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“Of course you do.”
Jonah scratches his head, his hair immobile. He must spend hours grooming. Like a cat, I think. Or those monkeys forever plucking things from their fur.
“Do you even remotely remember me?” he asks.
I remember him staking out the sidewalk outside my building. I remember barfing at his feet. I certainly remember him telling me the true, horrible nature of Lisa Milner’s death. But other than that, I have no recollection of Jonah Thompson, which he deduces from my lack of a speedy answer.
“You don’t,” he says.
“Should I?”
“We went to college together, Quincy. I was in your psych class.”
Now, that’s a surprise, mostly because it means Jonah is a good five years older than I first thought. Or else he’s sorely mistaken.
“Are you sure?” I say.
“Positive,” he says. “Tamburro Hall. I sat one row behind you. Not that there was assigned seating or anything.”
I do remember the classroom in Tamburro Hall. It was a drafty half-circle that sloped sharply to ground level. The rows of seats were arranged stadium-style, with the knees of the person behind you mere inches from the back of your head. After the first week, everyone more or less sat in the same spot every class. Mine was near the back, slightly to the left.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I don’t remember you at all.”
“I definitely remember you,” Jonah says. “A lot of times you’d say hi to me when taking your seat before class started.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. You were very friendly. I remember how happy you always seemed.”
Happy. I honestly can’t remember the last time someone used that word to describe me.
“You sat with another girl,” Jonah continues. “She came in late a lot.”
He’s talking about Janelle, who would sneak into class after it started, often hungover. On several occasions she fell asleep, head on my shoulder. After class, I’d let her copy my notes.
“You were friends,” he says. “I think. Maybe I’m wrong. I remember a lot of bickering going on.”
“We didn’t bicker,” I say.
“You totally did. There was some passive-aggressive thing going on between you two. Like you pretended to be best friends but actually couldn’t stand each other.”
I don’t remember any of this, which doesn’t mean it’s not the truth. Apparently it happened with enough frequency to make Jonah remember.
“We were best friends,” I say quietly.
“Oh God,” Jonah says, doing a shitty job of pretending to piece it together just now. Surely he already knew. Two girls who sat in class in front of him, neither of them coming back after one October weekend. “I shouldn’t have brought it up.”
No, he shouldn’t have, and I would lecture him about it if my head wasn’t hurting and I wasn’t so eager to change the subject.
“Now that we’ve established how I have a poor memory, it’s time for you to tell me why I’m here,” I say. “Your minute starts now.”
Jonah dives right in, a salesman making his elevator pitch. I suspect he’s practiced this routine. It has the smoothness of multiple rehearsals.
“You’ve made it very clear you don’t want to talk about what happened to you. I understand that and I accept it. This isn’t about your situation, Quincy, although you know I’m here if you ever do want to discuss it. This is about Samantha Boyd andhersituation.”
“You said she was lying to me. About what?”
“I’ll get to that,” he says. “What I want to know is how muchyouknow about her.”