“I’ll keep you posted.”
“Please do. Especially if you find what Ponce never could.” He winked and left the room.
I went upstairs and opened my computer, finding my synced contact list and copying important numbers down on a piece of paper: Sam, Mom, Dad, Abe, Em.
I could text from my computer too, so I sent a message to Sam:
Later today? I’ll keep you posted.
The anxiety from the night before was gone. Now I had a clear sense of what I needed to do. I needed to talk to Sam.
I got to Harry’s office an hour or so later, after stopping at the store and paying an absurd insurance deductible for a new phone. It was currently wrapped in one of the most expensive cases I could find. The salesperson had personallythrown his phone (same case) against the wall as hard as he could to demonstrate its durability.
Worked for me.
Harry gave me a folder of paperwork (“Have him sign here and here, initial here, and thank you so much, Lottie, you’re the best.”) and a small wooden box, about the size of a hardcover book. I brought everything out to my car and opened it, sitting in the parking lot, after looking around me like a truly paranoid creature to make sure nobody was watching.
I opened the box slowly. If my life were a movie, there would be very dramatic music playing in the background, a slow buildup to a swelling of instruments as the wooden case creaked open (it didn’t creak in real life, and there was regrettably no music playing).
The inside of the box was a mess of tissue paper, and resting on top was a piece of paper. I recognized my aunt’s handwriting like it was my own.
S.—
I wish things could have been different.
But not in the way you might expect.
—H.
I set my aunt’s note on the passenger seat carefully, my heart speeding up as I reached into the box and pulled out tissue paper after tissue paper, unearthing a small crystalbottle with a cork stopper in it.
I imagined it said—on a brown-colored tag tied to it with twine—Everlife Formula.
But it didn’t. It was just the glass vial, small and clear and plain in my hands. I held it up to the light and looked at the liquid within. It was completely unremarkable. Like water.
Because it was water, if I believed what my aunt was trying to tell me.
It was a very special kind of water, but it was just water.
A very, very special kind of water, something said in the back of my head. A tiny kind of voice reserved only for the darkest of nights, the loneliest of sleeplessness. The voice you hear right before you fall asleep, the one that whispers suggestions into your ear:Did you leave the door unlocked? Are your car lights on? Did you remember to turn off the stove? What if everyone you love dies? What if YOU die? What if there’s someone under your bed right now? Should you get up and check the closet again?
Years writing down all the anxious thoughts in my head and all the ways I didn’t want to die in a notebook now buried in a floorboard in my aunt’s shed, and here I was, holding something that could (if I suspended all disbelief) take care of all of that.
This could be what we’ve been waiting for, the voice said. It sounded like my voice, a lot like my voice, but twisted and wrong. Just a shadow of who I really was, what I reallysounded like. Not me at all. Or—a version of me. One I didn’t like.
I put the bottle back in the box and opened another letter from my aunt. This one was addressed to me, slipped into my purse before I’d left the house.
Dear Lottie,
A long, long time ago, I ran away from home.
I don’t know how much you know. I can’t know, can I, because I didn’t drink it. I didn’t choose the life Sam chose.
Sam and I met when I was a teenager, and he was both considerably older than that and also, at the same time, just a year older than I. We became friends instantly. There’s something about him, isn’t there, like he’s riding on a wave that’s slightly different from all the rest. Like he exists on a plane just a little bit tilted from ours.
We spent one perfect, magical year together. (Wait, let me be clear: not TOGETHER. Never anything more than friends.)
Then he offered me the water. He made me take it even when I refused to drink it. He wanted me to have it in case I changed my mind.
