and we’re going to set new ground rules that cannot be broken ever again. Are we clear?”