Everyone We've Been (10 page)

“You didn't say she was
this
tall.”

It is Saturday morning, two days after our day of mundane things, and Zach's best friend, Raj, frowns at me like what he means is,
You forgot to mention she was a troll.

“Addie's not that tall,” Zach says, shooting me an apologetic look, then frowning in Raj's direction.

“She's taller than me!” Raj protests, ignoring the message in Zach's eyes.

“So?” Zach asks, exasperated.

Raj sighs, flopping onto the couch in Zach's (mercifully) air-conditioned basement. Raj has a round face, brown skin, and straight black hair down to his ears. He's dressed almost exactly like Zach.

When I first got here—I biked over and arrived before Raj did—Zach opened the door, out of breath from running up the stairs. We smiled shyly at each other and then Zach said, “My parents aren't home, but you've met my dad. Kevin will come down in a second, and in the meantime, I can introduce you to everyone else.”

We rounded a corner into the hallway, and Zach stooped down to pet a gray Persian cat slinking along the wall. “This is Macy,” he said. She stared at us, tail raised, with judgmental green eyes.

“Hi, Macy,” I said.

“This is Diego Maradona,” he said, pointing up at a framed poster of a soccer player on the wall, next to a picture of two elderly couples I assumed were Zach's grandparents. The poster had a hard-to-read black signature on it and
LA MANO DE DIOS
typed underneath it. “The first person my dad would save in case of fire.”

I laughed. “Wow, I don't think I've ever met a famous person before. Your dad likes soccer?”

“His parents were first-generation Irish immigrants, so that would be a yes.”

“My dad is a soccer fan, too. He claims North Americans are the only people on earth who take it for granted.”

“Hey, now. Mexico appreciates the beautiful game,” Zach said. “And don't let my dad hear you call it soccer.”

Dad has tons of stories of growing up playing soccer indoors, on the streets, in random fields with his brother, Uncle Mark, who died before I was born. Their parents let them because that was what they had grown up doing in Vincy. He doesn't tell me these stories anymore; now we talk about furniture.

We walked a little farther into an open-plan dining area, and I followed Zach to a rectangular fish tank with a bluey-green tinge and a bevy of plants and rocks on the bottom. He squinted a bit and then pointed to the glass. “There's Goldie Hawn, Kevin's fish. My mom named him.”

An orange tail flicked out from behind a leafy green plant. I imagined it was waving hello.

“Him?” I asked.

“Hey, Goldie's a gender-neutral name for goldfish.”

We both laughed.

“So, do you live with anyone who actually talks back to you?”

“I swear I do,” Zach said. “Kevin's around somewhere. You're just early.”

We went down the stairs off Zach's kitchen into a living-room area in the basement littered with camera equipment and made small talk while we waited.

Now, with everyone present, Zach hands me and Raj about ten stapled sheets of paper each. “Here's the final script. Sorry, we were out of blank paper, so I printed it on lined.” Raj sighs heavily as he receives his. I read the copy Zach emailed yesterday, and on first glance, the opening scene looks exactly the same.

“Kev!” Zach calls, and I'm shocked when a skinnier version of Zach—precisely the same color hair, but shorter and not as bouncy—appears.

“This is my brother Kevin,” Zach says.

Kevin grins at me, a smile from the same family of smiles as Zach's but—how to put this?—greasier.
“Heeeey,”
he slurs. His greeting is met with a whack to the back of his head so swift that if I'd blinked, I'd have missed it.

“He's
fourteen,
” Zach says pointedly, and I smile, kind of enjoying Zach's protectiveness of me, despite being weirded out by his brother's creepiness.

“Fifteen almost,” Kevin says, which instantly makes him seem even younger. In trying to bargain for more freedoms, I used to say stuff like that to my mom all the time, and it's only recently I figured out how dumb it is to remind your parents that you can't count (nine months is not “almost”) and that you're Not Even [Insert Age] yet.

“Nice to meet you,” I tell Kevin, then turn back to Zach. “How many siblings do you have?”

“Three brothers. Two older—both of them live a few hours away. You have just one older brother, right?” Zach asks.

I nod. “It must be nice having a big family. I would love that.”

“Believe me, sometimes I would rather just have one brother.”

