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Zoe did not speak one word of French. She took German in high school and one intro Spanish class her freshman year of college because Amber, this pretty girl who lived on her floor complained about not knowing anybody in her nine o’clock class. Amber was a bit of a bust (straight, boyfriend back home), but Zoe could ask where a bathroom was if she visited Mexico.
But the thing was. She didn’t speak French. Not one word. Well, she could say “oui,” Zoe supposed, but that wasn’t really the issue.
The issue was.
She was a bit drunk. Her friends had all crammed into a minivan and driven across the border into Quebec. They did this on weekends, piled into Sarah’s mom’s old van, skipped their Friday morning classes, and picked a Canadian city to drink in. Sometimes if they had a few days and extra cash to spare, they’d spend the whole weekend, drinking cheap liquor and debating whether or not the money actually smelled like maple syrup in Canada.
So here they were, in Quebec, on a Thursday, and Zoe wanted very badly to chat up this this girl across the bar, who had her hair in a sexy Afro and a killer smile and basically, Zoe had been smiling at her all night. But she didn’t speak French. So she just kept battling eyelashes and hoping the girl would 1. Be into girls 2. Be fluent in English and 3. Come over and say hello.
So far, no luck.
Sarah swaggered over, drunkenly, throwing an arm around Zoe’s shoulder. “Zo,” she said, which always gave her a bit of a start. Nobody called her Zo. Nobody in years.
Zoe shook her head, smiling her way out of thinking about her brother on a park bench with a new haircut and a belly full of sleeping pills.
“What’s up, Sarah?” She asked, smiling in a warm happy tipsy way.
“Are you going to make a move on Scary Spice over there?” She asked, her face a little too close to Zoe’s.
“I need to take a French class first,” Zoe replied, finishing her drink. She waved the bartender over, and he refilled the drink without her having to ask. They had been there a few times before; Zoe had learned that the guy had spent most of his life over the border in Vermont. His wife was Canadian. He spoke English.
“There there, buttercup,” Sarah said. She smiled at Zoe and ruffled her hair. “Come on. Max found some change, and we’re picking songs on the jukebox.” She pulled Zoe with her toward the jukebox and her friends all gathered around her, singing loudly to Maroon 5, dancing in a super dorky drunk way. They were painfully American, and it was so obvious.
She liked getting a little lost in these interactions. She liked watching Max, a six foot four former basketball player, swing his hips in a way he thought was sexy. She liked how Sarah always flung her arm around something; right now it was Hannah, who was a transfer student this year. She was quiet and shy, and Zoe immediately felt like she had to be her friend when she spotted a pair of drumsticks in her bag on move in day. Her dad had helped her move back into the dorms that summer, and once Zoe’s things were unpacked in her single room, he started being Uber Dad and wandering the halls offering to help the other dads carry shit up the stairs.
He ended up helping Hannah’s brother loft her bed, swearing and sweating in his practical dad golf shirt.
“Sorry about him,” Zoe had said to Hannah, trying to grin at her in a friendly way. “He’s just. Got too much dad energy now that he’s an empty nester.”
Hannah giggled shyly, twisting her fingers in the hem of her t-shirt. It reminded Zoe of Evan when they first met, how he was so timid and awkward and always always tugging at his clothes one way or another.
“I’m Zoe, by the way. I live in 505.”
“Hannah,” She said, smiling while still biting her bottom lip. “Here, obviously.”
“You play drums?”
She nodded. “I… am in the marching band.” She squinted at Zoe like she might think it’s lame. “But, um, at my old school I subbed for my friend’s punk band sometimes?”
“Nice!” She said. “I was in jazz band all through high school. I play guitar. Maybe we should jam sometime?” Hannah didn’t seem to notice how lame Zoe saying “jam” was, she just agreed immediately.
And now Sarah was scream singing “Mr. Brightside” into Hannah’s ear, and Hannah was grimacing across their little circle at Zoe. Zoe laughed, sticking her tongue out at her, making Hannah laugh.
Zoe thought back to getting ready earlier tonight, sitting in Hannah’s desk chair while Hannah frowned into the mirror, putting some gel into her short hair, and asking Zoe if wearing a denim jacket was too obvious a choice for Canada.
