There was more. As I made my way through Alison’s tapes, I discovered that there were many entries about me, more than there were about our parents, or Drew, or her friends. My sister had watched me. Analyzed me. Puzzled over me much as I was puzzling over her now, like I was a riddle to be solved and like maybe in solving me she would crack open some truth about herself.

There was this moment at the swim club today that totally killed me. Claire’s going into second grade in the fall, which means she’s officially old enough to go in the deep end of the pool. So the big thing for the kids her age is to jump off the diving board. Not the high dive or anything, and not dive, just jump off the low one, a few feet. Today was ridiculously hot, and we all went to the club together. All of Clairey’s little peers are jumping off the diving board, and she’s just watching them while she licks a Popsicle next to my mom. Then when my dad left to do his laps, my mom asks her, very calmly and low-pressure, if she wants to give it a try. Clairey nods uncertainly, and they go over together. My mom goes in the water so she’s ready to catch her. When it’s Clairey’s turn, she steps up onto the board and walks really slowly to the end. I’m watching from my lounge chair. We wait and we wait and we wait. My heart was pounding out of my chest. My mom says, “Come on, sweetheart. You can do it!” Then some ten-year-old asshole waiting on line starts chanting that Jeopardy song and the rest of the kids join in. Fuckers. Finally, Claire looks at my mom and shakes her head, and my mom tells her if she doesn’t want to go she should get down. My mom got out of the water and Claire sort of fell into her arms. But right before that, I saw it happen. It was a tiny flash, so quick I’ve never, ever caught it before: My mom, just, swallowing everything of herself, just pushing whatever she was feeling down, and smiling really brightly at Clairey and telling her it was fine! Who cares? She’d do it later this summer! Which she can’t possibly believe. Why is life so hard for her? What are you so afraid of, Clairey?

It went on and on: Clairey came home early from the first slumber party she’d actually been invited to. Clairey refused to go up onstage when a magician chose her from the audience to be his special assistant. Clairey was too shy to order her own dinner at a restaurant. Clairey hid out in her room when Mom’s college roommates came to visit with their kids.

What is there to say about listening to these entries? It was devastating, humiliating, awful. How I wished I could slip into the past and tell my sister I would not be that weird little girl forever. I would grow up to have friends, boyfriends, a cool job, a life. But what would she think if she could see me now, skulking in the shadows, collecting details about Clive Richardson like some eccentric hobbyist? What clearer evidence could there be that I was exactly who Alison feared I would be? The friends, the boyfriends, the job—these might have been things I’d managed, but were they really me? Who was I? Didn’t you hear what Alison said? The weird kid. A coward. What if our situations had been reversed? She would have known just what to do. She wouldn’t have been afraid, either. She would have done whatever it took. What are you so afraid of, Clairey? I sat on my bed, hugging my knees to my chest and hearing her words over and over as my eyes filled with tears. I rubbed my fingertips together, and for the first time in years I felt that old prickling feeling. I raised my index finger in the air. A-L-I-S-O-N.

I knew what I had to do.

IT WAS an evening of brewing winds, the Brooklyn night an inimitable hazel. I arrived at my station across from the Little Sweet earlier than usual and pretended to examine the shelves in the grocery as I waited for Clive. At the usual time, I saw him coming up the sidewalk. A few moments after he entered the Little Sweet, I crossed the street. When I reached the entrance, I hesitated. Then I opened the door and stepped inside.

My nights following Clive had not prepared me for this proximity. I took my place behind him in line, inches away from him. I could smell his aftershave. I could see where the cuffs of his windbreaker were worn thin. His hands—fingertips drumming lightly against his pant leg as he waited his turn. I couldn’t do this. I was about to turn and run out the door when I heard a voice, clear as anything, in my mind. Get ahold of yourself, Clairey. It’s like this: He is just some dude who found your phone a few weeks ago and you are just some girl who digs authentic ethnic food and you’re just going to get to know each other. I stayed where I was. I forced myself to stare at his hands until I was able to convince myself that they were not his hands, not the hands, and as I did this, I felt my terror subside. In the coming months, I would play this game over and over. I split Clive Richardson in two: there was the man with whom Alison had spent the last night of her life on Saint X and there was this man in this restaurant in Brooklyn, and they were not the same.

