Undone (10 page)

“I didn’t see anyone, man,” Derek added. “Just try to relax.”

I nodded, but relaxing wasn’t something I’d been able to do for a long time.

As I was about to get back under the car to finish the oil change, I spotted a tan sedan parked across the street. I couldn’t remember if I had seen it before or not. It was nondescript, the kind of car that from its profile could be any number of makes and models. In a color that just seemed to fade into the background.

I stared at it. Something about it stood out. It wasn’t necessarily new, but it was too clean, too shiny, like it wasn’t used often, and its windows were tinted. It didn’t belong.

We worked from seven to five, so when it hit five on the dot, Derek was already in the car. His hands drummed on the steering wheel as he waited for me.

“I’m not up for dinner at Mom’s again,” he said when I got in.

I nodded and settled back into the car.

It only took me a few turns to realize we weren’t going home.

“I have a surprise for you,” he said when I sat up a little straighter.

“Have I ever loved surprises?”

He laughed. “Remember when Mom used to always bring us home surprises? I loved that.”

I smiled. I had too. She would come home from work and pick up surprise meals or surprise desserts or surprise presents that she gave us “just because.” I wondered if that had stopped when I left.

We pulled into the parking lot of a bar called Rusty Hinges. It was decorated like a beach bar with tiki torches and fake-grass umbrellas shading the tables, even though we weren’t really anywhere near the beach.

The drinking age here was only eighteen. “I’m still a year shy,” I said as we got out, wondering if my brother had forgotten.

He shrugged. “I know a guy.”

I followed, though I really didn’t want to go in. There were people laughing, sharing things with each other, having fun. I didn’t feel like I belonged there with them. If I was going to sit in a bar, it should be with people who knew me and understood me. With Eli and Reid and Janelle.

“Look, I know you’re upset about Reid,” Derek said. “And I respect that you don’t want to talk about it. You’ve got a lot on your plate with Dad and everything that you weren’t expecting here, but you can have fun, too. I’ve been sort of seeing this girl, Alice. We’re meeting her and a friend. It’ll be great. Like a quad date.”

“Quad date?” I said.

“Yeah, four people,” Derek said. “You know, on a date?”

I swallowed hard. There wasn’t much he could have said to make me want to go in less. That was my fault, though. Because I hadn’t told him much. It felt selfish to go into all of the things that had happened to me in another world, when right here his life, my family’s lives, had fallen apart. I hadn’t said anything to him about Janelle. Not really.

Even though I told my mom about her, it hadn’t felt right to bring her up to Derek. Not after I realized what had happened here, how much of their lives I’d ruined. It didn’t feel right to tell him that Janelle had made me happy, had made me feel alive in that other world, or that I missed her every second I was here. I wanted my brother to be happy. I couldn’t bear for him to think that I wasn’t glad to be back.

I knew which table we were going to as soon as we walked in. There were two girls sitting under an umbrella. One of them fit my brother’s taste perfectly: fair skin, blond, bright blue eyes. She looked delicate and very pretty.

She waved when she saw us.

The other girl looked over. She had long dark hair, but Derek still would have liked her. She was delicate and pretty too. “I’m Stacee,” she said, holding out her hand when I reached the table.

“Ben,” I said.

She smiled and turned to Alice. “I told you he wouldn’t remember me.”

I looked at Derek and he shrugged.

“We went to elementary school together,” Stacee said. “I was a year ahead of you, but I lived down the street from Ian.”

“Ian Shyrock? How is he?”

“He’s good,” she said. “He finished high school this past year. He took some exams to get ahead, and now he’s joined the military. He’s down at basic.”

“That’s great,” I said, even though I couldn’t picture the Ian I had known in the military.

“Oh my God, you would not believe what happened to Stacee today. Tell them,” Alice said.

Stacee turned pink and offered me a small apologetic smile. Something about it made me think of Janelle. Maybe all girls, not just Janelle, did that thing where they blushed and tucked a strand of hair behind their ear, but the way Stacee did it made it hard for me to listen to her story about how two guys in the city guard yelled at her after one of them opened a door for her and she didn’t say thank you.

All I could focus on was the fact that she wasn’t Janelle.

I wanted to be invested. Stacee was nice. She smelled good, she was funny and smart, she had a great smile, and she was pretty. She laughed at the right times when Derek interjected to say something funny and rolled her eyes when his jokes missed the mark.

Her hair was darker, her eyes smaller and less round than Janelle’s. At the same time she was taller, maybe even a little thinner, too. She didn’t have the same athletic look to her that Janelle did. I couldn’t imagine this girl swimming in the ocean or carrying a gun.

I couldn’t imagine her rescuing me, like Janelle had, in more ways than one.

After Eli had been shot and I went to her house, it was pouring rain, late at night. I went through the backyard to see if the back door was unlocked. I needed to talk to someone, which meant I needed her. The kitchen light was on, and she was sitting at the table, crime-scene photos and her father’s paperwork spread out in front of her. She was trying to solve everything. I needed that. I needed her to solve me.

When she saw me, she pulled me in, and I kissed her. I let everything go and I kissed her.

In that moment, I felt at home.

I loved my family, and I didn’t want to leave them again, but no matter how much I tried to pretend this was normal, it wasn’t. This life felt more fake than the one I’d left.

When I couldn’t take it anymore, I stood up. “I’m not feeling that great. I’m going to head home,” I said.

I offered Stacee my hand. “Thanks for the drink,” I said.

She laughed and gave me a hug. My arms didn’t fit around her right. “Anytime,” she said.