Hannah had worn it. She looked cute. Butch and cute. Zoe wished she had the kind of confidence to leave the house without makeup.
“I want shots,” announced her friend Mitch when Mr. Brightside finally ended and the jukebox turned over to something by Lady Gaga. Mitch snagged Zoe by the elbow, hauling her up to the bar to help him carry the shots back. She snickered at Mitch as he tried to order the shots in broken French.
“You want training wheels with your tequila?” he shouted at Zoe.
“Please.”
Zoe heard someone to her left say something about “Jolie americain” over the music, and ignored it. She sometimes did get hit on in these bars, but she rarely took the guys up on the drinks they offered. She couldn’t hold a conversation with them, and something about getting shitfaced and sleeping with someone in a foreign country seemed a little… Taken 3 to her. She could just imagine her dad getting all Liam Neeson on some poor sucker on the phone because she was stupid enough to get herself kidnapped.
Kidnapped. In Quebec.
Not fucking likely.
So Zoe ignored whoever was saying shit about pretty Americans and did her shot of Tequila with Mitch. Super Canadian.
“Okay, one more then we’ll bring some back for the others.”
Zoe snickered. “Only if you’re buying.” He gave her shoulder a brotherly squeeze and ordered them two more shots (badly). As she was licking the salt from her fist, prepared to tip back the shot, a man on the other side of the bar caught her eye. She drank down her tequila when he turned and she got a good look at him.
It wasn’t real.
Obviously.
But for half a second she thought she saw her brother across the bar.
And then she was coughing and sputtering the second she swore she saw Connor. She blinked rapidly, shoving the lime wedge in her mouth while Mitch asked if she was alright.
“Fine,” She coughing. “Went down the wrong pipe.”
Mitch thumped her on the back, with a “you’re good,” and then headed off to deliver the other shots to Hannah, Max, and Sarah.
Fuck, that was weird.
Zoe looked up again, and whoever it was she thought she saw was gone. She hung around the bar, and the bartender gave her a glass of water without her having to ask. She felt like she ought to learn his name sometime. Leave him a big huge tip.
Zoe sipped her drink. She checked her phone, grateful that they hadn’t gone so far into Canada that she had no service. She had a voicemail from her mom that she deleted without listening to; Zoe and her mom weren’t exactly on the best of terms these days. She thought it was best not to tempt fate and risk calling her mom back when she was drunk.
Max had tagged her in a facebook photo. Her dad had commented on it. Zoe frowned at the comment, “Wow, that’s certainly a lot of neon light for a dormitory. Call me.” She sighed, swearing that she was finally going to have to unfriend him. Between that and his comments about her boyfriend last semester had really made her certain that social media was not a place to connect with family.
Connor had the right idea, she thought to herself. He never friended the parents online. Smart of him.
Zoe started to put away her phone, thinking she ought to set a reminder in her phone to come up with a lie to tell her parents for morning. They worried. A lot. A lot, a lot. Every since Connor died three years ago, they spent a lot of time asking her to check in. For a while Zoe was scared that they wouldn’t even let her go away to college. She and Evan had spent a lot of time commiserating then. She was in her senior year, he was working at Pottery Barn and taking classes at the community college.
“I can’t stand being in the house anymore,” Zoe confessed to him one late night over IHOP pancakes and coffee at the start of her senior year. He nodded. “They keep talking about moving, but honestly I’m not sure if it’s the house or if it’s them…” She shook her head. “My mom’s a mess.”
“I’m sorry,” Evan had said.
“I just. I need to get the fuck away from here for school. Go… anywhere else.”
“Where are you applying?”
Zoe smiled, prattling off psychology programs all up and down the east coast. “Anywhere but here.”
Back in the present, Zoe was finishing her water when someone tall literally walked into her. She started to sputter and freak out at him, since he’d spilled water all down her top when he looped an arm around her and leaned down to say something. "Hey baby,” he started, his breath stinking of booze, “You... Euh... want a thing... tabernak, boire? Quelqu'chose à boire? Drink?”
“What?” She said, and twisted out of his grasped to look at him (and probably to tell him off).
But she stopped dead.
He looked like Connor.