When he looked up, I smiled at him politely and vaguely, then pretended to do a double-take, as if I’d just recognized him.

“Clive, right?”

“Yes…”

“Emily,” I said. “You found my phone last month?”

He exhaled. “That’s right. Nice to see you again.” He squinted at me, and I could feel the question in his gaze: what was I doing here?

Come on, Clairey. You know the words.

“After I met you here I looked this place up on Yelp and saw the rave reviews. I figured I’d better come back and try it.”

I was surprised by how convincingly this explanation came out. Who was to say I wasn’t the sort of girl always on the lookout for the city’s best arepas, curry, dim sum? Maybe I should have been alarmed by my facility for lies, by the ease with which I spun myself into someone else, but I wasn’t. Alison beamed. Well done, Clairey.

“Pepper pot and Carib, my dear?” the woman behind the counter asked Clive when he reached the front of the line. She was short and heavyset, and her natural hair was close-cut.

“Yes, Miss Vincia,” Clive said.

“Pepper pot and Carib, pepper pot and Carib,” the woman clucked as she ladled crimson stew onto a plastic plate. “And who do you have with you tonight?” she asked, her gaze hardening as it shifted to me.

“Oh, we’re not—” Clive began.

“I’m Emily.”

She raised her eyebrows. “And what would you like, Emily?”

I looked up at the illuminated menu. I wanted to pick something quickly and confidently, but with the exception of jerk chicken, the items were mysterious to me, and I was determined not to order jerk chicken, which I was certain would mark me as a rube. Buss-up-shut. Roast bake. Souse. Aloo pie. Accra. As I scanned the menu, I could feel my face heating up and Vincia’s eyes on me, and sensed (or perhaps imagined) her annoyance. Oxtails dinner. Doubles. Festivals. Sea moss. Peanut punch. “I guess I’d better trust the expert,” I said finally, smiling at Clive. “I’ll have a pepper pot and Carib, too, please.”

Vincia filled another plate, and Clive and I slid our trays down the counter side by side to the register.

“My treat,” I said when Clive pulled out his wallet.

He looked at me uncertainly.

“Please? You’d be doing me a favor. I’ve been feeling totally guilty you wouldn’t accept any reward.” I smiled my best silly-me smile.

“Okay,” he relented. “That’s very kind of you. Thank you.”

After I paid for our meals, Clive lifted his tray from the counter and looked at me. He hesitated. “Won’t you join me?”

By paying for his meal I had hoped to create in him a sense of obligation, and it had happened just as I expected.

“Oh, I don’t want to disturb you,” I said, looking down shyly at the floor.

“Please. I insist.” He said this without conviction. He didn’t want me to sit with him. That much was clear.

I smiled. “Okay, then. Thank you.”

I recognized this turn as absolutely crucial. Because now, if Clive ever began to wonder about Emily, and why she was so interested in him, he would remember that he was the one who had insisted that she join him in the first place. She hadn’t even wanted to—had tried, at first, to refuse.

He gestured to the table beside the potted palm tree, and I took my seat across from him. He wiped the table clean of straw wrappers and grains of rice. The table was covered in a yellow oilcloth and adorned with a vase of artificial carnations. A mural on the wall depicted a party on a tropical beach. On the television mounted on the wall, a game show was on—people in costumes competed to win bedroom sets and Jacuzzis.

“You must come here often,” I said.

He looked alarmed. “Why would you say that?”

“I mean, because she knew your order by heart.”

He shook his head and chuckled at himself. “Right. Of course. Well, it’s a good place to pass the time.” He picked up his fork and began to eat, and I did the same.

I swooned when I took my first bite. “Mmm. This is amazing.” In truth I was too full of adrenaline to notice the taste. My reaction was a performance, and I could feel the falseness of it—the theatrical Mmmm, the big eyes.

“Vincia’s food is the best in the borough.” His manner, too, was performative. He was saying what he thought he ought to say to me.