I placed the cat down gently and got up. “Thank you.”
“Wait, before you go, take my phone number, in case you need it.” She scribbled her number out and passed me the piece of paper. I raised it to my nose and sniffed. “Rose-scented?”
“I have lavender if you would prefer?” She laughed at this and then I did something that I hadn’t done as Zenobia yet. I pulled her into a small hug. And this time, she didn’t stop me.
CHAPTER 41
“Noah! Noah!” I yelled, holding my finger down on the bell until he opened the door.
“You were right!” I gushed as soon as I saw him. “And I am so sorry for the way I treated you. Because you were totally right and I was wrong.”
“About what?” he asked, sounding not so friendly.
“Everything!”
“Can you narrow that down?” He folded his arms and rested his body against the doorframe.
“That I amnotthis person!” I pulled the gray jacket off and tossed it to the floor by his feet. Okay, that was dramatic. But fuck it, I was feeling very bloody dramatic now. “The person who wears these clothes. These gray, bland clothes. I am not this person. I am more than this! I am more than invisible Zenobia-Phobia that no one knows and cares about. That no one notices in a fire!”
“A fire? What happened?” He pushed himself off the doorframe and moved towards me.
“Nothing. Well, something could have happened, and no one would have noticed and that is the point! No one noticed me. I’m a ghost that haunts the dark, damp basement that no one notices, except for Eugene, but he only did because he was trying to sue me.”
Noah shook his head. “You’re not a ghost. I see you. I notice you.”
“No! You notice the person I was a few days ago, because that person is noticeable. But this one . . .” I ran my hands up and down my body, displaying my bland plumage. “You would not have noticed this person. And it wouldn’t have totally been your fault either, because this person, this Zen, makes herself invisible. She’s terrified of everything, and I mean everything. Cars, germs, salmonella, spicy food and clothes with color, vitamin deficiencies and not flossing, and insects living in her eyebrow hairs!”
“What?”
“Loooong story. Point is, she’s terrified of life and everything in it. And people too. She is—no,I am—scared of getting close to people, and I don’t really know why. I know I’ve been doing it for the last ten years or so, but I know it started before that, and I can’t remember that far back.”
“Wait, you remember? Your memory’s come back?”
I nodded and then shook my head. “Sort of. I remember a lot from the age of nineteen upwards, but nothing else.”
“Nothing about your childhood?”
“Nothing.”
“I just know who I am now.”
“But I told you, you don’t ha—”
“Have to be this person. I know! I know now. I didn’t know that a few days ago, but now I know it. And I don’t want to be the person who is only seen through a slot in the wall. I don’t want to eat bland chicken and wear clothes like this! I want to be someone else.”
“No. Not someone else,” he said, sounding emphatic.
I paused. “What do you mean, not someone else?”
“Well, what if the person of last week . . . Zoe! What if Zoe is really who you are and this person is not. What if the life you were living before is not meant to be the life you’re supposed to be living, and never was.”
“How would that have happened, though?”
Noah shook his head. “I don’t know, but I’m sure there are two people who could give you a clue.”
“Who?”
“Your parents.”