Not just a little, not just a passing resemblance. Exactly like Connor. Everything. From the bump in his nose to the way his ears stuck out to the fact that he was roughly 75% leg to the way his eyes were mismatched. Literally this guy was her brother with a haircut.
“What the fuck?” Zoe shouted, and then she… puked on his shoes. Just barfed at the sight of him.
The guy backed away, arms up defensively, spewing what were presumably apologies in French, and a second later a few other guys pulled him away, laughing at him like he’d struck out.
“Everything okay?” Mitch was back, looking concerned. “Are you sick?”
“No, I… I… I’m gonna go outside. I need some air,” She rushed back to the coat hook where she’d left her things and rushed out the door, walking so fast that she startled some smokers standing outside.
Her fingers fumbled over her phone, grateful again that she had reception, and hit call next to the contact that read “EVAN HANSEN.”
“Pick up, pick up, pick up.”
“Hello?”
“Evan, hi, it’s Zoe.” She was suddenly extremely aware of how much she’d had to drink. How drunk she must sound. How crazy. She didn’t see her dead brother. She did not get hit on by her dead brother. That wasn’t possible. None of that was real and she was rambling and drunk and calling her dead brother’s only friend because she was drunk and stupid. “How are you?”
“...Fine,” Evan said, sounding surprised and unhappy. “How are you Zoe?”
She thought maybe he said her name sort of loud. “Is now a bad time?” Zoe asked quickly, “Because I can call back, I just wanted to talk.”
“No, no, you’re fine. Just give me a second.” Zoe heard a door close, and then Evan’s voice seemed to relax a little. “Sorry. I’m not home, but I can talk now. It was just sort of loud.”
“Okay.”
“What’s up?”
“Not much,” Zoe said, trying to sound casual. “I’m… some friends and I hopped the border to go drink and we’re at this bar and. Like, this sounds crazy. Like honestly crazy, so I need you… to tell me I’m crazy okay?”
“...Okay?”
“I saw Connor,” Zoe said in a strained voice. “I mean. I thought I did. Obviously it wasn’t him. But I saw this dude, and I thought he was Connor, and I’m freaking out.” She took a breath, then said, “How stupid is that, right? Like he’s dead. He’s been dead for three years and like. Okay, the first thing I thought was, well, Connor would be enough of an asshole that he’d fake his own death and run off to Canada.”
“Zoe-”
“But then the guy hit on me, and I seriously threw up on him! I barfed on his feet, because I am losing my mind and thought my dead brother was hitting on me.”
“Zoe….” Evan said again.
“I’m crazy right?” She said, her voice bordering on hysterical. “I’m losing it. I’ve cracked. Crazy runs in the family after all.”
“You’re not crazy,” Evan said said firmly. “I… Sometimes I see him too.”
Zoe’s heart started to slow down. “You… you do?”
“Sometimes, yeah. I’ll see someone and think it’s him for a second,” Evan said, his voice soft. “And it’s, you know. It’s freaky.”
Zoe took a slow, deep breath. “Yeah,” she said. “It was. It was really freaky.”
“Are you alright?”
Zoe kinda smiled. “Yeah. I mean. I guess? I’ve been drinking, I’m just kind of getting worked up over nothing.”
“It’s okay to be upset,” Evan said gently.
And then, in perfect drunk girl form, Zoe burst into angry tears. “What the fuck,” she said, yelled, whatever. “It’s… it’s not fair, you know? I just want to have one fucking day where I don’t have to think about having a dead fucking brother.”
“I know.”
“He wasn’t even a good brother,” Zoe continued, angrier now. “He was an asshole! He was a dick, and he broke our parents’ hearts, and it’s not fucking fair that I have to miss him when I didn’t even fucking like him.” She was breathing heavily, unable to catch her breath, suddenly scared that she was going to puke while she was on the phone with Evan. “Fuck!” She cried, throwing the phone down. It bounced (thank god for the industrial, survive a car crashing into a submarine kind of case from her dad), and Zoe glared at it for a moment before retrieving it.
“Zoe? Are you still there?”
“Yeah. Sorry…. It’s been a shitty night.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“I think I’m crazy.”
“You aren’t.”
“I feel like an asshole for still being mad at him,” She continued.
