Mr. Lansky collects our papers and promises that the results of the quiz we just took won’t count toward our final grade. It’s a relief, considering I could barely concentrate. Mr. Lansky wants to see what each of us already knows and doesn’t know about the different states of matter. I’m more focused on what I know and don’t know about my own life.
What I know: Jared and I delivered a packet of emails to the Murphys on Tuesday. It’s now Thursday.
What I don’t know: Whether the Murphys received the emails. Whether they read them. What they thought of what they read. Whether the emails helped them or not. What they want from me now.
I can’t even remember what Jared and I wrote. The words arrived in a mad, inspired rush. I handed over my only physical copy to the Murphys. I was going to ask Jared to send me the files, assuming he didn’t already get rid of them, but I decided I don’t want to see them. I’m trying to forget that they exist. That we did what we did.
The bell rings and it’s off to lunch. I lag behind my classmates. What’s the hurry? Before all this, I was alone, but I still had a few squeezes left in my tube of hope. Connor Murphy wasn’t a part of my daily life. He, like me, existed in the background. Our paths didn’t cross, and if they did, neither of us noticed. I was able to sit in the back of the cafeteria, sneaking glances at Zoe and imagining the possibility, however far-fetched, that one day we might be together. Now I don’t even lift my head at lunch. I’m too scared to catch another one of her icy stares from across the room.
I enter through the open double doors into an onslaught of aromas and sounds. I’m the last one to arrive, it seems, which is fine, because I don’t need much time to eat, if I eat at all. My usual table has plenty of open seats. I take one. As I’m sitting down, someone says, “Hey, Evan.”
The kid seated across from me looks familiar, but I don’t know his name.
“Sam,” he says. “We have English together.”
“Oh. Right. Hey.”
Sam resumes eating. I stare into his thick forest of hair. Where did he come from? Has he always been here? I’ve basically gone all of high school as a nonentity. Being acknowledged all of a sudden fills me with a strange and unsettling sensation.
Since my eyes are already raised, I keep them up for just a moment longer and take stock of my surroundings. As I feared, I’m getting stared at. But this time not from Zoe. The stares are coming from all over the cafeteria and not all at once. They’re not quite stares, actually, more like brief glances. A head turn here. A peek over there.
I lower my head and start unpacking my sandwich. At this point, just the sight of my SunButter standard fills me with dread. When I was working at Ellison Park over the summer, my boss, Ranger Gus, and I would grab lunch at one of the nearby food trucks. My favorite was the Korean tacos. I’m practically salivating right now thinking about those tacos. That, right there, was living. It actually makes me excited for dinner. Tonight is taco night with Mom.
I take a chomp out of the flavored Styrofoam in my hands. The bench shakes as someone takes a seat next to me.
“Oh my god, how are you?” Alana Beck says. “How is everything?”
My reaction time in social situations is always slow, but with Alana it’s even more delayed. Her brightness is like the sun reflected off snow.
I’m not sure why she’s so interested in how I’m doing, but it’s nice that she’s asking. “I’m okay, I guess.”
She cringes, as if in pain. “You are amazing.”
“Me?”
“Jared has been telling everyone about you and Connor, how close you guys were, how you were, like, best friends.”
Now I’m the one cringing in pain. Can an ulcer form instantaneously?
“Everyone is talking about how brave you’ve been this week,” Alana says, her hands clasped, a nun consoling a bedridden patient.
“They are?” My voice cracks and I almost crack with it.
I scan the room. Is that why everyone keeps looking at me? Sam delivers a miraculously timed nod.
“I mean, anybody else in your position would be falling apart,” Alana says. “Dana P. was crying so hard at lunch yesterday she pulled a muscle in her face. She had to go to the hospital.”
“Isn’t Dana P. new this year? She didn’t even know Connor.”
“That’s why she was crying. Because now she’ll never get the chance. Connor is really bringing the school together. It’s pretty incredible. People I’ve never talked to before, they want to talk to me now, because they know how much Connor meant to me. It’s very inspiring. I actually started a blog about him, a sort of memorial page.”
I open my mouth to speak but can’t. My heart rate has tripled. A long drink of water barely helps. “I didn’t realize you were friends with Connor.”
“Not friends, really. More like acquaintances. But close acquaintances.”
My heart rate drops to merely double speed.
“He probably never mentioned me or anything,” she adds.
I can’t tell if she’s asking a question or making a statement. Either way, my lips are sealed.
“Truthfully?” she says. “I think part of me always knew you two were friends. You did a really good job of hiding it, but I totally knew.” She leans in. “Tell me something.”
“Tell you what?”
“The photo everyone keeps posting of Connor? The one where the other guy is cropped out? The other guy is you, isn’t it?”
She studies me. I’m too frightened to even breathe.
She smiles. “I knew it.”
Sam smiles, too.
I didn’t say anything. I didn’t do anything. Not a nod, wink, or twitch.
“Hang in there, Evan,” she says before departing.
I want to be somewhere else, anywhere else. I gather my lunch and head for the doors.
Jared appears in my path, his arms spread open, welcoming me. I go in for a hug.
