Page 38 of The Next Person You Meet in Heaven
“Why would you show that to everybody?” Annie says, her voice shaking. “It’s not yours.”
She turns to Paulo. “It was supposed to be yours.”
Paulo’s mouth drops open. For a moment, all of them are frozen. Then, with Paulo inches away, something releases inside of Annie. It propels her forward. The next thing she knows, she is pressing her lips against his. It lasts a second. She feels tears leaving her eyes.
“Goodbye,” she whispers.
She turns and walks away, fighting her impulse to run. She hears one of the girls say, “Yeah, go on, geek.” She hears someone else say, “Oh... my... God.” When she turns the corner, she no longer holds back. She runs and keeps running, out the back doors and down the street, tears burning her cheeks.
She reaches a park and drops onto a bench, flanked bytwo blue garbage bins. She doesn’t come home until dark. When she enters, her mother is livid.
“Why are you so late?” she yells.
“Because I felt like it!” Annie yells back.
Lorraine grounds her for a month.
The next day, Paulo is gone.
ALL CHILDREN KEEP SECRETS.All parents do the same. We mold the version we want others to believe, boosting the disguise and tucking away the truth. It is how we can be loved by our closest family members and still, at times, elude them.
From their hasty cross-country journey to their new roots in rural Arizona, Lorraine held her secrets close. She took great pains to erase her past. She got rid of old photos. She stopped calling old friends. She never mentioned her ex-husband. She never spoke of Ruby Pier.
She hoped a new state would mean a new life. But the things we have done are never far behind us. And like a shadow, they go where we do.
Annie, meanwhile, had given up on old hopes. By sixteen, she had accepted her role as a high school outcast. She had few friends and spent much of her time at home, reading, with her dog, Cleo, curled against her. Her figure had developed, and she sometimes caught boys staring if she wore tight clothing. Their attention confused her. Being noticed was all right, but she wanted to be known. They never even spoke to her.
One day, in history class, Annie’s teacher was asking about family roots.
“What about you, Annie?”
Annie slid low in her seat. She hated being called upon. She glanced sideways and saw one of those boys with the juvenile stare.
“I don’t know much,” she said.
Another student sang those words, “Don’t know much,” from a popular song, and the class laughed. Annie reddened.
“Well, you weren’t born in Arizona, were you?”
“No,” Annie admitted, breaking one of her mother’s rules.
“Where did you begin?”
Trying to get this over with, Annie spat out a few details, the town, how many years, where she thought her grandparents came from.
“And why did you move here?” the teacher said.
Annie froze. She couldn’t think of a lie. She heard someone snickering, “It’s not a trick question.”
“I had an accident,” Annie mumbled.
An awkward silence.
“All right, who else?” the teacher said.
Annie exhaled.
Before the class ended, the teacher assigned the students to research world events on the day they were born. They could use the school library or, if they had access, computer search engines, which were new.
