I was waiting for Jack with printouts the next morning.
He looked annoyed to see me there in the smoking section, outside school. He checked for permission and lit his cigarette before saying anything.
“What is it now?” he finally asked.
I wondered what would have happened if we’d met up like this before you went over the edge. Would we have been able to stop you if we’d talked about it?
“I think I know who the photographer is,” I told him.
I showed him the photos.
“Who is she?” he said.
“I don’t know.”
He looked at me hard. “I thought you just said you knew.”
“Well, I know what she looks like. She’s right there. Do you recognize her?”
“She looks familiar.” He studied the photo some more. “But I couldn’t tell you where from. Maybe she goes here. But maybe she just reminds me of someone.”
I thought of Venn diagrams, those two overlapping circles. And how the translation of “You remind me of someone” is that piece in between, that common space that’s the only piece we’re seeing.
“I didn’t sleep last night,” I told him. “I was up all night looking at her profile. Looking for Sparrow and this girl.”
“I don’t know who she is,” Jack said, handing the photo back to me. “Sorry.”
I found myself saying, “I wish she had a sister.”
“What?”
I didn’t know why I’d thought Jack would understand. Too often I thought he’d have the same impulses as me, just because we’d both loved you.
“If Ariel had a sister,” I explained, “we could ask her. Show her the photos. Because we can’t do that with her parents. They hate us.”
“I don’t think they—”
“They do, Jack. They hate us.”
We went to your house the week after. To hear the news firsthand, instead of through gossip and rumors. They let us into the house, but it was clear that they didn’t want us to stay there. They told us what the doctors said. It was what we’d already feared.
Jack ground out his cigarette and put his hand on my shoulder.
“Ev, I don’t know what to tell you. We don’t even know if it’s the same girl who’s leaving the pictures for us. Don’t you think if these people were really important to Ariel, she would’ve told us about them?”
I was calmer now that he was using words like we and us.
I’d felt that way with you, too. Whenever you talked about we and us, I felt things made sense, that we were going through everything together, that if I could take it, then I could carry you through. It was only when you splintered off into your own lost I that things became complicated, overwhelming.
“I don’t know where I am, Evan.”
“I’m seeing red everywhere. It’s just … everywhere.”
“I am underwater right now. You don’t understand. I’m underwater.”
“I need a gun.”
“Evan? I need—”
“Evan?”
Jack was waving his hand in front of me.
“Evan.”
“What?”
“Don’t do that!” He was angry. “Jesus, not you, too, okay? Not you, too.”
We just stood there for a moment, neither of us knowing what to say next. Just like old times. And then a girl asked, “Is this a bad time?”
“Hey, Miranda,” Jack said, his tone lightening.
I didn’t know whether to say hi or not. Miranda Lee wasn’t someone I usually said hi to. She’d never been mean to me or nice to me or anything. She’d never been anything to me. She was one year younger than us and played sports, which was probably how Jack knew her.
“Hi,” she said to both of us. “What’s going on?”
I still had the photos out. I quickly put them back in my bag.
“Evan was just showing me some of his pictures,” Jack explained smoothly keeping you a secret. “He’s working on a project. It’s pretty cool.”
“Cool,” Miranda echoed.
“Yeah, thanks,” I said. “Anyway, thanks for taking a look, Jack. I guess I’ll be going. I mean, I was already going, so it’s not you that’s making me go, Miranda. I don’t want you to think that.”
“Oh, good,” Miranda said. She didn’t sound sarcastic. If I’d said something like that to you, you would have been merciless. You had no use for sputtering.
I spent the next fifteen minutes before school walking the halls, looking for the photographer. I saw girls with similar hair or similar clothes or similar features, but never at the same time. Either she wasn’t here, or she was hiding, or I wasn’t looking right.
I had no way to know.