Chapter Eighteen
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Moving to LA wasn’t a measured decision.
I didn’t finish school and then drive off in an old jalopy with just graduated written on the back.
No.
I didn’t move to LA at all.
I fled to LA.
In the days after Aimee died, I spent day in, day out in a silent, furious rage.
I sat outside by my parents’ screened-in, chlorinated pool, staring out at the man-made lake behind their house and seething.
I woke up early every morning, unrested from hours of watching the clock tick on and on through the night, then went out to one of the rubber-strapped pool chairs and baked in the sun until it hurt.
My skin pulsed with the heat and the rage that roiled inside of me.
I sweated out every ounce of water I drank and ate next to nothing.
Even to my parents, I probably looked like I was tanning at the pool, luxuriating as if nothing had happened.
As if maybe I wasn’t facing it, at the very least.
They both came and asked me repeatedly if I wanted to talk.
They brought me fresh juice and toasted bagels slathered in butter and cream cheese.
But I was snotty and irritable back at them.
I didn’t go to work, which didn’t surprise anyone.
At the time, I was employed at a beach club bar at a hotel selling pretzels from a hot cabinet and plasticky cheese with stale corn chips, so it wasn’t as if no one could cover me or live without the service.
Then, on the day of the funeral, my mom laid out a new, dull-looking black dress with a pair of grocery-store stockings and my little black ballet flats.
She left a note on them.
Meg,
I always find that, when it comes to funerals, it’s best to wear something you’ll never wear again.
I thought you might hate this.
We love you.
We’re going to Aimee’s parents’ house to help prepare for the wake after the service.
See you later.
Call if you need anything.
There’s a hash brown casserole in the fridge .
Mom
I had stared at the note and it filled me with anger.
The fury that had been boiling inside me for days erupted.
I took the dress and threw it in the trash can along with the note.
I then went to my room, blasted music as loud as I could—fuck the neighbors with their probably untraumatized lives—and filled every backpack and duffel I had.
I got in my inherited Camry and started driving.
I had a couple thousand dollars in my bank account from working through winter break at the hotel, the last few weeks, and what I had saved from last summer.
I had enough to get to LA and rent a room somewhere, probably.
I’d find a restaurant job.
I could start making tips right away.
I’d lie about how experienced I was.
It would all be fine.
I was in Texas before I answered my parents’ calls.
They couldn’t make me come back.
They couldn’t do anything.
Over the next two days, they both tried the angry Get back here right this instant tactic.
They tried the tearful appeal, the frank appeal, the kind appeal.
Then, eventually, they gave in.
They told me they loved me and let me be.
I haven’t thought of it at all in many, many years, and I feel so guilty now that it makes me ache.
To this day, I have no idea what kind of financial loss they took when I dropped out of college.
I know they must have paid some tuition for the year I didn’t attend.
Not to mention what a waste the previous semesters had been.
They never mentioned it.
Like they never mentioned the money I constantly borrowed over the next several years as I lived not-quite paycheck to paycheck.
No wonder they aren’t flitting off to the Amalfi Coast in my life.
Instead of a vacation fund, they spent years bailing me out.
And no matter how many times I try to send them money now, they never accept.
After missing Aimee’s funeral, I never talked to anyone from home again besides my parents.
I never even went back to Florida.
Not for Christmas, birthdays, nothing.
I made excuses about work, and then when I had the money, I flew my parents to me.
That was the only way they’d accept any money from me, and only because I would book nonrefundable tickets and insist that it was a Mother’s Day, birthday, or Christmas present.
My whole focus in LA became fame.
Success.
Changing my life so substantially that it didn’t resemble the one with Aimee in it; making it so perfect that I could never again wonder if I’d made a mistake by staying in Florida with Aimee.
And that’s how I ended up never saying her name in my new life.
I could pretend she hadn’t died by pretending she had never lived.
If I was in this new, completely different life, it made sense that she wasn’t in it.
As much as I tried to forget about her, I still often wake up with a start.
If I hear a crashing sound, my heart rate spikes.
I hate driving.
I’m white-knuckled most of the time I’m a passenger.
I gasp a hundred times a car ride.
I hate the hospital.
And whenever I think of her, I become heavy, my body weighing a hundred tons, as I think about how it was my fault, my fault, my fault .
If I had only…
If I had…
If I could have hidden my feelings…
If I had pretended I didn’t care…
It obviously had not worked.
