No One You Know Read Online Free PDF Page A

suspected their actual lives were far less interesting than the stories he built for them.
    At one point Thorpe sipped his orange soda and said, “Actually, I have some interesting news.”
    “Really? What?”
    “I’m writing a book.”
    “That’s wonderful,” I said, and meant it.
    Thorpe had confessed to me early on that his secret desire was to be a writer. While in graduate school he had attempted to publish a number of short stories, but after a string of rejections he gave up. I knew there was a partially written novel in a drawer somewhere—“Half the English department has one of those,” he’d said to me once, dismissing years of his own work with a wave of his hand.
    “A novel?” I asked.
    “No, this is nonfiction.”
    “About what?”
    He bit his lip, fiddled with his silverware, and after a long pause finally said, “It’s about Lila.”
    At first, I was certain I’d heard him wrong. “What?”
    “A celebration of her life and an investigation of her death.”
    It sounded rehearsed, as if he had said it before. But the very notion that he would write a book about Lila was so outlandish, I thought for a moment he was joking.
    “That’s not funny,” I said. “Why would you say something like that?”
    “It’s a fascinating story. I think people would want to read about it.”
    I pushed my plate away. “You can’t be serious.” I kept waiting for him to tell me he was kidding, but he didn’t. A man passed by with several dogs on leashes and Thorpe tried, stupidly, to lighten the mood with a joke. “This one gave up a lucrative career in medicine to pursue his dream of being a dog walker.”
    “Lila isn’t a story,” I said, so loudly the couple at the next table turned to stare. “She’s my sister.”
    Thorpe glanced apologetically at the couple and spoke quietly. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said it that way. It’s just that, listening to you talk about Lila these last few months, I’ve realized there’s so much about this case that hasn’t been brought to light. The police are strapped for resources. To them, solving the crime is just a job, an unwelcome distraction. Maybe I can bring a fresh pair of eyes to the case.”
    “What stone could you possibly overturn that they haven’t already looked under?”
    “Look, somebody knows something. At the very least, maybe I can figure out who Lila was seeing.”
    “If you want to play private eye, go ahead, but please don’t put it in a book. Lila would hate that.”
    I could tell that, as I spoke, Thorpe was already planning his response. “She was an exceptional person, enormously gifted,” he said. “The book is a tribute to her.”
    I felt my face getting hot. “But you didn’t even know her.”
    “I feel as though I did. If it weren’t for you, she would have been nothing more to me than an item in the news. But you made her real to me. You made her matter.”
    “I’m begging you,” I said, “seriously, as a friend.”
    I had told Thorpe in the past about Lila’s almost obsessive desire for privacy. It was the reason she lived at home rather than in an apartment; having an apartment would have required her to have roommates. It was why she rarely answered the phone, and she had so few friends. It probably had something to do with why she liked numbers, too: numbers kept their distance. They communicated without the messiness of emotion. Numbers possessed an inherent order that was impossible to find in human relationships. She would have been sick about having her face splashed across the papers, her name mentioned on the TV news. A book would be even worse. Books get passed from hand to hand, preserved in libraries. In a book, she would always be the victim.
    Thorpe leaned back. “I’m too far into it to back out now, but I’ll feel better if I have your approval. The first draft is almost halfway done. I’d love for you to take a look at it. I’ve already found an agent.”
    “Didn’t it occur to