Chapter Sixteen
Julia’s eyes went wide at the impossible, her knees buckling under her weight as her skin filled with concrete putty. She fell hard into the back of her seat.
What unfolded before was a distant dream, like having a poster of the moon on the wall above your bed because you want to be an astronaut, knowing damn well you’re afraid of heights.
She can’t be here. Out of all the places in the world? Out of all the theaters in New York State? Today, of all the days? No, not right here. Panic flooded every cell in her body and she felt her bloodstream restricting with the fight-or-flight response that overtook every muscle.
Marin stared back at her, their gaze lasting even milliseconds too long. Her aquamarine eyes reflected the stage lights on the balcony above, glisteningly widely at the center of long fluttering lashes. Julia fell backwards back into her seat.
She was just as beautiful as Julia remembered. Her hair was shorter now, landing just at her shoulder blade when she tossed it just moments ago. She looked thinner, and Julia had to squash out the concern of whether or not she was eating right, whether or not she was being taken care of. Conversations flooded her mind of explaining that two coffees in the morning and a cup of tea at night, a meal did not make.
Marin placed her hand on the back of the seat of her companion, her eyes narrowing as if they deceived her, as if Julia was a figment of her imagination, as if one little blink could erase her existence. But it wasn’t a dream. God, Julia wished it was, but it wasn’t, and there she was.
Oh, no. No, no, no, no, no, no.
She didn’t want to be even more obvious, but she stood anyway, desperate to be as far away from this situation as she could get. The chair flipped closed behind her, the bottom thundering against the back, matching the stomping of her heartbeat.
She did her best not to cause a scene, not to move too fast or draw the attention of wandering eyes. She slid past the few students that were still left in the row, walking steadily up the aisle, never looking back. She was simply getting a bottle of water, that was all.
That is when she heard it. That voice cocooned around her like the last standing shelter in a hundred-year storm. “Jules?”
Marin called to her from the bottom row, that sound so familiar and distant at the same time. It was breathy–the voice of a runner who just finished a marathon–excited and in inexplicable awe at the same time, but what was that underneath it? That tremor that shattered the last note?
Julia was already at the door leading to where concessions were served. She knew she shouldn’t have–she tried not to, that voice in her head screaming no, no don’t do it–but she looked back anyway. The entire room spun into a million kaleidoscope hues.
Marin stood at the end of the row, one hand placed firmly on the back of her chair as if she needed its support. Her pale face was taunt, her eyes creased with worry. Her expression was full of remorse, full of something else entirely that Julia just couldn’t place.
Julia couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t for the life of her figure out how air was supposed to travel from the outside world, to her nostrils, into her lungs to circulate within her body, and then back out again. Do you know how hard it is to make something nonvoluntary, voluntary? The burning in your chest when the pressure becomes too much?
She walked past students huddled in groups gossiping about who held whose hand, past those in the concessions line waiting for soda or water. Erin stood at the end of the line, supervising students and grinning at their conversation. Julia blew past her without a second glance, heading straight for the doors leading to the sidewalk in front.
Air. I just need air.
Just as her left hand reached for the bronze plated door latch, the coldness stinging her aching flesh, she heard dozens of her students’ voices erupt all at once in shouts of laughter and surprise.
“Mrs. Jenner!”
“Mrs. Jenner! No way!”
“You’re here!”
Not knowing how to breathe didn’t describe the feeling. It was cancer, starting in the cell and taking down anything in its path until it’s the last thing standing. It was the feeling of drowning. The feeling of fear sinking so much into your consciousness that you know you can’t breathe, can’t open your mouth gasping for the very air that could save you, because you’ll only take on water. It gets to a point when the unconsciousness takes everything over; when the chemical need to breathe becomes so great that you take in the water. You welcome the water.
It was more than the fact that she couldn’t breathe; it was that she, in that very moment, didn’t know how to be. As if everything she had ever been told or shown before was a lie. The feeling of finding out that the Earth really isn’t round. The scientists and geniuses lied. It’s flat–it always has been–and Julia had just been thrown over the edge, falling towards certain death where her feelings will finally splatter around her in an indistinguishable red sunset.
