Call Me By My Own Name

The day Wesley Vance came to the airport to meet me, after seven years of loving each other online, my sister ran out ahead of me in the red dress we'd agreed I would wear.

He froze for two seconds, then pulled her into his arms, his eyes going red.

Nightide. I'm finally seeing you.

I started forward, and my mother clamped down on my hand.

"Audrey Hughes just had the birthmark on her face fixed. She only wants to know what it feels like to be the one somebody chooses without hesitation."

"Lend her half an hour. Don't be so selfish."

But half an hour passed, and my sister said nothing.

In the car home, she leaned against Wesley's shoulder, using the nickname, telling the stories, that came from letters I'd spent seven years writing.

Wesley noticed me watching them and frowned.

"Rita Hughes, your sister says you always loved taking her things, even as a kid."

"This is the first time we're meeting. Could you not spoil it?"

My mother jumped in at once.

"Rita, move over a little more. Don't crowd the two of them."

That night, my sister pushed her phone into my hands.

"He asked me why I fell for him seven years ago."

She smiled, shy.

"Sis, this onecan you answer it for me?"

I didn't take the phone she held out.

Audrey's hand stiffened in midair, and the smile faded a little.

"Sis, are you angry?"

"Wasn't it supposed to be just half an hour?"

I looked at her. "It's already been ten."

The living room went quiet for a beat.

My mother rose from the couch and pressed the phone into my palm.

"You wrote for her seven years. What's one more line?"

I froze.

"What do you mean, wrote for her?"

"Didn't all of you say it todaythat I'm the one who"

"Rita." My father's face darkened. "Do you really have to make a scene when Audrey's this happy?"

Audrey's eyes went red on the spot.

"Never mind. I'll answer it myself."

She reached for the phone but didn't actually take it.

On the screen, another message from Wesley came in.

Nightide, why aren't you saying anything?

You used to say there always has to be a reason for loving someone. My reasons ran seven pages. What about yours?

I'd read that line more times than I could count.

Seven years ago, my parents fought for the first time over the birthmark on Audrey's face.

My mother blamed my father's bad genes. My father blamed my mother for taking the wrong medicine while she was pregnant.

They smashed the bowls and forgot I was standing right there.

I hid out on the balcony and wrote to "Everdawn."

I asked him why everyone needed me to be mature, to be strong, to look after my sister.

Only he wrote back:

Rita, it's okay not to be strong. Tonight I'll stay up with you until morning.

I closed my eyes, then opened the message box anyway.

Because that year everyone told me to be strong, and only you said it was okay not to be.

You stayed up with me until morning.

The message had barely gone through before Wesley replied, almost instantly.

So you do remember.

Ever since I saw you today, I've kept feeling like you'd changed.

But when you write, you're still my Nightide.

Audrey stared at those lines, her expression blank for a moment.

She didn't know what had happened that year.

She didn't know what Wesley had written, letter after letter, while he stayed up with me until dawn.

But the next second she was clinging to my mother's arm, wheedling softly.

"Mom, Wesley says I'm still his Nightide."

My mother laughed at once.

"See, I told you. In real life, it's you he likes."

"Your sister's just a bit better with words. Feelings aren't something you judge by writing alone."

I asked quietly, "Then what were my feelings?"

My father looked at me, impatient.

"You talked through a screen for seven years and never even saw his face. How deep could it be?"

"Audrey and Wesley have already met, and they like each other. You're the older sister. Do you really want to be the other woman?"

The other woman.

So from the very first day Wesley held the wrong person, I'd become the other woman.

The phone buzzed again.

A message from Wesley, just to me.

Your sister kept staring at me all day.

Nightide, does she have feelings for me?

I looked at those words and suddenly had no strength left to explain.

Audrey nudged me gently.

"Sis, hurry up and reply."

"Just say I always loved taking things from her when we were little."

I pushed the phone back into her hands.

"That line you can say yourself."

That night, for the first time, I didn't answer Wesley's goodnight.

But through the wall, I heard Audrey ask my mother, excited:

"So what do we do later, when he asks about the past?"

My mother didn't hesitate.

"Ask your sister."

"She'll answer."

"She's always been the easiest to coax. And the most sensible one."

The next day, Wesley came to pick Audrey up for a trip to his bookstore.

Mom made me go too.

"Audie doesn't know those books well. You'll be there to remind her."

I looked at her. "As what, exactly?"

"As her sister, of course."

She said it like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

"It's your sister's first relationship. What's wrong with helping her out?"

Wesley stood in the doorway, caught the last line, and gave me a flat glance.

"It's best if she's willing to help."

"That way Nightide won't be stuck in the middle."

Audrey looped her arm through his and said sweetly, "My sister just talks tough. She loves me more than anyone."

I got put in the back seat.

The two of them laughed and chatted the whole way.

Wesley asked her which letter was her favorite.

Audrey paused, then turned to look at me.

I turned my face away, toward the window.

So she could only smile and say, "I love every one of them."

Wesley's smile dimmed a little.

"But you used to say you'd never forget the thirty-seventh, not for your whole life."

