Don't I Know You? by Karen Shepard Page A

her father had been talking about, she didn’t try to avoid the question, and he was glad for that. She figured they were talking about the guy his mother had been seeing a few months back. She didn’t know anything about him, just that her dad had been upset, and then he hadn’t been anymore, and she’d figured they’d worked it out.
    The thing Steven was most glad about was that she didn’t say a thing about his not knowing. She didn’t say he should’ve known; she didn’t say there was no way he could’ve known.
    â€œI don’t know anything about anything,” he said.
    She was quiet for a minute and then she snorted. “Grown-ups,” she said. “Who wants to know anything about them?”

four
    J uan came with him. They used the fire escape and waited until they knew Manuel would be in his apartment at the back of the building eating his lunch and watching his soap operas.
    The metal of the fire escape was so hot he wished he’d brought gloves. He wrapped each ladder rung in the bottom of his T-shirt until Juan looked up from behind him and said, “Dude. What’re you doing?”
    Steven opened the window that had the lock that never worked, and they crawled on their bellies over the flaking paint of the sill, through the orange curtains, into his mother’s bedroom. He couldn’t believe it had taken him this long to remember her diaries.
    They stood up, brushing paint flakes off themselves. Juan asked if this was the window the guy had used.
    â€œHow’d you know about that?” Steven asked.
    He shrugged. “Everyone’s talking,” he said.
    Steven’s surprise was stupid. “What’re they saying?” he asked. He wasn’t even sure who “they” were.
    Juan ran his hand over his short tight hair a few times. “Everything,” he said.
    Steven pictured all their friends at the side entrance of the museum. There were big double-sided stairs going up to a landing where there was supposed to have been a café, but then something had happened. So there was nothing but a wall that was good for leaning against that hid you from the people down below.
    Summers, they went there almost every night. Steven didn’t hang out with the group as much as Juan did. He wasn’t so good at groups. Juan was the only reason Steven knew the other kids. And Juan was the only reason the other kids paid any attention to Steven.
    Juan surveyed the bedroom. “Where are they?” he asked.
    â€œI don’t know,” Steven said. “I could never find them.”
    â€œYou know we can’t, like, hang out here,” Juan said. “I thought this was a more in-and-out kinda thing.”
    Everything was the same. Another forty-eight hours, McGuire had said. It was still a crime scene. Someone had pulled all the curtains. The windows were shut. Outside it was midday; hazy light too bright to look at straight. Inside it was dim and stale.
    â€œI think in here,” Steven said, looking around vaguely. He didn’t really want to go back out to the hall.
    â€œYou think?” Juan said, but he got on his hands and knees and looked under the bed. “Oh, man,” he said. “Bring on the Electrolux.”
    Mrs. Carpanetti was thumping around upstairs.
    The elevator gears ground to a halt. Each sound made him jump, not out of fear but out of anticipation. Here she comes, he found himself thinking.
    What would he say to her? Hi. I missed you. What happened? What happened?
    He spread out on his belly next to Juan on the floor and looked under the bed. There were her good work shoes, the ones that were still white. Some Legos. Some cigarette butts. She pretended she didn’t smoke. When she didn’t have time to throw them out the window or flush them down the toilet, she crushed them out and threw them under the bed. There were always sticks of incense stuck in their plants. She was always