Undone: An Unraveling Novella Part 7

"Hey, Ben, wait up!" Derek called after me.

I turned and waited for him.

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing," I said, shaking my head. "I'm just tired."

It was a lie and he knew it. "Didn't you like her?"

"I did." She just wasn't Janelle.

"What is it, then?" Derek asked.

I didn't answer, and he punched me in the arm.

"What was that for?" I asked.

"You never used to be so quiet," he said with a laugh. Then he sobered. "Just talk to me, man."

"There's a girl," I said, getting into the car.

Derek got in and started the engine. "Back there?"

I nodded. "She's just in a different league."

"Hot?"

I smiled. "Yeah. And smart and fearless. Just . . . everything."

"I get it," Derek said. "You need some more time. Don't worry, though. We'll find you a girl here."

I couldn't bear to tell him that he didn't get it. Not even a little.

I didn't want another girl. I just wanted Janelle.

At home, I flung myself on the couch and turned on the TV. Programming was more regulated here, which meant less reality TV, which I didn't mind, but also just less entertaining TV in general. I watched the news a lot because it made me feel like I knew something about this place. Even if that was just an illusion, it made me feel better.

Without looking, I reached for my notebook on the coffee table. I wanted to remember to tell Janelle what I'd realized at the bar. Maybe I had known it all along, just subconsciously. That could have been why I stood there when the portal had first been opened and thought that I wasn't sure I wanted to go through it.

The notebook wasn't there.

I sat up and moved the magazines around on Derek's coffee table. Not there.

I looked under the couch. Not there.

I checked the kitchen in case I'd accidentally carried it over there. Not there.

I checked inside the couch cushions. Not there either.

Finally I found it on the floor under the TV stand. I must have set it on the floor instead of on the edge of the table like usual.

"Try not to kick my stuff around!" I called to Derek as I sat back down.

"What do you mean? I haven't kicked any of your stuff." He swatted at my head as he pa.s.sed the couch.

"Not on purpose."

"Not by accident, either," he said. "I watch where I'm going."

I waved the notebook over the couch. "I wrote in this when I woke up and set it down. Now it's under the TV stand. How did that happen?"

"You must have kicked it. I haven't been over there all day."

I sat up and turned around. He was making a sandwich, since we didn't eat at the bar. What he said made sense. Why would he have been over here? He got up and we went to Mom's before work.

Yet it had to be him, because this was important to me. I wouldn't have kicked it and not noticed.

I only ever put it on the floor at night before I went to sleep.

"Someone else must have been here," I said.

Derek laughed. "Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you the maid comes once a week."

I looked at him. He was kidding. "No, I'm serious." I scanned the room, trying to see if anything else was out of place.

"So am I," Derek said. "No one has been in here, kicking your diary around. Relax."

I nodded, but I didn't believe him.

I didn't say anything to Derek after that, but I paid more attention to my surroundings. I kept my eye on the cars parked close to the apartment, the garage, and anywhere else we went. I looked at the faces of the people we pa.s.sed and recognized the ones I saw too often. I memorized where I set things down when I left and noted where they were when I came back. Suddenly it was obvious.

I was being followed.

The next three days were the same. The tan sedan showed up and parked across from the garage only three minutes after Derek and I got there, and it sat there all day. Then it had followed me, three cars back, when I left the garage.

The real question was who was inside.

"Knock it off, would you?" Eli said.

I pulled my eyes away from the window. We were in a diner. I'd chosen the seat in the back corner where I could sit with my eyes on the door and keep watch for the people following me outside at the same time.

"It's just some generic town car that belongs to someone who works near the garage," he said. "They're not here."

I didn't say anything. I already knew his opinion on the subject.

"Trust me. No one is following me, and I'm public enemy number one," he added.

The papers hadn't left him alone since we'd been back. Everyone had known about his "abduction." His father and his position had made sure of that. Reid and I were more like an afterthought. Some people knew, sure, but no one really cared about us. Now that Eli was back, they wanted the details. Who was responsible, what happened, where had he been, how was he back? He told his mother and the military the truth, or at least most of it, and they'd crafted a public statement that was mostly garbage and released it to the public. Everyone wanted more, though. They wanted to hear directly from Eli, and whether it was conscious or not, they wanted to direct some of their hostility at him for what happened when he disappeared.

No one needed to follow him, though. Photographers were camped outside his house. They took pictures of everything he did. He'd barely left the house in three weeks. Just getting out tonight had apparently been a covert operation.

"Here, you can have this," Eli said, pushing a phone across the table.

It was a prototype of the new Samsung phone that everyone wanted. It was supposed to come out in three weeks, and people were already setting up tents in front of the stores. I didn't have a phone, so Eli had taken it upon himself to rectify that. Since his stepfather was some big shot at Samsung, this is what I got.

I put it in the pocket of my hoodie, and I waited. We'd seen each other every day for the past seven years, and now that we were home, we hadn't seen each other for almost three weeks. When he showed up at the garage, he was jittery, unable to stand still. I knew he needed to talk.

"It's f.u.c.king awful here." Eli shook his head as he said it. It was ironic to think how hard we had worked to get here, and now we were completely dissatisfied with everything. That whole metaphor about trying to push a square peg through a round hole. That was us. We'd been round when we left, but we'd been over there too long, and somehow that had sharpened our edges.