I clearly never resolved my past, never really moved on.
Which caused more guilt.
How dare I be unhappy with such a glamorous, charmed life?
Aimee had texted me early in the morning, the quiet vibration of the phone on the nightstand enough to rocket me out of unconsciousness.
As soon as I saw her name on the phone, a fresh jolt of adrenaline coursed through me, but it was just the file of the new script, sent without comment.
I had opened it and read it in its entirety, over and over until the sun started to tinge the sky dusty periwinkle and sleep took me over.
When I finally got out of bed, Kiera was gone, a note left behind again, the corner tucked under the partially burned candle.
You’re a good person.
Love ya, xx, K
I put it on the fridge with a magnet, and then went on memorizing lines.
They’re easy to remember for three reasons: One, she wrote the dialogue in a voice very similar to mine.
Two, my professional experience.
And three, I am so desperate for pieces of Aimee that I consume her words the way a Hungry Hungry Hippo goes after little white marbles.
When I arrive at the Avalon Playhouse, I am instantly swarmed by feelings.
It’s like déjà vu, and I realize that that’s what a lot of my time in Avalon has felt like.
When I knew where the whiskey was, when I knew my sweatpants were in the back of the closet.
When I look at Cillian.
That scene I saw at his apartment.
There’s a sense of familiarity but no memory alongside it.
I wonder if this is what déjà vu is.
What if it’s different realities bleeding through?
Somehow, that’s a comforting theory.
The theater is grand and warm.
Ancient and broken-in, a content wisdom in its walls.
I can practically hear the echoes of all the ghosts on the stage and in the audience.
I know a lot about the theater, since it’s attached to the school.
Or more accurately, the school is attached to it.
Both were built in a Tudor style and are surrounded by lush grass and ancient vines.
As the story goes, the Avalon Playhouse was built in the late 1500s for Queen Elizabeth I by a secret lover.
No one knows if she ever visited it, and there are a lot of questions about it due to the fact that Ireland was in revolt and tensions were high with the English, to put it incredibly lightly.
She was busy colonizing the place and the Irish wouldn’t have wanted her around, so the idea that she had a secret Irish lover is all the more salacious.
Another version of the story says that it was some psycho wealthy guy who built it for her but that she never even knew him.
Being here now, walking across the stage, I remember why I wanted to be an actor.
I love being onstage.
Not doing forty takes with a fussy director in a cavernous studio with my face carved into something new, depending mostly on editors to make the performance into what people will eventually see.
I like the lights, the people, the hallowed feel of a theater.
The specialness of existing in a moment that only happens for those who witness it.
Living in the moment.
There’s something to that old cliché.
I hear a door open and then a moment later, see Aimee walk in off the left wing.
Ghosts in theaters.
Such a thing.
“Hey,” I say.
“Did you have time to review the lines?”
I shy a little at her professional tone.
I had hoped that she would have warmed back up, a hope that seems delusional now.
“Yeah, I—I learned them.”
“Great. Any questions or issues?”
“No. It’s a great script, Aimee.”
She hesitates, and then says, “Great, let’s run a few lines and see how it goes. Tech should be here soon.”
“Aimee, can we talk? I’m so sorry about—”
“Meg?” she says, using that new, very adult voice of hers.
“We have a lot of work to do. I can’t deal with your little hissy fit bullshit. I indulged your whole interdimensional whatever for as long as I could, but I don’t have time for that right now, okay?”
This sends a searing pain through my heart and I feel like a fool.
“You said you believed me.”
She gives a humorless laugh.
“Believed you that you’re from a parallel universe? One where I’m dead and you’re famous? Come on. Either you’re consciously trying to get some kind of rise out of me, or your psyche is begging for help. Okay? So, until you get into some much-needed therapy, let’s do the task at hand, shall we?”
I’m in therapy , I want to whine.
“You’re trying to hurt me because I told you… about the…” I can’t say it.
“Because of what I told you.”
“No, you were trying to hurt me by saying that. And yeah, now I’m mad.”
“Fine,” I say, resorting to being bitchy back, since I don’t know what else to do.
She pulls out a chair and then says, “Okay, flip to page seventeen, let’s run those. We did the beginning enough the other day. I want to see how this flows into the new ending, then we can go back.”
“Sounds good,” I say.
Turning to the correct page, I clear my throat and begin.
“Hailey, this is stupid. Let’s go to the party.”