She let the door slam behind her as she rushed to the concrete covered wall to her side. Cold air wrapped her all around, a noose to her already tight throat. She leaned against the building, tilting forward to grip her trembling knees.
She didn’t cry, didn’t scream. She stood there leaning over the cracked sidewalk gasping as if she spent the last hour under water, as if her lungs grew legs and walked from her chest.
She tried everything. She counted to ten. She listed everything she could see, hear, and taste just like she told any overwhelmed child she had to coax out of a corner. She told herself to breathe in through her nose and out through her mouth, but nothing, absolutely nothing, would slow her steadily rising heart rate.
Nothing seemed to stop the feeling that this was it for her. This was the world’s last final aha before putting her out of her misery. Eventually, she would run out of gasps and fall to her knees right there on Broadway. She would die while clouded minds rushed past–the sound a falling tree makes in a forest when there’s no one to hear it.
Inside were her students, the ones she would lay her life on the line for. Inside was her everything. Wait, is Marin still everything? And there it all was, piling up so high it was sure to be the death of her. Her last breath would be outside the very play that made her life make sense. What was that called? Poetic irony?
Then Erin appeared in front of her, arms stretched wide, with eyes opened so vastly they looked like moons to Julia’s blurry vision. Her hair was disheveled, curls tangled into each other and sticking straight up on the top of her head. Her breath exhaled in puffs of smoky clouds above her, as if she ran around the entire block before finding Julia there.
“Oh,” she sighed, placing her hand on her stomach in relief, “there you are.”
Erin studied Julia for a moment. She didn’t do that head tilting thing when she was deep in thought. Instead, her jaw slacked, eyebrows furrowed, as pain clouded her expression and her chest heaved visibly.
Julia still leaned against the building, now with her hands crossed above her head as she still fought for air that just wouldn’t come.
“Okay, okay, okay.” Erin rushed to her side, hands outstretched and desperate to help. “What can I do?”
“I,” Julia huffed, but it was hard to get just a syllable out.
Her chest felt like fire. No, not fire. It was lava–an erupting volcano burning through her body and leaving nothing but rock in its place after the destruction.
Her body rose in sudden motions, more than it ever had before. Her heart thumped so quickly that she was sure she was having a heart attack, the very muscles keeping her body whole pulling apart at the seams. Erin stood there and just stared at her for a moment, those emerald eyes widely agitated.
“Julia, you’re having a panic attack.”
Erin pulled Julia’s hands from above her head and placed them on her chest. The words didn’t sink in. Touch didn’t sink in. Everything felt like tapping on glass, invisible to the eye even though your senses are telling you something is there.
“Jules, do you feel my breathing?”
Julia nodded to her question, her hands held firmly against Erin’s breasts. Erin’s chest rose and fell, still too fast for a normal heartbeat, but significantly slower than hers.
“Good,” Erin said with a soothing nod, and Julia tried to look away. “No, no, no.” Erin’s warm hand pulled her face back up to eye level. “Look at me. Don’t look at the ground or the sky or anything else. Look at me,” she begged, her voice shaking under the pressure.
Erin breathed in deeply through her nose and out through her mouth, never letting Julia’s hand go from her chest, but it burned.
At first, she couldn’t. Julia’s brain couldn’t make the connection that she didn’t need her mouth agape and gasping to be able to exchange oxygen. Yet, she couldn’t take her eyes off of the woman that stood before her, the woman who dropped everything to attempt a futile rescue, the woman who jumped into an already sinking boat just to try to pull her out.
“I know you feel like you can’t breathe. I know everything seems like it is crashing down over you,” Erin kept her hand firmly over Julia’s, her pulse felt through fingertips, “but you can do this.”
She pressed Julia’s hand harder into her chest as it swelled and dipped with every breath. Erin did it again and again as minutes passed. She did it again and again until Julia could close her lips, breathe without having her mouth wide open. Until Julia didn’t visibly shake before her.
She didn’t even realize when it happened; all she knew was that at some point, she wasn’t sure where the heave of Erin’s chest started and hers ended. She let her hand drop to her side, her arm and body exhausted from the battle it had just won.
