I walked. I knew I had to go, but then I’d always known that. I even had money in my pocket. Blood money, I guess. I should have been planning, but I was in a fog. The pain in my face was fading, but my nose and cheek felt puffy and tender. I didn’t even know where I was going until I realized I was walking up the hill to Gillian’s. When I saw where I was, I stopped and stood there for a long minute. I knew I had things to do before I left.
Knowing that was a strange feeling, like a dog tugging the wrong way on a leash. I’d never had it before. I was trying to decide how to get to Gillian without her mom knowing and asking questions when the front door of her house opened. Gillian came out into the porch light, frowning, with Buster on his leash, and started down the driveway. That was when I noticed the SOLD sticker on the real-estate sign.
She saw me as Buster dragged her forward to say hi. Her face got even cloudier when she got a better look at me. “What happened to you?”
“Aw, I was skateboarding with Matt and I messed up.” All at once I felt nervous. “Your house sold.”
She didn’t answer. She was pulling tissues out of her pocket. She handed them to me. I wiped around my nose. It hurt. “Why are you out so late?” I asked, trying to put things off.
“What do you mean? It’s only eight thirty.”
“Oh! Right. Wow, maybe I hit a little harder than I thought. Anyway, I was coming to see you.”
She took a tissue from me and dabbed at my face. It might have been the first time I ever wanted someone to keep touching me. She said, flat-voiced, “We’re moving.”
“When?”
“Soon. A month.” She looked away.
For an instant I wondered if I could hang on a month. Ty’s brain exploded behind my eyes again. I said, “Is that good or bad?”
She looked back at me. “I don’t know.” She paused. “Right now it feels bad.”
“Where are you going?” It was so weird. It couldn’t make any difference now, but knowing she was going felt like another part of me was getting torn away.
“Montreal,” she said. “It’s cheaper, and that’s where my mom’s family is.”
I touched her hand, then my cheek. “Can you just wipe here, like? It feels good.” She raised her hand again. I guided it on my face. “Maybe it will be better than here.”
“Why should it be?”
I didn’t know. I said, “Well…”
She said quietly, “You won’t be there.” She lowered her hand, and then I was kind of reaching out mine and we were holding on to each other, not quite hugging. I could feel the dog straining at his leash. “We better walk,” I said.
We started down the hill, still holding hands. I knew the easy thing to do would be to just say “See you tomorrow” and be long gone by morning. Maybe it would even be the best thing, I told myself, because when the questions started flying, Gillian wouldn’t know anything. I’d be protecting her. But I wanted to give her something so that later she’d know she was special, that I hadn’t just blown her off like one more Bad Time family I’d worked over. I remembered the birthday card. “Listen,” I said, “I’ve got something for you.” I let go of her hand and found the card in its envelope in the top pocket of my backpack. “Here.” I handed it to her. “We—I mean, you—won’t be here in February.”
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.