“Maybe,” she said, and she gave him a smile. He smiled back.
She walked home—it took about forty minutes—and let herself in. Her mother wasn’t there. Jane was still hungry, so she ate a bowl of cereal and slipped the DVD into the player on the TV. The surveillance footage was in color—she had expected it to be in black and white. She took the remote and sped it up a bit. The video switched from the counter and the register to the various corners of the restaurant so that the whole room was covered. She thought of fast-forwarding through it, but then she thought, This is an actual record of something I don’t remember and it’s a memory laid out for me.
So she started again at the beginning and she watched. A slow but steady march of people—some she recognized from school, sometimes kids on their own, sometimes with their families—came up to the counter, sat at the tables and the booths, and ate and chatted. Ten minutes in she saw herself and David enter the restaurant.
He was carrying something, she couldn’t see what it was, until they got closer. It was a laptop, a thin black one. They used iPads and Macs at school and she could see it wasn’t a Mac. He tucked it under his arm. She looked distraught, like she was just holding it together.
Wait. Wasn’t he the one in danger? Wasn’t he the one asking her for help? They looked reversed. She looked troubled. He looked grim, but he also looked worried about her.
They ordered food. They sat across from each other at the back booth. The camera switched away from them for a few seconds. Then went back, her leaning over her plate.
David was holding her hand. He crossed and sat next to her.
Switch again.
David put his arm around her. Comforting her. He put his lips close to her hair.
In another corner, Jane saw a girl—that would be Amari Bowman—turn and look at them. Stare. She was the girl who texted Kamala.
They ate, David one-handed, keeping his arm around her, then him opening the laptop, showing her something.
She was shaking her head.
She saw Mr. Sing walk past them, glance at the laptop, hover near the conversation.
Jane got out of the booth and walked out of sight, toward the restroom. David pulled out a cell phone and made a call. He was on the phone for only ten seconds and then he hung up.
When Jane came back into the frame, David was standing by the table, ready to go. He hurried her out.
Jane didn’t stop the tape. She wanted to see what Amari Bowman did. Amari kept texting. Billy Sing walked past and went behind the counter.
Four minutes after she and David left, Adam Kessler entered. With Trevor Blinn. They walked in together.
She froze, watching, her fingertips suddenly reaching out to the screen. Why are they there together? Right after we were there? Adam, who knew nothing about that night, supposedly.
Adam. Who had given her shelter, gotten her off the streets. They had talked about everything. But not this. Never had he mentioned this. She felt sick, cold, a shiver prickling her skin.
Then Trevor left, glancing back. Adam went to the counter and bought a drink, bringing his phone up to his face. Amari Bowman walked out a few moments after Trevor, oblivious to anything but her phone screen, perhaps still texting the scandal of Jane and David to Kamala and her gossipy friends.
The video ended.
She watched it again. Maybe Adam and Trevor were hanging around together that night. Maybe they got hungry. Maybe it meant nothing.
She went up to her room and looked at the yearbook, a document she never much cared to consult, finding Amari’s senior tribute card, which said she would be going to UT. Jane could call her.
She sat on the floor of her room, the photos from her life on the walls, and once again, nothing was as it seemed. Her mother, her friends, her counselor—they had all lied to her. Lies of omission. Go back to what Trevor had said about seeing her and David. A mention, from David, of her deceased father. David comforting her while she cried at the restaurant. Thinking about her father would have made her cry. And there was something else going on, something so bad they considered running away to Canada, which was lunacy.
But there was nothing to connect these thoughts or fears. Nothing to tie the events, these scraps of rumor, together. If she went around proclaiming what she’d learned, with no evidence to back it up, she was simply the damaged girl trying to avoid responsibility for her own recklessness.
She needed to figure out how to get to San Antonio and talk directly to Brenda Hobson. She wasn’t ready to confront Adam about why he had never told her he, too, had been at Happy Taco that night; if he threw her out, she had no place to stay (her mother, at the moment, felt like no improvement on the deal); and if he threw her out, she could learn nothing more.
When she had awoken in the hospital, and not known her own name, or any face around her, or where she was, she had felt like a shell with the soul ripped free. At first she felt almost numb with shock—she knew words, she could speak, she could feel fear—but when she realized she was a person with no past except what others told her, the dread and the terror had felt like a physical presence in her body, there as much as tissue, blood, and bone. The fear only started abating as her memories seeped back.
And now…so many lies. So much hidden from her. She could go back and hide at Adam’s or her mother’s, or she could push the fear off her and do something.
Choose, she told herself.
20
THE AFTERNOON PASSED, and night fell. Jane waited. Her mother didn’t come home. Jane watched the video a few times, she used her mom’s computer to track down Amari Bowman’s home address, and called. Amari’s mother answered and politely agreed to take a message, although Jane could tell from her initial hesitation that she recognized Jane’s name.
On Faceplace she found Brenda Hobson’s page, and an announcement from Brenda that she was staying at her sister’s house. Her son was still in the hospital. She sent a friend request to her, then, impatient, posted a message on Brenda’s page, asking if she could talk to her, that she might have information about the fire. There was no immediate response.
She tried Kevin’s number. To her surprise he answered. Counselors, she had learned before, loved voice mail and usually let calls roll over to that.
“Hello?”
“It’s Jane Norton. I had a memory return today. From the time I’ve lost. Freshman year. Walking home with David Hall. He was joking around about a school assignment.”
“I see,” Kevin said. “That’s very promising, Jane.”
Why are you lying to me? she thought. “I’m wondering why it happened now. Do you think it’s because I started therapy with you?”
“It might be. Or were you in the same spot where the memory occurred?”
“Yes.”
“That might have been the trigger. The anniversary of the crash has put that time at the forefront of your thoughts. You’ve been treading water, Jane, and now you’re swimming.”