Every You, Every Me Read Online Free PDF Page A

friends—we were stepfriends.
    But with you gone, he was still the person I felt closest to.
    I watched him as he stared at the photo. At you.
    “It’s in the woods,” he said finally. “She must’ve gone with someone else into the woods.”
    Neither of us.
    Someone else.
    I felt empty enough for both of us. And I imagined he felt empty enough for both of us. Which left us four times empty and none smarter.
    “It’s the same person who took the other pictures,” he guessed. “But we don’t know who that is.”
    I nodded.
    “Jesus,” he said. “This is completely messed up.”
    Are you sure it’s not her? I wanted to ask. But I knew what he would say. That was our difference: There was part of me that wanted to be haunted, because at least that would be feeling something that radiated from you. But he was different: He had closed himself off, except when I came around to bring it all back.
    “You have to help me,” I said. Because if I couldn’t talk to you, I could at least talk to him in the same way I would’ve talked to you.
    “Okay,” he said. “Okay.”
    But then he didn’t say anything else, and I knew it was up to me to figure out how to begin.

6G
    That night, I spent hours staring at the photograph.

    But you weren’t telling me anything.

6H
    I remembered a time we were going through magazines. There was this one model who looked icy to the touch, in total control. I told you that, and you said, “That’s what makes it a good photograph. You think you know what’s going on in her head. But the truth? No matter how good a photograph is, you can never tell what’s going on in the person’s mind. There’s no way to get from here” (you pointed to the room) “to there” (you pointed to her head).

6I
    I was treating the past as if it could be mined for clues, for reasons.
    But the past resists that.
    It holds too much evidence of too many things.

7
    You were the one who taught me how to spy on people. I guess, in many ways, that’s how you met Jack.
    It’s not hard for me to remember that part. He’d go running after school, even when it wasn’t track season. You and I would wander, and he kept crossing our path. Unlike most track teamers, who always took the same route, he would change his up as much as we’d change ours. I barely noticed it, but you did.
    “It’s that guy again,” you’d say.
    Then: “He’s cute, you know.”
    No, I don’t know. And you don’t need to tell me.
    It wasn’t enough to pass him as we were heading to your house or cutting over to the library. Soon you had to have sightings in the halls, too. Then sighting turned into spying, and spying turned to stalking. You could tell me how many pairs of jeans he owned before you officially knew his name.
    “I’m not sure he’s our type,” I told you.
    “Our type?” you said back. “I didn’t know we had a type.”
    I played along, but tried to get you to spy on other people with me. The teachers who were long past due for a meltdown, or the pompous student council president whose re-election bid was about to go down in flames. Misery—I was scoping out misery for us to witness. Then one day I had to stay late to make up a math quiz, and you walked home alone. This time when he ran by, you said hey. And he said hey back. Leaving me to wonder for the rest of my life what would have happened if I had been there.
    I didn’t think he the two of you would last. I continued to play along, but it stopped feeling like play. This is the thing they don’t tell you about being a third wheel—it’s not like you’re the wheel that’s added on. You were one of the original two wheels, but suddenly you’re not so important anymore. The relationship drives fine without you.
    “Don’t worry,” you’d tell me. “He’ll never know me like you do.”
    But you told him the same thing, didn’t you? He told me this, one night soon after. But by then, I guess it was beside the point.

7A
    He was the one