Remember Me Tomorrow

TWENTY-FOUR

J ack leans over to look at the picture. “That girl is Jay’s mother ?”

I nod, still not really believing it. But the picture is right there ... that’s Jay’s smile, right on this man’s face. “Yup. Did Stephen get her pregnant back then? Do you remember Stephen Everett having scandals?” Getting a teenage immigrant girl pregnant would have been a major scandal, wouldn’t it?

Jack snorts. “People like us don’t have scandals. We pay to make them go away.”

“Did Jay ever see this picture when he was at the yacht club?” Gracie asks.

Jack shakes his head. “I don’t think so. I never took him into the restaurant.”

And I remember him telling me that he’d never seen Jack’s secret Instagram. I google Stephen Everett, finding a picture of the guy not long before he died. Stephen Everett looked like any other rich white guy. Nothing stands out. Brown hair, brown eyes, and a big smile.

“That would make Jay Lance and Taylor’s first cousin, wouldn’t it?” Aster asks, forehead furrowed. She’s clearly trying to make sense of the relationships here. I don’t blame her for being confused.

Gracie nods. “Yep. Their mother and Jay’s father are siblings.”

I exhale, staring at the picture. This is huge . This is Jay’s father . “I can’t even imagine.” I look up at Gracie. “Do you think Stephen knew about Jay?”

Gracie shrugs. “ Someone knew. This is all connected. Andrew thought he was entitled to Stephen’s money. And now Andrew’s son thinks he’s entitled to Stephen’s son’s money.”

“The trust,” I say. “ Stephen set it up for Jay.”

Gracie nods. “Maybe it’s an inheritance. And who would be next of kin if Jay doesn’t claim it?”

“Maybe Stephen’s nephew. Or niece.”

Relationships and money. Pretty much the only reasons why anyone wants to hurt anyone.

Jack frowns. “Wait. How do you know Stephen set up a trust for Jay?”

Um, good question. We can’t exactly say Jay told us. Or that we opened his mail.

“His cousin told us,” Gracie says quickly. “His cousin on his mom’s side. She said he had a trust that he could claim when he turned twenty, but no one knew who set it up.”

I’m impressed by Gracie’s quick thinking. I wonder if she’s thinking the same thing I’m thinking that if past Jay is safe and avoided getting on that boat with Lance, then Lance has a motive to keep trying to kill Jay until Jay claims the trust.

“Should you give the police this new information?” Aster asks.

Jack shakes his head. “I need to speak to my lawyer first. He was adamant that we can’t go back to them without checking with him. I’ll give him a call this afternoon.”

The person I wish I could tell is Jay. “Better question is, should I tell Mia?”

“Lance’s girlfriend,” Jack says.

I nod. “Yeah, and supposedly, my oldest friend.”

Aster shakes her head. “You seem so different from that girl. How long did you know her, anyway?”

I exhale. “Mia? Forever. We were best friends since I was seven. That’s when I moved to Alderville. But ... I don’t think I was her best friend.” I exhale. “I was a sidekick. She was only happy with me when I was doing what she wanted.”

“Ugh. So ... basic,” Jack says. “You’re no one’s sidekick. You’re way better than her.”

I exhale. “Yeah, I should have dropped her on Halloween. That was the beginning of the end. Ironically, the day she met Lance.”

Gracie frowns. “What happened on Halloween?”

That night was the first moment that I realized maybe I wasn’t going to fit in here. That I was a weird, octopus-loving book nerd, and everyone knew how to make friends but me.

“It was stupid,” I say. “We were supposed to have matching costumes. It was the first time in forever that I had a non-octopus costume.”

Aster raises a brow.

“Aleeza has this weird thing for octopuses,” Gracie explains.

I nod, counting on my fingers. “I’ve been Davy Jones from Pirates of the Caribbean , Ursula from Little Mermaid , Squidward—”

“Squidward is a squid , not octopus,” Jack says.

I shrug. “He’s still a cephalopod. Anyway, she was supposed to be Sherlock Holmes and I was going to be Watson. So I showed up to the student center Halloween party in a tweed jacket, mustache, and a bowler hat, and all of Lance’s friends laughed and mocked me. And Mia pretended she didn’t even know me.”