“You’re not,” Evan said. “I swear you’re not. Sometimes… sometimes I am too. For leaving us like that. You know?”
Zoe sighed. “Yeah.”
“Are you going to get home okay?”
“Yeah, my friend Hannah… she’s responsible.”
“Drummer Hannah?” Evan asked, a smile in his voice.
“Oh shut up.”
He laughed on the other end of the line.
“Sorry I called you drunk and cried a lot.”
“From Canada no less,” Evan said, and she could hear him laughing a little. “Don’t worry about it. Honestly. You know can you call me.” On his side of the line, she could hear a muffled voice and Evan saying, “Give me a couple of minutes, please,” quietly.
“I should let you go,” Zoe said. “It’s late, I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” Evan said firmly. “Call anytime. Seriously.”
“Okay. I’ll talk to you soon.”
“Yeah, sounds good.”
“Bye Evan.”
“Bye Zoe.”
She hung up. Wiped her eyes and nose on her sleeve, and stood up to walk back into the bar. She took her time, hoping the redness in her face and nose would go away. As she got closer to the door, Zoe was surprised to see Hannah standing just outside the door, hands in her pockets.
“I wanted to make sure you were alright,” Hannah said quickly. “But I saw you were on the phone, so I didn’t… I didn’t want to interrupt.”
“Thanks,” Zoe said.
“Are you? Alright?” Hannah asked, and she sort of awkwardly shoved a hand through her short hair.
Zoe nodded. “Yeah, sorry, I just. The guy at the bar? He well… he kinda looked like my brother?”
“I’m...sorry?” Hannah said, frowning. Like she didn’t quiet understand. Because she didn’t. Zoe hadn’t told her. She was sure Sarah or Mitch would have opened one of their big mouths to spill the beans, and not for the first time, Zoe found herself a little resentful of her friend’s choosing to keep her confidence the one time she didn’t need them to do so.
Zoe sighed. She hated this part. “My older brother Connor died when I was a junior in high school.” She watched Hannah’s face carefully; she frowned a little, but otherwise her expression didn’t change. “He killed himself.”
“I’m really sorry,” Hannah said softly. “I’d probably puke if I was in your shoes too.”
Zoe smiled awkwardly.
“The bartender threw him out, I think. The guy you saw? Something about how he was always causing trouble.”
“I was the one who threw up,” Zoe said, biting her lip. “He didn’t do anything but spill some water and suck at flirting.”
“It’s fine, they seemed to know each other,” Hannah said shrugging. “He said something like, Marc-Phillipe, I will call your mother, I think? My French is terrible.”
“You speak French?”
Hannah shrugged. “Just a little.” She shoved her hand back into her pocket. “Do you… want to talk about, you know, thinking that guy was your brother? It sounds… sort of trippy.”
“It was,” Zoe confirmed. “But I think I’m okay now.”
Hannah smiled, biting her bottom lip. “I’m glad.”
“Me too.”
Hannah, having had only one drink all evening (she’d pawned her tequila shot off on Sarah) was the one who corralled them all back to Sarah’s minivan. It was late and she determined that everyone was officially too drunk to deal with Border Security that night. (“Oh come on,” Max had complained from the back, “We’re fine.” The sentiment might have come across stronger if he hadn’t hiccuped loudly at the end of his plea). Hannah borrowed Zoe’s phone and managed to drive them to a cheap hotel not far from the bar. She spoke to the woman behind the desk, booking the room for two while Zoe took the room key and sneaked the others inside from the backdoor under the guise of getting her bag from the car.
“Smooth moves,” Hannah said, smiling while biting her lip. “You’re like… James Bond.”
“Bond. Jamie Bond.”
They both tittered with laugher.
Max, Mitch, and Sarah were all sleepy drunks, and the three of them were all crashed out across one double bed within ten minutes of crawling into it.
“What a bunch of clowns,” Zoe commented, pulling out her phone and snapping a photo. She saw another missed call from her mom and ignored it. She didn’t have time for her mom right now.
Hannah snickered. “You okay with bunking up? I just don’t want to dogpile with the others.”
“Sure,” Zoe said. “I’m just gonna… wash my face? I’m kinda. I’ll be right back.”
