I put my hands on my hips and stared out over the crowd. I might as well be a ghost to everyone here. And I knew this wasn’t entirely their fault either; I had deliberately made myself into a ghost. Like I had with my neighbor. I waited for someone to say something to me. Anything. For someone to step forward and say, “Oh yes, I know you! I see you!” But no one did. Not even Cynthia. Everyone just stared at me in wide-eyed, gaping shock. So I turned my back on all the people I had “shared” my life with for seven years and I ran. Ran to the one person in the world who probably cared about me.
CHAPTER 39
I banged on the door, tears running down my face, I couldn’t keep them down; they had been pouring out of my eyes the entire way here. And when the door opened, the relief washed over me in waves and I couldn’t hold back.
“I’m here,” I said, wiping tears from my eyes and looking at this man that I didn’t recognize but knew I knew.
“Where have you been? I’ve been looking for you,” he said.
“I know! I know!” I nodded my head and then rushed towards him for a hug.
“Whoa, whoa . . . what are you doing?” He stepped back and held his hands up, blocking me.
“I was trying to hug you.” I was still smiling at him.
“We don’t hug,” he said flatly.
“So I’ve heard. And I’m sorry. I don’t remember how long we’ve been friends, because I can’t really remember— Long story, I’ll tell you soon, but I swear I’m going to start hugging you. I want to change. I know I probably haven’t been the best of friends towards you, but I’m ready to start now.” I stepped forward and tried to hug Eugene again. And he took a big step back.
“Uh . . . we’re not friends,” he said.
“What? We are!”
“No. We’re not.”
I blinked. “But you left me all those notes. You filed a missing person report? Of course we’re friends.”
“I only left you those notes and filed the missing person report because I thought you had done a runner on me.”
“A what?”
“When I gave you the bill.”
“What bill?” I asked.
Eugene folded his arms now and glared at me. “Oh my God, are you actually going to do this . . . what bill? What bill? Are you kidding me?”
“I’ve lost my memory. I really don’t know what you’re talking about. What bill?”
“The vet’s bill! For my dog!” He sounded like he was getting worked up and I shook my head. I still had no idea what he was saying to me.
Eugene looked over his shoulder and then whistled. I watched as a shadow began to emerge from behind him, and when it was fully in the light, I gasped.
“What happened?” I stared at the dog with the cone around his neck and the patch over his eye.
“You—you happened! You approached Rex a few weeks ago and he ran into the road and was hit by a car. Don’t you remember that?”
I looked down at poor Rex. “No, I don’t. I’m sorry.”
“He had to have his eye removed!”
“Noooo!” My hands flew up and covered my mouth in shock.
“And he had to have pins put in his leg. It’s broken in three places.”
“What! I’m so sorry, I didn’t know. I was wearing this watch. It gives off ultrasonic waves that humans can’t hear and that insects and animals can, and it’s meant to repel insects but it also affects animals and I didn’t know it did, I just thought animals hated me and—”
“I don’t really care what you were wearing. You said you would pay for his vet’s bill. And then the day I gave it to you, you disappeared.”
My stomach dropped. “You filed the missing person report because of that? Not because we’re friends?” That cold, clammy, sweaty feeling washed over me again.
“Friends!” And now he smiled. It was smug and awful and made me feel worse about myself than I already did. “Darling, I don’t think you have friends. That’s what everyone in the building says anyway.”
“People in the building talk about me?”
“Well, you come up every now and then . . . sometimes rather colorfully,” he said, trying to stop a smile.
“Wh-what do you mean?” I asked, but he didn’t answer. “Please. What do people say about me? I need to know.”
“Some people call you the B in 3C.” He said this a