“Yeah, I’m sure.” Caitlin puts on a smile. “You guys have fun.”
“Brunch tomorrow?” I ask.
“Definitely.” She squeezes my hand and heads off down the sidewalk.
Michael’s phone buzzes with a text. “Looks like it’s just you and me,” he says. “The lovebirds are calling it a night.”
Yorkside is packed when we get there, so we split up. Michael goes to the counter for our pizza, and I claim a booth near the back.
“I hope you like pepperoni,” Michael says as he approaches the table, balancing two paper plates and a pitcher of beer. He’s holding our cups between his teeth.
“Who doesn’t like pepperoni?” I lift a slice off the plate and take a bite. Hot, gooey mozzarella sticks to the roof of my mouth.
“So what’d you think of the show?” he asks, biting into his own slice.
“I thought it was awesome. You?”
He nods as he chews. “Loved it. It’s one of those quintessentially Yale things, you know?” He takes another bite, and a glob of pizza sauce sticks to his upper lip. “I used to make fun of that stuff,” he says. “A capella groups, theme parties, singing at football games. But then I got here and realized how cool all of it is.” Then, with a laugh: “Utterly dorky, but cool.”
“I didn’t even know any of it existed until I got here,” I say as I try not to stare at the sauce on his lip.
“So what sold you?” he asks.
“Sold me?”
“On Yale,” he says. “What convinced you to apply?”
“Oh . . . ,” I falter. The reasons I didn’t want to apply pop into my mind, reasons that seem more like excuses now. “Academics, I guess.” When in doubt, go with the lamest, most generic reason ever. “What about you?”
“Lacrosse. And the fact that it was a hundred and one miles from my house.”
“Lucky number?”
He laughs. “I had a minimum distance requirement. I had to be at least a hundred miles from home. Lucky for me, now it’s more like a thousand.”
“What do you mean?”
“My mom moved the summer after my freshman year.” Then, casually: “To Atlanta, actually.”
I blink. “Your mom lives in Atlanta? Where?”
“Lilac Lane,” he says, drawing out his vowels. His attempt at a Southern accent sounds like Crocodile Dundee on sedatives.
“I meant, what neighborhood? And why didn’t you tell me before?”
“I don’t know anything but the street address,” he replies. “And I haven’t mentioned it because I generally don’t.” His tone doesn’t invite a follow-up question, but for once I don’t let that deter me.
“But you know I’m from there, right?” As I say this, it crosses my mind that he might, in fact, not know that. What else have I assumed he knows that he actually doesn’t? Ohmigod, he doesn’t even know my last name. I rack my brain, trying to come up with a single instance where I’ve heard him use it, and can’t come up with one. Mortifying.
“Yes, silly. Of course I know you’re from there. I was planning to mention it eventually, I just hadn’t yet.” This explanation is laughably lame, but I opt not to point it out.
“How much time do you spend there?” I ask him.
“Last year, I only went home for Thanksgiving,” he replies.
“And this year?”
“Same. Arriving Wednesday night at eight fifty-two p.m., departing Friday morning at eight forty-eight a.m.,” he says. “Same flights as last year.”
“Short trip.”
“It’s a long thirty-six hours,” he says flatly, and reaches for the last slice. He doesn’t elaborate.
I pick at a piece of pepperoni, not sure what to say next.
We sit in silence for a few minutes as Michael works on his second piece of pizza and I play with the rest of mine. Should I change the subject? Wait for him to say something? After a few bites, he smiles. “You know what’d make those thirty-six hours better this year?” he asks me. His tone is lighter now, his eyes brighter. “A turkey dinner at the Barnes house.” He takes another bite, watching my reaction. I’m so elated that he just used my last name that it takes me a second to realize that he’s just invited himself over for Thanksgiving.
“You have pizza sauce on your lip,” I say coyly. He licks his lips. “Still there,” I tell him. He smiles and reaches for a napkin.
“You’re just gonna leave me hanging, huh?”
I lean forward, my thumb reaching his upper lip before his napkin does. “Pretty much,” I tease.