“What are you doing?” he says, throwing me off him.
“Sorry. I thought…”
“I’m trying to show you something, asshole.” He points to his chest. Over his heart is a button with Connor Murphy’s smiling face on it. It’s that same photo of Connor. Jared reaches into a canvas bag slung over his shoulder and removes an identical button, which he pins onto my shirt. “I’m selling them for five bucks each, but you can have yours for four.”
“You’re making money off this? Off Connor’s…” I can’t bring myself to say it.
“I’m not the only one,” Jared says. “Haven’t you seen the wristbands with Connor’s initials on them that Sabrina Patel started selling during free period? Or the T-shirts Matt Holtzer’s mom made?”
“No, I haven’t. I can’t believe people are doing that.”
“It’s simple supply and demand, my friend. Right now we’re at the peak.” He pats his bulky canvas bag. “I have to move these buttons before the bottom drops out of the Connor Murphy memorabilia market.”
He walks away. I call after him. “I’m not wearing this thing.” I can’t get the button off fast enough. I toss it at him. As I do, I see, over his shoulder, the glare of Zoe Murphy. She just watched me tear Connor’s button off my shirt and launch it across the room with contempt.
Jared saunters off and Zoe takes his place, standing right in front of me. “What’s wrong?” she says. “You don’t feel like wearing my brother’s face on your chest?”
What if I took one of the buttons and stabbed the needle point in my eye? Would that be justice?
Zoe scans the room. “He would have hated this.” And then, returning to me, “Don’t you think?”
It sounds sincere, like she’s seeking my insight. Then again, it could be a test.
“Probably,” I say.
There’s so much weight in her eyes. I can’t decipher what any of it means or what particular shape it takes, but the overall heft of it, the total sum, it’s colossal and I’m staring straight at it.
She’s about to step away, but her retreat is interrupted. I look down to see what she sees. It’s my cast, what’s written on it. When I go to check her face, it’s too late. She’s already halfway across the room, swallowed by the masses.
• • •
It’s an eerie feeling, being back in the computer lab. It was only last week when Connor Murphy stole my letter. I wasn’t even aware he’d been in the room at the time. I look, now, over my shoulder, checking who’s here. A few kids. I don’t see Connor. Obviously, I don’t see Connor. He’s not alive. You can’t see people who aren’t alive.
Maybe he could be alive right now if I hadn’t printed that stupid letter. As soon as I hit return on my keyboard, it’s like I started a tragic chain reaction. If the Wi-Fi connection failed and the command never reached the printer, Connor could be alive. If my mother didn’t schedule that appointment with Dr. Sherman for that specific day, Connor could be alive. Also, if I never broke my arm, there would be no cast for Connor to sign and maybe I could have debunked this myth before it hardened like plaster.
Considering how far I fell from that tree, I could have broken a whole lot more. I was lucky. That’s what everyone told me. I didn’t feel very lucky, lying there in the most excruciating physical pain of my life. But I guess I was. I could have wrecked my back. Cracked open my head. Even worse.
Ranger Gus drove me to the hospital. He kept asking what I was doing up there in that tree. I didn’t know how to tell him that I suddenly felt like climbing a tree when I was supposed to be working. I made up a story on the spot, what I hoped might sound better, something about finding a loose dog on my sweep. How it ran away before I could grab it and how I chased after it. I thought I could get a better view of everything if I was higher up.
“You call me on the walkie,” Ranger Gus said. “How many times have I told you that? Anything out of the ordinary, you call me on the walkie.” He was angry.
There were several instances over the summer where Ranger Gus’s sudden shift in tone caught me off guard and I had to remind myself that as much as he felt like my friend, he was actually my boss. One of those instances was when I tried calling him Gus, without the Ranger part, and he immediately corrected me.
“The rules are in place to keep you safe,” Ranger Gus said from the driver’s seat of one of the park’s pickups. “To keep everyone safe, including the park. It seems to me you just tossed all that out the window.”
He was right. Truthfully, I didn’t care one bit about safety in that moment. That’s not where my head was.
“Look, I know you’re in pain,” Ranger Gus said. “But if you don’t learn from this, then all that pain is for nothing.”
I didn’t mind Ranger Gus coming down hard on me. I was sort of grateful for it, actually.
“Did you call your folks?” he asked.
Ranger Gus’s reaction was better than what I got from my dad. When I talked to him the next day, my dad started telling me about how his older stepdaughter, Haley, broke her wrist last year. He described how quickly it healed and how Haley was back to playing sports in no time. If he was trying to make me feel better, it didn’t work. I would have preferred any other response than the one he gave me. He could have ridiculed me for being clumsy, or sympathized with a simple That sucks, or he could have shared a story about a bone break that he had when he was little. I definitely didn’t want to hear about Haley right then and there.
“I left my mom a message,” I told Ranger Gus. “I think she’s in class.” Coincidentally, she wasn’t at the hospital that day when we arrived. I remember feeling relieved when I realized that.
I haven’t spoken to Ranger Gus since my apprenticeship ended. I was with him five days a week for two months, and now we have nothing to do with each other. I don’t know. It just seems sort of messed up. One minute we’re a team or whatever, and now he’s probably busy teaching a new recruit.
