He walked across the stage, down a set of four back stairs, and disappeared through a door, leaving me standing there, on the stage, alone.
I stared up at the rows of empty seats and the balconies stacked above. I tried to imagine how it would feel to be in front of an actual audience, to have hundreds of pairs of eyes trained on me, watching my every move, when it hit me: I already knew. I experienced it at school.
A high-pitched, scratchy noise emerged from above. A few seconds later a thumping electronic beat suddenly filled the void, blasting from what felt like a million invisible speakers. Nick came running back through the door, up the steps, and across the stage to where I stood waiting.
“Now, this is the way to experience this place.”
His body bounced to the music. Soon, I was moving, too. It was unavoidable. The strong, steady beat was like a force field, propelling us up, up into the air with every pulse until we were surfing on cushions of vibrating sound. It was the same way I felt when I heard the voice sweetly singing in my head: transported somewhere else, somewhere magical, somewhere full of hope.
The music suddenly stopped and was replaced by a stern, gruff voice that seemed to be coming from the ceiling. “What’s going on? Who’s been in here?”
“What are we going to do?” I whispered, my heart racing.
“Make a run for it.”
“But he has your music.”
“It’s replaceable.” Nick shrugged.
“Hey, you two over there.” The security guard, a paunchy middle-aged man busting out of his uniform, appeared at the side of the stage.
Nick looked back at him, then calmly surveyed the hall. He grabbed my hand and whispered in my ear. “Okay, let’s go!”
We bolted back up the center aisle, through the double doors, around the winding corridor until we were back in the thick of the party. It reminded me of running away from the grounds-keeper on the golf course the day I first saw Nick. I couldn’t help but feel the two incidents were somehow connected. That maybe everything was connected to Nick.
He elbowed through clusters of people, jostling drinks and trays along the way, until we made it to the kitchen and back out into the alley the way we had come in. My heart pounded like crazy against my ribs even once we were safely outside. But before I could catch my breath, I noticed a tow truck backing in toward Nick’s car. “Look!”
We started to move at the exact same moment. Within seconds we were both running in an all-out sprint. We made it to the car just as the tow truck driver was about to connect it to his flatbed. Ignoring the driver’s string of profanities, Nick revved the engine and peeled out.
“Where to next?” he said once we were safely on the road.
I looked at the clock. I couldn’t believe it was only eleven. It felt like I had lived more in the last few hours than I could in a year at home. “I should probably be getting back.”
“And where’s home?”
“Have you been to the valley?” I asked, knowing full well that he had. And that I’d finally have a chance to casually mention that I’d seen him before.
“You mean the expanse over those hills,” he said, pointing
toward the Hollywood sign, which was barely visible at night. “Can you be more specific?”
“I live in Vista Valley.” I paused, waiting for him to interject, to say he knew exactly where it was, that he’d been there before, but he didn’t. “It’s about thirty miles northeast of here,” I continued. “Ever been?”
“Nope,” he said with a straight face, with not even a flicker of recognition. “Never heard of it.”
I swallowed hard and tried to focus on what a great time I’d had with him, to ignore the other questions that burned in my mind, like why he was lying, or what he was trying to hide.
There were hardly any cars on the road at that hour so it only took forty minutes to get back.
“Thanks for an interesting time,” I said when he pulled up to my house.
An interesting time?
I could be such an idiot sometimes. I bit down on my lip. It was still salty from the caviar.
“No, thank
you
,” Nick said as I got out of the car. “For being good company.”
I listened to his idling engine as I walked up the path to the front door. The left side of my head started to tingle from where he’d counted in my ear, back when this adventure all started. When I got inside, I pressed up against the closed door and peered through the peephole as he drove away. It was strange. When I was with Nick it felt like the rest of the world melted away, like time expanded until there was no time, just infinity, with no end in sight. But now that I was back home and he was gone, it felt like I had dreamt the whole night.
“FINALLY,” ANNIE SAID,
flinging open the door to the darkroom. “I was wondering if you were ever gonna surface.”