“No sympathy at all for the poor, lonely guy who can’t bear to spend Thanksgiving away from his girlfriend?”
“Nope.” My voice sounds tight. Airless. Probably because sometime between his use of the word “girlfriend” and this moment, I stopped breathing. It’s the first time he’s said it. Suddenly, intensely, I want to be exactly that. His girlfriend. For as long as fate will let me.
Parallel Abby, please don’t screw this up.
“That’s a shame,” Michael says, leaning across the table until his face is inches from mine. My eyelids flutter as I breathe in the spicy-sweet scent of mint, pepperoni, and aftershave. Who knew the smell of cured meat could turn a person on? My lips tingle in anticipation. I’ve been thinking about that kiss my parallel self got from Josh all day, unable to shake the memory of it. This is exactly what I need: an even more amazing kiss to take its place. I let my eyes close, feeling his lips touch mine, wishing we were in his bedroom instead of this crowded restaurant.
“Abby?” a small voice says. My eyes pop open. A tearstained Pink Ranger is standing next to our table, holding a plastic pumpkin.
“Marissa? Are you okay?”
“Ben broke up with me.”
“What?” My eyes dart to Michael. His eyebrows are arched in surprise, but the expression strikes me as false. The face you’d make at your surprise party, when it’s not a surprise at all. He knew. I look back at Marissa. “When?”
“Right before I puked in this pumpkin,” she says miserably, holding out the orange plastic container, which is, indeed, filled with vomit. Michael recoils. I take the pumpkin and set it on the floor beneath the table.
“Sit,” I tell her, sliding over to make room. “How much have you had to drink?”
“Too much.” She puts her forehead down on the table.
I look at Michael.
“Uh, I’ll get some water,” he says, and stands.
“What happened?” I ask as soon as Michael leaves.
“I don’t know.” She looks at me with red-rimmed eyes. “He just started acting weird. I kept asking what was wrong, and he kept saying he was just tired. But he didn’t seem tired, you know? So I told him that, and his face got all twisted, and he said he’d wanted to wait until tomorrow to tell me, but he felt like he was lying by not saying anything. And then his voice broke, and I knew.” Her eyes well up again. “He said he didn’t want to hurt me, but he just didn’t feel the same way about me anymore. And that’s when I puked.”
“Where were you?”
“On our way back from the cemetery.”
“You did yoga like this?”
She nods miserably. “I don’t know where I got the pumpkin. Someone must have given it to me.” She nudges it with her shoe. “There’s candy at the bottom.”
I look down and instantly regret it.
Don’t throw up, don’t throw up, don’t throw up.
Michael returns with a pitcher of water and some breadsticks, which he sets on the table in front of Marissa. She stares at the cup vacantly.
“Should I . . .” Michael looks from Marissa to his empty seat as if not sure what to do with himself.
“I think we’re good,” I tell him. I doubt Marissa wants her ex-boyfriend’s best friend listening to her sob about their breakup. Plus, although I don’t think I can reasonably be mad at Michael for not ratting Ben out, it feels a little like he’s on Team Ben right now when I’ve just become captain of Tea
m Marissa. Neither of us is neutral. “Call you tomorrow?”
Michael looks relieved. “Hang in there,” he tells Marissa, giving her shoulder a squeeze. “Let me know if you want me to punch him in the face.”
Marissa’s eyes well up with fresh tears. “I love his face,” she says miserably. I give Michael a you-should-leave-now look, and he gets the hint.
“You should eat something,” I tell Marissa when we’re alone. “A breadstick at least.” I break off a piece and hand it to her. “I think it’s whole wheat,” I lie. But she reaches for the rest of my pizza instead.
“That has peppero—”
“I keep replaying it in my mind,” she tells me, midbite, either unaware or unconcerned that she’s breaking about ten of her food rules right now. “It’s like something happened today . . . but nothing happened. He was with me the whole time. I just don’t get it.” She shoves the last of my slice into her mouth and reaches for what’s left of Michael’s.
I, of course, know exactly what happened. Ben realized that his secret wasn’t a secret anymore. He felt like he had to pick between Marissa and Caitlin, and he picked Caitlin. He doesn’t realize that he just lost them both.
