Who I'm Not (15 page)

“Sure, sure. Okay. I'm all for that, dude.”

I put one hand on the chair and leaned forward. “Sweet.” I was almost purring. “So where did you put him?”

“Wha—?”

“Where'd you put him? Where's the body?”

He scrabbled back from me like some kind of giant insect. His head started snapping around like it would fly right off his neck. He hissed, “What are you—don't even
say
that, man!”

“No, listen. Don't you see? You tell me what you did with his body, it makes me an accessory. I can never tell or I go down too. You've got my secret, I've got yours. We're bound together, like blood brothers or whatever.”

His eyes glittered crazily. “I don't…I don't know what—”

“Sure you do,” I coaxed. “I got to tell you, weird as it sounds, I was glad when I figured out what you'd done for me with the chain. I mean, all at once I knew I wasn't alone in it anymore. I knew that you had my back. It was a good feeling. I want to give that to you, man. Brothers in blood, back to back.”

“Get
outta
here.”

“Come on, Ty. You're feeling sick with it. Share the load; you'll feel better.”

“You think
I'm
sick,” Ty shouted. “
You're
sick. You're a maniac. You're…you're…”

“I'm what? Pretending to be a dead kid to his family?”

“HE'S NOT DEAD!”

“No, I'm not. I'm not dead, am I? Danny's not dead, is he?” I waved my hand around the room. “
This
is dead. Tell me, and you won't be.”

“Yes, we will.” Ty kept twisting back, as if he was hearing a sound behind his shoulder. “We
are
dead. We're dead, dude. Dead, dead, dead. That's why we're here. And we both know it. I thought about it a whole, whole lot, all the time. Only diff is, you're here forever and I'm not.”

Before I could move, his hand jumped into the pocket. As I grabbed the chair, he jerked something out and stuck it in his mouth. I saw what it was as he pulled the trigger. I never heard the shot. I'm pretty sure I screamed at the same time, but I never heard that either. His head snapped back and something blotched the wall behind him and I was gone.

THIRTY-THREE

I ran blind, I don't know how far, before I realized the Camry was rolling beside me. Griffin pulled ahead and up to the curb. The passenger door opened. “Get in.” I was past thinking. I got in.

He drove fast but carefully, not saying anything. I was hunched up, knees to elbows, hyperventilating, trying not to see red blossoming behind Ty's head, puddling behind Harley's. I heard Griffin say, “Where'd he shoot?”

“His mou—” I gagged, and he pulled over. We were on the two-lane highway. I staggered through a muddy ditch, the puke already spilling from my mouth, and heaved and heaved in the long grass by a fence. I scrabbled under my clothes and ripped off the tape and wire and threw them as far as I could. When I turned around, panting and acid-mouthed, I was almost surprised to see the car was still there. I got back in and we pulled away. “I didn't know he had a gun,” Griffin said. He didn't look at me.

We took some kind of backroad into Port Hope. As we started down it, Griffin said, “What's done is done. Maybe it's better this way. In that place, they may not find him for days. There's no connect. You'll be long gone.”

I looked at him. He was clutching the wheel with both hands, looking straight ahead. He said, “The guy in Tucson didn't die.” He looked a thousand years old, and I hated him for every second of them. I said, “You got nothing on me now anyway. You try telling anyone, and I'll tell them about this. I'll tell them how you assaulted me sticking on that wire.” I spat on the dash. I spat on the seat. I clawed the roof liner and armrests, then started swiping at everything around me. “And they'll find my fucking DNA all over your car no matter how much you clean it—and all over you.” Then I lost it and started swiping at him, hitting him. He had his arm up to keep me off and the car was swerving and then he backhanded me across the face. It hurt like hell. I yelled and stopped hitting. I couldn't breathe right. I touched my face. Blood was running from my nose. More blood. It was all over my hand. My face was throbbing, but everything inside me had gone flat and cold. I moved my hand around, flicking it to spatter my blood all around the interior. Then I slowly rubbed a big smear into that gray upholstery. “That'll cost you your max from the bank machine,” I said. “Unless you're just going to kill me.” I was so far gone right then, I don't think I would have cared if he had.

