That night, I broke about a hundred promises to myself and looked at your old online profile. I thought maybe there’d be some answers there. Or evidence.
It said your last log-in was the day in the clearing. You must’ve checked it before we went to school. Before the three of us left to hang out. Before.
Fiona’s expression didn’t change. “It’s like right before it happened with Ariel, Evan. I know I wasn’t there, but I was around it. I saw things. I remember how overwhelmed you were.”
“It’s not like that,” I argued.
It was painful to see you frozen like that, frozen in time. It wasn’t like you were smiling in your profile picture, or even happy—even though there were times you were happy anything something and there were times you were smiling kittens! playing poker!; you just weren’t the type to parade them. Instead it was a shot I had taken of you leaning against my bed, staring me down. I’d been so excited when you chose it for your profile pic. So honored. Ridiculous.
I clicked on that picture to see more pictures.
“Then what’s it like? What’s going on?” Fiona asked.
There was no way for me to tell her. Because I felt that if I told her one thing, I’d have to tell her everything in order to explain it. Everything.
I could feel all the memories pressing against the leaky wall I’d put up to hold them back. The pressure was enormous, and I had to throw my body up against it in my mind, this was all in my mind so the memories didn’t drown me. I was not going to look at the familiar pictures the parties, making faces into the camera phone, the birthdays, the two of us—I was looking for something unfamiliar, something I hadn’t noticed before.
“Evan,” Fiona said, not reaching out with her hand, but with her voice, “I’m on your side.”
“But who’s on the other side, Fiona?” I had to ask. “Is it her? Does that mean you’re against her?”
Fiona pulled back. “Evan, something’s wrong with you. Even if nobody else can see it, I can see it.”
I found one. Three weeks before it happened. A couple of days after the photos we found in your house.
The fingernail wasn’t yours.
But the skin with the heart … the skin with the heart …
“I’m not saying there isn’t something wrong,” I told Fiona. I was tired. It felt like years of tiredness. “But you can’t help.” Because she wasn’t there the last time, was she? “Really, it’s nothing. I really have to go.”
I didn’t know. I couldn’t remember.
Now Fiona risked it. She reached out. Put her hand on my shoulder. Squeezed. Said, “You don’t have to do anything. You don’t. It’s over.”
It was like I had never seen you before. Not in that one spot.
How can we remember every part of the body? Even on someone we love?
Fiona waited for a response. Not even an answer. A response.
There was no tag on the photo. No comments. No signs.
“It’s never over,” I said. “It can’t be.”
And I walked away.