Rayne & Delilah's Midnite Matinee

by Jeff Zentner

  “I get lonely sometimes, but so does everyone else. We’re all looking for some sort of salvation in something. Sometimes we try to find it in people. We find our salvation. It slips through our fingers. We find it again. We get left behind. Living is hurting, but I’ll take living over the alternative any day. Consciousness is a marvelous gift. It took almost dying to make me realize that. Hell, I’m just rambling now. Anyway, having said all this, you did not get left behind.”

  “Feels like I did,” I say through sniffles, wiping my nose with the back of my hand.

  “My girlfriend left me and left me good. Josie? She didn’t leave you. People who love each other never really leave each other. If I know y’all, you won’t be two steps out that door before you’re texting about what a pain in the ass I am.”

  “Wrong.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, we like you.”

  “My efforts have been in vain,” Arliss says, his eyes twinkling. “Here’s the deal, kid. Josie is going out and finding her path. You gotta find yours. Sometimes that takes people in different directions for a while. But you’ll stay friends and be okay.” Arliss pats my shoulder. “Here’s one more thing: it’d be real easy to think that you can protect yourself from hurt by just never loving anyone. Kinda like how you can keep from getting hit by a bus by never leaving the house. But that’s no way to go through life. Better to love people and get hurt. No one ever says on their deathbed they wish they’d loved fewer people.”

  I dab a tear away with my index finger. “Arliss?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I think you’re a really good person, no matter how hard you try to convince people you aren’t.”

  “Let’s don’t get carried away.”

  I wipe my eyes. “Promise you won’t make fun of me for what I’m about to say?”

  “No.”

  “Thank you for being here for me. Not even my own dad was. Thanks for that, and for helping me do this for so long.” I wish I had something better to say, but I come up empty—sort of the way of things tonight.

  Arliss looks at the floor. He clears his throat a couple of times. “Yeah.” It might be my imagination, but his voice cracks a little. He nods, stands, drags the chair back off set. “It’s my pleasure,” he says quietly, his back to me.

  “Liar.”

  He turns, half smiles, and takes his position behind the camera. “I still don’t want to be here all night. So let’s nail this intro.”

  I take a deep breath that stutters as it fills my lungs and exits. I’ve made a decision. Arliss’s pep talk has given me the sliver of courage to end this thing I created. To give it the finish it deserves. And then I’ll go find my path. I thought it was this, but I’m not strong enough to go it alone.

  I steel myself to kill off this part of me, the one beautiful and exceptional thing I had (and it wasn’t even that beautiful or exceptional). It’s run its course. I don’t know what I’ll say. I decide to speak from my heart, and if it’s a calamity, so be it. I wish I could give it a more dignified send-off.

  Arliss raises his hand one more time. “In five, four, three, two…”

  I want so badly to cry again, it nauseates me to button it in. But I know I have this one last chance. Because even at his most patient and accommodating, Arliss isn’t going to let me try this twenty times. We should have ended with Josie here instead of my limping across the finish line alone. I silently pray to get it right. This once, let me be as good as Josie.

  “Hello, ladies and ghouls, I’m Delilah Darkwood. You may have noticed I’m by myself this week. So I guess I want to say something.” I start to crack. I breathe the lump back down. “This is going to be the—”

  There’s a loud knock at the outside door. Great.

  “The hell,” Arliss mutters. “We’re never gonna get through this.” He stomps back up the corridor to answer the door.

  I stay seated, trying to smooth down my latest surge of stage fright like a stubborn cowlick. I hope I haven’t lost the little bit of momentum I had going. While Arliss talks with whoever’s at the door, I close my eyes to concentrate on what I’m going to say. Instead, my thoughts spiral.

  You’re not good enough.

  You can’t.

  You’ll never be happy.

  People will always leave you.

  You aren’t enough for the things you love.

  Two sets of steps echo in the corridor over my sniffling. Arliss’s heavy plod, and some lighter, quicker ones. I assume someone who works at the station left their keys at their desk, or a half-eaten bologna sandwich in the break-room fridge that they can’t stop thinking about.

  “Hey, kid,” Arliss says.

  I open my eyes and look up.

  My mom is standing in front of me. She’s dressed in a black satin gown she bought on one of our thrifting expeditions, and has long black gloves up to her elbows. Pale foundation covers her face and upper chest, and she has theatrical dark eye makeup. Her hair is teased up wildly and has a gray streak sprayed into it. Her look is somewhere between Helena Bonham Carter as Bellatrix Lestrange and Helena Bonham Carter as everyone else she’s ever played.

  I don’t know how to make sense of what I’m seeing. I stand. “Mom?”

  She beams. “You mean”—she does jazz hands—“Dolores Darkwood.”

  “Mom,” I say again, my voice quavering, pleading with her not to be making some awful joke as I start toward her slowly.

  She holds out her arms, and I rush into them, and she hugs me tight, like I’ll slip from her grasp. I sob and sob. And I feel her warm tears on the side of my face.

  “I couldn’t do it alone,” I say. “I tried so hard.”

  “And you don’t have to, DeeDee. I’ll never leave you on your own. I’m here for you, baby. Always.”