The car went quiet for a few seconds.

Audrey's eyes reddened fast.

"I'm just so nervous today, my head's all a mess."

Wesley softened his voice at once.

"It's fine. I'm not testing you."

He looked at me in the rearview mirror.

"As long as certain people don't put pressure on you."

My fingertips curled slightly.

He probably thought it was me in the back seat, making Audrey nervous.

At the bookstore, Wesley took us up to the second floor.

A whole row of blue-covered books sat by the window.

The one in the very center was the out-of-print copy of The Tide Book.

Seven years ago I'd written in a letter that I'd seen it once at a used-book stall but couldn't bring myself to buy it.

Wesley handed the book to Audrey.

"A gift for our meeting. Seven years late."

Audrey flipped through a couple of pages and smiled sweetly.

"I love it."

"Which line?" Wesley asked.

Her hand stopped.

I knew what Wesley wanted to hear.

There was a line in that book: the mountain waits for a tide that never comes, but with every retreat, the tide knows the mountain is still there.

That was why he was Everdawn and I was Nightide.

Audrey pointed at a line at random.

"This one. It's very romantic."

Wesley glanced at it and said nothing.

That line was about death.

At lunch, he ordered Audrey a fish chowder with no cilantro.

Audrey took one sip, frowned, and picked all the cilantro out of her own bowl into mine.

"Here, sis, you like it. Eat up."

Wesley's chopsticks stilled.

"Didn't Nightide never eat cilantro, even as a kid?"

Audrey went pale.

She had Mom's script memorized by now.

"I didn't before, but my taste changed after the surgery."

Wesley looked again at the little mound of cilantro piled in my bowl.

"Then what about her?"

Audrey smiled.

"My sister likes to copy me."

"Whatever I won't eat, she says she won't eat either."

The hesitation in Wesley's eyes turned to distaste in an instant.

"Rita."

"People aren't the same. Learning her habits doesn't make you her."

I lifted my head.

"You'd better remember that yourself."

He seemed not to have expected me to push back, and his brows drew tighter.

That afternoon, for the group photo, Audrey stood beside Wesley.

Both sets of parents were pulled into the frame.

The photographer asked, "And where does this young lady stand?"

Mom said, without thinking, "She'll take it for us."

I took the camera.

In the frame, the two families stood close together.

Wesley smoothed Audrey's hair, and Mom and Dad smiled wider than they ever did at Christmas.

Like they'd always been one family.

No one asked whether I wanted to be in the shot.

When it was done, Wesley came over to me.

"Rita, I don't care what problems you had with Nightide in the past."

"But she finally got through it, and today she's happy."

"Don't use those half-true little details to wreck her happiness."

I looked at him.

"And what if those details belonged to me in the first place?"

He gave a short laugh.

"Your sister already told me."

"You've been snatching her things since you were kids."

"Rita, don't make yourself look pathetic."

On the drive home, Audrey handed me her phone again.

Wesley had asked:

In the thirty-seventh letter, there was a line I never sent. Do you still remember it?

Audrey bit her lip.

"Sis, you can't refuse to help me this time, can you?"

I didn't take the phone.

Because the thirty-seventh letter was the first time Wesley confessed to me.

That line had never been written into any chat log anywhere.

Only I knew it.

"I don't remember."

It was the first lie I ever told in front of my whole family.

Audrey panicked at once.

"How can you not remember? Don't you keep every single letter?"

Wesley walked in from outside just then.

He only caught the second half.

"Why would you be keeping Nightide's letters?"

Audrey shot up like she'd been startled.

"Wesley, don't blame my sister."

"She's just... she's always envied us."

Mom sighed too.

"Rita's always been the brooding type. Whatever Audie has, she wants it."

I looked at Wesley.

This was the third time.

At the airport, when I tried to say I was Nightide, he said first that I loved to steal my sister's things.

At the bookstore, when I tried to say those habits were mine, he said I was copying her.

Now, before I'd said a word, he'd already believed them.

Wesley said coldly, "Delete them."

"Those are private, between me and Nightide."

I asked, "And if I don't?"

"Then I can only assume you have feelings about her and me that you shouldn't."

Audrey tugged at his sleeve.

"Don't be like this. My sister's just very lonely."

The way she pleaded for me looked so gentle, so kind.

Suddenly I felt exhausted.

"Fine."

I said, "I'll deal with it."

Wesley thought I'd agreed to delete them, and his face softened.

But that night I exported everything from seven years, every email, every chat log, every scanned letter, and handed it all to Sadie Abbott.

Sadie was my classmate from college, now an editor at a publishing house.

She read through the whole folder and went quiet for a long time.

"You came to ask me how to win the man back?"

"No."

"Then what do you want?"

I looked at the titles of eighty-four letters on the screen.

"My name."

Sadie nodded.

"Then the first thing is copyright registration records."

"As for the man, he's worthless. Not covered by protection."

I let out a soft laugh.

Three days later, Wesley announced he'd be holding an exhibition of the seven years of letters between Nightide and Stillmount.

He said anonymous letters had carried him through the hardest seven years of his life.