"It'll get better," I said. I didn't necessarily believe that, but it was what he needed to hear.

"I just can't believe my mother. She's a completely different person, cleaning the house and cooking every meal. It's like she's out of some 1950s sitcom, and those kids . . ." He leaned into me. "I've done the math. She must have fallen into bed with this guy days after my father was shot."

I'd also done the math. Not just for his mother, but for my father, too. He'd at least waited a little longer, but after losing us and after everything here went to h.e.l.l, they'd both chosen the same coping mechanism. They started over. They left every bad memory, including us, behind.

"She wants to send me to some prep school up north and enroll me as a freshman so I can go to Officer School when I graduate. She thinks that my becoming an officer in the city guard would have made my dad happy. Can you believe that s.h.i.t?"

I could believe that. His mom was right. It would have made his dad happy. He was all about military service. I was also pretty sure it would make the new prime minister of the Republic of California happy. Society here was stable, but people weren't exactly prosperous. I doubted it was just Derek musing about what it would be like if it went back to the way things had been before Eli disappeared, and now that he was back, who better to step into the shoes of his father. Eli falling in line like a good soldier would keep him alive.

"It's not going to happen," Eli said. "I didn't even go to cla.s.s during my first three years of high school at Eastview. I'm not going to f.u.c.king start over and go to some prep school full of dips.h.i.ts."

"So don't. Talk to her. Tell her what you want to do instead."

He shook his head, but then he turned away and looked out the window.

"What?"

"I want to go back," he said, turning to look at me.

"Go back . . . ?"

"I know it's bat-s.h.i.t crazy," he added. "But don't you miss it? It was the three of us against the world."

"But there's only two of us now."

Eli shook his head. "There's Janelle," he said quietly. "Look, I've been meaning to tell you I'm sorry for all the s.h.i.t I gave you about her. She came through in the end. Don't you miss her?"

"Of course I do." My voice came out harsh, but I didn't care.

"I even miss her," Eli said. "Not like you do, but I miss the normalcy of Eastview and the anonymity of everything. I miss the parties and being able to go wherever we wanted and not having to worry about the city guard or the f.u.c.king reporters. I even miss Roxy."

That made me laugh. "All you ever did was complain about how clingy she was."

"Maybe I don't miss her exactly," he said. He frowned and picked at his fries. He didn't look at me. "Or maybe I do. I don't know." He kept talking, trying to puzzle out his feelings, but I was distracted. A lone guy came into the diner. He sat at the table closest to the front door, facing me. He ordered a cup of coffee but didn't drink it. Something about him looked familiar. Like maybe I'd seen him before somewhere else.

I purposely dropped my napkin and leaned down to pick it up. Then I leaned into Eli. "They're here. Directly behind you by the front door."

"What are you, some kind of f.u.c.king spy?" He laughed, but he looked behind him anyway. He shook his head. "It's a guy having coffee."

"Look at his shoes. They're military issue."

"Maybe it's one of the city guards on his day off," Eli said, leaning back. "Who would want to follow you? Tell me that and I'll stop thinking you're a paranoid freak."

"What if it's IA?" That was the only thing I could come up with.

"They'd be following me, too," Eli said. "Besides, what would they want with you? They got their man."

I didn't know. That was the problem. "Let's get out of here."

Eli stood up. "Will you think about what I said? About going back?"

I nodded. I didn't need to think about it, not really. I wanted to go back. I just needed to figure out how to tell Derek and my mother that I wasn't going to stay. "You should give it some time," I said. The last thing we needed was to go back and have him change his mind.

"I've had three f.u.c.king weeks inside a house with my mother and her new family to contemplate it," he said. "I want to go back."

"Then we'll go back," I said, and I meant it. "I just need some more time."

We walked out. As we pa.s.sed the guy with his untouched coffee, I recognized him. He'd been at the bar where Derek had taken me. I'd b.u.mped into him on my way out.

I made a split-second decision and pitched my weight forward and stumbled. I had to reach out and grab the corner of his table to keep from falling.

"Sorry about that," I said.

"What the h.e.l.l was that?" Eli said.

"I tripped," I said as I stood up.

I followed my best friend outside. I didn't tell him about the way the guy's hand had reached into his jacket almost instinctively as I'd fallen toward him. Probably for some kind of weapon.

I had to figure out who was following me and what they wanted.

And if they were a danger to the people I would leave behind.

We went a week before I saw the man again. I wasn't any closer to figuring out who was following me. At least not with any kind of concrete evidence.

The phone Eli gave me buzzed against the coffee table, waking me up. It was 3:47.

I grabbed it. There was a message from him.

MEET ME?.

I though about saying no or even just not answering and pretending I slept through it. I was tired, and I had to work in a few hours. But I knew it could be important. I texted back: WHERE?

His reply was instantaneous: PLAYGROUND.

I knew what he meant. There was an old playground behind the elementary school we went to as kids. We used to all go there all the time: me, Eli, Reid, and Ian. Sometimes our moms would take us and stand around and talk. Sometimes we would go by ourselves. It wasn't far. I told him I'd be there in about fifteen minutes.

I kept my head down when I left the apartment building. I pulled my jacket tightly around my body even though it wasn't that cold. The night was eerily quiet. The street was empty. Buildings I pa.s.sed were dark.