Erin took another step towards Julia; she surrendered, resting her head on her shoulder. Erin wrapped her arms around her, grazing her knuckles on the concrete walls behind them as she sunk her face into Julia’s damp blonde hair.
Julia still didn’t cry. It was like she had a certain number of tickets, like she had a certain amount of times she was allowed to submit to the sorrow–a ration given all at once to carefully hold–but she already spent her allowance. Instead, she kept her head knelt on Erin’s shoulder as she breathed deeply, matching every rise and fall of the chest she was pressed against.
“Marin,” Julia gasped, her voice alien to her plugged ears.
She’s not here. She can’t be here.
“I know,” Erin’s voice broke, overfull with sympathy and… and?
“Here?” Julia asked herself, her voice still a panic gasp she fought to push down. “Of all the places? Here? She had to be here, seeing this very show? Today? Why? Why? Why!”
Erin pulled away and looked as if she was admiring her for a moment. Julia was still whole–Erin pieced her together–no matter how broken she felt. Erin watched as a tear escaped the fortress Julia built, trickling silently down her face and clinging to her chin for dear life. Erin wiped it off her flushed skin, leaving a river shaped line in its wake.
Maybe she hadn’t spent all her tickets yet.
Julia rested her head back on Erin’s shoulder again–the warmth radiating from her body as soothing as the weightlessness of floating in the ocean–barely able to tell her knees to not collapse beneath her weight. Erin just sighed into her hair, at a complete loss for words.
What do you tell someone who is crumbling in front of you? What can you say that will fill the cracks forming before your very eyes? Is there enough duct tape in the entire world to put together such a shattered form?
“It doesn’t matter where she is,” Erin whispered, her breath a single ray of sunshine on even the darkest nights. “Whether it is here or thousands of miles away, because you are still you. You are okay, even if you don’t think so right now. You are strong. You can walk back in there and watch the show. You can do this. You are so much stronger than you think, Jules.”
“I never thought I’d see her again,” she confessed, her breath still ragged and tangled within the weight of her chest. “She walked out of the door and I never saw her again.”
“You never talked after that?” Erin asked, stepping just slightly away. She leaned against the building to break the wind that beat Julia’s face.
There was so much she didn’t know, didn’t understand. It wasn’t her fault. She could only reach so far with the yardstick forced between them. She could only fill in so many of the pieces that Julia hid in her pocket.
“Never.” Julia rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand. “I thought she would. I thought she would call or at least show up for her things,” she paused, looking at busy walkers rush past on the sidewalk, completely oblivious to anyone other than the time on their watches, “but she didn’t.”
“That sounds like a really shitty thing to do to someone.”
She held out her hand and Julia took it, for the first time not caring who saw. She wished she could melt into every inch of skin that covered Erin’s body, soaking up every syllable that floated from her lips.
“It was,” she said with a nod, just realizing that while her chest still heaved, her breath was close to normal.
“She never deserved you,” Erin said softly. She didn’t allow Julia the time to overthink the comment. “So, what now?” Erin looked around at the snow-covered trees and nosey passersby. “Do we stand out here for the rest of the show?” Julia laughed, but Erin’s jaw was set, her eyes steady. “Because I will. If you can’t go back in there, we will sit on that bench right over there and freeze our asses off until the final curtain.”
Julia looked over at the slick bench twenty paces away. It was glossed over from neglect, icicles forming like daggers beneath. Dirt covered snow traced the sidewalk and covered the crevices of each building along the narrow street. Gum wrappers and paper coffee cups littered the corners.
“No,” Julia laughed. Oh, she needed that laugh.
“I’m serious.” Erin turned towards her, warm hands cupped around her cheeks. “If you can’t go back in there, we will stay right here. I will stay with you right here.”
“I know you would.” Julia placed her hand on top of Erin’s and then let it go with a sigh. “I’ll be okay. I can do this.”
She pushed herself off the side of the building. She refused to admit she was lightheaded from the whole ordeal–her head spinning as red stars clouded her perception of anything solid before her. Instead of waiting like she should have, she gripped the wall and turned the corner to walk back in like the hard-headed woman she was.