“Holy shit,” Jack says, looking at me with awe. “I was there, in a Joker costume!”

I blink. It makes sense—Jack was friends with Lance, so of course he’d be there. I remember the Joker, actually. He was drunk out of his mind. Did he laugh at me that night?

Aster nods, grinning. “Oh my god, I remember you! Personally, I thought you looked hot ... I loved that jacket.” She shakes her head. “The tailoring! It fit you so well!”

Huh. Realizing that these people, my new friends, saw me at my most embarrassing was ... well, embarrassing. But these two probably weren’t laughing at me. Maybe my perceptions of the night are off? Everyone wasn’t laughing.

And of course, the night wasn’t all bad. That guy in the cheap Cthulhu mask didn’t laugh at me and said those things that made me feel better. I was drinking, so I don’t remember much, but he also said I’m no one’s sidekick.

I chuckle to myself. I remember thinking meeting that guy was a sign . It was such a coincidence that the guy trying to pick me up had a freaking Cthulhu mask on—a mythical creature depicted with an octopus face. I’m not sure I would’ve ever walked away from Mia, ever stood on my own two feet, if it weren’t for that little pep talk from the octopus-faced guy.

But ... there are no coincidences. My skin tingles with goose bumps.

“Was Jay at that party?” I ask slowly.

Aster frowns. “I don’t think so.”

“No, he was. He came with me,” Jack says. “He was Cthulhu.”

It was Jay . My heart beats heavily in my chest. The whole time, the guy who was kind and made me feel better that night was Jay . I open the calendar on my phone, where I marked the dates in Jay’s timeline so I could remember how much time we had until his disappearance. That Halloween party on Jay’s October 29 would have been my March 25—the night of Jack’s party. I remember getting home that night from Jack’s house sad and drunk, and Jay made me feel better. Again. He told me he’d been out and would tell me later where he’d gone. And we slept in each other’s arms across time. But the next day they found Jay’s coat and phone, and he never ended up telling me where he went.

It was all on purpose. I told Jay I’d gone to a Halloween party dressed as Dr. Watson, and he went so he could find me. He wore a mask so I wouldn’t recognize him. But he got an octopus-related mask so I’d pay attention to him.

“You okay?” Gracie asks.

I nod. I, of course, can’t let on to Aster and Jack why this hurts so much. But Gracie has to understand. “I wish I could have known him,” I say as I wipe away a tear. “I feel like I do, after investigating his disappearances for so long.” I chuckle. “He liked Cthulhu, and I like octopuses.”

“I have a bunch of pictures and videos from that party,” Aster says. “I think you might be in one of them.” She searches on her phone.

Aster finally holds out her phone to show me a picture. It’s definitely from that party. There are a lot of people around, but on the side of the picture, I’m there on a couch. I have that ridiculous hat on my lap.

And Cthulhu is next to me. My head is resting on his shoulder.

I don’t remember this, but I was quite out of it that night. I look closely at the picture. It’s the most ridiculous image I’ve ever seen. Dr. John H. Watson, sitting deep in her feelings, with Cthulhu.

But it was us. Me and Jay. Why didn’t he tell me about this? This happened, both in his timeline and in mine.

I wipe another tear falling down my cheek.

“You did meet him,” Gracie says softly. She, of course, knows that I fell in love with him too.

Jack smiles. “Jay was a great judge of people. He saw through phony crap better than any of us. I wish I remembered you from Halloween when we met at my party.”

I stare at Jack, realizing something. “You did.”

He raises a brow.

I nod. “Jack, you did remember me! When I got to your party, you said, ‘Oh, it’s you. You looked better in a suit.’ And you said all this cryptic shit, calling me a water lily and saying Jay danced with the water lily. You also knew about Jay’s father. You said the swamp flows through Jay’s veins. I thought you were just stoned, but you actually knew all of this.”

Jack frowns. “I don’t remember that.”

“You’ve always said weird shit when you’re baked,” Aster says.

“Jack,” I say. “You told me on Sunday that your gut instincts are so good your mom calls you a fortune teller, right?”

He nods, but I can see that he’s embarrassed.

