The Storyteller

Prologue

I’m not sure when I became an impostor. It wasn’t a conscious decision, more a slow, smooth slide into something that felt, just, easier. Maybe it was in sixth grade, when I told my mom that I wanted to take piano lessons, but she convinced me to play sports instead because it was more social. I’ve played soccer for six years. Truth is, I hate soccer.

Or it might have been in ninth, when Ms. Emery, the school guidance counselor, with an office the size of a broom closet, cocked her head to the side and asked, You doing all right, Jess? and I replied cheerily, Yep, I’m great. It was simpler than explaining that Jenny Glocke had suddenly stopped talking to me for no apparent reason and that the tense exchanges that drifted from beneath my parents’ bedroom door had started to become tenser. Great was what my mom crisply replied when we were visiting my grandparents in Florida and Gammy would ask, with narrowed eyes, How are things at home?

Or maybe it was the day Ryan Hart asked me if I liked to ski, a lone dimple winking from his right cheek, and I looked down at the hot dog in my hand and nodded and told him, Yeah, sure. It was Labor Day 2003, and we were at a barbecue in the Harts’ backyard. They’d just moved to Keene from Boston. Our parents were friends from their college days who hoped Ryan and I, both entering eighth grade, would be friends, too.

We sat on top of a picnic table under an oak tree whose leaves had yet to turn for fall. With honey-tan skin and boy-band hair, Ryan was certifiably, undeniably, trademark Cute™ in the charming, slightly aloof way of the love interest of an eighties movie. Late-afternoon sun filtered through the branches, making the fine blond down on his forearms glow. He appeared golden.

Even his name was made for doodling in the margins of a notebook or murmuring under your breath just to see how the syllables felt in your mouth: Ryan Olivier Hart. For the next year and a half, every textbook I owned, every diary, every scrap of paper that came through my hands bore some calligraphed form of his initials within a perfectly lopsided heart.

At school, a single hey as we passed in the hall—on Tuesdays and Thursdays after second block, and some Fridays if he was coming from Mrs. Cardinetti’s—was enough to spin me into orbit. What was the inflection of that hey? Was there eye contact? Sustained eye contact? When he asked if I was coming to the Harts’ holiday party, did that imply he hoped I was coming, or was he just being polite? I tortured myself—as well as my best friend, Katie—with the possibilities.

Ryan was everything I thought I was supposed to be: confident, popular, easy, at ease. Where I strained, he glided. Where my small clique of best friends was hard won, popularity seemed to come to him instantly. Our social circles overlapped in a thin, almond-shaped sliver, but Ryan Hart was nice to me. And sometimes, I suspected—hoped—he even sought me out.

The truth is, I do not ski. In fact, I hate the cold. Mummifying yourself in six layers of clothes in order to careen down the side of a mountain while someone screams at you about pizza slices and French fries is something I will never understand. Yet in that moment, when Ryan asked me on the picnic table in his parents’ backyard if I liked to ski, it was so easy to say . . . Yeah, sure. Two little words. But words have weight.

The next fall, Ryan would go to Mountainvale Academy, a special boarding school in Maine for elite winter athletes. They had a really good ski racing team, and turns out, Ryan was a really good skier.

I never told him that, actually, I hate skiing. Even when our families went to Sugarloaf the following Christmas and I faked a stomachache so I wouldn’t have to show him how bad I actually was at the thing he loved most in life. I’d rather Ryan Hart believe I had explosive diarrhea than know I don’t like skiing—that’s how devoted I was to my story.

Even when we started dating later that winter, I didn’t fess up. It was too late by then, anyway, once I’d been kissed outside the arcade room in the basement of the ski lodge. My first kiss, the one I’m told I’ll always remember, and I will: my heart exploding into a million tiny sucker-red pieces.

