Chapter Twenty-One

twenty-one

“You deleted her number?”

Kat’s voice rings through the phone with so much bewilderment, you’d think I’d insulted her personally. Whether it’s luck or perfect timing, she picked up without even a predial “can I call you” text, and I got her up to speed as quickly as possible on the happenings of the thirty-six hours since she left Geneva—most notably, the moving meltdown and the mass destruction of any and all Ellie evidence on my phone. I can’t believe the amount that’s happened in the few days since I’ve seen her, and as I sit cross-legged in the center of my bed, it all tumbles out like a verbal rockslide, leaving Kat to sort through the debris.

“God, what a shit show,” she mutters. “Are you okay? What can I do to help?”

“Hang on. I haven’t even gotten to the real reason I called yet.”

“Oh God,” Kat groans. “How could there possibly be more?”

“Well, at the study session—”

“You went to the study session?” she interrupts. “Great job!”

A smile creeps over my lips. Not what I was getting at, but the recognition feels nice.

“Yes, but after, Professor Meyers gave me back the Tupperware that I left at her house, and she gave me, like, this little pep talk about my grade and how to study better. More on that later. But inside the Tupperware, there’s this painting.” I’ve been thumbing the edge of the watercolor paper our entire call, but I only now realize it. “I’ll send you a pic, hang on.”

I position the painting right between two sunbeams spilling across my bed, then snap two photos—one of the painting itself and one of the note on the back—and hit send, chomping on my cuticles as I wait for Kat to review the source material. After a brief pause, she squeals.

“Oh my god, Murph. This is gorgeous.”

“Gorgeous,” I echo. “Do you see the tiny Ellie and Murphy out front?”

She squeals. “Oh my God, I missed that! Murphy!”

“But you have to read the stuff on the back. It’s from this Thanksgiving tradition they have where they write down what they’re thankful for.”

Another pause. “She gave this to you?”

“Yeah, that’s what Professor Meyers told me.”

“So this has to be an apology,” Kat says.

“I think so. At the very least, it’s a message. She’s going to New York after U of I, and I told her I want to live in Chicago after I graduate, so I think she painted that? Like, what that could be?” I suck the blood off the bleeding edge of my thumb. “I have to talk to her.”

“And say what?” Kat’s voice is so giddy and cutesy, I almost forget there’s a big, nasty truth we need to circle back to.

“It doesn’t matter,” I groan. “Because my dumb ass has no way to reach her.”

“Because you deleted her number,” Kat says, verbally tying the loose ends together.

“Yes,” I sigh. “Yes I did.”

“Fuck.”

Someone in the background shushes her, and I use the temporary silence to resituate so I’m facing away from the Wall of Fame. Staring at all the pictures I’m going to have to take down bums me out.

“Quick question,” Kat finally says. “Are you dumb?”

I snort. “Obviously yes.”

“Why did you have to delete her number? Why didn’t you just, like, block her or change her contact name to Spam Likely? Like a normal person?”

“Because I’m dumb ,” I remind her. “But chewing me out for deleting her number isn’t going to bring it back.”

“Sorry, sorry. You’re right.” She pauses, then lets out one last exasperated, “Fuck!”

Again, an aggressive shh in the background. Louder this time, even.

“Why are you getting shushed?”

“Because I’m at the library,” Kat says.

“Oh my God, then leave the library, we’re being loud.”

“I’m not on the quiet floor!” She sounds defensive, and it’s definitely directed more toward her shusher than toward me. “Can you DM her anywhere?”

“What, from the Sip Instagram account?”

“Right, I keep forgetting that you’re not chronically online like the rest of us. Hang on, let me find her.” Kat does me the favor of muting herself before tapping away at her phone in search of Ellie’s digital footprint. When she comes back, she sounds defeated. “Elbell underscore underscore underscore…her Insta is private. I requested her, but like…we’ll see.”

I collapse back onto the bed with a sigh, letting the pillow swallow my head on either side. Square one is a shitty place to be.

“You could ask Professor Meyers for her number,” Kat suggests, but the upspeak in her voice assures me that we’re on the same page there: I’m definitely not going to do that. “I don’t know, Murph,” Kat says, deflated. “You clearly like this girl. She clearly likes you. You could just wait until she comes home for Christmas?”

“Hate that.”

“What’s the alternative? Sending me to hunt her down on campus?”

I don’t respond.

“Nuh-uh. No chance.” Kat shuts me down before I can even offer a solid argument in favor of Operation: Find Ellie. “Do you know how many people go to this school? I’m not just going to bump into her.”

“Then what am I supposed to do?” I whine. “Send a carrier pigeon? Smoke signals?”

“Okay, maybe we keep brainstorming. Singing telegram? Message in a bottle? Snail mail?”