She hurried to the bathroom in their hotel room, taking the tiny bar soap from the sink to scrub her face with cold water. Part of her was still pretty sure that she was losing her mind. She hadn’t seen Connor, she reminded herself. Evan said he thought he saw him sometimes too. She wasn’t crazy…
But it wasn’t like a brief thing. She hadn’t thought she’d seen her dead brother, she had. For a full minute she had looked into a face she knew, right down to the heterochromia. Her mom taught her that word young; kids at school started a rumor that Connor’s eyes meant he was an alien, and her parents gave both kids a big talking-to about how they shouldn’t rise to the bait.
Zoe splashed more cold water on her face, until her makeup was smudged but the salty tear tracks on her cheeks had disappeared.
You didn’t see Connor, she thought, looking at her reflecting sternly. You were drunk. Get it together. Stop thinking about it.
She walked out of the bathroom to see Hannah unzipping her jeans. “Shit,” Hannah said. “Is… is weird if I sleep in my boxers? I just. I wore skinny jeans and now I regret my entire life.”
Zoe smiled. “It’s not weird.” She was wearing a dress, but she shimmied out of her tights and pulled her bra out through her sleeve.
“I know I can do that,” Hannah said conversationally. “But it’s still impressive.”
Zoe laughed a little. They both climbed into bed, and Hannah switched the lights off. Zoe rolled over, and Hannah rolled in the opposite direction and then, suddenly, Hannah said, “Thanks for telling me. About your brother. I’m sure… I’m sure that was hard.”
Zoe smiled. “Yeah. I… We didn’t really get along,” she said. “But it still sucks. Like. My parents and I had to move because the house was basically haunted.”
“Shit.”
“I know, right?” Zoe turned to face Hannah. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before. I just. I don’t like being the girl with the dead brother.”
Hannah turned over as well. “I understand,” she smiled, biting her lip at the same time. “But I don’t think of you that way.”
“Who’s fucking phone is going off?” Mitch groaned from the otherside of the room. Zoe tore her eyes open, seeing Hannah’s sleeping face first (she had freckles, that was adorable).
“Shit, mine, sorry,” Zoe groaned, finding her phone tangled up in the hotel sheets. She snatched it up, annoyed to see it was only 7:45 and her fucking mom was called. She hit ignore, then fell back on the bed, groaning.
And then it started ringing again.
Zoe shoved her feet into her shoes and rushed out into the hallway, sliding her finger across the phone and answering by saying, “This had better be an emergency.”
“I’ve been calling you since yesterday,” Her mother said, sounding exasperated.
“Is dad dead?”
“No.”
“Did the house burn down?”
“Zoe, no, don’t be ridiculous.”
“Then why the hell are you calling me at quarter to eight?”
Her mother sighed. “You have a class at 8 on Fridays, I thought you’d be awake already.”
Shit. Way to blow her own cover. “Sorry,” Zoe mumbled. “Class was cancelled, I wanted to sleep in.” She sank down the wall, parking her ass on the floor.
“I’m sorry.”
“So… what’s up mom?”
“I had another dream about your brother,” her mother said breathlessly, and Zoe almost chucked her phone away from her. Christ almighty.
“What was he doing this time?” Zoe said, hearing the exhaustion in her voice, the way she was bored. Her mom did this all of the time. She thought the dreams meant something.
They didn’t. Zoe had resigned herself to that fact. The dreams meant nothing, just like the fact that Connor got a hipster haircut on the day he died. It meant nothing. There was nothing deep or profound to divine from this. Her mom was just picking at a years old scab, refusing to let it close up.
Sure, Zoe had entertained her mom’s theories at first. She had been sort of a mess after Connor died. Her friends didn’t get it, her mom was falling apart, and he dad was basically a robot. This was before her mom went on that grief retreat and Zoe started to hang out with Evan.
Her mom firmly believed that there was a reason why Connor had cut off all his hair before he died. She cycled through reasons - it was an apology for all of the fights he and his parents had had over his appearance, it was a sign of his emotional distress, it was him burying his hair according to some indigenous custom which made zero sense because Zoe knew for a fact that that Murphys were too white for that nonsense.
“In my dream,” Cynthia was saying, “He was upset. He was at the house, the new house, and he got angry that we gave all of his books to Evan.”