  We hug and rock back and forth.

  I break the embrace and wipe my eyes. I take a deep breath and fan myself. “How did you get here? I have the car.”

  She wipes her eyes too. “Candy brought me after her reading. Helped me with my makeup.”

  “What about work?”

  “I talked with my manager. I’m picking up extra night shifts in return for no Fridays anymore.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I wasn’t sure I had the guts to do this. I didn’t want to get your hopes up and then chicken out.”

  I glance in Arliss’s direction. He’s standing by the camera, waiting patiently. But I’m not about to press my luck.

  “Okay,” I say to my mom. “Should we fix our makeup?”

  “I think our runny mascara actually looks kinda cool and spooky,” she says.

  “I’m good if you are.”

  “Let’s do this. I gotta warn you, I’m very nervous. I’ve never done anything like this before.”

  We walk over to the stage. Arliss hurries and grabs Josie’s chair and sets it up for Mom.

  “Why, thank you—I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name at the door,” Mom says.

  Arliss tips his cap. “Arliss Thacker. Ma’am.” He’s uncharacteristically stammery and jittery.

  “Shawna Wilkes. You’re a fine gentleman, Arliss. Thank you for all you’ve done for my daughter.”

  He blushes. “Ain’t no big thing.”

  “It’s a huge deal to her.”

  Arliss smiles, showing teeth. This is an exceedingly rare occurrence. “All right. Follow your daughter’s lead, okay?”

  “I’ve watched every single episode of the show.”

  “I don’t doubt it.”

  “But it’s different being on this side of the camera.”

  “I don’t doubt it.”

  “I’ve survived worse, though,” Mom says with a deep breath. “I’ll survive this.”

  Arliss smiles again. He actu
ally has a good smile. “I don’t doubt it. We survivors have a way of surviving.” He and Mom share a knowing look.

  We sit. Mom vibrates with anxious energy. I reach over and take her hand, which has gone cold and tense. “Hey,” I say. “You’ll be great.”

  She nods quickly and swallows hard but doesn’t respond.

  “It just takes practice,” I say.

  She nods again and gives me a thin smile. “By the way, I had an idea for a new horoscope segment we could do tonight,” she whispers.

  Arliss counts us down and points.

  I don’t even need to try very hard to sound upbeat and bright. “Hello, ladies and ghouls, I’m Delilah Darkwood, and you’re seeing a new face on Midnite Matinee. With me is…”

  Mom sits frozen for a beat. “Oh! Me? Dolores Darkwood.” She dissolves into the church giggles. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Can we take it again?”

  “Okay, Mom,” I say gently. “Deep breath. Arliss lets us have two tries, and then—”

  “It’s fine,” Arliss says, cutting me off, all jittery and blushy again. “We can go until you get it right.”

  “I don’t want to tie you up all night. I promise I’ll get the hang of this,” Mom says.

  “It’s no trouble at all,” Arliss says.

  Man, Arliss is acting really strangely. It’s almost like…Oh, come on. I can practically see my own brain with the internal eye roll I’m doing.

  But also, every molecule in my body feels like the rush of birds taking flight from a field.

  Sometimes you’ve resigned yourself to living your life in the shadow of what might have been. Looking up at happiness from some low place. You’ve finally accepted that your life isn’t on the unbroken upward trajectory it feels like it’ll be when you’re a kid, when you assume every year will be better than the one before. You’ve said to yourself, This is all there is for me, and then something, someone, comes along and says, Hold on, there’s more.

  Maybe life isn’t about avoiding pain at all costs. Maybe it’s about having one or two people who have signed up for the messy job of being your salvation, who make your life bigger.

  I used to keep a memory in my most sacred heart of my dad holding me in his arms under October stars, the clean smell of autumn night air in my nose. A perfect day.

  But now I’ll keep a new one, of my mom holding me in her arms in the dim light and cool, musty-basement smell of TV Six. A perfect day.

  Buford let me cuddle him all night last night. He hasn’t let me do that since we were both young. I guess he just kinda outgrew it as he got old and grumpy. I was packing a few last things and he waddled into my room, slowly and painfully, the way he does now. And I kissed the top of his head and said, “Bufie, Mama’s gonna be going away, and they won’t let me have you in the dorms. So you’re going to have to stay here.” And I saw in his mournful, droopy eyes that he understood, and also he understood that maybe he won’t be around anymore the next time I come home. The thought filled me with the deepest, purest sadness—the sort you can’t even begrudge for its inevitability but can only accept. And so when it came time for me to go to bed, he shuffled over and let me help him onto the bed with me, and allowed me to snuggle him once more.

  I see him now, in my side-view mirror, Delia kneeling next to him, lifting his paw and making him wave. She waves too and wipes her eyes with the back of her hand. I wave back out my window and wipe my eyes as I slowly pull away.

  Behind me, at my back like always, is Lawson, his pickup pulling a U-Haul trailer with a mix of our stuff. He’s going to help me move into my dorm, and then I’m going to help him move into his house.

  His phone is full of music I picked out for him to listen to on the drive. My phone is full of music he picked out for me. We made a deal that neither of us is allowed to listen to anything else for the five-hour drive to Knoxville.