“What if ...” I’m about to sound like a complete idiot. This is so implausible that it’s almost laughable. But me and Jay talking daily for the last month is also implausible. And so is Jay in a Cthulhu mask finding me at a Halloween party. Yet it all happened. “What if you can tell your past self things? Just now, you said that you wished that back at your party you knew that it was me in the Dr. Watson costume at the Halloween party. What if that’s why you knew who I was back then? People always say they wish they could tell their past self things ... What if you actually can ?”

Everyone at the table stares at me like I’ve lost my mind. Which, fair. But at least Gracie should know that the impossible is actually possible.

Jack blinks at me. “I can.”

“Can what?”

His eyes are still, like he can’t believe what he’s saying either. “I feel like I’ve always known I can do that. When I’m really drunk, I talk to my future self.”

Gracie exhales. “This is wild shit.”

Aster nods. “I’ve heard of this! This lady on Etsy does future-self readings! Jack, you can make a fortune if you sell this ability.”

Jack rolls his eyes. “I don’t need a fortune—I have several waiting for me. Plus, I can’t control it. It just ... happens .”

I shake my head, excited. “No, I think you can control it. But you control it on the future side. Like, right now, you said you wished your past self knew something. And your past self did know it. I think ...” I exhale. “Tell your past self all about Jay.”

He turns and looks at me like I’ve lost my mind. I don’t blame him. “What?”

“Tell your past self,” I say again. “On that night on your boat when you drank spiked Gatorade. Or before that. You said you were drunk in the afternoon, then sobered up. Tell that Jack that Stephen Everett is Jay’s father, and that Lance wants to kill Jay. Maybe Jay can ... I don’t know. Run away or something. Save himself.”

Everyone is looking at me like I’m nuts again, but I have to make Jack try. I’m grasping at straws here, but this is the only way I can get a message back to Jay. Jack is the only one who can do this.

Jack shakes his head. “I don’t even know how to do that,” he says. He doesn’t look as skeptical of me anymore, at least.

“Like you just did,” Gracie says. “Wish that you knew back then that Stephen is Jay’s father. Actually, wish that you’d shown Jay that picture of his mother with Stephen, and Lance and Taylor’s parents.”

I snort. This is the picture that Jack sent Jay. “You did! Remember when we met on the library steps after your party, you said it started with a picture on a text.”

Jack raises a brow, then finally sighs. “Fine. What could it hurt? The day Jay disappeared, I really wish I knew that he was Stephen Everett’s son. I wish I’d texted him the picture from the yacht club so he could save himself.” He exhales. “Who knows, maybe even a fuckup like me can help someone.”

I shake my head. “You’re not a fuckup.” Jay said Jack was weirdly the most trustworthy person in that group. “I ... I don’t think Jay thought you were a fuckup either.”

He’s quiet for a while before smiling small. “What did he say to you that night? In the Cthulhu mask?”

I shrug. “He gave me some advice about stepping away from people who were holding me back. And he said ...” I pause, remembering how his words made me feel like I could break free of Mia’s influence one day. “He said when things don’t go as planned, friends never forget friends .”

Gracie frowns at me. “Jay said that?”

I nod. He said that. And now I know he was talking about him disappearing. Telling me he wasn’t going to forget me.

And here we are now, and things didn’t go as planned. He didn’t get back to the room at six on Sunday like he was supposed to. But he wouldn’t have forgotten me. In fact, he promised me once that if something went wrong, he would leave me a message somehow.

I may not have a way to talk to the past (other than a long shot with an inebriated trust-fund kid), but Jay is in the past. He had to have left me a message.

I just have to find it.

After my last afternoon class on Tuesday, I rush back to my room to find any message Jay may have left me, but when I get there, I don’t know where to start.

I check the whole closet, especially the tiny space behind the shelf where he tried to leave me a message last time. Nothing. I check the beds and under the mattresses. I inspect every wall. Every drawer. Under every drawer. There is nothing. Anywhere.

This is ridiculous. Of course there’s nothing.

I sit on Jay’s bed. I’m making too many assumptions here. Assuming the timelines match up enough that the message would be here for me. Assuming the cleaners missed the message when they cleaned the room over the Christmas break. And most of all, assuming he would have had the ability to leave me a message at all.