The following week, he called from the shared phone on his dormitory hall because he didn’t have cell reception at school. We talked about everything and nothing: scary movies and funny videos, the virtues of fast food, our siblings’ exceptional ability to annoy the crap out of us, and his coach, who’d once trained the Olympic team. Something I said made him laugh. We talked for an hour, through three different dormmates pestering him to give up the phone.

Our first date was to Athens Pizza V, home of the famous heart-shaped pizza. Mrs. Hart dropped us off, grinning from ear to ear. You know she’s calling your mom right now, he said, clearly embarrassed, as we watched the Volvo pull away. He held the door for me and paid for my pizza. It felt so adult, so much like wooing. Two months later, nonchalantly, in the middle of a conversation about our favorite breakfast cereals, Ryan Hart called me his girlfriend. And that’s what I happily became.

I never told him that, actually, I hate mushrooms on my pizza. Or that concerts freak me out because I dislike big crowds—sometimes small ones, too. I did not share that I found the video games we played in his basement too loud and too violent, that they made me feel anxious but that I feel that way 99 percent of the time anyway. That I sometimes cry in the shower or that, although I like being alone, I fear being lonely. Ryan did not know that I filled thick notebooks with the stories I imagined and that, while I was too embarrassed to say it out loud, I wanted to be a writer when I grew up.

My boyfriend knew a different Jess—a laid-back, outgoing, adventurous Jess, ready for anything, whether that meant breaking into a neighbor’s pool or nursing a skunky beer while watching three Fast and Furious movies in a row. This Jess was cool. She was girlfriend material. The Jess who lost sleep over grades, who often preferred books to people, whose body physically hurt when she was forced to try something new—Ryan didn’t know that Jess. I made sure he never did.

It wasn’t just with him, of course. I pretended, in ways, with everyone—my parents, my teachers, even sometimes Katie. The bottom line is that there were two of me: the Jess I showed the outside world and the Jess I knew on the inside. Every day a performance—laugh, smile, engage.

It’s surprisingly easy to pretend to be someone you’re not. Writers do it all the time; that’s how they write a story—pluck a character from the air and try her on for size. What I know now is that we’re all made up of stories, the ones we tell ourselves and the ones we tell each other. They’re the masks we wear every day, the personal histories we write and revise again and again, the futures we imagine, the images we project online, the narratives we construct in order to fit in.

Then there are the other stories, the stories we don’t tell, the ones we lock away within the hidden, dark rooms of ourselves—the secrets. Here’s what I also know now: secrets tend to seek the light.

1

August 4, 2007

I’m stuck, fingers dancing above the warm keyboard . . . hovering . . . waiting for inspiration.

Sometimes the world around me disappears as I write. My vision constricts to a pinhole of light, only the page in front of me visible—in the zone, I’ve heard athletes call it. But I’ve also heard of writer’s block, and that’s what I have now.

At the edge of the cliff, Iris watches waves throw themselves against the rocks. Behind her, suddenly, a voice.

Saying . . . saying . . . I can’t decide: Is this a romance I’m writing, or a tragedy?

Endings are the trickiest part. Harder even than beginnings. This one I’ve been working on for weeks, the third act for an ambitious actress who falls in love with a roguish, backstabbing ship captain. Katie’s always trying to get me to confess who my characters are based on, and this one is based loosely on her, but the thing is, I tell her, characters like to get away from you; they take on a life of their own.

She turns to face him. Wind whips her ha—

No. Delete. Delete. Deleeeeeeeete.

She refuses to turn.

Of course! She hates his guts; he’s betrayed her. She won’t pardon him. She’ll punish him.

Do you know the cost of telling lies? Iris’s voice is almost lost in the wind.

Yes! Gold. Words spill onto the screen like so much digital ink . . . and there’s a knock at my door.

Ignore it.

I know the value of telling the truth.

Jess!

The pinhole dilates. Just a sec! I call frantically, but the door has opened, and my mother is standing in it, back from her eight-mile morning run. The world zooms into focus.