  I made a big show of pretending like it was going to be some great ordeal, but the truth is that his music reminds me of him now, so it’s fine.

  * * *

  •••

  We pull up outside Jesmyn’s house in Nashville to have lunch and visit awhile, and there’s a single text on my phone from Delia: Rayne & Delilah 4ever.

  It’s hard to see through the tears to text her back, but I manage.

  Me: Rayne & Delilah 4ever.

  Delia: I miss you already.

  Me: I miss you more.

  Delia: I love you, JoJoBee.

  Me: I love you, DeeDeeBooBoo.

  Dear Dad,

  I’ve written a lot of these emails, but you wouldn’t know that because I never sent them. Maybe I won’t send this one either. I guess I’ll see when I get to the end.

  I have two stories for you. Here’s the first. I was sitting in the break room at the grocery store where I work, chatting with a couple of my new friends, when Josie (my friend I told you about, who I used to do my show with) called. She said she heard some girls dying laughing in the hall outside her dorm room, and she went out to see what was up. They were watching a video clip from my show. Mom does it with me now. When Josie left for college, I wanted to quit because it was too hard to do it alone, but Mom stepped up and saved me. Anyway, in this clip, Mom and I were trying to do a sketch with marionettes and we were terrible at it, and Mom kept accidentally making the marionette do this jacking-off motion.

  So we both crack up, and we can’t stop. We were having so much fun, we left it in. It’s not the first time this has happened on our show, but this time, somehow, people got ahold of the clip and started sharing it. It’s infectious, I guess, to see two people laughing like that, being silly and enjoying being together. Anyway, it went viral. Millions of people have seen it. Maybe even you have by now. We’ve gotten all these invites to horror cons and talk shows. Thousands and thousands of people have subscribed to our YouTube channel, which we’ve started putting more work into.

  All I can think about is how glad I am that Mom was there for me when I needed her the most. How glad I am that she’s kept my life from being too small. And that brings me to my second story.

  Ever since I saw you in Florida, I’ve been thinking about a memory I have from a few years ago. This one morning in late September, I woke up a lot earlier than usual. For some reason, I went outside, and it was still dark and chilly.

  Then I saw a firefly blink. I couldn’t believe it. I thought I was hallucinating. I’d never seen one that late in the year. You could tell by how slowly it moved that it was close to dying. I thought about it all day. How bummed I was that this lonely firefly was shining its light out into the world when everyone had left it behind. It seemed sad and desperate.

  But lately I’ve been thinking a lot about that firefly. And not because it’s September. Because I see it differently now. Maybe that firefly wasn’t sad and lonely and desperate. Maybe it was okay with being left behind, and it was shining its light because that’s what it does.

  For a long time I shined my light for someone other than me. But not anymore. Now I shine bright for me. You can create light even when everyone’s left you behind because that’s what you do. It’s what I do. I don’t know if the world will remember me or what I did, Dad. But I’ll know that I burned as bright as I could.

  I’m glad I got to have pizza with you one more time.

  I’m glad I got to see the ocean.

  I hope you have a good life and you’re a good father to your new daughter.

  I hope you remember me sometimes and love me, or at least remember that you loved me once. There will always be part of me that loves you.

  I hope I’m braver than you when life hurts. I think I already am in some ways.

  Your daughter,

  Delia

  I hit send.

  This book would not have been possible without my amazing agents, Charlie Olsen, Lyndsey
Blessing, and Philippa Milnes-Smith, or my brilliant editorial team of Emily Easton, Lynne Missen, and Samantha Gentry. My undying gratitude to you all.

  Thanks to Phoebe Yeh and everyone at Crown Books for Young Readers. Thanks to Barbara Marcus, Judith Haut, John Adamo, Dominique Cimina, Mary McCue, Margret Wiggins, Kristin Schulz, Adrienne Waintraub, Lisa Nadel, Alison Kolani, Ray Shappell, Trish Parcell, and Megan Williams at Random House Children’s Books.

  My eternal gratitude as always to Kerry Kletter. Your writing reminds me of the possibilities of precise, beautiful language and clear insight. I don’t know how I ever wrote without your friendship, brilliance, wisdom, and critical eye. Yes, I cut and pasted that from my last set of acknowledgments, but it’s still as true as ever.

  Deepest thanks to Brittany Cavallaro and Emily Henry. You are brilliant, hilarious, amazing writers and people who inspire me daily both with your published works and with the text message threads with which I can only barely keep up. Thanks for being such a wonderful exemplar of female friendship. I need the book you’re writing together in my hands.

  Victoria Coe and Bridget Hodder, another dynamic duo of friendship, an inspiration to me and this book.

  Stephanie Perkins, for your phone call that day and for making me believe I could write romance. Who, after all, is more of an expert?

  David Arnold, my bizarro twin. Will it ever stop surprising us how similarly we think? More to the point, it will never stop pleasing me.

  Nic Stone. My Working on Excellence partner and Crown sister. I’m so excited the world finally has your books.

  Jennifer Niven and Angelo Surmelis, for being the models of generosity and kindness as authors and people. Y’all deserve every good thing that’s come and will come to you yet.