Twenty-Nine

“You’ve been so chilly to me this week,” Zach said when our food arrived. We’d barely spoken on the ride over, and other than exchanging a word here and there, we’d said nothing to each other since sitting down in the diner.

“Yeah, I’ve had stuff on my mind,” I said.

“So that means you avoid me?” he asked. “I don’t understand why you can’t just talk to me. I thought we had something, and I thought that if you were upset, you would talk to me about it instead of trying to pretend I don’t exist.”

“My sister left town,” I said.

“Gracie?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, see, that wasn’t so hard, was it? Talking to me, telling me stuff.”

I shook my head. I tried to focus all my attention on the grilled cheese sandwich on my plate. If I looked at Zach I was pretty sure I’d lose the ability to speak entirely.

“It’s more complicated than that,” I said.

“It’s not complicated at all.”

I put down my sandwich and looked at him. He was gorgeous. If I had the chance to play God and design a perfect-looking guy, I would have created someone who looked just like Zach. His eyes met mine and I felt my pulse quicken.

“Why do you like me?” I asked.

“What kind of question is that?”

“I’m serious. Why do you like me? Why me and not someone else?”

“Because you’re smart and you’re pretty. You’re independent. You don’t care what anyone else thinks. Because no one else makes me feel the way you do.”

I replayed his last sentence in my head: Because no one else makes me feel the way you do. Did he feel it too, then?

“When I’m around you, I become someone else,” I said. But no, that wasn’t quite it. “I don’t recognize myself around you. I lose control.”

“Is that such a bad thing?” he asked.

“It’s scary,” I said.

“No, what’s scary is thinking you could walk away from me—that I could lose you.”

“You’re not being realistic. We don’t know each other that well. Besides, we have our whole lives ahead of us.”

“The reason we don’t know each other that well is because you keep yourself closed off,” Zach said. His brow furrowed in anger, and it was something about that wrinkled forehead and the dark look he gave me that made me gasp out loud and drop my sandwich onto my plate as I turned away from him. For a moment there, he hadn’t looked at all like Zach.

When I looked back at him he was smiling at me, and he looked like Zach again—but no, I could see it. It flickered in and out, but if I squinted and pictured Zach looking older, I could see it.

“Oh my God,” I said.

“What?” he asked. He turned around and looked behind him as if there might be someone back there, but there wasn’t. He was the one I suddenly couldn’t take my eyes off of, and not because of his incredible good looks. In fact, I was beginning to doubt that he really was good-looking.

Annie had thought she was hallucinating, and I’d thought she was freaking out from a bad case of nerves, but she wasn’t hallucinating. I could see it too. I now understood why she’d been so scared that she’d locked herself in the bathroom. Zach bore a striking resemblance to our not-quite father. It wasn’t surprising that Annie had seen it before I did—she’d spent more time with him, too much time. Plus, she’d known him longer, known him when he was a bit younger. Most of my mental images of my father came from unreliable childhood memories and what few snapshots we had of him. Of course there were only a few of these—he had been the one who was usually behind the camera, not Susie, since she’d died before we were ever created.

“Are you all right?” Zach asked.

“I’m not sure,” I said.

For a moment I wondered if I was overreacting. Maybe the stress of everything—Annie being sick, Gracie leaving, the three of us being something other than normal—had taken its toll on me. I could be hallucinating. I looked at Zach, and it was like I was looking into the eyes of my father. How could I have never seen it before?

It all made sense, too. Zach had been left on the steps of a convent. He’d never known who his parents were—and that was because, like me, he didn’t have parents, not in the traditional sense. He was the product of some mad scientist’s stupid experiment. Who would do a thing like this? Why would they do it?

As these questions spun through my mind, they must have written themselves on my face because Zach said, “You’re starting to freak me out.”

“I’m starting to get freaked out,” I said.

I realized something else. All these years, Zach’s life had been financed by a mysterious secret benefactor. Not only that, but for no apparent reason this same benefactor had arranged for him to move to Shallow Pond. That was no accident. Of all the towns in the country, to be sent to Shallow Pond—which was already home to three more clones than your average American town—could be nothing but pure manipulation. Everything I felt about Zach—the way it seemed he’d been sent just for me—that wasn’t just a feeling. That was real. This wasn’t the work of the fates of the universe. Zach’s benefactor wanted him to move to Shallow Pond so that he could meet me and we could fall in love, just like our clones had thirty-some years before.

My stomach churned uncomfortably and I felt hot and dizzy. Suddenly everything was too close. I needed space and fresh air.

“I’ll be right back,” I said. I ran out of the diner and into the parking lot. It was chilly outside, and I’d left my jacket back in the booth, but I didn’t care. The cold air felt good.

We were like chess pieces in someone’s weird and twisted game, or puppets dancing at the pull of a string. I began playing back events from my life to see if they had really been the way I remembered them or if they, too, had been orchestrated by some demented puppet master. Who was this puppet master? Obviously, one and the same as Zach’s benefactor. Perhaps before he’d died, my father had set up some sort of trust fund and given some attorney or someone specific instructions on providing for the alleged orphan boy. Perhaps Dr. Feld was involved in some way—but no, he hadn’t known about my father’s death.

I thought about how strange that was. Surely someone so close to my father would have heard the news of his death. Annie had handled all the arrangements, and Annie had known about Dr. Feld; she’d made us take her to University Hospital specifically to see him. So why wouldn’t she have contacted him when our father died?

I knew there was only one answer that made any sense. I played back the events of his death. There had been a short service at the funeral home. Besides us, some of the other folks from around town had been there, but not friends of my father’s. He really hadn’t had any; it was just folks who knew Annie or Gracie. I think my teacher showed up. There hadn’t been any viewing, of course, just the urn containing his ashes on display at the front of the room, next to the most recent photo we had of him. I thought of Susie’s grave in Shallow Pond’s cemetery. Why would he choose to be cremated instead of being laid to rest beside the love of his life?