Zach goes to sit on the couch, bits and pieces of camera equipment around him.

I sit on the other end of the couch from Zach, who says, “So I think we need a schedule for shooting and editing this time.”

“
I think
we need to get paid. I won't work for free like last summer,” Kevin says, flipping through the pages of the script. “Now that I have a real job.”

“We can't afford to pay you,” Zach tells him.

“Then you can't afford me.” But Kevin stays put, continuing to leaf through the script, and minutes later they're talking sets and makeup, which it looks like Kevin is in charge of.

“Why can't we use the trampoline like last time?” Kevin is arguing.

“Because,” Zach says patiently, “it was Lindsay's.”

There's a momentary silence before Raj says, “She won't let you borrow it?”

“No,” Zach answers in a quiet voice. “She doesn't want anything to do with”—he hesitates—“us.”

I could have sworn he was going to say something different.

“What a bitch,” Kevin says.

“Shut up, Kevin,” Zach says, his voice even.

“I'm just saying. If I broke up with you,
I
would let you borrow the trampoline. She knows we need it. How many films did
we
let
her
be in? Beeyotch.”

“Kevin,” Zach says again.

“Um,” I say quietly, “who is Lindsay?”

Heavy silence follows before Raj says, “Zach's ex.”

One more beat of silence.

In it, I cling to the word “ex.” Zach's
ex.
On the one hand, it means he doesn't have a girlfriend
now,
that our maybe-date the other day still counts as just that. On the other hand…

“Not my character,
Lindy
?” I ask.

“Of course not,” Zach says, glancing at me as if I've sprouted a second head.

“Your character's a
nun,
” Raj adds, implying that Lindsay was not, in fact, a nun. “Zach's quit Lindsay like a bad habit.”

It's the first hint of lightness Raj has shown since we met, and he chuckles at his own joke. Kevin roars with laughter, slapping his thigh. “Good one!”

Zach does not laugh.

“You know, Mom and I saw her at the mall the other day and we waved and she just kept walking,” Kevin says, shaking his head.

“Maybe she didn't see you,” Zach says, eliciting a snort from Raj.

“Oh, she saw us,” Kevin insists. “Beeyotch.”

“That seems a little harsh,” I say, surprising myself by sticking up for someone I don't even know. Someone who
used to be Zach's girlfriend.
But still. I wouldn't want people calling me names.

Raj looks at me, no emotion on his face. “Lindsay's not a bitch because she doesn't want to date Zach,” he says. “
No one
wants to date Zach. She's a bitch because she's mean.”

Zach coughs and steers the conversation back to the script he's just handed out, but I keep wondering about Lindsay. What she is like, how long they dated (they all seem to know her quite well), whether she was prettier than me or smarter or what.

The three boys continue to talk, referring to past films and ideas for props and scenes.

Zach suggests we do a read-through, and I'm really beginning to question whether any of this is a good idea. Raj (Solomon) and I (Lindy) are the leads. Kevin is the Carpenter, and Zach reads the random parts like Stranger 1, Guy with Ax in Head, and Exorcist.

I feel myself getting nervous as we start reading. Which is so stupid. I'm used to performing in front of rows of people, people trained to hear every note and key change, every mistake. Yet I feel more embarrassed than I can remember feeling for any performance when Zach says, “Okay, Lindy bursts in here.”

“Um”—I swallow—“did I hear that you were looking for Little, um, Georgia? Georgie. All the children were picked up last Friday.”

My ears are burning so hard they couldn't pick up an ounce of sound if they tried.

Surprisingly, when I glance at Zach, he winks at me. I am not a fool; I know that was possibly one of the worst line readings ever, and I think,
Oh God. No way he'd settle for me if Katy was around.

It occurs to me that my best friend would kick ass at this.

In the same breath, though, I realize I am glad that Katy isn't around kicking ass. I'm glad Zach chose me to be in his movie, winked at
me.
And with that, I continue my wooden line readings.

To be fair, if I am wood, Raj is metal: “Oh no. My spleen.”

I giggle quietly to myself and then a little louder when I see Zach's shoulders shaking.

When we are done reading, I am feeling a little more confident, Kevin is hitting on me again, and the bar, overall, has been set much lower than I initially understood it to be.