If he made it back to this room, he wouldn’t have left it again of his own free will. He could have been drugged, knocked out, or whatever. Maybe he didn’t even come back from his mother’s. Maybe the cameras were wrong, and he wasn’t here. Maybe he took my advice and stayed away, hiding until he could claim the trust. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

I sigh. I’m all out of ideas. If he left me a message, I would have seen it five months ago, long before I knew what I was looking at.

I look at Ted, and Ted gives me nothing. Because he’s a stuffed animal, and I’m losing my mind.

I can’t sleep at all that night. I want to, because I’m exhausted, but my mind keeps replaying everything I learned this morning. I get out of bed at 2:00 a.m. and turn on my computer, looking for more confirmation that Stephen Everett is Jay’s father, and Lance and Taylor’s uncle. After looking at Taylor’s and her mother’s socials going way, way back, I find old pictures of family events that include Stephen. I even find some pictures of their grandmother, the kick-ass lawyer Helen Grant, at a birthday party at her cottage. A huge crowd of beautiful white people, with young Lance and young Taylor in the middle.

Jay should have been in that picture.

I google Stephen Everett and Salma Hoque together and find no hits at all. I find that picture in the yacht club’s newsletter online, and Stephen’s name is in the caption, but Salma’s is not. It doesn’t make sense. Why was she there at the yacht club at all? Stephen apparently grew up in north Toronto and went to private schools, while Salma grew up in Scarborough in an immigrant community. They did not go to the same high school. Their paths should never have crossed.

I think back to the things Jay told me about his mother. She moved to Canada with her brother, sister-in-law, and parents when she was thirteen. She, like the rest of the family, had to work. Mom waited tables at some posh place near the lake. She still refuses to butter toast from all the brunches she served.

Could the place by the lake be the yacht club? If she worked there, I could see the club not bothering to label her in the picture, even if she had a relationship with the son of a member. She was just a waitress.

I couldn’t save my Jay, but getting justice for his mother, the smiling young girl who worked at a yacht club, is enough of a reason to keep going.

After breakfast, I’m on my way to class when someone taps my arm. When I turn to see who it is, it takes me a few moments to remember the face.

“Kegan!” I finally say. “You work at campus housing.”

He smiles. “That’s me. And you’re Aleeza from East House. I’ve been meaning to call you all week—I fixed the glitch in your room.”

I frown. “What glitch?”

“Remember you came into the housing office last month saying your ResConnect was glitching? Last week, I happened to see a duplicate record in the backend. Just like you said, the former resident wasn’t completely removed from the room. It’s all tech jargon, but I deleted the duplicate record. It’s backend systems, so it may take a few days to reflect in the app, but you shouldn’t see anyone else in your room anymore.”

All the air seems to leave my lungs at once. I have to lean on the nearby wall so I don’t fall over.

He deleted Jay from my room.

“Are you okay?” Kegan asks, concerned.

I manage to speak. “When did you do this?”

“Friday, I think. I was cleaning up the database. It was a tangled mess back there.”

“So ... would it have been fixed by Sunday?”

“Yeah, could have. You probably noticed the student wasn’t there anymore and thought it was magic or something. Not magic, just complicated tech! See you later!”

Kegan walks away, and I stand there with my head resting on the wall. Our connection was deleted . If Jay was safe that day, he wouldn’t have been able to tell me. And I’ll never know because he’ll never be on my ResConnect again.

I close my eyes. I’ll never speak to him again.

I exhale. If the ResConnect glitch was fixed, then it’s possible he came back to the room on Sunday but couldn’t see me in the app even though I was in the room. Did he think I abandoned him when I promised I’d be there?

What would he have done if he came back to the room to tell me he was fine, that he got Jack’s message, that he knew to stay away from Lance ... but I wasn’t there?

I push myself off the wall. He would have left the message somewhere else, that’s what he would have done. He said so many times that he’d never forget me. I think back to the facts I know from that night. He came back into the building at six and was seen climbing the stairs. Then seen going down them at eight. An eyewitness saw him in the mailroom then. Then he went back up the stairs, and he wasn’t seen again. I assume he came downstairs again at some point using the secret staircase, but I don’t know when.

What was he doing in the mailroom at eight o’clock on a Sunday? There is no mail on weekends. And he couldn’t have been leaving me a message in my mailbox because I would have seen it a long time ago.

