Chapter Twenty-Four
MACEY
An email from Christine to Macey, Tuesday, September 24, 9:16 a.m.
From: [email protected]
Subject: Welcome back!
Macey,
I hope you had a great time on your trip. I can’t wait to hear all about it. Let’s touch base today and get you caught up on what you missed while you were gone.
I’ve got quite a bit of paper that needs stapling—hope you are ready to get back to it!
Best,
Christine
I TAKE A DEEP brEATH before knocking on the door of Christine’s office.
You are strong. You are brave. You can do hard things.
It’s strange because unlike the many times I’ve told myself these words before, today I actually feel them. I am strong, and brave, and I can do hard things. I think. I’m pretty sure. Listen, Rome wasn’t built in a day. I’m a work in progress.
But right now, I’m taking a big step.
“Come in,” Christine says, and I open the door to find her sitting at her desk, stacks of unstapled papers surrounding her.
“Hello,” I tell her, giving her a mostly awkward wave.
“Great shirt,” she says, smiling at the T-shirt I came in early this morning to make.
“Thanks,” I say, looking down at my hot-pink tee with the words Channeling Lizzy Bennet on it and smiling to myself because that’s what I’m about to do.
I’m not sure what got into me, but on the way back from Pride and Prejudice Park, after playing Elizabeth Bennet for a week and then finding out I hadn’t won the trip after all, and then everything with Zane, I realized something: I’m not living the life I want to live. I’ve been coasting, letting things happen to me instead of making them happen for myself. It’s not the life I imagined, and I can’t pretend I’m okay with it anymore.
I think playing Elizabeth had something to do with that. She taught me what it’s like to stand up for yourself, to speak your mind, even when it’s terrifying. I’ve spent so much time being scared of failing, of upsetting people, that I forgot what it felt like to actually want something for myself. But I remember now, and I’m tired of waiting for something good to happen—I want to make it happen.
So, I started making a list Sunday night—in the hotel room by myself, after crying my eyes out for a good while—of all the things I want for my life, where I want to be, and who I want to become. I added more to it the next day on the flight, doing my best to avoid talking to Zane. I was afraid that some of this new inner strength might slip away if he looked at me with those blue eyes and asked me to make out with him. Because I might have cracked.
And though I may have pictured that scenario more than once, I held strong.
Maybe I’m just caught up in everything, and maybe it won’t last, but right now I feel like a different Macey than the one who stepped on that plane ten days ago. I don’t even know exactly who she is yet—I haven’t fully worked that out. I’ll probably fall back into old habits sometimes, but right now, I’m going to take this gumption I’ve recently developed and use it.
“So, how was the trip? How was Pride and Prejudice Park?” Christine asks, her lips pulled up into a smile, her eyes bright.
“It was really fun,” I tell her.
“Tell me all about it,” she says, resting her hands over a shirt that says If Lost, Return to the Theater.
“Actually first, can I ... I need ...” I let out a breath. I see that speaking up for myself isn’t going to be as seamless as I pictured in my head. “Can we talk about something else first?” I sputter out.
“Of course,” she says, holding out a hand toward one of the eighties chairs in front of her desk.
“Right,” I say as I sit. I swallow and then clear my throat. You’ve got this, Macey .
“So, the program I wrote ... um ... I don’t want Verity to run it.”
Christine’s brows move upward. “Okay,” she says, uncertainty in her tone.
“I spent a lot of my free time coming up with it, and it’s something that means a lot to me,” I say. My heart is racing, and my palms are sweaty, but I’m saying what I need to say. “And Verity wants to make it into something it’s not.”
Christine nods her head, as if she’s following, but the crease in her forehead makes me think she’s not really getting it. “Well, Verity is the program manager; she has the creative freedom to adjust the direction if she thinks it’s necessary,” she says.
“But she’s not just adjusting it—she’s completely changing it,” I say. “If I wrote it, then I feel like I should have a say in how it’s presented.”
She nods her head, thoughtfully, the crease in her forehead softening. “So help me understand what you want here, Macey. Do you want us to not do the program at all?”
I shake my head. “No, I want us to do the program, but I want it to stay the way I wrote it.”
“Well, it’s Verity’s job.”
“I know that,” I say. “But I have an idea.” I swallow because I don’t think I expected to get to this part—this idea that I came up with on the plane. Honestly, I worried, or maybe figured, I’d crack under the pressure and go back to the Macey from ten days ago.
“What if I ran the program?” I ask.