I awaken my computer’s screen. I could send Ranger Gus an email and ask how he’s doing. But considering how rarely he’s online, he probably wouldn’t see my email for weeks. I tried to get him to create a social media profile for himself and the park, but it did not go over well. Ranger Gus is one of those off-the-grid types who thinks technology is ruining society. Besides, if I emailed him to ask about his life, I’d also have to fill him in on mine.
• • •
That evening, I’m busy trying to bang out some homework before dinner when I notice a new email in my inbox. The subject reads: Thank you. I open it and realize that it’s a message from Cynthia Murphy. The sight of her name nearly strikes me blind. Why did I include my real address in those emails I gave her? I should have made up my own fake account, too.
I begin to read:
Dear Evan,
We received the package you left. We can’t thank you enough for trusting us with these private exchanges. They certainly provide us a view of Connor to which we were never privy, one that we can hardly reconcile with the boy we knew.
You mentioned there were more emails. We’d be grateful for whatever you choose to show us and at whatever pace you decide. Reading over these emails is almost like seeing Connor live on, and part of me wants to stretch out the experience forever.
I do have one favor to ask. I’m wondering if you have any additional emails pertaining to Connor’s unfortunate struggle with substance abuse. In particular, did he ever mention by name any of the people who supplied him with drugs? Would you go back and check? Of course, my husband thinks I’m wasting my time, but I would just sleep more soundly at night knowing you looked over everything and could confirm that there was nothing there.
Finally, when will we see you again? Are you free tomorrow night? We’d love to have you over for dinner again.
With the deepest love,
Cynthia
The emails didn’t satisfy her. She wants more. This will never end.
Names? Why is she asking me for names? So she can give them to the police? It’s definitely not so she can send out gift baskets. No, she wants justice. That’s my interpretation of this reading, and when it comes to English skills, I feel, for once, confident. Here’s what else I feel confident about: Cynthia Murphy going to the police is officially the worst thing that could happen.
On my nightstand, next to the waiting pile of college essay scholarships, are two bottles. One is full of water, the other Ativan. I swallow one of the latter and down some of the former. I close my eyes, willing the chemicals to course through me. My shoulders slacken and my breath slows as I wait for myself to reset.
Okay. This has to stop. I have to make this stop. I’ll just tell Cynthia that there are no names. It’s the truth. (I’ve started keeping track of truths like they’re bread crumbs that might lead me out of this.) But what if it’s still not good enough for her? What if she won’t take no for an answer? This is a grieving mother we’re talking about. This woman lost her son. This isn’t a game for her. It isn’t for me, either.
That’s it. I can’t go on like this. It’s time to come out with the truth. The whole truth. It’s what I tried to do from the start, but I didn’t speak loudly or clearly enough. I’ll fix it. I’ll go back to their house and I’ll look them in the eyes and I’ll just do it: I’ll confess.
“You okay there?”
It’s my mom in my doorway. I swear she possesses some kind of superpower for suddenly and inconveniently appearing outside my bedroom.
“Yeah. I’m okay. Of course.” That Ativan can’t kick in fast enough.
“You had a very focused look on your face.” She squints, doing her best impersonation of me. “Let me guess.” She comes closer. “Is it math? That was always my worst subject.”
I shut my laptop before she can reach it. She stops in her tracks and we share a look.
“I was just… emailing Jared,” I say, hands shaking. “He had a question about something.”
I avoid her eyes and notice that she’s wearing her scrubs.
“It seems like you and Jared are spending more time together.” She seems relieved. “I’ve always said he’s a great friend for you.”
“Yeah, really great.” Her purse hangs over her shoulder and she’s holding her car keys.
“I’m proud of you. Putting yourself out there.”
“Right,” I say dispassionately.
“Well, I’m leaving, but I left money on the table.” She turns to go. “Order anything you want, okay?”
A sick, swelling feeling mixes in with what was already there. I wish I didn’t even care. “I thought we were doing tacos tonight. Looking at the essay questions.”
Her eyes widen. “That’s tonight. Oh my god. Oh, honey. I completely forgot. Shit.” She bangs her keys against her head.
“That’s okay,” I say, because, well, what else can I even say?
She sits down on my bed and looks at the pile on my nightstand. “You know what? You should go ahead and take a look at the questions without me. And then, if you have any ideas, you can email me, and I can write back with any ideas that I have. That’s better anyway, isn’t it? That way you can really take your time?”
I nod, ready to be done with this whole conversation. “Yeah. For sure.”
“We can do tacos another night, Evan. We could do tomorrow night. How about tomorrow night?”
“I can’t tomorrow. I have… I’m busy.”
My mom doesn’t hear me. She’s looking at the time on her phone. “Shit. I’m late.”
I get out of bed. “You should go.” Those bedpans aren’t going to clean themselves.
“No, let’s figure this out.”
“It’s fine.”
“Evan…”
I head for the door. “I’ll make dinner for myself,” I say, leaving her alone and late in my bedroom.