The Other Side of Now, page 26
She bites her bottom lip in a way I forgot she used to do. “I do believe you. I was mad and being mean.”
I pause. “Why didn’t you go to Avalon with me?”
“Because I didn’t want to!” she says, her voice now the one bouncing off the empty seats and through the sky-high rafters. “I didn’t want to.”
“What do you mean, you didn’t want to? It’s literally all we talked about for like two years!”
“No, Meg, it’s all you talked about for two years.”
I shake my head. This is bullshit. “We stayed up every night talking about it.”
She doesn’t say anything because we both know what she’d say. Which is that I was the one who stayed up every night talking about it.
“Okay…” I relent. “So why didn’t you tell me?”
“I knew you’d blame it on Theo. Because, yeah, I wanted to stay with him. I loved him, Meg, I’ve always loved him so much. Even when he was a loser idiot teenager, and now that he’s not, I love him the same. I knew that you’d think I was being a dumb girl staying home to be with her townie boyfriend. I never wanted a big life like you.” The way she says big life, I can tell she’s quoting me. “You could never understand why or how anyone could ever want anything less than to become an icon. To become immortal.” She gives a laugh joylessly.
I seethe. “This is crazy.”
She nods slowly.
It makes sense. It makes so much stupid, stupid sense. I can hardly believe it, because if this is true, and if the timelines diverged when I think they did, then it means she lied in my world too. And in my world, it’s even worse, because she let me stay home without telling me the truth.
I think of how I’m always trying to get my mom to move out of Florida. How she’s always telling me that she and Dad like their life there. How I’m often angry when I get off the phone with her.
More strange, disjointed memories start to pour over into my consciousness like an overflowing bathtub, the hot water seeping over the sides.
No wonder the atmosphere was so charged after we graduated high school. Aimee acted so weird, especially once we got to college. No wonder she encouraged me to move to the nicer building without her. No wonder she got so visibly uncomfortable every time I joked about having stayed home for her. Clearly, I had been veiling my own resentments, but I’d based them on what I thought was the truth.
Every time things sucked, they double-sucked for her because she felt guilty I was there, ostensibly, for her.
“But I saw the letter,” I say.
She shakes her head. “No, you didn’t.”
I have an image in my head of the rejection letter she received. I can see it.
But as quickly as it appears, the memory begins to go up in flames, as if I were holding a match to the edge of the letter itself.
“You never asked to see it,” she says. “I think you knew. You must have, somewhere.”
I feel a strange tremor run through my skeleton and I wet my lips and clear my throat. “No, that’s—no.”
“I kept thinking you’d ask to see it, but when you didn’t, I didn’t volunteer it. Obviously. Because it was a lie.”
A small waft of amusement goes between us and I can’t help but scoff.
“This changed my whole life, you know. That decision. That’s what this whole thing is about. I think. My being here at all. I had two lives. I picked one. The one where I stayed with you. And where I lost you.”
“You should have come,” she says to the ground. “This is what should have happened. To me, it is what happened.”
“Why didn’t I? If I knew? Why would I stay in Florida with you if I secretly knew?”
She shrugs. “I don’t know. I don’t know if you knew or didn’t.”
We look at each other now, and I feel like we’re two fairies trapped under a jar. Both easily apprehended because we were paralyzed with fear, too afraid to take flight.
“So this is why we were fighting?”
“I mean, it started as an argument about Theo. Then I told you the truth about my acceptance. I was so mad. I wanted you to learn to like Theo and when you wouldn’t, after all this time, I snapped. Told you. I knew it would make you as angry as I was. I think my logic was that you’d see that you were selfish, you broke our deal and came without me. Which is stupid. I knew it was stupid.”
“And … how did you end up coming here? To Avalon? If you didn’t want to.”
