I didn’t go home.
I didn’t go to the park.
I drove and drove until I couldn’t concentrate any longer. Even though my life was hot mess express at the moment, I really didn’t want to accidentally take out a family of four. I pulled into a shopping center and turned off the car. I let my head fall back against the seat.
Yesterday I’d been worried about some kind of psychotic Origin out to kill me, and today my entire life had imploded.
I stared at the ceiling. “How is this possible?”
None of it sounded like it could be, but why would she lie and why would Luc lie? What did they have to gain by telling me that my entire life was one big fat façade?
They wouldn’t.
A huge part of me knew that it was the truth. There was nothing to gain by the lies. Nothing.
When I’d felt like the world was on the verge of imploding, I hadn’t realized it was my world that had been hours away from self-destructing.
I squeezed my eyes shut. “My name is Evelyn. My name is . . .”
I couldn’t remember what it was like to be a kid. In the quiet, I searched and searched my memories. There were glimpses of running and laughing, the scent of wet soil and the sound of rushing water, but nothing concrete. How had I not noticed that before? Could it be as simple as what Luc had said? That I hadn’t noticed, because I simply hadn’t thought to?
Sounded unreal, but it wasn’t like I’d spent time each day reminiscing about the good old days or something.
My phone rang, jarring in the silence.
I reached into my bag and pulled the phone out. Heidi. I started to answer the call but stopped. Luc could’ve told Emery what had happened. Or it could just be that I wasn’t in class and Heidi had snuck out into the hall to call me. Either way, she was too close to Luc.
Too close to everything.
I silenced the phone and then saw there were several missed calls and texts. One from her. Several from Zoe and Heidi. A text from James. I dropped my phone back into the bag. Did Heidi know what Luc had told me? It was possible. He could’ve told Emery and she could’ve confided in Heidi.
The back of my throat burned as I lowered my head to the steering wheel. I fought back tears as I closed my hands into fists, pulling my elbows into my stomach. The movement didn’t even hurt my arm.
My arm that had been broken less than twenty-four hours ago.
I would do it again, because the only other option would be that you wouldn’t be standing in front of me.
“Oh God,” I whispered, a sob racking my body, but I didn’t let the tears fall. I refused to.
My phone rang again. Cursing, I grabbed it and was a second from pitching it through a window, but saw that it was Zoe. I stared at the picture of us. We were making duck faces in our selfie.
She had nothing to do with this or Luc.
I answered, croaking out, “Hello?”
“Evie! God.” Her voice was hushed. “Where are you?”
I glanced out the window. “I’m outside of a Target. Where are you?”
“I’m hiding in the bathroom at school, calling you. Is there a reason why you’re there and not at school?” she asked. “Your mom called Heidi this morning, asking if you came to school.”
Mom.
“We waited until lunch to see if you would show up, but when you didn’t and then didn’t answer any of our calls, we started to get really freaked,” she said. “You know, considering how classmates are disappearing left and right.”
I should have thought about that.
“Especially since I heard someone say some guy jumped you in the parking lot after school. Heidi said that wasn’t true, but I’m not so sure.”
“That’s not true.” I didn’t want her to worry. “I’m fine.”
There was a beat of silence. “If you’re fine, why aren’t you at school?”
I pushed my hair back. “Mom and I—We got into this huge fight this morning. I just couldn’t go to school.”
“About what?” she asked.
I pressed my lips together as I blinked back hot tears. “Nothing.” I cleared my throat. “It’s nothing. Look, I haven’t eaten. I’m going to grab something at Target.”
“Wait—I can leave school and come meet you.”
“That’s not necessary. I’m okay.”
“Evie—”
I winced at the sound of my name. “I’m fine. Seriously. Go back to class. I’ll text you later.”
Not giving her a chance to argue, I hung up the phone. I sat there for a couple of moments, and then a sudden, shattering thought occurred to me.
“Who the hell is Evelyn Dasher then?”
Better yet, did she even exist?
* * *
Thirty minutes later I walked back into my house. It was empty and quiet. Her car was gone. Wasn’t exactly surprised. Knowing her, she was probably at work.
I stopped in the middle of the living room. Actually, I didn’t know her. At all. I just knew what she let me see, which was a lie.
