“I wasn’t kidding back there,” he says, his army-green coat hanging from his hand. I get a glimpse of the label. Burberry.
We’re standing a few feet from the caramel-apple booth where Mr. Jacobsen whistles as he dips Granny Smiths into a slow cooker. He looks up and catches my eye, waves me over as if the allure of caramel apples is too strong to resist. I like Mr. Jacobsen—he’s the undisputed favorite among the teachers at school—so I smile at him as I shake my head.
“Okay,” I say to Klein.
I feel around in the pocket of my black peacoat until I find a loose thread, roll it into a teeny ball between my thumb and forefinger. The more he talks about us being together, the more I think about Chris. About which version of him to believe. He was a liar. Of course he was a liar, but how far would he go? How far did he go? And did I ever mean anything to him?
“Okay?” Klein looks more than a little hurt but only for a second. He shakes it off as fast as I can blink.
“Klein, you have Trisha. And I’m busy with ballet and . . . we already tried once. Maybe it wasn’t meant to be.”
And I like your best friend, anyway.
He shakes his head but he’s smirking and patting the pocket where he stored his flask.
“Never say never, Legs,” he says as he starts walking away, backward so he can watch me as he retreats. “Never. Say. Never.”
CHAPTER TEN
THE MINUTE I STOP EXPECTING TO SEE DONOVAN IS EXACTLY when I get my first glimpse of him.
Mom and Dad are watching the news, listening to reports about the economy and gas prices and cheating politicians. I’m pretending to give a shit about the English essay that’s due tomorrow, but the news anchor’s voice breaks into my thoughts about Miss Havisham, and when I look up, Donovan’s face is on the television.
He’s there so quickly, I almost miss it: a still shot from a grainy video, blown up so large that if I stare at it too long without looking away, Donovan appears to be made of brown and black squares and rectangles.
The news anchor says they’ve made contact with a woman who used to live in the same apartment complex as Chris and Donovan. Some crap town in Nevada.
The woman’s name is Candy DeGregorio. She’s wearing a postal worker’s uniform and the lines around her mouth are deep, like she’s been pulling on cigarettes for the better part of her forty-five years.
“He was a real sweet kid,” she says, licking her thin, dry lips. “Around the same age as my boys, so they ran around together all the time, walked to school, stuff like that.”
The apartment building behind her is in bad need of a paint job and all the windows have lopsided or missing shutters. The earth around the building looks dry and dead, but not in the way that means winter is on the horizon. The camera zooms in on the part of the complex where Donovan lived with Chris. The curtains are drawn and police tape is stretched over the scarred front door.
Then, without warning, the camera switches to the video Candy provided. It’s shaky and a little fuzzy, filmed on a cheap camera. Maybe a cell phone. But there’s Donovan, at a skating party. I watch him race from one end of the rink to the other, neck and neck with a blond kid who must be one of Candy’s sons. They do it again, flying back to the other side, where they skid to a stop at the end and high-five each other.
There’s another clip after that, but it’s just a few seconds long. This one is of Donovan at the snack bar, cramming cake into his mouth with the same blond kid and generally looking like he’s having the fucking time of his life.
I am certain none of us breathe while the videos play. They were taken two years ago, but he was already tall. Long legs with arms to match. Hair separated into small twists, the start of dreadlocks. Who did his hair? Did Donovan say he wanted dreads? Did Chris pay someone to do it?
“We thought his name was Jamie,” says Candy DeGregorio’s voice in the background. “Look, we live in a small town but we don’t get a lot of bad folks around here and I thought that man was doing a good thing, being a good person and taking in someone who needed help.”
I hate Candy DeGregorio.
I dig my fingernails into my palm as hard as I can because they just keep playing the first video and the more I watch it, the more I wonder if I have any reason to think he didn’t leave on his own. Skating parties? As those few seconds play over and over, I start to reimagine the life he lived. As Jamie Fenner.
Jamie, trekking to school with Candy’s sons, when he could have snuck off to call home and tell us where he was. Jamie, in school, sitting in a classroom with a kind-faced teacher who would have listened to him say his name was really Donovan Pratt. And Jamie with Chris. At home. Eating dinner together and watching TV together and—what? Sleeping in the same bed? Doing the same things Chris and I used to do? Together.
The news plays the video from the skating rink over and over, those few seconds that show us the life he led, that his existence wasn’t only behind closed doors.
Mom’s hand is on my arm. I feel her looking at Dad over the top of my head. I wonder what their eyes are saying, what private conversation they’ve started that will be finished when they’re safe behind their bedroom door.
I shake off my mother’s hand and stand. My copy of Great Expectations falls to the floor and I don’t bother to pick it up. I step over it—on it, cracking the spine for the billionth time—because I have to get out of here right fucking now. I can’t look at Donovan, can’t think about how many more videos and pictures like this exist in shitty towns between here and Nevada.
“Theodora?”
I’m already walking. Out of the den and down the hall, toward the front room. I need my coat. I need my car. I need to get the fuck out of here before I explode.
“I need to go out for a while.” I don’t turn around as I say this. My parents are close behind, their footsteps moving as fast as they can without actually stepping on my heels.
“Theo, sweetheart.” Mom this time, as we round the corner into the living room. “Why don’t you hold on and we can talk about this. I know it was a shock seeing him in that . . . environment, and—”
I shake my head. Tunnel vision. Coat closet. Door. Car. “I don’t want to talk. I want to be alone right now.”
“Theodora.” Dad’s voice is still gentle, but stern enough for me to turn and look at him. “This is confusing and that was hard to watch, but things aren’t always what they seem. Especially in a situation like this where—”
“Then what was it?” I yank open the door to the closet in the foyer. Snatch my coat down from its wooden hanger. “He wasn’t faking. He was—I know what he looks like when he’s happy. He was happy in those videos, so how is it not what it seems?”
“Honey.” Mom moves toward me, her eyes wide and her hands clasped helplessly in front of her soft, camel-colored sweater. “This is one piece to the story, and it’s only the beginning. They—they have to look at all sides, talk to people who knew him while he was away.”
My hand is on the doorknob. I can’t listen to them spout off these things that are supposed to make me feel better but actually make me feel like shit because they’re trying so hard and no matter what they say or do in this moment, it won’t change what I saw. “Please let me go. Please. Please.”