Up and at ’em! Her voice is as bright as a fluorescent bulb.

I’ve been up since seven. I’m not usually an early bird, but sometimes I’m pulled from the quicksand of sleep by story ideas—nonsense that fills a small red journal by my bed: She has a celestial twin. A snowstorm in July. Something about a walrus????

Mom rips aside the curtains and perches on the edge of my bed. Well, then, how about you get out and do something? She’s always saying things like this.

Midmorning light makes the walls of my room glow pale purple—officially Lavender Cream, the paint color chosen when I got to redecorate for my tenth birthday. Actually, the color was my mom’s choice. I don’t love Lavender Cream; it feels kind of like living inside of a My Little Pony.

I close the laptop. Mom is already showered and dressed for the day, though not in her usual Ann Taylor Loft business caj. It’s the weekend, but as a real estate agent, she works every day. Instead, in crisp khaki shorts and a collared polo shirt, her hair pulled into a neat ponytail, she looks like a camp counselor.

Her fingers run scales on the lid of my laptop, and my eyes drift over the stickers plastered on top: Sierra Club. A crimson H, for Harvard. A holographic avocado from Katie. Ski Free or Die—that one’s from Ryan. I resist the urge to pick at the decals’ peeling edges as Mom confesses to the real reason she’s in my room now, other than to keep me from being a lazy bum: I need your help today. I’ll take you to lunch at Luca’s afterward.

Luca’s is my favorite restaurant, and I can’t remember the last time Mom and I spent a Saturday together. A bribe? Okay, I ask warily, with what?

She stands, neatly folding the sweatpants lying across my bed. Aunt Anna’s house is listing next week. I finally convinced your dad to sell it, but we need to clean out the attic.

I groan, duped like a rookie. Can’t Griffin help? My gym-obsessed, six-foot, fifteen-year-old brother is far better suited to manual labor, but Mom knows I never say no.

He doesn’t get back from lacrosse camp until tomorrow.

Right. Since he hit puberty and developed the burning need to make fun of everything and everyone, my brother and I so carefully avoid each other that I’d almost forgotten he’s been gone all week. The absence of slammed doors and toothpaste smeared across the bathroom counter should have reminded me.

All right, I relent, sighing and throwing back the covers. I’ll help.

I haven’t been to the house in more than six years, not since Aunt Anna moved to a nursing home when I was in fifth grade and my dad started renting it to college kids from Keene State. It’s a sagging farmhouse at the edge of town that I remember smelling of baked beans and damp earth, but it was also filled with books—on mantels, on tables, stacked against the walls, bowing bookshelves. Like they owned the house, not her. There was something magical about this. There were paperbacks and hardcovers and ancient encyclopedias that not even Goodwill would take when my mom cleared the house before the students moved in. She let me keep a few novels, but my stomach churned to watch her chuck the rest in the dumpster behind her office.

Maybe, I tell myself, this will be fun. Attics have been known to hold interesting things: long-lost heirlooms, family secrets, rare first editions.

Do you want to shower first? Mom asks.

Oh. I look down at the baggy athletic shorts I’ve just pulled on. Aren’t we gonna get, like, dusty?

But if we’re going to Luca’s afterward. . . .

Right. I grab my towel.

She claps once. Great! See you downstairs in fifteen. Then glances at her watch. Actually, make it ten.

2

A fine layer of grit coats my arms, and the dust in the attic has triggered an allergy attack. As for family heirlooms, so far I’ve found a Keds shoebox filled with cheap plastic Mardi Gras beads and a box of cassette tapes promising peace through positive thinking.

Luckily, Mom keeps a small pharmaceutical operation in her purse, and I’m happy for a break from the attic’s hot, mite-ridden updrafts.

In the kitchen, I pop an antihistamine from its foil bubble and wash it down with lukewarm Diet Sprite, then check my phone. Ryan is supposed to call after weight training, but I have no new messages. Jess! I hear my mother call from the attic. Coming! I shout, slipping the phone into my pocket and trudging upstairs.