Erin strategically placed a hand hovering just an inch behind her back, there in case she needed her. They walked back in as the crowd around Marin dwindled. Students slowly returned to their seats with excitement of the next act. Faculty began to usher the stragglers back towards the theater as the lights dimmed with warning.
“Dr. Jenner!” a 12th grader yelled from the base of the stairs next to Marin, his hands raised high in the air. “You didn’t tell us Mrs. Jenner was coming!”
“Oh,” Julia said, smiling with all the composure she could muster in those few seconds, tears stinging the back of her eyelids, “it was a surprise, Dennis!”
“This is great!” He beamed, too aware that the last time he saw her was at his sophomore winter formal, too aware of her absence.
These were students they watched grow up in elementary and middle school, now just months away from taking on the world themselves. These were the students they held crying as toddlers and then took pictures with at prom.
“Dennis, why don’t you come with me to sit down?” Erin asked him. “I don’t remember where my row is.”
“Absolutely, Ms. Calanis,” he said as they made their way back to the theater. “I think I’m a couple seats behind you!” Erin looked back just briefly to catch Julia’s eyes, just to make sure she was okay.
As the last of the students piled into the aisles leading to their seats, an employee closed the large golden doors to the entryway. There was no one left–no noise, no distractions from the inevitable interaction.
There she was, just as beautiful as the day she left. Julia placed a hand over her chest, silently reminding herself to breathe so she wouldn’t lose the thumping completely.
She’d thought about the day this would happen. She drew it out in her mind, replayed every possible thing she would say until the very seconds were burned into her memory, but it was nothing like what she imagined.
A million options crashed into her head, kaleidoscoping through her all at once. She could shout at her, curse her for leaving without looking back. She could cry and then maybe, just maybe, Marin would wrap her long arms around her and she’d fall back into that spicy embrace. She could walk right up to her, looking up into those sparkling cobalt eyes and kiss her–really kiss her with a desperate longing–and hope she could feel all that she let go.
Or she could do nothing. She could go back to her seat and say nothing, pretend it never happened at all. That would be the right thing to do, right, to leave Marin standing there while she walked away. Wouldn’t that be an appropriate punishment? Wouldn’t that exhibit just a tidbit of justice for what she did to her?
Marin spoke first, slowly stepping toward Julia as she lowered her voice. “How are you?”
She reached out and touched Julia’s arm–long, thin fingers tickling the goosebumps plaguing her flesh. Julia looked down at it. Her touch was an invasive species, so foreign, as if it never belonged there in the first place.
“How am I?” she repeated the words quietly as she brought her gaze to eye level. “How am I? That’s what you have to ask me?”
Marin pulled her hand back, her pale forehead wrinkling as her eyebrows rose in surprise.
“Yes,” she said, nodding sincerely. “I want to know how you are doing, if you’re okay.”
Julia didn’t speak for a moment. She didn’t know what to say, didn’t know how to think with Marin’s soft gaze on her. She was angry. No. She was sad. No. Actually, she didn’t feel a thing. She was covered in a veil of Novocaine that she wished would drown her cells into a blissfully unknown state.
“You,” Julia paused, her voice barely an audible murmur, trying so hard to be louder than the pulsing heartbeat engulfing her body, “you don’t get to ask me that anymore.”
Then Julia did what she never thought she’d have the courage to do. She walked away, her chest bright red and throbbing beneath her shirt. She nodded kindly at the young man holding the door to the theater open for her, his eyes shooting down to the ground to pretend he didn’t witness any of that intense interaction.
Julia heard Marin’s heels walk towards her as the door quietly closed. The click-clack echoed off the extravagant walls and repeated in her head even after the egress closed.
Quiet.
She squeezed her eyes closed as the lights on the stage flickered–props adjusted in darkness–and then the orchestra boomed, releasing all of the nerves in her body into a swarm.
One deep breath, that was all she’d allow herself. One deep breath and she’d get it together.
She walked briskly down the aisle and caught Erin’s eyes–not looking at the wonderful excitement flowing over the stage as the lights turned back on–searching over her shoulder at the crowd of seats. She was looking for Julia. It never took long for those twinkling eyes to find her.