Zoe rolled her eyes. “That does sound like him.”
“It was strange,” her mother went on. “Especially because… Well, you know I’ve been attending those conferences on suicide prevention? Well I was on a college campus last week. I think it’s where Evan wound up going, actually. It was the strangest thing… I swore for a moment that I saw your brother. But with pink hair.” Her mom laughed sort of lightly. “I know you think it’s silly, but… It makes me feel like he’s still around.”
“With pink hair,” Zoe commented dryly. Her mom laughed again. “Funny you say that though,” Zoe went on. Then stopped, wondering if she really wanted to open that can of worms with her mentally unstable mother. “I thought I saw him the other day too. Just for a second.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah,” Zoe said. “I called Evan, and he said it happens to him sometimes too. I think… I think it’s normal, you know?”
“The ladies in my grief group said the same thing. I was afraid I was going crazy!”
Zoe laughed awkwardly. “Yeah, same.”
“How is Evan doing?”
Zoe smiled. “Good, he’s good. I talked to him last week, and I guess he got an awesome internship with some… laboratory or something. He really likes it.”
“That’s wonderful. We’ll have to have him over for dinner when you’re both home for Christmas.”
“Great idea.”
“I’ll let you go back to sleep, sweetheart. I’m sorry I woke you, I just worried when I didn’t hear from you,” Her mom said.
“It’s okay. I’ll talk to you later.”
“Love you sweetie.”
“Yeah, you too. Bye.”
Hannah’s bedhead appeared around the corner a moment later. “Mitch is throwing up in the bathroom,” She said, shaking her head. She had her jeans back on again. “Everything alright.”
“My mom is… being my mom.”
Hannah nodded. She sank down in the hallway beside Zoe. “Family is… complicated.”
“Tell me about it.” At least Hannah’s family didn’t see dead relatives everywhere lately. Zoe blew some air up through her bangs, setting her hand on the floor. A second later, Zoe felt Hannah’s pinky finger bump against hers. She looked over at Hannah, confused, and saw that Hannah’s cheeks had turned a light pink.
“Sorry,” Hannah said, moving her hand again.
Zoe smiled, reaching over and taking Hannah’s hand. “Don’t be.”
Hannah smiled back.
It had been a weird trip. But maybe, Zoe realized, not such a bad one. The five of them ended up making a quick stop at Pharmaprix to get some mouthwash so they didn’t all smell like a tavern when they crossed back over the border.
“Hey,” Hannah said after rinsing her mouth and passing the bottle to Zoe.
“Hey yourself,” Zoe said, taking a swig of the mouthwash and rinsing out her mouth for a full minute. After she spit the mouthwash out, Zoe took a step closer to Hannah. Invading her space. She reached up and fiddled with a piece of Hannah’s hair, before kissing her on the cheek.
“Zoe?” Hannah said when Zoe started walking back toward the car.
“Yeah?”
She grabbed Zoe’s wrist and pulled her back toward her, and then they were kissing outside a pharmacy in Canada. Mitch and Max both wolf whistled and Sarah stage whispered, “Wait, is Hannah gay?”
On the drive back to Vermont, Zoe texted Evan. She felt she owed him something pleasant after her phone call freak out the night before. She sent a picture of her hand with it’s sparkly blue nail polish holding Hannah’s polish-less hand.
“Guess who I just made out with?”
Evan’s reply with instant, “Please say drummer Hannah.”
Zoe sent him a winky face.
“What did she say?” Connor asked Evan.
“None of your business,” Evan said, rolling his eyes.
Connor rolled his eyes. Across the room, Reed rolled their eyes too. “Stop being nosy, Connor.”
“Stop being nosy, Connor,” Connor mimicked in a high voice.
Evan rolled his eyes. “Fine, oh my god, she just send me a photo of her holding hands with Hannah.”
“Drummer Hannah?” Reed asked, looking amused. Evan had made the mistake of mentioning her a few weeks before when Zoe had texted him during class.
“I need to stop telling you two about Zoe’s life,” Evan said, shaking his head. “It’s not fair that you know everything and she doesn’t.”
“He’s not wrong,” Reed said fairly.