She exhales heavily and says, “I changed my mind. I realized I was making a major life decision based on fear and decided that it was a worthier thing to follow your dream than to have no dream of my own. I couldn’t stay home for a guy, in the end. I figured if it was meant to be, then me leaving for an opportunity like this wouldn’t mean saying no to a life with him eventually. And he wasn’t really getting it together yet. The weed-smoking was a lot back then, and obviously it just was different then. Like a whole-ass lifestyle.”
It’s true. When we were teenagers, you didn’t have to be a prude to think the stoners were lame. Now, in California, I don’t know anyone who doesn’t have gummies, a vape pen, a topical cream.… I could go on.
I hear her phone buzz on her stack of things in the aisle where she left them.
“That’ll be Theo,” she says. “I usually put the kids to bed.”
“Okay.”
She pauses, then says, “It is annoying, you’d think he could do it one night without me. Maybe I should divorce him.”
She’s kidding of course, and I laugh gratefully. “I love that guy, I think you should stay forever.”
We both laugh, then when the awkward silence hits, she inhales through her nose and says, “I’d better…”
“Yeah, for sure.”
She goes back out into the empty theater and picks up her phone, then gathers her things. She holds up a hand to say goodbye, and I hold mine up.
“Turn the lights off, yeah?” she says.
She goes through the squeaky door to the outside, and I’m left by myself.
* * *
That night, I text Cillian and he tells me that he’s got a busy night at the pub. I text Kiera, too, who says she’s busy but can’t wait to see the show tomorrow.
I get back to the cottage, absent of all the company I’ve had recently, and feel overwhelmed by the emptiness.
It’s not that I feel sorry for myself or panic at the idea that I have to face an entire evening alone.
No, it’s weirder than that. More complicated.
In the last couple of days, I’ve been feeling more and more divided. Tense but relaxed. Happy but worried. As if I’m slicing into two. And I’ve seen enough movies, consumed enough stories, to fear what I think might be inevitable.
Tomorrow night, after the show, I have a flight from Dublin to LAX. I have no intention of getting on that flight. I would cancel it if I could, but of course my ticket doesn’t exist. It’s from the other reality. So why am I so afraid that the end will come and take me?
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
“Aimee, I can’t find the garden hose! I don’t know how it went missing, but—”
One of the tech crew, the teenage barista from Joy’s—who’s not named Freddy and is in fact named Antony—bursts into the dressing room. With him comes the ambient sound of busy energy from outside.
He looks stressed.
“Stage left, I just saw it,” she says.
He sighs deeply, putting a hand on his chest. “What a relief.”
He rushes back out, sending this room back into silence.
Aimee and I look at each other.
“I can’t do it. I haven’t had any time to emotionally prepare for this. I hate being onstage!”
I’m filled with a fizzing, nervous anticipation I haven’t felt in years. Knowing everyone is out there, that they’ll be watching in real time. I’ll hear them laugh. I’ll feel them listen.
“You can do this,” I say to Aimee, earnestly. “It’s you and me.”
The characters are us, in a way, but there’s another meaning to my words. It’s going to be us onstage and nothing else matters.
She exhales noisily and says, “Why did I agree to this?”
“Because it’s the best thing.” And the only thing, because otherwise she was big-time fucked. “You’re going to be great.”
“Maybe! Or maybe I’ll suck!”
She sits down next to me and starts buffing her foundation into her skin with frantic energy. I finish my lipstick and then, as she overapplies blush, I say, “Okay, okay, let’s calm down, let’s put down the makeup. Come here, let me help you.”
She turns to me, looking anxious, her eyes pointed at the ceiling, her eyebrows in a state of worry.
I blend the foundation around her jawline and clean off the blush brush with a tissue before starting to buff in the color.
It’s been a really long time since I’ve done another girl’s makeup, but I always used to do Aimee’s. Even if I did a bad job.
When we were around thirteen years old and really discovering makeup for the first time, we’d experiment with it in my parents’ bathroom while they watched Survivor downstairs. Once, we got caught using my mom’s good stuff and she tried to teach us better techniques.