Julia excused herself to the three boys she had to step in front of to get to her seat. She pulled her jacket from her chair and laid it over her lap as she sat. She didn’t slouch. She didn’t try to sink as low as she felt at that moment; she’d disappear into the boiler in the basement if she did. Instead, she rolled her shoulders back and poised all of her attention onto the stage.
She could still see Erin’s eyes refracting flickering blue and yellow lights, looking at her from the corner of her own. How long could they sit like that,pretending to not notice the other staring while focusing on nothing else?
Minutes passed and her expression just grew more concerned. She leaned towards Julia, her mouth just inches from her ear, but she didn’t speak. She began to pull away but stopped as if she changed her mind.
“Are you okay?” she asked at last.
Julia turned towards her, their faces just a breath span apart. She wanted to lean her forehead on Erin’s. She wanted to rest her weary eyes and sink so far into the deepness of nothing that she couldn’t find her way out.
Julia didn’t say anything as she raised her hand and so tenderly rested it on hers, which was still clutching the jacket in her lap like it was the last buoy holding her afloat. She turned her attention back to the stage, patting Erin’s hand twice before releasing it.
“I’m fine,” she said in her most convincing voice, a flat line void of any of the emotions that erupted within her. “Here’s one of my favorite parts.”
Marin didn’t follow her out right away. The woman who sat next to her kept looking, searching in the dark for that glimpse of red. When she did walk back, purposefully never looking back at the rows of people behind her, she was impossible to not see.
They sat in silence as the last half of the play revealed itself before them. Students jumped at some parts and laughed at others. Erin didn’t say anything else, didn’t try to comfort her with words or touch. She just sat, her face never leaving the man with half a white mask or the girl in the flowing white gown, even though her eyes could see Julia in every frame.
Julia waited so long to be in that seat, to see that very production one last time. Yet, she couldn’t focus on anything other than the way the light glimmered off Marin’s carnelian hair. She couldn’t help but catch every head turn, every movement as if that spotlight was locked on her and not the stage.
Julia didn’t realize the ending arrived until hundreds of people rose to their feet in applause. Erin turned her head towards Julia, waiting. She stood and clapped, completely numb, waiting for the chaos to die down.
All of the chaperones had instructions to wait until the theater cleared out before conjoining in the lobby. They’d need a final headcount before trekking back to the bus, but all she could think about was the need to be far away.
Instead of making her usual loud reminder to those around her, she was quiet. With the swift motion of a hand, she motioned that students could begin leaving their aisles. Everyone followed the cue, boys and girls giggling as they mimicked the trademark instrumental notes from the play in prepubestic melodies carrying no tune.
Once back in the lobby of the theater, she found the rest of her students huddled into their respective groups. Keegan was standing next to Jonathan, reminiscing about how when the chandelier crashed down onto the stage, so many students around them jumped.
“Julia! Erin!” Keegan smiled, waving them over. Her eyes were full of concern, but she hid it well. “Wasn’t that just the greatest thing? The chandelier swinging above us before it fell to the stage?”
“Brilliant!” Jonathan agreed.
They were more excited than most of the students, once again glued to their phones–their fingers itching from not being able to check their texts for the last hour.
“It was exactly as I remember,” Julia said, but her voice was a weak impersonation of herself, a weak impersonation of the part of her that dug out of the depths after meeting Erin.
“Seems like the weather is picking up out there,” Keegan said, adjusting one of the gold drapes aside to inspect the outdoors.
White snow flurries beat against the window as blobs of people rushed past, fighting the wind and losing as they continued to stumble. Keegan held the curtain open. The cold air felt in its surrounding space, but her eyes were locked on Julia. They squinted as if trying to pull back the microscopic layers of composure she skillfully piled up.
“Let’s get everyone on the buses before it gets too late,” Julia said quietly, almost distantly, while motioning students to come closer. She looked behind her at the staircase wrapped in gold and red carpet. She took a few steps up as everyone gathered around. “Your group leaders are going to take attendance, and then we’re going to move to the buses. It’s snowing and windy outside, so bundle up!” And then she clarified, “that means actually putting on your jackets.”