But the thing is, he never should’ve thought Caitlin was an option. She was supposed to be off-limits the night they met, wholly and happily unavailable. But she wasn’t because my parallel tried to play cupid, destroying not just Caitlin’s relationship with Tyler but, ultimately, Marissa’s relationship with Ben.
Of course, my parallel didn’t know how powerful her words were, how far-reaching the consequences of her lie would be.
We never do.
Everything is a cause.
It’s not a new idea, but still, I am stunned to stillness by its truth.
Everything we do matters.
I reach for Marissa’s hand. “I’m sorry,” I tell her, knowing these words are insufficient but wanting—needing—to say them anyway.
NOVEMBER
10
HERE
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 2009
(Thanksgiving Day)
“You’re missing the parade.”
I peer out from under the covers and see Dad standing in my doorway, still in his bathrobe, holding a coffee mug. His thinning hair is all mussed up from sleeping on it.
“So are you,” I point out.
“That’s because I don’t have anyone to watch it with. Your mom is busy playing Martha Stewart in the kitchen.”
Even though it’s just the three of us this year (my grandparents are spending the month of November on a seniors’ tour of South America), my mom has planned an elaborate Thanksgiving meal involving excessively complicated recipes she found online.
“Meet in the living room in five?”
“Avoid the back stairs,” he warns. “If she sees you, she’ll put you to work. And then I can’t save you.”
I giggle. “Front stairs. Got it.” He nods, then disappears down the hall. I hear him shuffling down the steps. A few moments later, the TV comes on.
I spend another few minutes in bed. My bed. With all that’s been happening, I’m relieved to be home, in my room, where even the smells are familiar. Except for the blue Yale pennant hanging above my door frame and the graduation photos tacked to my bulletin board, everything is the way I left it when I moved to Los Angeles last May. It’s amazing how dramatically life can change while your bedroom decor stays exactly the same.
It’s been twenty-six days since my last reality shift, which is good, because the last one left me rattled. I haven’t been sleeping well, and when I’m awake, I’m distracted and uneasy. Replaying the horrible things Caitlin and I said to each other in the cafeteria that day is nowhere near as chilling and awful as reliving the night of Ilana’s accident (which I still do, at least once a day), but the memories of the fight and its aftermath haunt me in a different way. I used to think that waking up someplace else was my greatest risk. Now I know that there are far bigger things at stake. We’re all just a decision or two away from destroying the relationships that are most important to us and to the people we love. And most of the time, we never even know it.
Now I do. Now I see.
But this new awareness isn’t the only thing that’s throwing me off. There’s also the Josh factor. Against my will, my brain has stored that kiss from the day before Halloween last year in its Best Kiss Ever file, despite my attempts to replace it with one from Michael (who, it’s worth noting, is objectively the better kisser). But it’s not just the kiss that won’t go away. It’s every memory of Josh I’ve gotten since. Holding hands in the hall, sharing Skittles at the movies, watching him from across the room in astronomy. There’s nothing particularly significant about these moments, but that hasn’t kept my mind from making a freaking highlight reel out of them. Meanwhile my real memories, the new ones, the moments with Michael that I actually want to keep, have been relegated to Oh, That Happened status.
Michael. At the thought of him, my heart flutters a little and my stomach sinks. Joy competing with fear. The more serious we get, the more I dread our inevitable end. Thankfully, it doesn’t look like that end has come today. I haven’t run through my morning checklist yet, but with the blue pennant over my door and Caitlin’s bracelet on my wrist, I feel good about my odds. But I grab my phone off the nightstand to make sure.