Mom swipes a pale, freckled forearm across her chin, tiny tufts of insulation clinging to her knees. My mother relishes chores, but even she seems to be regretting this one. From the floor, she hoists a cardboard box labeled, sloppily, EASTER EGGS, and hands it down. The box goes on the floor next to the others.

Still sneezing?

I try to sound as pathetic as possible. I’ll be better once the drugs kick in.

Just a few more. She ducks again into the shadows, and from the gloom, I can hear but not see her. Why on earth did Aunt Anna save all this junk? Can you imagine what buyers would think? Something thuds to the ground. ‘Hoarder,’ she mumbles, that’s what.

There’s no doubt that my aunt was . . . different. Winter was the only season she dressed for, bundled in a scarf and coat even on days when the August heat glimmered from the sidewalk, and although her clothes were shabby, she always had a new pair of shoes. Beyond that, her movements were nervous and fluttery, as if she thought someone was watching her. When she visited, I got the feeling she was watching us, taking mental notes. She didn’t talk much on these visits, but occasionally she’d smile at something someone said—a sad smile, more like the memory of a smile.

Maybe this was why I’d once overheard my parents argue about whether to invite her for Thanksgiving dinner:

Why do we keep asking when all she does is sit in the corner? Mom griped.

She’s ninety-seven years old, Valerie; what do you expect from her? my father replied.

She’s weird, John.

He exploded, something he rarely did. She’s family!

And so weird Aunt Anna came to Thanksgiving and to Christmas that year.

There were the trinkets she’d bring Griffin and me, cheap gifts like a sparkly rubber ball from a grocery store coin machine or a figurine clearly retrieved from a Happy Meal. She handed these over as if they were rubies. Typically, there was a book along with them, one from her own musty library. Though the books were often over our heads—The Odyssey, The Great Gatsby, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers—she was the one who introduced me to The Secret Garden, which I read no less than a dozen times.

Then there was the Hello Kitty diary. It must have been Christmas, because I remember sitting on the living room floor, a light-strung tree behind me. The diary wasn’t wrapped. She simply took it from her purse and handed it to me. For— she said, making a herky-jerky scribbling motion in the air.

Thank you, I replied, acutely aware of how closely she watched as I opened the diary and flipped through its pale pink, lined pages.

I loved that journal, not because of its bright cartoon cover but because it had a tiny working lock and key, which I kept in my sock drawer. My first story, a novel about a horse named Babbling Brook, was written in it. When the diary was accidentally left in a hotel room the summer we drove to Palm Beach to see my grandparents, I cried across two whole states.

So, yes, she was eccentric, Aunt Anna—and a pack rat—but hoarder didn’t seem fair. I liked my great-great-aunt, maybe because she was strange.

Earth to Jess.

My mom is holding another box. A peek between the flaps reveals a jumble of chipped porcelain tea sets, the kind a child might use to throw a tea party for her stuffed animals, even though Aunt Anna and Uncle Henry didn’t have children. He died a long time before I was born.

She stands, stretching her back. There’s a trunk here. I’m trying to figure out if we’ll give ourselves hernias trying to lift it.

My ears perk up. Picturing an old-timey steamer trunk straight off the Titanic, I scuttle up the stars and am not disappointed. At the back of the attic, beneath the shadowy eaves, is a beautiful old chest with leather straps and wood ribbing faded to a greenish gray. The leather has started to disintegrate, and the canvas covering is ripped in places, but I can tell it was once a fancy thing.

What do you think’s in it? I ask.

Commemorative thimbles? Mom jokes.

Should I open it?

She shrugs. Sure.

My mom isn’t into old things the way I am. To her, vintage means reproduction apothecary jars and hand-distressed birdcages from the Pottery Barn catalogs that clog our mailbox. New is good, and newer is better. But for me, old stuff is fascinating, a wormhole into the past.