It was already lunch and the first time we had seen each other all day. “I told you my mom was taking me to the doctor this morning. Remember?”
“You know that’s not what I’m referring to,” she said, starting back down the hall. She had texted me a bunch of times while I was out with Nick, but I didn’t respond until I got home. “But first tell me what the doctor said.”
“It was just a follow-up to check my head and make sure it’s healing okay.” I felt it throb just talking about it.
“And is it?”
“Yeah. He said I might experience some phantom pains because the nerve endings are raw from where the stitches were, but he doesn’t need to see me again.” I had almost asked him about the song, if it was a phantom too, but my mother was there. She had miraculously gotten off my case in the last few weeks, and I didn’t need to give her a reason to get back on it.
Besides, I wasn’t so sure I wanted the song to go away. Not now that it reminded me more of Nick than anything else.
“Well, that’s good. About not needing to see him again.” Her voice was cool and distant.
“Come on, don’t hate me,” I said, following her down the corridor toward the darkroom. Even when I was being evasive about something, I had never avoided Annie before, at least not deliberately.
“On one condition,” she said as we walked into the darkroom. “You tell me who kept you out all night and don’t say no one because you are in the best mood I’ve seen you in since the
Hailey’s Clinic
summer marathon.”
“Very funny,” I said, turning away so she couldn’t see the shade of red I was sure my face was turning. I could always tell I was blushing from the prickly sensation that came along with it. “Why are all the lights on?” I asked, ignoring her other question. I had been hoping they’d be off. It would be easier to evade Annie in the dark. I wasn’t ready to talk about Nick yet. I had attempted to Google him the second I got home last night, but without his last name, I had nothing to go on. Every search yielded millions of results except for the one I was looking for, just like with the song.
“I’m working on layouts for a yearbook meeting for which I’m already supremely late,” Annie said, checking the time on her phone. “But stop changing the subject. You kind of freaked me out, Ol. It’s so not like you to just disappear like that, especially in a strange city.”
My mind raced with the other things that happened last
night that weren’t at all like me either. Ditching the meeting, getting in Nick’s car, going to Skid Row, and crashing the party at Disney Hall. I could practically still taste the caviar when I swallowed. I walked over to the table where several mock yearbook pages were laid out and picked one up. It was labeled
The Way We Were
, an infamous section that appeared in every edition. It was supposed to be a comedic homage to the graduating class with “before” and “after” shots to show how much we had all transformed since the beginning of high school. “I didn’t disappear. I texted you when I got home.”
“Oh please,” Annie said, pulling her black leather portfolio carrying case from the wall cabinet. “Are you really going to be like that? You’re talking to me, not your mother, you know.”
My stomach tightened into a ball of guilt thinking about the various secrets I had been keeping from her lately. “It’s not what you think.” I hoisted myself up on the table, letting my feet dangle freely below. “I was just out with this guy I met in the meeting,” I said, trying to sound as nonchalant as possible.
“I knew it!” Annie screamed, slapping her thigh in excitement. “You are so busted! I demand that you tell me everything immediately!” She jumped up next to me on the counter, right on top of a series of contact sheets she had carefully laid out.
“I thought you were late.” I pulled the pages out from under her so they wouldn’t bend and noticed they included some of the pictures from Spring Fling.
“I am.” She didn’t budge, and I felt her eyes probing into me.
“Hey, I took this one!” I said, pointing to the image of Jill
Rosen licking the cotton candy, an explosion of fireworks in the background. The way the colored flames fanned out behind her head made it seem like I had included them on purpose. “And it’s not even terrible.”
“It’s really good, actually. That’s why it’s in there. You’re a natural. But STOP. CHANGING. THE SUBJECT!” She crossed her arms over her chest. “I’m not leaving until I hear more.”
“There’s really not that much to tell,” I said, avoiding her probing stare.
“You were out until midnight and there’s nothing to tell? How about his name, for starters.”
I let out a sigh. “Okay, fine. It’s Nick. We met during the break at the meeting last week and talked a bit, probably because we were the only two people there under the age of forty. I told you, the group is a bunch of old weirdos.” It felt strange talking about Nick, to even say his name out loud, like it might make him—and the memory of last night—disappear.
