Free All of Us and Everything by Bridget Asher Page A

disoriented. “Hi.”
    “You’ve been sleeping on my shoulder.”
    She remembered, suddenly, the smell of him in her sleep. She’d read once that people smell one another’s DNA, in fact, and were drawn to DNA scents that would work well with their own. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to sleep on you.” And then Ru blushed because it sounded more intimate than she’d meant it. She hadn’t blushed in months because the M’nong people didn’t make her feel embarrassed.
    “You actually curled your hands around my arm. You slept pretty hard,” he said and then he added, under his breath, “on me.”
    “Where’d the other guy go?”
    “I switched with him. I hope that’s okay. When I got up to go the bathroom, I recognized you.”
    “Oh,” Ru said, “right.” She straightened up, expecting to be asked about her writing secrets or for a signature or to read a manuscript written by the man’s cousin.
    “You don’t recognize me, do you?”
    She knew this wasn’t professional. This was personal. And then in a flash of recognition—beyond the blur of her less-than-perfect eyesight—she knew who this was: Teddy Whistler. The buzz of the plane roared in her ears, and her chest felt like it was filled with small wires, suddenly charged with electricity.
    “Maybe you’ll remember that you wrote a book and made a film about me? Thanks for changing the last name from Whistler to Wilmer, by the way.”
    She kept staring, speechless. She saw how his face had become tough-jawed and lean. He’d grown into his blocky nose. He still had the same sad eyebrows and dark hair, but he no longer wore glasses, so his eyes were crisp and proportioned to his face. Bright-blue eyes with dark lashes. “Jesus H. Christ,” she whispered.
    The novel and subsequent adaptation of
Trust Teddy Wilmer
was based on a portion of Teddy Whistler’s life—this man sitting next to her. When he was a teenager, the press named him a local hero three times during the summer of 1988 when he saved a woman from drowning, then a dog from a burning car, and survived a near-mauling by a neighbor’s kinkajou—a vicious member of the raccoon family—only for it to later be revealed that he staged all of the events in order to be thought of as a hero and win the girl he loved—who later turned him in.
    Ru’s sister Liv was that girl.
    “I’m sorry,” Ru said quickly.
    “About what? Your sister turning me in? Or the book? Or the adaptation? Or having me played by that hyper-good-looking actor I could never live up to? Or not calling to give me a heads-up that you were turning a deeply personal part of my life into something for public consumption.”
    “I wasn’t in charge of casting.”
    “That’s all you have to say?”
    She shook her head. “No, no. I mean, I thought of trying to look you up and tell you about the book but then I decided that I’d changed it so much that it was no longer about you and so telling you that it was about you would have been confusing because it really wasn’t.”
    “Really wasn’t? I mean, the man who played my father has my father’s exact lisp and tattoo and wore the same lifts in his shoes. Should I go on here?”
    “I’m sorry. It’s art, you know? I mean, I thought I was making art. I thought, if you saw it, you’d think it was a form of admiration.”
    He pinched his nose. “That never dawned on me. It was just so…weird. It was just so intimate and me but not me. Plus, you got some stuff wrong.”
    “That’s because it wasn’t really about you.”
    “Oh, I see. That’s how you’re going to play this.”
    “No, I mean. What did I get wrong?”
    “Nothing. It’s personal. Have you ever had someone write a book and make a movie of the most messed-up time in your life? No? Then I guess you wouldn’t understand.” He squeezed his eyes shut. “God, I loved your sister.”
    “She was in love with you too.”
    “I loved her first.”
    “Does that matter?”
    “No, I think it only