“How are you going to get home?” Derek asked as I started to head out.

“I’ll walk,” I said over my shoulder. I used to walk home all the time. I never would have thought I’d miss that. Derek called after me. I turned and held up my hands the way we used to do when we were kids and there was something we didn’t understand. It was usually when our parents were doing something stupid, but it applied here. I didn’t understand what I was doing here, and I needed to leave.

When I turned around again, I bumped into a guy in a Windbreaker. “Sorry,” I said as I moved around him. He said nothing.

“Hey, Ben, wait up!” Derek called after me.

I turned and waited for him.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” I said, shaking my head. “I’m just tired.”

It was a lie and he knew it. “Didn’t you like her?”

“I did.” She just wasn’t Janelle.

“What is it, then?” Derek asked.

I didn’t answer, and he punched me in the arm.

“What was that for?” I asked.

“You never used to be so quiet,” he said with a laugh. Then he sobered. “Just talk to me, man.”

“There’s a girl,” I said, getting into the car.

Derek got in and started the engine. “Back there?”

I nodded. “She’s just in a different league.”

“Hot?”

I smiled. “Yeah. And smart and fearless. Just . . . everything.”

“I get it,” Derek said. “You need some more time. Don’t worry, though. We’ll find you a girl here.”

I couldn’t bear to tell him that he didn’t get it. Not even a little.

I didn’t want another girl. I just wanted Janelle.

At home, I flung myself on the couch and turned on the TV. Programming was more regulated here, which meant less reality TV, which I didn’t mind, but also just less entertaining TV in general. I watched the news a lot because it made me feel like I knew something about this place. Even if that was just an illusion, it made me feel better.

Without looking, I reached for my notebook on the coffee table. I wanted to remember to tell Janelle what I’d realized at the bar. Maybe I had known it all along, just subconsciously. That could have been why I stood there when the portal had first been opened and thought that I wasn’t sure I wanted to go through it.

The notebook wasn’t there.

I sat up and moved the magazines around on Derek’s coffee table. Not there.

I looked under the couch. Not there.

I checked the kitchen in case I’d accidentally carried it over there. Not there.

I checked inside the couch cushions. Not there either.

Finally I found it on the floor under the TV stand. I must have set it on the floor instead of on the edge of the table like usual.

“Try not to kick my stuff around!” I called to Derek as I sat back down.

“What do you mean? I haven’t kicked any of your stuff.” He swatted at my head as he passed the couch.

“Not on purpose.”

“Not by accident, either,” he said. “I watch where I’m going.”

I waved the notebook over the couch. “I wrote in this when I woke up and set it down. Now it’s under the TV stand. How did that happen?”

“You must have kicked it. I haven’t been over there all day.”

I sat up and turned around. He was making a sandwich, since we didn’t eat at the bar. What he said made sense. Why would he have been over here? He got up and we went to Mom’s before work.

Yet it had to be him, because this was important to me. I wouldn’t have kicked it and not noticed.

I only ever put it on the floor at night before I went to sleep.

“Someone else must have been here,” I said.

Derek laughed. “Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you the maid comes once a week.”

I looked at him. He was kidding. “No, I’m serious.” I scanned the room, trying to see if anything else was out of place.

“So am I,” Derek said. “No one has been in here, kicking your diary around. Relax.”

I nodded, but I didn’t believe him.

I
didn’t say anything to Derek after that, but I paid more attention to my surroundings. I kept my eye on the cars parked close to the apartment, the garage, and anywhere else we went. I looked at the faces of the people we passed and recognized the ones I saw too often. I memorized where I set things down when I left and noted where they were when I came back. Suddenly it was obvious.

I was being followed.

The next three days were the same. The tan sedan showed up and parked across from the garage only three minutes after Derek and I got there, and it sat there all day. Then it had followed me, three cars back, when I left the garage.

The real question was who was inside.

“Knock it off, would you?” Eli said.

I pulled my eyes away from the window. We were in a diner. I’d chosen the seat in the back corner where I could sit with my eyes on the door and keep watch for the people following me outside at the same time.

“It’s just some generic town car that belongs to someone who works near the garage,” he said. “They’re not here.”

I didn’t say anything. I already knew his opinion on the subject.

“Trust me. No one is following
me
, and I’m public enemy number one,” he added.

The papers hadn’t left him alone since we’d been back. Everyone had known about his “abduction.” His father and his position had made sure of that. Reid and I were more like an afterthought. Some people knew, sure, but no one really cared about us. Now that Eli was back, they wanted the details. Who was responsible, what happened, where had he been, how was he back? He told his mother and the military the truth, or at least most of it, and they’d crafted a public statement that was mostly garbage and released it to the public. Everyone wanted more, though. They wanted to hear directly from Eli, and whether it was conscious or not, they wanted to direct some of their hostility at him for what happened when he disappeared.

No one needed to follow him, though. Photographers were camped outside his house. They took pictures of everything he did. He’d barely left the house in three weeks. Just getting out tonight had apparently been a covert operation.

“Here, you can have this,” Eli said, pushing a phone across the table.

It was a prototype of the new Samsung phone that everyone wanted. It was supposed to come out in three weeks, and people were already setting up tents in front of the stores. I didn’t have a phone, so Eli had taken it upon himself to rectify that. Since his stepfather was some big shot at Samsung, this is what I got.

I put it in the pocket of my hoodie, and I waited. We’d seen each other every day for the past seven years, and now that we were home, we hadn’t seen each other for almost three weeks. When he showed up at the garage, he was jittery, unable to stand still. I knew he needed to talk.