Then, once we were older and I was starting to get the general hang of it, I’d do Aimee’s makeup before homecoming, when we were usually each other’s dates. Before prom, which we both had dates for, but left early. Before the plays, even when I had the lead and she was in the background. Before our joint high school graduation party.
In college, she leaned into a more natural, clean look and lost interest in me practicing cat eyes and contouring on her.
I cringe a little now, thinking about how I had forced her to let me use her as a little doll sometimes.
The welcome music kicks on outside, dreamy 1930s jazz. It doesn’t have anything to do with the plot or the show itself, but Aimee insisted that it lends a festive feel to any situation, and I couldn’t argue with that.
As soon as she hears it, Aimee inhales sharply. It’s almost time.
I look at the clock on the wall. Thirty minutes ’til curtain. Six hours until my flight. I just need to get past boarding time and I’ll feel safe here.
“Hey,” I say, smiling at Aimee and dropping my chin. “You’re fine. You don’t need to worry. Plus, I’m an old hand at this now. If you screw up, we’ll freestyle. No one else will know.”
She nods tightly. Then she says, “Meg, can I tell you something?”
I sit back. “Of course. Anything.”
“Last night—last night I had a really weird dream.”
“That always used to happen to me before a show. What was it?”
She bites her bottom lip, eyebrows tented fretfully. “We were in Florida. I was driving. I think—I think it might have been the—the … it was by that McDonald’s. The one that closed before midnight.”
Oh God.
“Shit.” I feel like my heart might disconnect from my body completely. “Are you serious?”
She nods. “It was scary, Meg. I thought you weren’t supposed to be able to die in dreams, but I just … and then I woke up.”
I reach out and put my arms around her. I squeeze her, even though she doesn’t, at first, hug me back.
“I don’t want to believe you,” she says, sniffing and pulling back. She uses a triangle of tissue to dab at her tears. “It feels impossible to accept it. It’s terrifying.”
“Would it make you feel better if I said I made the whole thing up?”
She scoffs. “No, God!”
I laugh sadly. “I wish I had.”
Her phone buzzes. She reads whatever pops up, then groans and says, “The bartender didn’t bring ice—dammit, how…” She texts back furiously.
I move away from her, feeling as though this whole world is starting to slip between my fingers like sand.
“Fifteen minutes,” says the stage manager, appearing in the doorway.
“Gah!” exclaims Aimee.
“It’s okay!” I say. “Look, don’t think about the dream. I’m sure it was your imagination. We talked about it. You’ve seen movies. Your brain probably repurposed a bunch of tragic stuff and turned it into a nightmare.”
She looks at me, and I look at her. I don’t believe the words I’m saying. There’s been too much weirdness since I’ve been here. Including the being here thing to begin with. But also the strange bleed-through of memories and feelings that I shouldn’t have access to.
What if her soul knows? What if all our souls know things? What if that’s what instinct is? What if that really is the explanation for gut feelings, intuition, déjà vu, kismet, and everything else? What if it’s our souls, remembering or knowing the truths of all our other lives?
“Bullshit,” she says, looking into my eyes. “You don’t think it’s a dream. Neither do I.”
We’re both silent for a moment.
“Come on,” I say. “Let’s get into costume.”
We’ve been sitting here in our foundation garments—which is really the only word for this particular kind of scaffolding.
She wears an A-line dress with stockings and little kitten heels. I’m in a chic blue jumpsuit with high pumps.
Once dressed, we look in the mirror.
Our reflection sends a chill through me.
I don’t want to say that I’ve gotten used to being around Aimee again. I haven’t stopped being amazed, confused, weirded out. I would say that I’ve adapted, like I have to the rest of this surreality. But this is the first time I’ve seen myself beside her in real life, and something about this is startling.