Raj, however, is stuck in precisely the same place.

“So how tall are you exactly?” he asks.

“Five seven,” I say.

He sighs.

Lindsay, I realize, must have been shorter.

My parents are the very last resort. If either of them finds out what I've been seeing, I'll be in a psychiatric facility so fast I won't know what hit me. I consider driving myself to the hospital, but after the night I spent there after the accident, I'll try anything I can to avoid going back. To avoid the worried look on my mother's face, the plastic food, the stench of disinfectant hiding the smell of worse things.

So after I leave the park, I race home and log on to my computer. I don't know what to search for. Hallucinations? Psychosis? I go with the former, but I'm immediately knee-deep in articles about delusional disorders, and a tremor runs down my back.

I reach into my pocket for the piece of paper, the note to myself.

If I'm asking, then I can't be.

I quickly close out of those pages and frown, struggling to think. I learned in school about a neuroscience facility close to Lyndale, and I've seen a few ads for it. I can't think of the name, though, so I type “neuroscience facility Lyndale” into the search engine. Nothing.

How is that possible?

I know it exists.

After a few minutes of racking my brain, the name comes back.

Overton.

I put it into the engine, but there's nothing.

Did you mean:
Over town
or
Over a ton
.

I'm pretty sure it's Overton.

I pull out my phone and try again, but I get the same ridiculous results. Do I have the name wrong?

Neither my phone nor my computer is yielding anything useful. It's not the first time I haven't been able to find something on my computer, thanks to the insane parental controls my mom has had on there since I was in middle school and Channel Se7en ran some story on child predators and Internet safety. I've never figured out how to get around them.

When I crack open my bedroom door, I can hear my brother downstairs eating dinner, so I tiptoe down the hall.

I don't just avoid Caleb's room because we're not particularly close; I avoid Caleb's room because I value my life. Simply making it the approximately five feet from his door to his computer, I nearly lose my leg. There are clothes everywhere, three bowls with varying levels of moldy cereal, and books and papers covering every inch of his desk. His wall is plastered with pictures of different types of aircraft and a poster of Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, the pilot who successfully landed a plane in the Hudson River during an emergency.

After flinging Caleb's jeans off the armrest and onto the floor, I sit in his swivel chair and pull up a browser. I type in “Overton,” and the website instantly comes up. I know he doesn't have controls on his computer, but I can't explain why mine couldn't even find any results. On the page in front of me, words like “nanotechnology” and “cognitive neuroscience” jump out at me, but with Caleb shuffling around downstairs, I only have time to skim-read.
Having Problems with Your Memory?
a banner at the top of the page asks.

“Yes,” I whisper under my breath. From what I can gather, Overton helps people deal with memory problems and emotional issues. The page even mentions sleep somewhere; this is perfect. I grab a pen from his desk and scrawl the number on my palm. I can hear Caleb washing up downstairs, meaning he's done eating, so I close the window and quickly go to his browser history—I don't want him to know what I've been searching for. As I delete the pages I went on, curiosity forces me to look at Caleb's last web hits.

I feel a small kick of delight when I see that, somewhere in between a dozen video-game sites, Caleb searched for “aviation academies” this morning. Is it possible that he
is
itching to get out of Lyndale, after all? Maybe he's finally going to follow his heart.

I'm so busy marveling at this that I don't notice Caleb coming up the stairs until it's too late.

“Addison, what are you doing in my room?”

I jump out of his chair. “I was just, er, looking up New York stuff. School stuff. Some of the pages weren't opening because of the parental controls on mine.”

His face is impassive. “You should have asked.”

“Fine. Sorry,” I say, starting to move toward the door, but then I stop. I know I shouldn't mention what I saw, but I can't help myself. “So, um, I saw you were looking at some aviation academies. Are you thinking of applying?”

“No, I'm not thinking of applying. Who the hell told you that you could use my computer?” Now he's starting to get angry.

“But why not?” I ask stubbornly. “It's obviously what you want to do.”

“Leaving Lyndale won't fix anything, Addie.”

I can no longer tell which one of us he's talking about. Caleb hates that I want to go to New York. Maybe even more than Mom does. It's like because he can't bring himself to leave, he can't conceive of the idea of anyone else wanting to.