I picked up the wooden candleholder, the really nice gray-and-white one that I still hadn’t take a picture of. I walked over to the office doors and slammed the heavy base through the square window by the lock. Glass shattered, pinging off the floor.
The sound was frighteningly satisfying.
Reaching inside the gap, I unlocked the door. It swung open with a rush of cold air. I stepped into the room, seeing it for the first time.
Looked like any normal office. Built-in bookshelves lined with medical tomes. A neat, dark cherry oak desk with a desktop computer sitting next to a large desk calendar. There were bins—organizing bins everywhere, under the window seat and on the bookshelves.
I stalked toward the nearest one, a gray cloth bin under the window seat. Bending down, I picked it up and peeled the lid off, dumping the contents onto the floor. Receipts fluttered. Hundreds of them. I grabbed the next bin and it was heavier. I turned it upside down, and envelopes fell out, along with a black handgun.
The gun thumped off the floor.
“Jesus,” I muttered, leaving the gun where it fell. I stepped over it and got to work. Every bin came down. Every single one, and there was nothing—not a damn thing in any of them who told me who Evelyn Dasher was or if she ever existed.
Not until I pulled open the bottom drawer of the desk, which took using a hammer I’d found in the garage and prying it open. In the process, wood splintered, and I really didn’t care.
A photo album.
I found myself staring down at a freaking photo album.
There supposedly hadn’t been any that had survived the invasion. That was what I’d been told. That was what I’d believed to be the truth. Surprise, surprise. That was also a damn lie.
I dropped the hammer onto the floor and then snatched up the photo album and carried it over onto the window. I sat down and yelped. I stood and ripped the cushion back.
Another shotgun.
“Are you freaking kidding me?” I picked it up and propped it against the wall. Then I sat back down. “Geez.”
Drawing in a deep breath, I cracked open the photo album and there, right on the first page, was photo of my mom and who I knew immediately to be Jason Dasher. They were younger, probably in their twenties. He was in full military uniform with awards and shiny things on his breast and shoulder. She wore a pretty white dress and had flowers in her hair.
She wasn’t wearing contacts.
Her eyes were as blue as they’d been this morning.
Hands shaking, I flipped the glossy pages. There were more pictures of them, in places that appeared to be far from here. Tropical, I was guessing, based on the palm trees. There were a few of her in what appeared to be army greens. Candid snapshots taken of them both, and it was evident that there had been a relationship between them. I didn’t know how many pictures I’d flipped past before I saw her.
Evelyn Dasher was real.
It was the three of them.
Jason and Sylvia Dasher stood behind a girl who had to be about nine or ten, give or take a year or so. Both had their hands on her shoulders. Peeling back the clear film, I pulled the picture out.
She had a cherub face—round with big cheeks. Freckles like me. Long blond hair. Brown eyes.
“Holy Christ,” I whispered. She looked like me. That was like climbing the Mount Everest of messed up and sticking a freak flag on the top of it.
I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
Was this why the door to her office was always locked?
I put the picture aside and kept turning the pages. There were more pictures—a birthday party with a cake. There was a number eight candle in the middle of it. There were first-day-of-school pictures—photos with her in a frilly blue dress and black shoes. In between the pages, there were blank sheets—sheets where there had to have been photos once, because perfect square white marks stood out in stark contrast against the faded yellow of the rest of the page.
I came upon another birthday picture. She had this little cone-shaped hat on and she was smiling so brightly at the camera. There was another cake, and the man crouched next to her was him: the man whose face I couldn’t remember, whose voice I couldn’t hear. But that wasn’t the part of the picture that was an undeniable stab to the chest.
Behind her, hanging from the ceiling, was a sparkling banner. It had unicorns on either side of the words—words that spelled out HAPPY BIRTHDAY, EVELYN.
Evelyn.
That wasn’t me.
She looked like me, like we could be cousins, but that wasn’t me.
All these photos, and none of you as a kid.
Luc had said that to me. Luc had said so much. My hand trembled as the picture blurred. How was I supposed to . . . How was I supposed to process this?
How was I supposed to understand this?
That I was holding a picture of Evelyn Dasher and she wasn’t . . . wasn’t me.