Free How to Save a Life by Sara Zarr Page B

in a graceless move that involves clutching at a shelf and knocking over a paper coffee cup someone has left behind. It’s half full of cold coffee, which splashes onto my hand. I curse.
    R.J. whips a handkerchief from his chest pocket and starts dabbing at my hand. “Here.”
    “Can you just… not.” I grab the hankie from him and use it to mop up the coffee before it can ruin half a shelf of books. “Help me with these.”
    He picks up five books with one hand and rescues two with the other. I finish cleaning the shelf and myself, rearrange the books, and give the now brown and wet hankie back to R.J., asking, “Why’d you change your name?”
    “So you do remember.”
    “Not really.” I crumple the empty coffee cup in my hand. “I had to look in my yearbook. How’s your ‘journey into the future’ going?”
    “What?”
    “Nothing.” Ron comes down our aisle with some go-backs. “Anyway, you look pretty different. So you can see how I wouldn’t have recognized you, right?”
    He nods and presses his lips together.
    “I like Ravi better,” I say. “ ‘R.J.’ sounds like a Texas oil baron.”
    “Okay, call me Ravi. Most people do.” He’s still fiddling with his suit jacket, with his tie, with his sad-looking hankie. “About the other night…”
    “Excuse me,” Ron says, brushing by and disappearing around the corner.
    Ravi clams up again, staring at me like he wants something, expects something.
    “What?” I ask. When he remains silent, I give him the impatient swirling hands of Go on .
    “It was a poor…” He glances toward the ceiling, blows out a breath, then continues. “… execution of my duties. I should have thought before startling you like that.”
    I point to his bruise. “Does it still hurt?”
    “Oh yeah.” He says that with a charming little half smile, and a tone of awe, like he’s impressed. Whatever is left of my indignation deflates.
    “Let’s forget it. Only because I don’t want to deal with the whole nightmare of making a report for HR. And I know closing early was dumb.”
    His body relaxes and he loosens up in his suit, looking slightly less like a person living out some kind of pathetic CIA make-believe game, his black hair cut high and tight and a cell phone clipped to his belt. “Noted.”
    We stare at each other. He’s got that same expectant look. I can’t comprehend him as someone who occupied the life I lived before—before I was all Dylan’s, before my dad’s accident, before I changed. Before I leaped over that jagged place between then and now and didn’t look back. I want to tell Ravi not to take my failure to remember him personally; I don’t remember me, either.
    The lights in the back of the store blink off, the subtle signal to customers to get the hell out and go home. I put my hands in my apron pockets. There’s no reason for our conversation to continue. Thank you and good night . Yet my lips keep moving, and my feet stay put. Like, if I talk to Ravi long enough, maybe I’ll catch some glimpse of myself from back then. “So do you go to UC or DU or what?”
    I watch his face, listen to his voice. Strain to see or hear a memory of Schiff’s computer lab, the view from my keyboard, the sound of whirring CPUs, maybe. Anything.
    “Neither,” Ravi answers. “None. Just working right now. Finally. It took forever to find this job. That’s why I’m a little intense about it, I guess.”
    “A little.”
    “That’s also why I changed my name. After about twenty applications and no interviews, I thought I’d mix things up a little. See if someone named R.J. could get more play than someone named Ravi.” He pulls another business card out of his jacket pocket. “Here. If you need anything at the store or see any suspicious activity or something. There’s been a lot of merchandise disappearing in our region, so I’ll be around a few times a week, at least.” Very professional, very thorough. Like someone twice his