Chapter Twenty-Four
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
No.
No.
No.
This cannot be happening.
I walk into the theater, almost expecting four hundred people to jump out and scream, “Just kidding!”
Of course, they do not.
They are gone.
It smells different.
Dusty.
Musty.
Like the room hasn’t been used lately.
There’s no sign of life anywhere.
The bar is gone.
The kids in front of the stage are gone.
Cillian is gone.
No Kiera chatting up a critic.
No crowd.
And the set—the set is gone too.
Oh my God.
I back up into the hallway again, fingernails digging into my palms, unwilling to believe it.
Maybe they all left?
I must have not noticed the dust before?
Hello, denial, my old friend.
I know, in my heart, that at the very least, breaking down that bar would have taken longer than this.
I worked too many catering events not to know that.
And the set.
It couldn’t disappear.
It was simple, but it would take at least a day to strike.
I go back out into the hallway, then crash outside into the night.
There’s no one out here.
Only an empty road.
Quiet fields.
Sleepy houses, none with lights on.
No smoky, green smell in the air.
It’s like the place has been abandoned.
For once, the sky is dark.
Starless.
I tear down the road, running toward the pub through the deafening noiselessness and past every closed business, afraid of what I’ll find.
My footsteps echo strangely.
The pub has no lights on—not even the amber lamp—and the doors are locked.
I bang on the door anyway, as hard as I can, and then stand in the middle of the street and scream for him.
“Cillian!”
Nothing.
Nothing.
Nothing.
“ Cillian!” I spin in a circle and scream, “ Kiera!” Then, finally, “ Aimee!”
I realize then that I don’t have my phone.
I can’t even try to call anyone.
I run as fast as I can back down the street again, my still-bare feet growing colder against the chilly, slightly damp ground.
I run to Aimee’s house, where so recently there had been a lively party.
A party where I had so confidently drifted through the scene as though it could not be stolen from me.
What was wrong with me?
How had I not hung on to every stupid second like it could be taken away?
This is exactly what it felt like when Aimee died, when I wondered how I had not smothered her with appreciation.
How had I not held her and never let her go and loved her all the time?
How had I simply had a cider and walked around chatting like a few days later it might not all be over?
I knew it might be.
I feared it would be.
And yet I kept living.
How dare I?
I know there’s no one there, but I pound on the door anyway.
I let my forehead land against it, flatten my palms against the wood, and then turn and look out at empty Avalon.
It may as well be a movie set.
Eventually, I have no choice but to return to my home base.
From the outside, the cottage looks the same as ever, and I feel a moment of hope lift inside me as I go through the swinging fence door and then run up the path to open the door.
It’s locked.
No.
I remember the lockbox and put in the code.
Zero, six, one, nine.
Easy to remember.
June nineteenth was the day of the accident.
Right before my birthday.
It opens—more hope—and inside I find the house key.
I fumble with it and then go to the door.
My hands are shaking so badly that I can’t open it at first, even dropping the key and having to find it in the grass again before finally fitting it in the lock and opening the door.
My heart nearly stops when I get inside and see my suitcase— my suitcase—in the foyer.
My carry-on on the floor beside it.
They’re the ones I packed in a hurry back in LA.
The ones I got sent for free and had to post about with a bunch of insincere hashtags and an offer of 15 percent off with the code LANA15.
The suitcase with the zipper that tore the first time I used it when we took a flight to Georgia to shoot a special episode of Brilliance.
I let the door fall shut behind me and I stare at the suitcase.
On the table, I notice my phone.
My real phone.
I pick it up and see a picture of Dido as the background.
Though I can barely see the picture because there are about a trillion missed notifications.
It is all undone.
I hear the sound of tires on gravel outside and know what I will see when I open the door.
A taxi.
Its glowing sign diffused by the fog that’s descending upon the nighttime.
The driver gets out.
“You call a taxi to Dublin, ma’am?”
“No!” I scream immediately.
Then I say, “Wait one second, I’m—I’m sorry.”
He climbs back in, like this happens all the time.
I pick up my phone and google Lana Lord .
A slew of articles comes up.
News about the finale.
News from an unreliable source suggesting Grayson and I are expecting because of yet another unflattering picture taken of me at Sushi Park.
The taxi honks once outside, politely.
I google Aimee’s name.
Nothing much comes up until I add the name of our hometown at the end.
Her obituary.
“No, please,” I say out loud, fighting back soul-deep nausea, asking whatever forces to please have mercy and not take it all away.
“Please, please,” I whisper.
I shut my eyes hard and then open them again, hoping that the place will be different again, back to my new normal.
But no.
In fact, I notice that it’s not even the house I got to know.
Not really.
I glance around, noticing the little signs for which light switches to leave flipped and what not to throw down the toilet and where to find extra towels and firewood.
It’s a true rental house now.
The taxi horn goes again, this time less patiently.
I know what I have to do, but I don’t want to.
I want to sit in the middle of the floor and never leave.
Never.
I don’t care.
I’m not leaving.
But almost as if I am not in control of my body, I find myself going to my suitcase, pulling up the handle, and dragging it outside.
“Sorry!” I call to the driver.
I feel fluttery and panicky and strange as my body goes through the motions of locking the door and replacing the key where it belongs.
I can’t leave, I can’t, I can’t.
Maybe if I simply stay, it’ll all go back to how it was in the morning.
Maybe it comes and goes.
I can deal with that.
I can’t deal with it being over.
But no.
I know it’s over.
I get in the back of the taxi as the driver puts my things in the trunk.
I look out the window at the cottage, knowing in my heart that it’s different.
It’s changed.
Avalon has changed.
Everyone is gone.
Everyone is gone but me.
“How was the trip?” asks the driver.
I bite the tip of my tongue to keep from screaming.
I cannot bring myself to say more than, “Good. Thanks.”
“All right,” he says.
“It’ll be about an hour ride, ma’am, so settle in. I’ll let you know when we’re getting close.”
I nod, feeling like an injured little kid, and say, “Okay.”
I stare outside, watching it all go by.
My eyelids start to grow heavy, and I don’t know how long it takes, but somehow, I fall asleep.
I dream that I’m running around Avalon, as I had been, but that when I get to the pub and bang on the door, the sound is thin.
Not timeworn chestnut as hard as rock, but thin plywood.
The pub isn’t real, it’s just a painting.
Desperate, I lean against a tree, only to have it fall over too.
It’s hollow.
I look up, expecting to see the moon, but find tracks of lighting.
The grass is plastic, like that on the stage tonight.
The fog pumps from a machine at my feet.
The wind comes from a fan.
It’s like that scene in The Truman Show with the stairs leading to the door through the sky.
All of the life that felt so real, turning out to be something synthetic, something created.
In my dreams, I see Avalon as if it were an empty soundstage.
Nothing more.