“I thought you might be cold out here,” Zach said. He walked over and handed me my jacket. “Was it something I said?”

I shook my head and thought about how Zach said I didn’t share things with him. Maybe that was instinct on my part.

“Remember how my sister freaked out before?” I asked.

“Hard to forget.”

“I think maybe I understand why. Do you think you could drive me home?”

“Sure, fine.” His shoulders slumped as he walked toward his car. I stood there for a moment watching him, then jogged to catch up.

“Zach!” I called, even though I was only a step or two behind him. “I’m crazy about you!” His eyes brightened. “It’s just I’m not sure why I am, and I’m scared about why I am.”

“Is that supposed to make sense?”

“I’m sorry. I can’t explain right now.”

Just the porch light was on when Zach pulled up to the curb. I figured Annie must still be out, which made sense. The night was young. I should still have been out too.
“Pull into the driveway,” I said. “It’s okay. Gracie took the minivan with her when she left.”

“I’m not worried about the minivan,” Zach said. “I’m worried about you.”

“I’m fine,” I said. “I just need to check something. Wait here. I’ll be right back.”

I ran into the house and went straight to the small room my father had used for an office. After he died, we’d kept the room closed, using it for boxes of Christmas decorations and other odds and ends. I’d never liked the room, maybe because I’d always associated it with my grumpy father. I went straight to the desk, which still had some papers on top. What I wanted to find was a death certificate. That would make it all official. But the papers on the desk were mostly copies of old utility bills and tax papers. I opened the drawers, surprised to find them empty. Most people don’t clean out their desks before they die, but I figured maybe Annie did after he died—though why leave other papers on top of the desk? I looked around the room to see if there was some other place a death certificate might be lurking. Instead, my eyes fell on the urn.

It was an ugly thing, in black and gold, probably the cheapest model the funeral parlor offered. No sense spending any more than was necessary on the death of an unpleasant man. Unless the urn hadn’t even come from the funeral home. Perhaps it had been bought on the clearance shelf at Wal-Mart. Perhaps it didn’t contain ashes at all. I yanked the lid off and peeked inside, but saw immediately that it was two-thirds full of ashes. I quickly replaced the lid, uncomfortable staring at my dead father reduced to a pile of ash. It was strange to think that a full-grown person took up so little space after cremation.

I was about to walk out of the room, to give up, when a nagging feeling made me go back to the urn. Part of me resisted the idea, creeped out at the thought of looking at what remained of my father. I bit my lip as I lifted the lid again and forced myself to look at the contents.

Ashes. But as I stared, I saw it—a piece of ash that was bigger than the others, too big. I held my breath and reached my hand into the urn. The large piece of ash was a piece of paper. I stared at the type on it. Random letters that had once been part of long-lost words, and something else: $300 OBO. I was looking at what remained from a page of newspaper classified ads.

There could be a reasonable explanation. Maybe my fa-ther had a newspaper with him when he was cremated, or perhaps just a page from a newspaper that he’d clipped out and shoved into his pocket, and even though the high heat of the cremation furnace had reduced the rest of him to ash it had somehow left behind this scrap of fragile paper.

I knew what I needed to do. I sucked in my breath and held it again as I reached into the urn and this time scooped a handful of ash in my hand. I stared at it as I let it drift through my fingers. At first, I saw only gray ashes, but as I stared I caught glimpses of a few letters here, a number there, everything in black no-nonsense newspaper type. The urn did not contain human remains, just newspaper remains. It confirmed what I’d already figured out. He was still alive.

I sank down to the floor and rested my head against the wall. The urn fell from my hand, spilling its newspaper ash across the floor. Annie had known this whole time, of course. She was the one who’d made him leave. The other night I’d asked her why she hadn’t simply run away, but she was smarter than that. She’d figured out a better solution. She’d made him go away, and had him fake his death so that no one would ever try to find him. She must have blackmailed him into leaving. She certainly had enough information to do so.

For a moment I wondered how this changed anything. The man I’d barely known who’d turned out to not be my father after all wasn’t dead as I’d believed. He was alive, probably living under an assumed name somewhere out there in the world. Did this really make any difference to me? The more I thought about it, the more I realized what I needed to do.

I jumped up and went back over to the desk. I rummaged through the papers there, but it was the same pile of old bills. I glanced around at the room again, but I knew what I was looking for wasn’t here. Annie wouldn’t have put it here. She would have hidden it someplace safe.

I ran upstairs to her room. I didn’t know where to begin. I opened the drawers of her dresser, digging through her clothes, but there was nothing buried beneath them. I pawed quickly through the books on her bookshelf. I glanced under her bed, where shoes and a herd of dust bunnies had taken up residence. I lifted up her mattress—and was rewarded with the sight of a small envelope.

Tucked inside was a piece of paper with a name and address scrawled in a shaky hand. Donald Haley. Could that be his new name? If it wasn’t, then I had no idea who it was. I’d never heard her mention anyone by that name before. He apparently lived in Dunmore, PA.

In my room, I fired up my computer while I threw some things into my backpack. I plugged the address into Mapquest. It was about two hours away. Doable, I figured.

I threw my backpack into the back of Zach’s car and sat down in the passenger seat, clutching the envelope with the name and address on it, along with the Mapquest directions.

“Are you running away from home?” Zach asked.

“No, we’re going to find your benefactor,” I said.

“What are you talking about?”

“Just drive,” I told him.

“You’re doing it again,” he said. “You’re shutting me out.”

“I’ll explain along the way.”