He got me the money. I stood by his car while he did. Nobody was around. In Port Hope, they rolled up the sidewalks at six o'clock. “Go,” he said. I knew I would, but I wasn't telling him that. I shouldered my backpack. “Maybe I'll see you around,” I said. I took a step away, then turned back to him. “Sure hope you were right about Ty.”

I meant it as a last shot at him, to get under his skin forever, but as soon as I said it, I thought I was going to be sick again. Griffin didn't say anything. He got in the Camry and started it up.

THIRTY-FOUR

I walked. I knew I had to go, but then I'd always known that. I even had money in my pocket. Blood money, I guess. I should have been planning, but I was in a fog. The pain in my face was fading, but my nose and cheek felt puffy and tender. I didn't even know where I was going until I realized I was walking up the hill to Gillian's. When I saw where I was, I stopped and stood there for a long minute. I knew I had things to do before I left.

Knowing that was a strange feeling, like a dog tugging the wrong way on a leash. I'd never had it before. I was trying to decide how to get to Gillian without her mom knowing and asking questions when the front door of her house opened. Gillian came out into the porch light, frowning, with Buster on his leash, and started down the driveway. That was when I noticed the SOLD sticker on the real-estate sign.

She saw me as Buster dragged her forward to say hi. Her face got even cloudier when she got a better look at me. “What happened to you?”

“Aw, I was skateboarding with Matt and I messed up.” All at once I felt nervous. “Your house sold.”

She didn't answer. She was pulling tissues out of her pocket. She handed them to me. I wiped around my nose. It hurt. “Why are you out so late?” I asked, trying to put things off.

“What do you mean? It's only eight thirty.”

“Oh! Right. Wow, maybe I hit a little harder than I thought. Anyway, I was coming to see you.”

She took a tissue from me and dabbed at my face. It might have been the first time I ever wanted someone to keep touching me. She said, flat-voiced, “We're moving.”

“When?”

“Soon. A month.” She looked away.

For an instant I wondered if I could hang on a month. Ty's brain exploded behind my eyes again. I said, “Is that good or bad?”

She looked back at me. “I don't know.” She paused. “Right now it feels bad.”

“Where are you going?” It was so weird. It couldn't make any difference now, but knowing she was going felt like another part of me was getting torn away.

“Montreal,” she said. “It's cheaper, and that's where my mom's family is.”

I touched her hand, then my cheek. “Can you just wipe here, like? It feels good.” She raised her hand again. I guided it on my face. “Maybe it will be better than here.”

“Why should it be?”

I didn't know. I said, “Well…”

She said quietly, “You won't be there.” She lowered her hand, and then I was kind of reaching out mine and we were holding on to each other, not quite hugging. I could feel the dog straining at his leash. “We better walk,” I said.

We started down the hill, still holding hands. I knew the easy thing to do would be to just say “See you tomorrow” and be long gone by morning. Maybe it would even be the best thing, I told myself, because when the questions started flying, Gillian wouldn't know anything. I'd be protecting her. But I wanted to give her something so that later she'd know she was special, that I hadn't just blown her off like one more Bad Time family I'd worked over. I remembered the birthday card. “Listen,” I said, “I've got something for you.” I let go of her hand and found the card in its envelope in the top pocket of my backpack. “Here.” I handed it to her. “We—I mean, you—won't be here in February.”

She opened the envelope as we walked. “You bought it!” She looked at me, brighter. “You could have mailed it.”

“It wouldn't be the same. And I wouldn't know the address.”

“I'd give it to you, silly.” She opened the card. “But you didn't sign it.”

“Aw…” I said.

“You have to sign it. Come on, over here.” By now we were at the bottom of her street, in the park across from the library. She led me over to a picnic table and put the card down. Buster stopped to do his business. Gillian followed him with a plastic bag from her pocket.

I got my pen out of my pack and bent over the card, but when Gillian came back I still hadn't signed. “You don't have to say anything fancy,” she said.

