Chapter 1
“Ellie, there’s before this moment, and everything after. For the rest of your life, you’re living in the after.”
I wasn’t going to tell my dad that he was wrong, and that specific, monumental moment that divided my life in two happened the night before, on the ripped fabric in the passenger side of a hand-me-down classic black Jeep Cherokee with Rory Campbell.
“I got it from here, Dad. I love you, but no one can see me with you. I won’t be Ellie McCain.
I’ll be the pathetic little girl from Canada who needed her dad to bring her to orientation.
” I tried to push my dad back down the stairs to the train platform, but he bested me with a bear hug.
His salt-and-pepper hair pressed into my face as he breathed in his little-girl-no-more one last time.
My dad and I stood at the same height. It was jarring how much we looked like one another now that I had grown into an adult-ish kind of person.
We both had blue eyes that random people would comment on.
I had wavy dark-blond hair that reached down my back and teetered on the verge of a color often referred to as “mousy.” We both had smiles that pulled creases into our cheeks.
But my biggest inherited trait from my father was my occasionally damaging, often delusional, blinding ambition.
We were both determined to rip our roots from the ground and fly into the unknown, come hell or high water.
My dad had moved out of Canmore, Alberta, to study medicine in Toronto and become a doctor.
And I was going to move out of Vancouver, British Columbia, and become a goddamn movie star!
The moment I knew that I was on my way out of Canada is as clear to me as if it happened yesterday.
I was fourteen. We were driving down Sepulveda Boulevard in LA on a family holiday and cruised through the Airport Tunnel.
I could feel the yellow lights inside the tunnel burn into my soul as I watched them blur around our car.
My dad was driving, my mom sat in the passenger seat, and my older sister, Hannah, was beside me.
I closed my eyes in the sudden darkness and rolled down my window to let the warm air push into my face and rip through my hair.
I said aloud, “This is it. It’s LA. I’m going to live here one day.
I’m going to be somebody.” I didn’t have to open my eyes.
I could feel my parents smiling to themselves from the front seat, as if they were patting my head condescendingly and saying, “That’s nice, dear.
” My sister snorted out her annoyance. But I meant it, and that indescribable pull of “this is it” tugged on me and had me chasing dragons ever since, as my parents liked to say.
Yes, I was aware that New York wasn’t Los Angeles, but I had made it to the States.
I was one step closer. I was on my way to orientation at Bronwyn School for the Arts.
“Good luck pouring coffee for the rest of your life,” my uncle told me when I got accepted into the theater program at the prestigious conservatory.
“How does it feel going into something when you already know you’ll never make your money back?
” a friend asked at my going-away party.
“It’s so funny how some people think they’re special,” my cousin quipped passive-aggressively.
“My friends complain about having to drive over the bridge to North Vancouver to see their kids, and you want to go to New York?” my mom cried after I went to the audition.
Two years, I told them.
It’s only two years, I told Rory.
I had been in New York for a total of three hours, and I already felt like a different version of myself.
I wasn’t sure how much of that had to do with my traumatizing night before, but I was different nonetheless.
I didn’t know who this new person was yet, but I was free, scared, and excited.
I also pretended I wasn’t instantaneously homesick and so overwhelmingly heartbroken that I could hardly catch my breath.
A wave of heat hurtled toward me and my dad on the staircase like we had been blasted inside a wind tunnel.
Another train had come into the station below.
The warmth washed over me and propelled me into a memory of Rory and me standing at my door, sixteen years old and flushed with nerves, excitement, awe, and fear.
His brother, Cameron, and my best friend, Kara, were waiting for him in the driveway, ready to go.
“I don’t know what to do right now.” Rory carefully moved his forehead to mine. His sweet, shallow breath seeped into my bones.
“Rory, let’s go!” Cameron called out the Jeep’s window and honked.
I wanted so badly to lean in, skim my nose along his, part my lips, and see what would happen. I wanted so badly to move my hands into his dark-brown, loose curls, but I didn’t. I closed my eyes instead and felt his warm breath steadily coat my skin.
“Rory, they can see us.” I kept my voice small and quiet, and my words only for him.
“I don’t think I care . . .”
Cameron honked louder and longer this time. I could hear Rory’s lips pull into a smile, and we both started laughing.
“On your left!” A stranger bumped my shoulder, rushing down the stairs to catch the next train, slapping me back to reality.
“Oh, sorry,” I said instinctively, even though she was the one who hit me.
I watched her work blazer flap in the wind as she clutched onto the railing with one hand, barreling down the stairs.
Her other hand popped above her head, and her middle finger raised high and proud.
I pulled my face back, surprised that someone had just randomly told me to “fuck off ” minutes after getting off the train.
My dad and I had taken the E train from our hotel, which sat near the Empire State Building, before I moved into a converted hotel-turned-apartment building called Grayrock on the Upper West Side.
It was one of the very few buildings in the affluent neighborhood that had yet to be bought by a developer and renovated.