“It’s not stupid; it matters to me. Here, help me up. I can’t believe they still have the same lattice.”
I let out an irritated exhale.
“What?” asks Aimee, deviating from the script.
“What, what?”
“What are you sighing about?”
“I was acting, Aimee.”
Comprehension dawns and she says, “Oh. Right. Sorry. Go on. I can’t believe they still have the same lattice.”
“It’s probably not even in there, and if it is, who cares? It’s like, two Polaroids and some expired candy.”
“Fine, don’t help. I’ve climbed this thing a million times without you.”
“Will you stop? ” I yell, my voice echoing around the empty theater.
Aimee looks startled, but then carries on.
“What are you so afraid of?” she reads.
I hesitate and then put my hands on my thighs and bend over, embodying Lola’s exasperation.
“I don’t want to dig up the past.” I laugh.
“I mean, really, let’s not go back there.”
I stand and breathe in deeply, letting it out as my head tilts at Aimee.
“I know you’re acting,” she says, once again going off script.
“But it’s really weird to hear you saying the lines. I pictured you when I wrote them, even though I knew you wouldn’t come out to auditions or anything.”
We spend the rest of the afternoon rehearsing.
The lines are working.
They’re not awkward or stilted.
But there’s no heart in them.
There’s no heart in her delivery.
I wonder if either of us will be able to open up enough to make this thing real.
To make it special.
It’s like a modern Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
but with more comedy.
The two female characters don’t speak anymore, but come together for their high school reunion; ultimately, the decision of whether or not to break into this house for the time capsule becomes a metaphor for the past they can’t agree to revisit.
Throughout the story, they switch back and forth on taking the lead in saying they want to break in for it.
The show takes place in a backyard, and I can see that the set builders are more than halfway through with the backdrop.
A velvety blue sky with holes for starry lights to shine through.
They’re testing the lights, securing them on the back.
There’s an old white wrought-iron patio set that’s stunningly similar to the one Aimee had growing up.
I wonder if anyone in Avalon knows her well enough to recognize it besides me.
Theo, I guess.
We spend hours going through it.
Over and over and over, surviving off of protein bars and gallons of water.
The lines are deeply engrained by the time we finish, and now I can start focusing on how to deepen the delivery, work on the character.
We only stop because I point out that we’re no longer improving, and that we’ve peaked for the day and any more rehearsal runs the risk of actually making us worse.
Aimee reluctantly agrees and I try to reassure her that it’s good.
It’s going to be good.
As we shut the lights off and make our way out of the theater, Aimee says, “Good job today.”
I get the feeling she just wants to fill the aching silence.
“Thanks. The set looks great. Simple but really good. And this theater is amazing. Cooler in person.”
She pauses, and I remember that she doesn’t believe me anymore.
It’s so uncomfortable to be uncomfortable with her.
Against my will, faint memories of that last month of Aimee and me together come into my mind.
We were at school, sharing a dorm room.
We lived in the college residence hall, and it was a constant, miserable party we could never leave.
There was always some guy playing guitar with his door open.
Weed drifted around the air at all hours of the day.
Someone had a cursed karaoke machine that seemed to only have the songs “Mr. Brightside” by the Killers , “Kryptonite” by 3 Doors Down , and “The Reason” by Hoobastank.
The lighting was prison-fluorescent.
I had saved enough money from working the beach bar that I could have lived in the nice new student housing building, but we stayed there because Aimee couldn’t afford it.
A vague memory of a fight starts to gather.
We wouldn’t have to live here if you had the money to move out with me , I had said.
That’s so shitty, are you really going to bring up how much money you have?
You would have as much money as I do if you’d worked all summer!
But you didn’t, you sat around in Theo’s stupid basement watching him play video games!
I suck air in through my teeth now, suddenly remembering how many fights we’d had like that.
I wasn’t wrong, but I wasn’t right either.
If I’d had my therapist back then, she would have encouraged me to break my codependent bonds and live where I wanted to.
But the problem was that I wanted to be where Aimee was.
We’d been so snappy with each other that last semester.
I never let myself think about it.
What possible purpose can it serve to think about all the bad times?
Who thinks about those once someone dies?
“See you tomorrow,” she says coolly now before splitting off and heading toward her own home.
She’ll go home to a husband waiting for her, kids waiting for her.
A whole little family she built from scratch.
I start to walk home, rain falling in big drops, drenching me.
Then I get an idea.
A very bad idea.