“But—”
“I know that’s not my job,” I say, jumping in. “But ... I’d like it to eventually be what I do here. And I’d like to try my hand at running the program I wrote, doing most of the work during my free time so it doesn’t interfere with what you need me for. I’d like the chance to prove to you, and myself, that I can do it.”
Christine rests her head on her closed fists, nodding as she takes in my words. “Right. Well, I’d need to think about it,” she says after a few endless-feeling moments of silence.
My eyes go wide. “You’ll think about it?” Honestly, I didn’t expect to get to this part either.
“Yes,” she says, giving me a closed-mouth smile. “Let me think about it. But I have to say, I do like this tenacity from you, Macey. This trip must have been good for you.”
I nod. “I think it was.”
After giving her a rundown of how it went at Pride and Prejudice Park, I head back to my office feeling so much lighter. It’s the second time since Sunday that I’ve said what I was feeling, and didn’t hold back ... and this time, it does feel empowering.
When I sit down in my supply room office, a pile of papers to staple in my hand, I don’t feel quite as stuck. I feel ... better, like maybe there’s more for me than just this. Like maybe, for the first time in a long time, I’ve taken a step toward something that’s mine.
“I’M SO SORRY, MACEY,” AMELIA says, her tear-stained face turned toward me as we sit on the couch in the condo later that evening.
Empowered by my conversation with Christine at work, I came home and told Amelia how what she did—paying for the trip and pretending I won it—made me feel hurt, frustrated, and small.
“I know,” I say. “I just need you to stop trying to save me.”
“I promise,” she says, her voice thick. “I’ll never butt into your life like that again.”
I tilt my head to the side. “I think we both know that’s a lie.” There’s teasing in my voice, but I mean it. I don’t know if Amelia is capable of letting others—especially me—do things without getting involved. She likes to fix things. It’s who she is. And I love her for it, even if it makes me feel like I’m incapable of doing things myself.
“Well, I can try,” she says, giving me a watery smile.
“That’s all I’m asking,” I say.
She rubs under her eyes with the cuff of her sweatshirt.
“So, did you at least have fun?”
I give a smile then. A genuinely happy one. “It was so much fun,” I tell her.
“Tell me everything.”
And so, I do. I tell her everything I didn’t have time to share with her during leisurely pursuits —which, honestly, is most of it, since I could only give her the barest highlights in that short amount of time.
I tell her about the balls, and the dancing, and all the little moments that made it feel like I stepped straight onto the pages of Pride and Prejudice . I tell her about Mr. Collins’s over-the-top character, Lady Catherine’s over-the-top expectations, and how the whole experience was like nothing I’ve ever done before.
I leave out the parts about Zane. I’m not ready to talk about that yet, and I doubt Amelia wants to hear it anyway. But as I finish recounting the trip, I realize just how much it all meant to me—and how much I’ve changed because of it. And maybe even though I didn’t win the trip, it doesn’t have to taint my experience there. I think someday, when the hurt that lingers passes, I might look back on the trip as one of the best trips of my life.
“Oh, I wish I could have gone,” Amelia says.
“You should go,” I tell her. “You’d love it.”
I hear the door to the condo open, and my heart does a fluttering thing. It picks up speed when Zane comes into the room.
“Hey,” he says.
“What’s up, loser?” Amelia replies.
I feel a bit like my old, mute self right now, unsure of what to say around him. So much happened while we were away, and my feelings for Zane—there are just too many, tangled and overwhelming, making it hard to act normal. I want to be normal around him, to go back to being friends. I just got him back, and the thought of losing him again feels unbearable. But maybe that’s not something I can control.
“Just got home from work,” he tells us.
My eyebrows raise instantly. “How was it?”
The words pop out of my mouth of their own accord, but I need to know how his first day back went and if he’s made any decisions.
He smiles softly. “It was good,” he says. The words are few, but I can read the subtext. He’s made his decision, and whatever that is, he’s happy with it.
“I’m glad to hear it,” I say. I’m hoping he says more, but instead he just stands there.
“Well, I think I’m going to change and then hit the gym,” he finally says with a head bob toward his room.
“Uh ... thanks for the itinerary,” Amelia says, looking at him like he’s a weirdo.
He gives me a slight bow of his head—similar to the ones he gave me at the park as Mr. Darcy—and a smile that’s full of the words he isn’t saying. I’m sorry. I miss you. I’m hurting.
Or maybe that’s just me projecting. Maybe Zane has realized he was, in fact, being impulsive at Pride and Prejudice Park, and now that he’s home, he knows I was right.
Now if only I could keep reminding myself of that.