Carefully, I work stiff straps through rusty buckles and flip open the trunk’s corroded hasp. When the lid still won’t budge, I worry it’s locked, but with a little more effort, it gives with a satisfying creak. The trunk seems to exhale the musty, sweet odor of decay. My own breath catching in anticipation, I fully raise the lid.

Mom peers inside. Great. More books.

Even I feel a ripple of disappointment. Not exactly the Heart of the Ocean. Still, the books look old—their pages swollen with time—and this intrigues me. Jumbled in a heap, they’re an array of colors and sizes. Plucking one from the top, I turn it over, handling the brittle, powdery leather with care. Curiously, the book has no title. Its spine crackles as I open it. Inside, a stream of cursive flows across the pages in faded black ink—so, it’s not a book; it’s a journal. But a frown tugs at my lips, because the writing puzzles me. It’s not a language, or even letters, that I recognize. It’s not the English alphabet.

My mom is squinting at her BlackBerry beneath the attic’s single bare bulb. She needs glasses but won’t admit it.

I open a second book. The same foreign script stares back. I check a third. There are numbers at the top that seem to be dates and what appears to be a signature, or sometimes just the letter A, at the bottom.

A for Anna.

I think, I say, these are Aunt Anna’s diaries.

Hmm, Mom mumbles.

But what language is this? I raise the journal so she has to tear herself away from her phone and look.

Huh. She frowns. I’m not sure. Looks a little like Greek, actually. She and Dad went to Mykonos a couple of years ago for their anniversary. They brought back evil eyes and baklava but never talked about the trip.

Aunt Anna didn’t have an accent . . . did she? I ask, searching my limited recollections.

Not that I remember.

One particular memory plays in my mind, an old one I’d half forgotten, although the event meant something to me at the time.

Weird! Mom chirps, slipping her BlackBerry into her shorts. Okay, first stop, Goodwill. Second stop, lunch.

Wait, can I keep them? I ask.

These old books? She looks confused. Sure, but why?

Diaries, I correct her. And I don’t know, they’re kind of cool, I guess. I run a hand over the journal’s soft cover.

She sighs. Okay. You know, the trunk might make a cute coffee table. Kind of shabby-chic? She cocks her head, mentally staging the trunk in one of the homes she’s selling.

I place the journal back in the trunk and close the lid.

3

Katie doesn’t like the fancy consignment store on Main Street. House of Hipster, she calls it. Instead, she prefers the dirty, overstuffed vintage shop down the street that smells like air freshener and decades of dust.

Following the promised but rushed lunch at Luca’s, Mom dropped me and the mysterious trunk at home. Still no word from Ryan, but Katie had texted for a fro-yo run so she could spy on her latest crush, a college student with ear gauges and a nose ring who works behind the register. Afterward, we find ourselves amid the vintage shop’s congested, antique-carpeted stalls.

I can get lost in this palace of hand-carved decoys and rusted butter churners, green-hooded lamps and faux Chinese vases, Conan the Barbarian and The Justice League. Every inch of the space is crammed with the ephemera of bygone eras, bygone lives. Brittle maps curl from the wall. Atop a pyramid of nesting suitcases sits the giant tin trumpet of a phonograph.

From an old Singer sewing table, I grasp the rough, heavy handle of a cast-iron pan. This is what my mom doesn’t get—that objects, especially old ones, are stories in physical form. I’ll never know what it was to cook my son a final meal of salt pork and johnnycakes before sending him off to Gettysburg, but in the ache of my wrist holding that pan, I am momentarily transported into another life, another time.

Wandering to the books section, I’m distracted by a display of old postcards: London! Paris! Essex Junction! Niagara Falls! they shout in faded colors.

J! Katie calls. Check me out.

On the other side of the store, she’s posing before a full-length mirror. An elaborately beaded, canary-yellow gown hangs on her slight figure. She wears T-strap heels on