I was staring at the blank space. I felt paralyzed. Finally I said, “I can't sign.” My voice was wobbly.

“Why not?”

I forced it out. “I don't know my name.”

Gillian touched my back. “What do you mean? Are you okay?”

It was now or never. “I'm not Danny.”

She sat beside me. She smiled. “You keep saying that.”

“I know, but I'm
not
Danny and I never was. The real Danny disappeared three years ago and never came back. I saw his name somewhere and pretended to be him to get out of some trouble I was in.”

Her face blanked. She pulled back. “Then who are you?”

The Question. I swallowed. “I don't know.”

“What do you mean, you don't know?”

I looked away. The ache in my face got hotter. Buster sniffed around the table. I said, “I don't know anything. I don't know who my parents were. I was given up when I was born. They called me a ward of the state and I got put in all these foster homes from when I was a baby. That was the Bad Time. I don't know my real name. I don't even know if I have one. Someone picked one. Sometimes people would call me by one they liked better. I don't even know my birthday for sure. I knew it once, but nothing ever happened on my birthday and then I started lying about it and got confused. Harley—this guy I was with—he got paid to take me from some people who said I ran away. I was with him for a long time. Then he had an accident and died and I was scared I'd go back, and I heard about Danny and I lied, just to get away. I had to—I was scared of the Bad Time. I never thought it would turn into this.” I closed my eyes. “I'm nobody. I've done bad stuff. And now I have to go too. I was coming to say goodbye. I can't do this anymore, and it's bad to you. You can't…live a lie.” The last words hurt the worst. I didn't dare look at her.

Gillian was quiet for what seemed like a long time, and then she said, “I can tell you who you are. You're somebody who is smart, and nice to me when nobody else wants to be. You're the person who makes Shannon and Matt and Brooklynne happy. You take chances. You're brave. You do things on your own. You don't care what other people think.”

“I lie,” I said. “I fake, I cheat, I steal. I…” The sick was bubbling up in me again. “I make…I make people do bad things. Harley had his accident because of me, and once…I made a guy kill himself.”

“Oh, come on,” Gillian said.

“The first time you saw me I was stealing, to show off to Matt. You were right. Then I lied to you after.”

I looked at her then. Her face had fallen. Her hands were in her jacket sleeves. She pushed up her glasses and got to her feet, tugging at Buster's leash. “Come on,” she said to the dog.

I'd said too much. It was like a can of soda exploding—I couldn't stop once I'd started, and now I'd ruined everything. Maybe that was what I deserved, but I didn't want it to end this way. Maybe Gillian didn't either, because she didn't go anywhere. Instead, she said, “Are you lying to me now?”

“I could be, but I'm not. At school that day, I needed to talk to you so bad.”

“Because of my name.” I nodded. “Where did you know a Gillian?”

A month ago, I would have snowed her with a story about a little sister I'd gotten separated from or a best friend in grade one. Now I told her: “She was a girl in a book I read over and over. She kept getting moved around like me, and it never worked out for her either, except once and then she had to leave.”

“
The Great Gilly Hopkins,
” Gillian said flatly. “So you never knew her. That's a lie too.”

“No. I
knew
her. I can't—she was just like me. It was like she was my only friend and she got out and it was like if she could, maybe I…I can't explain.”

“I get it,” she said, more gently. Then: “Remember what you said to me the first day at school?
Be anybody you want
? Maybe you get to be.”

“What?”

“Be anybody you want. Be someone who doesn't lie and cheat and steal.”

I looked at her. For once in my life, I didn't know what to say. What finally came out was, “Give me a name.”

She looked off toward the library, then closed her eyes. When she opened them she said, “Adam.”

“Adam?”

“It's the first name. You're starting at the beginning.”

“Adam.” It felt right. “Thank you,” I said.

“Sign the card, Adam,” she said softly.

I signed. I didn't know what my signature would look like, but it turned out okay.

I gave it to Gillian and said, “You can start at the beginning too.”