“Are you kidding?” Annie sprang from the counter. “That’s, like, insanely romantic. Almost tragically romantic. Meeting at a group for people who died? Wow. So what’s his story?”
“I don’t know. We didn’t really get into that stuff.” Even though it was what linked us, I bristled at the thought of Nick dead.
“I see,” Annie said, raising an eyebrow. “Now I really understand why you were ignoring me.”
“Believe me, nothing happened.” Just thinking about kissing someone else, someone who wasn’t Derek, still made me uneasy. I knew it was over, that he was with Betsy now. I was
starting to accept that. I also knew that being with Nick made me feel more alive than I had in a long time. But as much as my stomach flipped when I was near him or how my skin tingled from his touch, the idea of kissing him frightened me more than anything. I wasn’t sure that would ever go away. All it took was coming back to school, to my old life, to remind me of that. “And he doesn’t think of me that way.”
“Oh, really,” Annie said, not buying it. “Then what kept you out all night, Cinderella?”
“It wasn’t all night.” My voice got quiet and I felt defensive, like I was letting her down. I still didn’t know anything more about Nick than I had when I got in his car, at least not anything I could put into words. I just knew that when I was with him I forgot about Derek, about that night, and school, and Dr. Green, and my dad swirling his half-empty glass of scotch. I forgot about everything. But that’s not what I told Annie.
“Okay, mysterious one,” she said, collecting her things. “I just hope he’s not another blond-bot.”
“Stop it,” I laughed. “He’s not. And I’m telling you. We’re just friends.” My stomach fluttered thinking about the way Nick’s dark hair fell over his ears and into his face. “Oh, and he has an English accent.”
“Get out,” Annie said, then nodded knowingly. “No wonder you’re being all coy. Nothing like a man with an accent.”
“Annie!” I yelled, playfully pushing her toward the door. “Enough!”
“Now you’re kicking me out of my own darkroom?”
“You can continue grilling me after school.”
“What’s after school?” she asked, stopping by the door.
“You’re taking me shopping.” The idea sprang up as I spotted a picture of me from freshman year. Except for my hair, I still looked the same, even if it felt like everything else had changed. “I’m sick of my boring old clothes.”
“Wait, did I just hear correctly?
You
want to go shopping? Okay, Miss ‘there’s not much to tell,’” she said, attempting her best impersonation of me. “I can read between the lines.” She turned off the lights. “Aren’t you coming?”
I stepped back into the darkened room. “Is it cool if I hang out here until the end of lunch?”
“Be my guest.” She rummaged around her oversized vintage Prada bag, one of her infamous flea-market finds, and tossed me her keys. “Just make sure you lock up. I’ll meet you after school. Don’t forget!”
“How could I forget? It was my idea.”
I watched her retreat down the narrow corridor. Once she was gone, I shut the door, launching myself into sudden and complete darkness. The room was so well sealed not even the light from the hallway could seep in through the cracks. Reaching my arms out in front of me, I blindly felt my way across the room, banging my right knee up against one of the table’s legs.
“Ow!” I yelped, rubbing my leg before hoisting myself back up on the counter. The cold, metal surface gave me goose bumps. I lay down and stared up toward the ceiling. The room was so dark, there was no visible proof that it existed, of where the space began and ended, like all the walls had vanished and I was at the epicenter of a massive black hole. We had learned
about them in physics last year, how their gravitational pull was so strong that not even light could escape their grasp. Mr. Kahill had explained that once something entered a black hole, there was no going back, that it would remain suspended in time, forever. It was one of those pieces of information you don’t realize you’ve retained until it finally starts to make sense. Because it’s how I felt now, swallowed up by the darkness, suspended in time.
Fractured images of Nick flashed in my mind, like pieces of a puzzle. The stretched skin across his knuckles as he changed gears; the quick flick of his head to clear the hair out of his eyes; his partial grin; whispering in my ear. But no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t see him whole.