Two beds sat in the middle of the tiny studio apartment, divided by a small nightstand.
The walls were made of concrete, so that no one could hear my screams. There was a small fridge, an electric grill, and an oven at the foot of the beds that was considered unsafe for use but too big to move.
The kitchen sink was also the bathroom sink.
Oh, and there were most definitely what one would assume to be murder stains all over the gray carpet.
After I found the apartment on my own, my overprotective parents were on high alert and weren’t about to let me vet a roommate on my own.
I had to agree to let them come with me to New York to help me settle in.
It was the only way they would support my taking on this irresponsible (in their opinion), yet inevitable (in my opinion) adventure.
I needed a roommate and a job, but because I was Canadian and only had a student visa, I promised my parents that I would find a roommate and take on internships to build real-world connections and work on a backup plan should I never catch that pesky little dragon.
My parents and my sister were the realists. I was the asshole.
My dad cupped the back of my neck to pull me in and kiss the top of my head.
“Okay. I’ll go. But before I go back down there”—my dad nodded down the stairs into the busy subway station—“and you’re off in the wind up there .
. .” We both looked up at the enormous buildings blocking the late-summer, early-evening sky.
“I love you.” I saw my dad shift his weight and prepare to tell me his next sentence. “Your mom’s flying back tonight.”
“What?” I almost fell over from whiplash. “We just got here! We literally just got here.”
“Your grandma had a fall—”
“What?!” My eyes twitched.
“She’s okay, take it down three notches. Your mom got a voicemail when we were on the plane, and we didn’t say anything until now because we didn’t want to interfere with your big night. But she’s not going to be there when you get back tonight, so that’s why I’m telling you.”
“She didn’t say goodbye.” I searched my brain for exactly what transpired when we left my mom in Bryant Park.
Well . . . Now that I thought about it, she did seem to cry an unusual amount over her luke-warm afternoon coffee.
She wished me good luck, and she squeezed my face between her palms with an intense look in her eyes that I had shrugged off as “Mom is nuts.” Come to think of it, she did scream “I love you, Ellie-Bee” so loud that everyone in the park stopped what they were doing to slowly look at the overly emotional crazy lady sobbing into her pain au chocolat.
“Your mom knew if she said a proper goodbye, she wouldn’t be able to leave, but all is good. I’m staying until we find your roommate, so it’s fine. It’s all fine.” My dad was trying to sound like he had things under control. He didn’t.
“You don’t know how to do that,” I declared accusingly. “You don’t know how to be a person like that.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” my dad asked defensively.
“Life stuff is Mom. You’re here for the fun.”
“It’s okay, I have a plan. You find a roommate. I’ll humanize you by showing them you have a family, so they’ll think twice before killing you.” My dad grinned mischievously.
“This is just . . . a lot of information.” I blinked heavily. There was too much swirling around my mind.
Mom. New York. Orientation. Rory. No friends. Grandma. Roommate. Rory.
I looked down, feeling the weight of everything at my feet. Nope. Never mind. It was a rat. There was a rat on my shoe.
“Ahhhhhhh!” I screamed then booted the rat against the stairwell’s wall. As it scurried away back down the stairs, I looked at my dad with my eyes wide open, and he doubled over with laughter.
“Okay, honey.” My dad kept chuckling. “I can’t wait to hear about how it all goes tonight. Also, your mom wanted you to have this. Please, I’m begging you, read it when I’m gone. You’ll see what I’m talking about.”
My dad handed me a letter and gave me a quick kiss on the cheek before turning back to catch the next train.
I may have failed at concealing my cry as I choked out “Dad?”
He turned back around from the bottom of the stairs to see me silhouetted by the scary super-city filled with bad people behind me. I fiddled nervously with my delicate rose gold bracelet. I didn’t have words, but it didn’t matter. My dad nodded, holding in his tears, and gave his fist a pump.
“Give ’em hell, Ellie.”
I watched my dad disappear beneath the city, then read my mom’s letter.
My Ellie-Bee,
I am so, so, so proud of you. Remember these four rules:
Zip up your purse.
Have big feelings. Make big choices.
Stop what you’re doing and recognize what you’re doing.
No licky-dicky.
Vancouver will always be home, but it’s not your life. Live your life and don’t look back. I love you.
Mama
“No licky-dicky?” My snort turned into a full-blown, tears-spilling-down-my-face laugh. I sucked in a shaky inhale and pocketed the letter.
No licky-dicky. Christ . . .
I shook my head with another chuckle. It took five seconds for my smile to fade.
To my parents, New York was Gotham City.
To me, it was something hugely different.
I knew when I turned around and walked onto the streets, toward those suffocating skyscrapers and blinding lights, I was letting go of my “everything before” and heading directly into my “everything after.”
I closed my eyes and dragged in a slow, shuddering breath.
Don’t think about him. Don’t think about him . . . Don’t look back.
I looked up one last time, and before I stepped into the unknown, I quietly said, “Goodbye, me. I’ll miss you.”