He wanted to give Nightide a proper beginning, in front of every reader.

Audrey was so thrilled she didn't sleep all night.

Mom dug out the paper letters I'd saved and picked through them for her, one by one.

"This one's beautifully written. Put it first."

"This line's romantic too. He can read it out during the proposal."

I reached for them.

But Mom clutched the box to her chest.

"What do you think you're doing?"

"Those are my letters."

"Yours? How are they yours?" Dad pushed a document across to me. "Audie can't write. You just tidied up a few lines for her, that's all."

The title read Work Authorization and Ghostwriting Statement.

It said all writing published under the name "Nightide" belonged, in true emotion and creative authorship, to Audrey, and that I was only responsible for the ghostwriting.

I stared at those few lines, my fingers going cold, one degree at a time.

"Who told you I was writing on her behalf?"

Mom lost her patience.

"In real life the one Wesley likes is Audie. Doesn't that prove enough?"

"Rita, you've taken the older-sister spot for twenty-five years. Now all she wants is one person who genuinely likes her, and you still have to take that too?"

"I didn't take her spot."

My voice shook. "I'm the one who's your daughter."

"So is she!" Mom slammed the table. "Which is exactly why you should give way to her!"

Dad pointed at the authorization.

"Sign it."

"We're family. If this gets out, how does that look for any of us?"

I didn't sign.

The next day, I went to the exhibition hall.

A huge poster hung at the entrance.

A girl in a red dress standing by the sea, her smile bright and vivid.

The poster read:

Nightide, real name Audrey Hughes.

Seven years of letters, revealed for the first time.

And the name I'd written under for seven years was set in one line of tiny text at the very bottom of the poster.

Text compilation: Rita Hughes.

The day of the exhibition, Mom laid out a black dress for me.

"Don't wear red."

"Today is Audrey's day," she said. "Don't let anyone get the wrong idea."

I looked at the dress, the kind you'd wear to a funeral, and didn't reach for it.

"I'm not going."

Dad's face went dark at once.

"The account is in your hands. At the end, the exhibition has to link back to the original inbox."

"If you don't go, what happens to the proposal?"

So they'd never wanted me there to witness anything.

They just needed me to finish the last step.

Audrey came out of her room in the red dress from the airport.

She said quietly, "Sis, help me one last time."

"Once Wesley proposes, I won't bother you again."

"One last time?"

I looked at her. "At the airport, you also said half an hour."

She looked away.

Then Mom grabbed my arm.

"If you make a scene today, we'll pretend we never had you."

I laughed.

"Haven't you always pretended that already?"

The hall was crowded.

My letters hung on the walls.

*Everdawn, I turned eighteen today.*

*Everdawn, Mom says again that I have everything, so I should be good and let others come first.*

*Everdawn, if we ever meet someday, will you know me at first sight?*

Beneath every letter was Audrey's name.

Some praised her devotion.

Some praised her talent.

She stood beside Wesley and took in all of it.

A reporter asked her, "In seven years, what's your most unforgettable memory?"

She smiled and said, "Every single day."

Wesley glanced at her.

The hesitation in that look ran deeper than before.

But he still took her hand.

When the host introduced me, all he said was:

"This is Miss Audrey Hughes's older sister, the one who put the letters into words."

Someone in the audience sighed.

"The little sister falls in love, the big sister writes her love letters. So sweet."

"With writing that good, the sister must have given her a lot of real feeling to work with."

I stood backstage and didn't explain.

Before the proposal began, Wesley came to me to connect the account.

He said in a low voice, "Don't embarrass Audrey today."

"After this is over, I'll get her to sit down and talk things out with you."

I asked, "Do you still remember what else there was, besides the red dress, when we agreed to meet seven years ago?"

He froze.

"How do you know there was something else?"

"Audrey didn't tell you?"

His face changed, just slightly.

Behind him, Mom's voice came.

"Wesley, Audrey's looking for you."

He hesitated a few seconds, then turned and walked away.

Onstage, the lights came up.

Wesley stood before a backdrop wall made of eighty-four letters, reading my words out loud, line by line.

"Audrey, you told me the thing you fear most is being left behind."

"From today on, I'll never make you wait again."

He dropped to one knee and took out the ring.

Audrey covered her mouth, crying, and nodded.

As the applause broke out, Mom gripped my hand hard.

"You see it now?"

"The one Wesley loves is her."

"After today, you hand over the account, and you never bring this up again."

She squeezed my wrist until it went pale.

But I couldn't feel the pain anymore.

As they embraced, the big screen suddenly went black.

Staff rushed to check the wiring.

A few seconds later, the screen lit up again.

Not the proposal photos.

An email.

Sent seven years ago.

Delivered today.

The subject line read: *To Everdawn, Seven Years From Now*.

The first line appeared slowly.

*Wesley, I'm Rita.*

The applause in the hall died away, little by little.

The second line jumped out after it.

*When we meet, you have to call me by the right name first.*

The smile on Wesley's face vanished completely.

Across the whole crowded room, he slowly turned his head.

For the first time, he truly looked at me.