Something lights up inside me. “Wait, what about email?”

“You have her email?”

“No,” I admit, “but I have a best friend who goes to the same school and knows how they format their student emails.”

“First name last name at Illinois dot e-d-u!” She shrieks her answer like it’s the winning response on a game show, and her background shusher comes back full force. Kat doesn’t seem to mind. “Type it in! Type it in!”

I wedge my phone between my ear and my shoulder, opening my laptop. “So Ellie Meyers at…”

“Is that her full name? Ellie?”

My stomach nosedives. “Fuck. Probably not.”

“Yearbook,” Kat snaps. “Check our high school yearbook.”

“Do I still have a yearbook?”

“You have so much shit in that room, there’s no way you don’t have a yearbook.”

“But I might’ve packed it up already,” I point out. “Or thrown it out. I’m throwing out so much.”

“Just look,” Kat says. “It can’t hurt.”

I put my phone on speaker and set it on the edge of the bed, keeping within shouting distance while I search. I’ve already hauled a few bins of books off to Goodwill and tossed a significant amount of junk with a particular emphasis on anything that reeked of High School Murphy. A yearbook would, by definition, be the first to go, but I don’t remember seeing one. I open and close my nearly empty corner cabinet and do a quick scan of my bookshelf. Nothing.

“Try your desk,” Kat suggests.

“I never use my desk.”

“Exactly.”

As I haul the pile of clothes off my desk chair and onto my bed, I imagine a different version of me, one who sat at this desk twice a week to study for accounting and work on her transfer application instead of using it exclusively to roll joints. A studious Murphy. A more organized Murphy. One who could definitely pull off a passing grade on Friday’s final. If I clear a place for her, maybe it’s not too late to be her, just for this last stretch of days before the exam. I tug on the desk drawer and it tugs back. Too much shit wedged in there. I jiggle the handle, barely fitting my fingers in to prod anything that might come loose.

“What’s going on?” Kat asks from where I left her on the bed.

“My desk is jammed.” Just as the words come out, I give one last tug and the drawer releases. There, buried between outdated teen magazines and travel softball paperwork, I spot the royal-blue binding of a Geneva High School yearbook. There’s quite literally a quarter inch of dust on the top, and I cough a little as I crack the spine. “Found it,” I say. “Or found one. From…” I do the mental math, subtracting from the current year. “Sophomore year, I think?”

I flip to the junior portraits, thumbing toward the M s at a speed that threatens paper cuts. There she is, with long brown hair and a face like an Accutane before picture. Eliana Meyers. Eliana. What a perfect name. I whisper it to myself, enjoying how it pirouettes off my tongue.

“You find it?”

“It’s Eliana. Eliana Meyers.”

“WOO! ELIANA!” Kat shouts, then pauses and adds. “Wow, that’s really pretty.”

I run my finger along her name as though it were braille. Eliana. I wonder why she shortens it. Flipping back a few pages, I find my own picture among the sophomores, looking every bit as sixteen as I’d love to forget I ever was. My pixie cut phase never did me any favors, and the oversize gray sweatshirt I’m wearing stands as evidence that I never put picture day in my planner. I flip back from Ellie to me then back to Ellie. Eliana. I wonder if I fold down the pages in between, I could line our pictures up, our teenage selves permanently kissing so long as the yearbook is closed.

“So what are you saying in the email?” Kat presses, and I recenter myself on the goal at hand.

“I don’t know. I have to think about it. But I’ll let you know if I need a proofread.”

“Or a ghostwriter!” she offers. “Whatever you need. I’m gonna jump, though, if that’s okay. I’ve gotta study.”

“Of course, love you.”

“Love you back!”

The line goes quiet, leaving me alone in the company of Geneva High School’s finest. Across the two-page spread from me, Kat’s not-yet-tamed brown curls and precontacts wire frames take me back to a hundred and one high school memories. Given the chance, what would I say to little high school Kat? Or Ellie? I don’t bother thinking of what I’d say to my high school self. She wouldn’t have listened anyway. I close the cover and slip the yearbook into a slot in one of my packing bins. Maybe I was wrong about memory lane. It doesn’t have to be a one-way street. Maybe it’s just somewhere you only plan to visit when you’re ready.

I climb back into bed, digging my laptop out from under the covers and clicking into my email again. ElianaMeyers @Illinois.edu. When I hit enter, a tiny headshot-style picture of her appears next to her contact. I’d expect a freshman ID photo, if anything, but the picture is recent—blonde hair, bangs and all. Junior year of high school Ellie wouldn’t recognize herself now.

My fingers stall on the keyboard, the cursor pulsing in the subject line box. I could take this a hundred different ways, only one of which is short enough that she may actually read it.

Reminder: IOU one chaicoffski

I hit send, praying the U of I spam filter goes easy on me.