I don’t know what I expected. That her reflection—or mine—wouldn’t show up? Like a vampire? Or maybe some M. Night Shyamalan twist, where her reflection is some terrifying proof that she really is dead. Or maybe that we’d suddenly be nineteen again?
Instead, it’s us. Thirty-year-old me, thirty-year-old her. Together. Alive.
Our eyes lock on each other’s.
“Let’s go look at the audience,” I say. “Do you think the critic is here yet?”
“I don’t know, I’ve seen Waiting for Guffman one too many times.”
We sneak to the side curtain and look out at the theater.
“Aw, look,” says Aimee, nudging me and then pointing at Cillian in the middle of the front row, talking to Theo, his ankle resting on one of his knees and a beer in his right hand.
The place is packed with warm, delicious energy as noisy men clink their glasses of beer and ladies clutch their shawls close while sipping from small glasses of wine (not being sexist, that just is the situation for the most part). There are some irritable-looking teenagers and hyper kids who undoubtedly won’t stay still for the performance. Including Clare and Ronan, who are in tow with Theo, playing in front of the stage. He’s got a beer too and he tilts his head with interest at something Cillian says.
I feel a pang of unexpected fondness for Theo and resolve to apologize to him after the show, or at least try to talk to him. Get to know this version of him. We’re staying at the theater for a little party and mingle thing afterward. I’ll do it then.
Clare holds something up for Cillian to look at. He takes it and says something that makes her laugh.
“Cute,” I say. In yet another life, I could see the four of us out on double dates. Having fun. Maybe her kids and … my own kid too. One day. A long time from now, when I’m physically capable of that kind of responsibility. When I’ve finished sorting out my own child- and teenagehood.
I watch Aimee’s face as she looks at her family. The tender, slight smile. The softness around the eyes, which focus far off into a world with them.
It’s like it recharges her. Helps to wash away the sadness she felt a moment ago, thinking of the dream. Thinking of how bad things could be or might have been.
“Do you see him?” asks Aimee.
“Who?”
“The critic.”
“How would I recognize him?”
“He’s the one person who isn’t from Avalon—or, I guess you don’t know everyone. Never mind.”
“Oy, ladies,” comes a voice behind us.
We both jump and turn to see Kiera.
“What is it?” asks Aimee, putting a hand over her chest. “There’s a disaster, isn’t there?”
“No! I chatted up that critic. We had a glass of wine and it turns out he’s a young, dashing sort of character. Not the old, stodgy miser I was picturing. Maybe enough to finally steal me from my Nial spiral.”
This makes me laugh, but Aimee says, “Ohmigod, ohmigod, ohmigod.”
“I know, I know, I thought it would be good if you knew—I told him how amazing you two are, and how you’ve been friends for years and all. He looked impressed when I told him the backstory.”
We both stare at her.
She looks between us and then says, “Oh, no, God, not everything. I just told him it’s based on your own friendship. Basically. He thinks it sounds good! Seems like it’s a pretty big deal he came all the way out.”
“No pressure,” I say to Aimee, giving Kiera a wide-eyed look of shut! up!
“No, no! He said he’s looking for real. He’s looking for raw. And he said if this show is anything like it sounds, then it’ll be right up his street. I’m here to tell you good luck and remind you to give it your all. Hold nothing back. Really. I’ve known you both a long time. That’s your issue. You’re so tough, the both of you. I know that’s rich coming from an Irish girl, but that should tell you something.”
“Five minutes!” calls the stage manager.
“I also got him a little tipsy. Okay, break a leg, ladies. I can’t wait to see the show!”
She winks and goes off.
“I’m so nervous,” says Aimee.
“It’s no big deal,” I say, looking as cool and collected as humanly possible. “You’re fine. Everyone will love it. And if they don’t, then fuck ’em. But they will.”
She nods. “Okay.”
“It’ll be great. I promise.”
I hold up a pinky. After a moment, she holds up hers, too, and links it with mine. Electricity buzzes between us, coursing through my bones starting at that joint.
