i know you’ve forbidden me from speaking to her but i’m going to give her a copy of your friend verena’s book. hear me out: louise b. needs a kick in the ass. watching her is like watching a caged animal at the zoo, except she doesn’t know she’s in a cage, she doesn’t see the bars. i really think i could come back here in 30 years & she would still be living this same existence—still dieting, living alone, working at a job that’s beneath her. she deserves more than this. i like her, jules. she depresses me but i like her. don’t be angry at me for giving her the book, k?
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my verdict: i think you can trust her to help you spy on kitty. she might not agree to do it but ask her anyway. push her. maybe this is what she needs??
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p.s. i wish she could meet your friend verena. can you make this happen, jules? pretty please?
* * *
I read through the notebook greedily, my eyes moving swiftly across each line. Leeta’s observations about me would have stung much more if I’d read them back then, but since I’d met Verena and the others, unflinching commentary about my life had become the norm.
As an observer, Leeta had gleaned a lot about me, but not the whole story. She didn’t know about the surgery, my plan for escape so that I wouldn’t be in the same place thirty years later, filled with regrets, having only lived half a life. I knew this wasn’t the kind of escape she’d envisioned for me: surgery and weight loss, the ability to blend in with the crowd. She wasn’t the blending-in type.
The margins of the notebook were decorated with doodles of butterflies and daisies and a stick figure hanging from a rope. I thought again of Leeta’s face on the screen in Times Square. It wasn’t real—it couldn’t be. I didn’t know where she was or what she’d done, but she had led me to Verena. Her notebook read like a story about me, but the next chapters were missing. She’d started the story in motion but hadn’t stuck around to record the rest of it. I turned to a blank page. I started to write about the New Baptist Plan and the underground apartment, telling my own story. I realized I had no idea how it was going to end.
In the morning, or what I pretended was morning, I showered in the mirrorless bathroom and dressed in a fresh set of clothes from my closet. I’d never gone so long without seeing myself in a mirror. I patted down my hair, wondering what it looked like.
I went to the kitchen for a glass of water and saw that someone had been there. On the table was a plate with a cinnamon roll and a cherry Danish; next to that, a bottle of orange juice, a granola bar, a banana. The room smelled pleasantly of butter and icing, but I still didn’t feel like eating. Also on the table was a file folder. I opened it to discover a cache of articles about Leeta.
LEETA ALBRIDGE LINKED TO “JENNIFER”?
NEW YORK: . . . After a tip from her roommate, whose identity is being protected, the authorities have sought Ms. Albridge for questioning . . . FBI Agent Lopez explained that Albridge’s roommate said she confessed to knowing the identify of “Jennifer.” Albridge also claimed to have done something wrong, but provided no details . . . With no one else linked to this baffling series of crimes, Ms. Albridge is quickly becoming the face of the mysterious group referred to in the media as “Jennifer,” even though there is no evidence that she is involved . . .
WHEREABOUTS OF LEETA ALBRIDGE UNKNOWN
AMHERST, MA: The family of Amherst native Leeta Albridge, 23, held a press conference last night . . . “Leeta, please come forward. We know you’re not a criminal,” said her father, Richard Albridge . . . “There’s not a violent bone in her body,” said Albridge’s mother, Ruth . . . Ms. Albridge’s older half brother, Jakob Albridge, a Hampshire County police sharpshooter, said he taught his sister how to fire a gun, but “she was never any good at it” . . . Ms. Albridge graduated from the University of Southern California last summer and moved to New York City afterward . . . As a student in Los Angeles, she had volunteered as a rape crisis counselor and was considering graduate study in her home state of Massachusetts this fall . . .