Free Undone by Elizabeth Norris Page B

tired.”
    It was a lie and he knew it. “Didn’t you like her?”
    “I did.” She just wasn’t Janelle.
    “What is it, then?” Derek asked.
    I didn’t answer, and he punched me in the arm.
    “What was that for?” I asked.
    “You never used to be so quiet,” he said with a laugh. Then he sobered. “Just talk to me, man.”
    “There’s a girl,” I said, getting into the car.
    Derek got in and started the engine. “Back there?”
    I nodded. “She’s just in a different league.”
    “Hot?”
    I smiled. “Yeah. And smart and fearless. Just . . . everything.”
    “I get it,” Derek said. “You need some more time. Don’t worry, though. We’ll find you a girl here.”
    I couldn’t bear to tell him that he didn’t get it. Not even a little.
    I didn’t want another girl. I just wanted Janelle.
     
    At home, I flung myself on the couch and turned on the TV. Programming was more regulated here, which meant less reality TV, which I didn’t mind, but also just less entertaining TV in general. I watched the news a lot because it made me feel like I knew something about this place. Even if that was just an illusion, it made me feel better.
    Without looking, I reached for my notebook on the coffee table. I wanted to remember to tell Janelle what I’d realized at the bar. Maybe I had known it all along, just subconsciously. That could have been why I stood there when the portal had first been opened and thought that I wasn’t sure I wanted to go through it.
    The notebook wasn’t there.
    I sat up and moved the magazines around on Derek’s coffee table. Not there.
    I looked under the couch. Not there.
    I checked the kitchen in case I’d accidentally carried it over there. Not there.
    I checked inside the couch cushions. Not there either.
    Finally I found it on the floor under the TV stand. I must have set it on the floor instead of on the edge of the table like usual.
    “Try not to kick my stuff around!” I called to Derek as I sat back down.
    “What do you mean? I haven’t kicked any of your stuff.” He swatted at my head as he passed the couch.
    “Not on purpose.”
    “Not by accident, either,” he said. “I watch where I’m going.”
    I waved the notebook over the couch. “I wrote in this when I woke up and set it down. Now it’s under the TV stand. How did that happen?”
    “You must have kicked it. I haven’t been over there all day.”
    I sat up and turned around. He was making a sandwich, since we didn’t eat at the bar. What he said made sense. Why would he have been over here? He got up and we went to Mom’s before work.
    Yet it had to be him, because this was important to me. I wouldn’t have kicked it and not noticed.
    I only ever put it on the floor at night before I went to sleep.
    “Someone else must have been here,” I said.
    Derek laughed. “Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you the maid comes once a week.”
    I looked at him. He was kidding. “No, I’m serious.” I scanned the room, trying to see if anything else was out of place.
    “So am I,” Derek said. “No one has been in here, kicking your diary around. Relax.”
    I nodded, but I didn’t believe him.

I didn’t say anything to Derek after that, but I paid more attention to my surroundings. I kept my eye on the cars parked close to the apartment, the garage, and anywhere else we went. I looked at the faces of the people we passed and recognized the ones I saw too often. I memorized where I set things down when I left and noted where they were when I came back. Suddenly it was obvious.
    I was being followed.
    The next three days were the same. The tan sedan showed up and parked across from the garage only three minutes after Derek and I got there, and it sat there all day. Then it had followed me, three cars back, when I left the garage.
    The real question was who was inside.
     
    “Knock it off, would you?” Eli said.
    I pulled my eyes away from the window. We were in a diner. I’d chosen the seat in the back corner