IN MEMPHIS, THE ADDRESS LED ME TO THAT SAME HOUSE FROM the summer, the cottage in Central Gardens. I had been hoping that it wouldn’t be the same house, since the last time I was here, there had been some weird violence, a lot of chaos. I didn’t even consider driving away, but I thought about Zeke, that goofy teenage boy, and how those fits of anger would spark, and I was scared. I wished that I weren’t, but I was.
And then, before I even got out of the car, Zeke was standing on the porch, staring at me. After twenty years, of course someone looks different, but really I was just softer, a little heavier, and my skin was clearer. It was still me, and if you saw me as a teenager, nothing would throw you when you looked at me now. Zeke was so lean, muscle and bone, like someone who ran marathons or climbed mountains. He had grown into his features and now looked kind of handsome instead of goofy, which saddened me a little, honestly. He looked like he was one of two things: a man who made coffee tables from reclaimed driftwood and sold them for three grand, or a man who was very, very suspicious of the circumstances of 9/11. I guess I’d thought, and it was stupid to think this, that Zeke would still be a teenager, that he’d look like how I remembered him. And it made it harder to get out of the car, to walk toward him, when he seemed like someone I didn’t recognize. I waved to him, or I held up my hand, and he nodded, like he’d been expecting me but had hoped I wouldn’t come.
“Hey,” I said after I rolled down the window.
He looked at me for a few seconds; I saw the flash of fear cross his face, but then he finally relaxed his posture. “Hey,” he finally said. “Hey, Frankie.”
“It’s been a really long time since I last saw you,” I said, and I wondered how it was possible for every single thing you said to sound so dumb, so weightless. I wanted to say, “I missed you,” but it wasn’t really true, I was now realizing. I missed teenage Zeke. This guy was a stranger. He was the person I had to talk to in order to get Zeke back. I got out of the car and walked over to him.
“It’s been twenty-one years,” he said. The last time I had been this close to him, my arm had been snapped nearly in half, my mouth bleeding, my whole world ruined. I could feel my heart beating so fast.
“Do you still go by Zeke or did you change it back or—”
“I go by Ben,” he said.
“It’s going to be really hard for me to call you that,” I admitted.
“It doesn’t matter,” he admitted, looking so sheepish. “You can call me whatever.”
“Can I come talk to you?” I asked. “It’s important.”
Just then, Zeke’s mom came onto the porch. She wasn’t smiling, but she didn’t look angry. She touched Zeke’s shoulder and he turned to look at her. And then, holy shit, his dad came out, walking with a cane, and asked Zeke if he was okay. I could not believe that they were still married. Or maybe they weren’t. Why was Zeke still living with them? I guessed I needed to get inside and maybe I’d find out. I did not like that the fact of his parents staying together was overwhelming my focus on Zeke. I waited for permission, because I wouldn’t come in if Zeke said no. I mean, I would later throw a rock through their window with a message that explained everything, but I would not go into their house without Zeke’s okay.
He took a deep breath, looked back at his parents, and then nodded. “Yeah, come on in,” he said.
“You were hard to find, honestly,” I said, still not moving, and he smiled for just a flash of a second, and I saw those weird teeth and it instantly made me happy, calmed me down, even though he went back to his deadpan look right after.
“I mean, kind of?” he said. “I’m in the house where I grew up. I didn’t leave.”
“Well, okay, but it was hard to find you online.”
“Yeah, okay.”
“Did you not want people to find you?” I asked.
“No one is trying to find me,” he said, smiling again. “Except, you know, for you.”
“Well,” I said, “I found you.”
“You did.”
“Honey, maybe we can go inside?” his mom said, looking around as if a crowd were on the sidewalk watching us. “Hello, Frankie,” she said to me.
“Hi, Mrs. . . . well, hello. And, hello, Mr. Brown. I don’t know if you remember m—”
And the whole family laughed, a real laugh, over something so strange as the fact that I’d kicked him so freaking hard in the knee while his son had tried to murder him.