The Noah Confessions by Barbara Hall

got to that part.”
    He patted the bed and said, “Sit down.”
    â€œNo. Just tell me.”
    He sighed and said, “It’s in the letter. Who Jaqueline is.”
    â€œYou know what I mean.”
    He said nothing.
    â€œThat’s my name.”
    My real name was Jaqueline Julia Russo. Lynne was the nickname they agreed to call me. Jaqueline was so far in the past I didn’t even put it down on forms anymore. But I knew it in the back of my mind.
    â€œThere was another Jaqueline before me?”
    He nodded.
    â€œAm I named after her?”
    â€œYes,” he said, without hesitation.
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œIt’s in the letter.”
    â€œStop with the letter. Just tell me.”
    â€œPlease sit down,” he said.
    I sat on the edge of the bed, but just barely, as if the bed had the power to burn me or suck me into hell.
    He thought for a moment, rubbing his eyes.
    Finally he said, “Jaqueline was a girl who was very important to your mother.”
    â€œSo I’m about to understand, if I keep reading.”
    â€œYou should keep reading.”
    â€œI will, but I want to know.”
    â€œShe loved Jaqueline very much,” my father said. “She wanted to validate her memory.”
    â€œSo I have another girl’s name.”
    He thought some more and finally said, “She considered it a great honor, to pass that name on to you.”
    â€œWell, what if I don’t want some other girl’s name?”
    He shrugged and said, “It’s why we decided to call you Lynne. You’re not the same. It’s a memory. It’s an homage.”
    â€œDid the other Jaqueline contribute to my mother becoming a criminal?”
    â€œYou should keep reading,” he said.
    â€œTell me this: Am I named after someone good or someone bad?”
    â€œSomeone very, very good,” he said. “Who never had the opportunities that you have.”
    â€œSo she never had a car.”
    He smiled at me. “She never even had a chance.”
    I decided to let it be. I went back to my room and went directly to sleep and didn’t dream.

SIXTEEN
and Technically Three Days

• 1 •
    I woke up around one a.m. and couldn’t get back to sleep. I was staring at the ceiling as if it were a movie screen, watching all these characters I didn’t know move around and play their parts. The strange girl with my name. My mother, who didn’t really look like me (I had gotten my father’s coloring; some people said I had her smile but I didn’t see it), suddenly looked exactly like me in the movie. I was the one who was living in this crazy house with the distant smoking mother and the strange, fire-setting father. And now I had a new friend to think about. I couldn’t wait until morning to find out about her. I turned on the bedside light and started to read again.
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 
    September 29
    The girl’s name was Jaqueline. She was a teenager. She was the oldest girl of a man who was a machinist in my father’s carpet factory. He was divorced and had remarried a younger woman. They had children together, two girls, Dana and Sheryl, who were both roughly my age. They lived in the bad part of my neighborhood—the poor housing. We were allowed to play together, though my parents made it clear that they were beneath us in terms of social status. Jaqueline wasn’t on anyone’s social scale. She was just a wild teenager.
    She tried to be good. She worked hard in school and made good grades. But when her parents weren’t looking, which was most of the time, she was wild. She had a much older boyfriend who rode a motorcycle. She wore hot pants and smoked on the streets. When her long hair got in the way, she pulled it back and put on a bandanna. She smiled and laughed a lot. She had a good attitude.
    Once when my father was driving home from work, he saw her standing outside a local gas station,