x x x
I take the computer to the drugstore, which has a shipping outlet at the back. Troy Boggins, who was a year ahead of me in high school, is working behind the counter. “Hey, Cody. Where you been hiding?” he asks.
“I haven’t been hiding,” I say. “I’ve been working.”
“Oh, yeah,” he drawls. “Where you working these days?”
There’s nothing to be ashamed of about cleaning houses. It’s honest work and I make good money, probably more than Troy. But Troy didn’t spend four years of high school going on about how the minute the ink was dry on his diploma, he was getting the hell out of here. Well, I didn’t either. Meg did, though like most of her plans, it became my plan too. Then Meg left and I stayed.
When I don’t answer, Troy tells me it’ll cost forty dollars each way to mail the computer. “Plus more if you want insurance.”
Eighty bucks? That’s how much a bus ticket costs. The weekend’s coming up, and I have cash from the extra shifts. I decide to take the computer to Tacoma myself. I’ll get the answers faster that way.
I tell Troy I changed my mind.
“No worries,” he says.
I turn to walk away. As I do, Troy says: “Wanna hang out sometime? Go out for a beer?”
Troy Boggins is the kind of guy that, if you added fifteen or twenty years, Tricia would date. He never paid me any attention in high school. His sudden interest should be flattering, but instead it feels ominous. Like without Meg by my side, it’s clear what I am. What I’ve been all along.
x x x
When I tell Tricia I’m going back to Tacoma for the weekend, she gives me a funny look. It’s not like she’ll stop me. I’m eighteen, and even if I weren’t, she’s never been that kind of mother. “Is there a guy?” she asks.
“What? No! It’s for Meg’s stuff. Why would you say that?”
She narrows her eyes and sniffs, like she’s trying to smell something on me. Then she gives me twenty bucks for the trip.
I text Alice that I’m coming and ask if I can crash, and she responds with a bunch of exclamation points, like we’re buddies or something. She says she’ll be gone most of Saturday at her internship, but we can hang out Sunday. I tell Harry I’m coming too, and he says he’ll look at the computer right away, that he’s looking forward to it.
x x x
I get in late, but the couch has been made up for me. I crash there. In the morning, Harry and I go into his room, which has, like, five computers in it, all on and humming. We turn on Meg’s. He opens her mail program first. “I’m not sure about retrieving the deleted email,” he says once he’s looked around. “Her mail program is set to use IMAP, so once messages are deleted here, they’re also gone from the server.”
I nod, as if that makes sense to me.
He clicks on the encrypted file. “She probably meant to throw this away too, but the encryption got corrupted somehow and it prevented the machine from throwing it away.”
“What do you mean?”
“You found it in the trash, right?”
I nod again.
“She probably tried to empty it, but watch. . . .” He goes to the menu and selects “Empty Trash.”
“Don’t!” I yell.
He holds up his hand for me to stop. Some of the things empty, but then an error message reads, “The operation cannot be completed because the item ‘Unnamed Folder’ is in use.”
“I put some dummy folders in the trash so we could see that it’ll empty that, but not this. And don’t worry, I already copied this folder onto my computer. But my guess is, she meant to toss it, but couldn’t.”
“Oh.”
“Whatever it is, it’s something she didn’t want people to see. You sure you want to see it?”
I shake my head. I’m not sure at all. “This isn’t about what I want.”
“Okay. I’m doing something this afternoon, but I’ll work on it before and when I get home. It’s going to take a little bit of doing.”
I’m about to apologize, but I see the delight in Harry’s eyes, like I’ve just given him the world’s biggest puzzle. So I thank him instead.
He nods. “How are the cats doing?”
“Don’t know. That guy Ben took them.”
“He lives in Seattle, right?”
I shrug. I think that’s what he said.
“If you want to check on the cats, my church group is going up there this afternoon to paint a youth center. We could give you a ride.”
“They’re kittens, Harry, not babies. And they’re probably not even there. He was sending them to his mom.” Though the way Ben talked, I didn’t get the sense he was the kind of guy who saw his mom every week. “Anyhow, they’re not my concern anymore.”
He holds his hands up. “Sorry. You seemed pretty into them. Meg was.”
“I’m not Meg.”
He nods again. “Let me get to work on this.”