I slammed my locker shut. Some people turned to look at me. I wondered if any of them was the one. If the photographer was watching me. Seeing my reaction. Recording it.
I crashed through the halls, crashed through my mind, crashed through all this mental history, crashed into people, crashed and felt the breaking—
Jack was talking to some of his friends from track. I didn’t want to interrupt but if I didn’t interrupt I knew I’d fall apart, so I tried to calm the crashing, tried to keep myself normal as I walked over and said, “Hey,” and said, “Can I speak to you for a second?” and pulled him away from them because this involved you and I was sure the rest of them had all forgotten you by now and wouldn’t understand why this was so urgent and how things had changed. I led Jack into an empty history classroom and let the door close behind us.
“What’s up?” he asked.
Up, I thought.
“This,” I said, looking down at the photo in my hand.
Down, I thought.
And Jack, who always kept so cool, Jack, who had track friends—Jack, who told me all the time to move on—Jack, who you hadn’t really loved like you loved me Jack took one look at the photograph and gave me a glimmer of what I must have looked like. When you say someone looks “haunted,” it doesn’t matter if you’re talking about the ghost or about the person who’s seen the ghost. The expression is the same. It’s a sudden constant death, and the haunting comes from the surprise.
“Where did you get this?” Jack asked. He left it in my hand. He wouldn’t touch it.
“It was in my locker,” I told him. “Someone put it there.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“I don’t know. Whoever it is knows my combination. They just put it right in.”
“Well, who knows your combination?”
“Ariel’s the only one.”
I’d told you
18—the age I’ll be when I leave this place
two turns left
74—July 4th
one turn right
90—the number of bottles of beer on the wall after nine of them have fallen
“She never told me,” he said. “In case you’re thinking she told someone.”
“She’s all dressed up,” I said.
“I never saw her like that,” he told me. “Nothing like that.”
Even when I held it close, I couldn’t tell if you were happy. Right in front of me, and I couldn’t tell. As if that would have been the biggest clue to when it was.
Up or down? Were you in an up or a down?
“I would remember it,” I said, as much to myself as to Jack. “I would remember her like this.”
He reached for the photo, and I actually hesitated a second before giving it to him. As if he would destroy it. Or keep it for himself.
I wondered what he would tell his track friends about me pulling him away, or even if they’d ask. I’d always been insecure around him, but now it was amplified. I could never believe we were truly friends. It was as if he’d married into our friendship when he started going out with you. We weren’t friends—we were stepfriends.
But with you gone, he was still the person I felt closest to.
I watched him as he stared at the photo. At you.
“It’s in the woods,” he said finally. “She must’ve gone with someone else into the woods.”
Neither of us.
Someone else.
I felt empty enough for both of us. And I imagined he felt empty enough for both of us. Which left us four times empty and none smarter.
“It’s the same person who took the other pictures,” he guessed. “But we don’t know who that is.”
I nodded.
“Jesus,” he said. “This is completely messed up.”
Are you sure it’s not her? I wanted to ask. But I knew what he would say. That was our difference: There was part of me that wanted to be haunted, because at least that would be feeling something that radiated from you. But he was different: He had closed himself off, except when I came around to bring it all back.
“You have to help me,” I said. Because if I couldn’t talk to you, I could at least talk to him in the same way I would’ve talked to you.
“Okay,” he said. “Okay.”
But then he didn’t say anything else, and I knew it was up to me to figure out how to begin.