And as happy as they are to clip our wings, it's not as if either of my parents needs us here. Dad only spends a portion of his time in his sad, clammy apartment; the rest of the time he spends doing what he loves. For two years, Mom has been happily dating Channel Se7en's five o'clock news anchor, best known as Bruce “Silver Fox” Landry. Or, to Caleb, as Bruce “Asshole” Landry. I don't think I've ever heard Caleb call him Bruce at any point except when they are face to face. At which point, my brother is the picture of respect.

“So it's better to stay here, forcing yourself to live a life you don't even want?” I ask.

Caleb is quiet and then, in the coldest voice he is capable of, says, “Get out of my room, Addison.”

“Fine,” I spit. I've barely gotten into the hallway when the door slams shut behind me. I know what I said hit a nerve, and I want to feel guilty—I do—but I just feel irritated.

Caleb and I agree on some things. We both love plantains, fried like my father ate them growing up. We agree on Mom's boyfriend—that he's nice enough and we're glad he makes her happy, but we sure as hell hope she doesn't marry him, because it would break Dad's heart. And also Bruce wears leather oxfords without socks and has his teeth artificially whitened every other weekend. My brother and I feel exactly the same way about this. Sometimes we randomly say Bruce's hammy sign-off to each other: “Hate to leave you hanging, friends, but you'll have to join us in twenty-three hours for tomorrow's news.”

We'd been close growing up, but when he was thirteen, right when he became a teenager, Caleb started pushing us all away. Maybe he was angry at the divorce, or maybe it was puberty. Or both—that shivering helplessness at everything changing at once. But the more I tried to include him in my life, the more he retreated from me. Ever since I told him I wanted to go to college in New York, he's seemed downright pissed at me. For leaving, I guess. Which makes no sense, given how little we interact now, living under the same roof.

When I was in elementary school, whenever my brother's friends from the neighborhood came over to ask if he would play tennis with them in the driveway, Caleb would yell, “I call Addie!” Even if they hadn't invited me to play.

Victor would make a face and say, “Caleb's just showing off. He wants to prove he can beat us, even with a girl on his team.”

Both Victor and Job were Caleb's age, and remarkably, Victor had managed to make it to the seventh grade, despite having a pea for a brain. Caleb would roll his eyes at him and tell him to shut up. Which he finally did, when we beat him soundly, even with a boy on my team.

We played pickup basketball in front of Victor's house, and then, too, Caleb would say, “I call Addie.” I wondered whether it was because of Dad, flying in another part of the world, and the way he always looked at Caleb before he went and said, “Take care of things on the ground, okay?” I thought that was the reason Caleb looked out for me, keeping his promise to Dad by being nice to me. Or maybe he was saving me the pain of being paired off with either Victor or Job.

Except that when they didn't come out to play and it was just the two of us in the driveway with our rackets, Caleb would ask, “Us against the wall?” And then we'd hit the ball at the garage door and take turns swinging it back.

As we played, Caleb would recite random facts to me.

Did you know that the pilot and copilot almost always eat separate meals, in case one of them gets food poisoning? Dad told me that.

Did you know that there are more than sixty thousand people in the air in the United States at any given time? That's more people than live in Lyndale.

Did you know the longest flight in the world is from Fort Worth to Sydney, Australia? It's almost exactly seventeen hours long.

“Did you know that the Concorde traveled at more than twice the speed of sound? And you could actually hear this massive boom when it broke the sound barrier. Although the first aircraft to break the sound barrier was a Douglas DC-8 in 1961.”

After we moved five years ago, there were no more tennis games in the driveway. There were only memories of a time when we used to know each other.

It catches me off guard sometimes how much I miss the relationship we used to have. It happens when Caleb and I are mocking Bruce's sign-off together. Sometimes, when Mom ropes us into watching the holiday movies we've seen every year since we were in diapers, we'll accidentally recite the same lines at exactly the same time, and I feel it then, too. It feels like finding something important you'd misplaced but hadn't really noticed was gone. In those moments, we're shaking dust off something lost and it's like,
Oh, there you are.

There we are.

Only to lose it again.