The one perk to losing my phone on Halloween was the discovery that I was due for an upgrade, which meant I could get a fancier one for half the regular price. Since taking advantage of the offer required me to re-up my contract, I decided to get a new number, too. It’s silly, but having a 203 area code makes me feel rooted to New Haven, like I’ve somehow staked a claim to my existence there. Like I truly belong. The truth, of course, is that I don’t. I belong in L.A., or maybe at Northwestern, and no matter how many times I wake up to my current reality, I know that it won’t last. It can’t, now that Caitlin and my parallel aren’t speaking. Yale’s regular admission application deadline is a week away, and without Caitlin to talk her into it, there’s no way my parallel will apply. Truth be told, as thankful as I am to have gotten a few extra weeks with Michael, I can’t figure out why I’m still at Yale now. The way I figure, the fight with Caitlin erased any chance my parallel had of ending up here. Maybe she’ll decide on her own to apply? She’d better hurry. She only has a week till the deadline and, as of right now, she’s determined not to apply.
I tap the camera icon and scroll through the latest entries in my photo log. Thank God I backed up my phone three days before I lost it. Except for a few from the week before Halloween, I still have every photo I’ve taken since the collision. My life at Yale, in pictures. I skip over the one Caitlin took of Michael looking at another girl’s butt (I’d delete it, but it’s the only one I have from November 22) and pause on a shot of him and me at the Yale-Harvard Game last Saturday. We’re standing with our arms around each other in front of the Beta tailgate, holding Styrofoam cups of hot cider, our noses red from the cold. The next photo is from the night before, five seconds after Michael told me he loved me for the first (and so far only) time. We were in his kitchen, making microwave popcorn at three in the morning, when out of nowhere he said it. “You know I love you, Abby Barnes.” Just like that, as if he were stating the obvious. Yes, it was weird when I asked him if I could take a picture of him right after, but the weirdness was worth it for the proof.
I continue scrolling until I get to the picture from November 13, the morning they posted the cast list for Arcadia with my name at the very top. This one gets a grin every time. Rehearsals don’t start until the first week of next semester, but the Dramat held auditions early to get them out of the way before exams (which, unfortunately, start two weeks from Monday).
Of all of them, the tailgate photo is my favorite. My hair is down and wavy around my shoulders, and my eyes look almost silver in the midday sun. Michael’s green eyes are on me, and his mouth is open in a laugh. Neither of us looks particularly great, b
ut there’s something so hi-we’re-a-happy-couple about the image.
Caitlin asked me yesterday if I’m in love with him. She knows Michael told me he loves me last Friday, and she also knows I didn’t say it back. I wanted to, but then the microwave dinged and one of his roommates came in and we all started eating popcorn. Not exactly an I-love-you-too scenario. Caitlin knows that part, too. So her question caught me off guard, surprising me enough to give me pause. Am I in love with him? How is a person supposed to distinguish between Love and Very Strong Like? Is the distinction all that important? Here’s what I know: I like being with him. I like the way he makes me feel. I like waking up next to him, fully clothed, and that being okay with both of us, on his flannel plaid sheets. Do those things add up to love? I think so, but I’m not sure. Which is exactly what I told Caitlin. She responded with some cryptic “trust your instincts” comment and wouldn’t elaborate.
Ding! A new text appears on my screen.
Michael: HAPPY T-DAY. CANT WAIT TO C U LATER.
I’m smiling as I reply: DITTO. DONT FORGET TO TEXT ME UR ADDY!
The next text I send is to Tyler. He’s been acting weird the last few weeks, enough to make me wonder if he’s mad at me for something. He and I talked for over an hour the day after Halloween, but since then, I haven’t been able to get him on the phone, and when he responds to my texts, it’s always with a one- or two-word reply. Not that Ty is a particularly loquacious texter, but I can usually count on him for some dry wit or not-so-veiled sarcasm.
U HOME? I write. CAN WE HANG OUT TOMORROW?
“Abby!” my mom is calling from the kitchen. “I need your help down here!”
“Coming!” I shout. I toss my phone on the bed and head down to the kitchen, where Mom is up to her elbows in turkey (literally). Dad is holding the bird while she stuffs it.
“She tricked me,” he declares. “Used the ol’ ‘come here a sec’ routine.”
“This turkey has to bake for six hours. It’s already eight twelve.” Mom is rapidly shoving handfuls of celery and onion into the hollow chest cavity. “Abby, there’s a ball of twine somewhere in the pantry. Can you see if you can find it, please? And there’s a bag of lemons in the fridge. I need those, too.”
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