Harlan Coben: Stay close

“I saw you picking on your brother.”

“You’re inside. You couldn’t hear anything. For all you know, I said, ‘I love you so much, Jordan.’”

“She did not!” Jordan shouted.

“I know she didn’t,” Megan said.

“She called me a loser and said I had no friends!”

Megan sighed. “Kaylie…”

“I did not!”

Megan just frowned at her.

“It’s his word against mine,” Kaylie protested. “Why do you always take his side?”

Every kid, Megan thought, is a frustrated lawyer, finding loopholes, demanding impossible levels of proof, attacking even the most minute of minutia.

“You have practice tonight,” Megan told Kaylie.

Kaylie’s head dropped to her shoulder, her entire body slumping. “Do I have to go?”

“You made a commitment to this team, young lady.”

Even as Megan said it-even as she had said similar words a zillion times before-she still couldn’t believe the words were coming from her own mouth.

“But I don’t want to go,” Kaylie whined. “I’m so tired. And I’m supposed to go out with Ginger later, remember, to…”

Kaylie may have said more, but Megan turned away, not really interested. In the TV room, her husband, Dave, was sprawled out in gray sweats. Dave was watching the latest fallen movie actor bragging in some tasteless interview about the many women he’d bagged and the years of scoring at strip clubs. The actor was manic and wide-eyed and clearly on something that required a physician with a loose prescription pad.

From his spot on the couch, Dave shook his head in disgust. “What is this world coming to?” Dave said, gesturing at the screen. “Can you believe this jerk? What a tool.”

Megan nodded, suppressing a smile. Years ago she had known that tool quite well. Biblically even. The Tool was actually a pretty nice guy who tipped well, enjoyed threesomes, and cried like a baby when he drank too much.

A long time ago.

Dave turned and smiled at her with everything he had. “Hey, babe.”

“Hey.”

Dave still did that, smiled at her as though seeing her anew, for the first time, and she knew again that she was lucky, that she should be grateful. This was Megan’s life now. That old life-the one nobody in this happy suburban wonderland of cul-de-sacs and good schools and brick McMansions knew about-had been killed off and buried in a shallow ditch.

“You want me to drive Kaylie to soccer?” Dave asked.

“I can do it.”

“You’re sure?”

Megan nodded. Not even Dave knew the truth about the woman who had shared his bed for the past sixteen years. Dave didn’t even know that Megan’s real name was, strangely enough, Maygin. Same pronunciation but computers and IDs only know spelling. She would have asked her mother why the weird spelling, but her mother had died before Megan could talk. She had never known her father or even who he was. She’d been orphaned young, grew up hard, ended up stripping in Vegas and then Atlantic City, took it a step further, loved it. Yes, loved it. It was fun and exciting and electrifying. There was always something going on, always a sense of danger and possibility and passion.

“Mom?”

It was Jordan. “Yes, honey.”

“Mrs. Freedman says you didn’t sign the permission slip for the class trip.”

“I’ll send her an e-mail.”

“She said it was due on Friday.”

“Don’t worry about it, honey, okay?”

It took Jordan another moment or two but eventually he was placated.

Megan knew that she should be grateful. Girls die young in her old life. Every emotion, every second in that world, is almost too intense-life raised to the tenth power-and that doesn’t jibe with longevity. You get burned out. You get strung out. There is a heady quality to that kind of action. There is also an inherent danger. When it finally spun out of control, when Megan’s very life was suddenly in jeopardy, she had not only found a way to escape but to start over completely anew, reborn if you will, with a loving husband, beautiful children, a home with four bedrooms, and a pool in the yard.

Somehow, almost by accident really, Megan Pierce had stumbled from the depths of what some might call a seedy cesspool into the ultimate American dream. She had, in order to save herself, played it straight and almost talked herself into believing that this was the best possible world. And why not? For her entire life, in movies and on television, Megan, like the rest of us, had been inundated with images claiming that her old life was wrong, immoral, wouldn’t last-while this family life, the house and picket fence, was enviable, appropriate, celestial.

But here was the truth: Megan missed her old life. She was not supposed to. She was supposed to be grateful and thrilled that she of all people, with the destructive route she’d taken, had ended up with what every little girl dreams of. But the truth was, a truth it had taken her years to admit to herself, she still longed for those dark rooms; the lustful, hungry stares from strangers; the pounding, pulsating music; the crazy lights; the adrenaline spikes.

And now?

Dave flipping stations: “So you don’t mind driving? Because the Jets are on.”

Kaylie looking through her gym bag: “Mom, where’s my uniform? Did you wash it like I asked?”

Jordan opening the Sub-Zero: “Can you make me a grilled cheese in the panini maker? And not with that whole grain bread.”

She loved them. She did. But there were times, like today, when she realized that after a youth of skating along slippery surfaces she had now settled into a domestic rut of dazzling sameness, each day forced to perform the same show with the same players as the day before, just each player one day older. Megan wondered why it had to be this way, why we are forced to choose one life. Why do we insist that there can only be one “us,” one life that makes us up in our entirety? Why can’t we have more than one identity? And why do we have to destroy one life in order to create another? We claim to long for the “well rounded,” the Renaissance man or woman inside all of us, yet our only variety is cosmetic. In reality we do all we can to smother that spirit out, to make us conform, to define us as one thing and one thing only.

Dave flipped back to the fallen movie star. “This guy,” Dave said with a shake of head. But just hearing that famous manic voice brought Megan back-his hand twined in her thong, his face pressed against her back, scruffy and wet from tears.

“You’re the only one who understands me, Cassie…”

Yes, she missed it. Was that really so horrible?

She didn’t think so, but it kept haunting her. Had she made a mistake? These memories, the life of Cassie because no one uses a real name in that world, had been kept locked up in a small back room in her head all these years. And then, a few days ago, she had unbolted the door and let it open just a crack. She had quickly slammed it closed and locked it back up. But just that crack, just letting Cassie have a quick gaze into the world between Maygin and Megan-why was she so sure that there would be repercussions?

Dave rolled off the couch and headed for the bathroom, the newspaper tucked under his armpit. Megan warmed up the panini maker and searched for the white bread. As she opened the drawer, the phone rang, giving off an electronic chirp. Kaylie stood next to the phone, ignoring it, texting.

“You want to answer that?” Megan asked.

“It’s not for me.”

Kaylie could pull out and answer her own mobile phone with a speed that would have intimidated Wyatt Earp, but the home phone, with a number unknown to the Kasselton teenage community, held absolutely no interest to her.

“Pick it up, please.”