Wait. There’s a bulletin board in the mailroom, one that hasn’t been emptied in months. Screw my media class. I rush back to East House and go straight to the mailroom.

The bulletin board is about five layers deep of paper. I have no idea why no one ever cleans it. How can I find a note from Jay in all this? I don’t even know what I’m looking for.

After about three minutes of searching the board, a red-and-orange image draws my eyes. I push aside the ad for tutoring that’s half covering it.

It’s an abstract watercolor painting of a flame, done in fiery shades of orange, yellow, and red, with some wisps of blue around it. The style is unmistakable. This is Manal Hoque’s art.

I take the painting down and inspect it. It’s painted on a small postcard-size sheet of watercolor paper, and up close, I realize it’s not a flame at all. The swirling lines are tentacles.

It’s an octopus. This is the painting that Jay asked Manal to make for me. The one that he said he’d find a way to get to me one day. Did he pin this to the board right after Manal made it?

Or did he leave it here on Sunday when he realized he couldn’t leave me a message in our room because he thought I wasn’t there?

I turn the small card over.

In small, messy writing, it says, I LOVE YOU. Follow me on Instagram for updates.

I blink. He loves me? The picture blurs with tears, but I’ve cried enough in the last few days. I wipe my eyes and read it again. What does he mean by follow me on Instagram ? Follow who?

I take the painting and rush up to my room. I check ResConnect first, but of course he’s not there. I look back through the screenshots to what he said when Manal painted this. I’ll give it to you in person when I am safe and sound.

This painting is the message. He’s safe and sound. But where? I check Jay’s Instagram account, but he hasn’t posted in months. Not since long before he disappeared. I try to check Manal’s next, but she still has me blocked. If the message is on her account, I won’t see it.

I almost call Gracie and ask her to check Manal’s account, when I wonder: Did Jay have another Instagram account? I suddenly remember ... the fake one he set up to follow the TCU Birdwatcher account! But he never told me the name of his fake account. I open the Birdwatcher Instagram and look at the followers. There are more than a hundred of them. One of them is Jay.

I start scrolling through the names. Now that I know more people in the school, I do recognize some of the accounts following the Birdwatcher. Or more like, I recognize the pictures. I see Bailey Cressman, Tamara from Jack’s party, even Taylor and Lance. Also, a lot of birdwatching accounts follow it, too, maybe not realizing that the account isn’t actually for watching birds. I have no idea how to find Jay, though. I know the account, or the picture, won’t have his name, or even have anything connected to him, or the Birdwatcher would have known who it was.

Finally, I see an account. @Keanu58008. The picture is a nineties-era one of Keanu Reeves. And it follows my account.

Could this be Jay? Maybe he named it this as a nod to that Keanu Reeves movie The Lake House ? But what about the numbers ...

I go back and look at the chat logs, and yes, that note he tried to leave me in the closet said 100458008. I now know that 1004 is his birthday, but I never did find out the significance of 58008. But here’s that number again.

I open the account, and there is only one post, uploaded on November 6—the day Jay disappeared, at 8:07 p.m. It’s a picture of the bulletin board with Manal’s art visible on the bottom right corner.

The caption says: Wednesday’s taking me home. I’ll be fine with her.

I blink. What does that even mean? I can’t be certain that this account really is Jay—but the Keanu reference, plus the number, and of course the picture on the East House bulletin board tell me this is him. And if it is him, then as of 8:07 p.m. that night, he was fine. He saved himself and thought he would be fine in the future. But if he’s fine, if he’s alive, why isn’t he talking to me? It’s been five months—why didn’t he pick up the phone and call me? And what does Wednesday’s taking me home mean? Today is Wednesday. But it was a Sunday when he disappeared. Was it a Wednesday when he had Manal make the painting?

Does I’ll be fine with her mean he’s still alive?

I try to DM the account, but it’s closed to DMs. I add a comment on the post from my own account. DM me if you’re alive. I turn notifications on for Instagram DMs, so I’ll know immediately if he responds.

I suddenly remember something. He doesn’t mean Wednesday the day; he means Wednesday the person .

Taylor. She was sexy Wednesday Addams for Halloween.

If Taylor took him, then I need to talk to her.