The Other Side of Now, page 1
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To Emily and Hartner. To Taryn and Jean. To Elaine and Beth and our Greg.
To everyone else who lost their best friend.
I know what you must be thinking. “Poor little rich girl, what does she know about misery?”
—ROSE DEWITT BUKATER, TITANIC (1997)
PROLOGUE
fifteen years ago
I pull the trigger over and over and over as the increasingly feeble stream of water fails to propel my tiny horse as fast as I want it to go.
“Come on, come on!” I say, baring my teeth, which are still sore from today’s orthodontist appointment, not taking my eyes off the bullseye for a moment.
Aimee’s horse lurches ahead even farther, and that’s when I notice that she’s doubled over beside me, cracking up, her finger not even on her accelerator gun.
“Mine’s broken!” she says between laughing gasps, and points at her ghostly horse, racing on speedily without her assistance.
My jaw drops and I yell, “This game is rigged!”
The finish-line bell sounds as Aimee’s horse stops at the end of its track, leaving mine far behind.
“You win,” says the bored, older teenager working the booth. He then gestures at the prizes. She picks a white teddy bear; he yanks it down from where it’s clipped by the ear and tosses it to her, then sets up the horse game for another couple of suckers.
“It’s rigged,” I whisper to the girl taking over my old position. “The game is rigged.”
“I don’t think she got it,” Aimee says as we walk away.
“Kids.”
It’s the end of summer and as hot as it gets in this part of muggy Florida. At home, the air-conditioning is broken, so I’ve been aching hot for weeks except for the nights I’ve been allowed to sleep over at Aimee’s. Even our pool is hot. My parents keep reminding me what a whiny, ungrateful complaint that is, but it sucks, and it’s not my fault they don’t get that having something that should be nice that doesn’t work is annoying.
Somehow, Aimee’s pool is always cool. Aimee’s house is cool. I know I don’t live in some terrible, broken home or anything. It’s nice. I’m lucky. But I always like being at Aimee’s house more. Even when her parents make me do chores, I like it more. And they do. All the time. I know where the Comet and backup sponges are and that trash night is Wednesday, recycling is Thursday. Aimee and I are fifteen now, and her parents say that when we get our driver’s licenses we’re going to start doing the grocery shopping. They say it like a joke, but I wouldn’t mind. As long as I get to go over there all the time.
Even though tonight is hotter than an oven, I’m happy. It’s the annual End of Summer Carnival, the one super townie thing we really have around here. There’s a Ferris wheel and some little roller coasters, a funhouse, lots of games, and—the part we like best—a ridiculous amount of junk food.
Funnel cake, ice cream, turkey legs, the good kind of chicken tenders with an array of dips, deep-fried Twinkies and Oreos, nachos, hot dogs, cheeseburgers, popcorn so salty it stings the tongue, soft pretzels with cheese dip that I can only find here (my mom eats them with mustard, gross), corn dogs, pizza, weird soda, root beer floats, snow cones (always disappointing), cotton candy, and then a bunch of stuff our moms like and we don’t, like chocolate-covered bananas, cheesecake, onion rings, and chili cheese dogs. The air smells like fry oil, salt, sugar, and some other cheap neon smell I can’t put my finger on but that practically intoxicates me every year.
Best of all, our moms come with us; they sit and drink pink wine from plastic cups and listen to the live music, and we get to run around with a twenty-dollar bill each and do anything we want with it.
Like get ripped off by a stoner in a tie-dyed shirt with a broken horse game, for example.
Aimee and I walk through the candy-colored stalls to the sound of the old-timey jazz band playing on the stage off in the distance.
“This reminds me of that scene at the beginning of The Notebook,” I say. “Ooh, we should watch that tonight!”
“Oh … actually, um…”
I turn to look at her, thinking she’s doing a bit. “Oh what, you don’t want to?”
“I’m actually going over to Theo’s tonight.”
“Wait, what? Tonight?”
“Yeah. He didn’t want to come to the carnival but he invited me over after. His friends are watching like … Tarantino movies or something all night and they invited their girlfriends.” She says the syllables of Tarantino with unfamiliarity that she is clearly trying to pretend isn’t there.
I stop walking. “Are you and Theo boyfriend-girlfriend now?”
She shrugs. “I don’t know. I know you hate him.”
“I don’t hate him. He’s…”
The worst. He smokes cigarettes and weed constantly and completely ignores me whenever I’m around. Worse than that, he acts like Aimee is a supporting character in his story. He talks over her and doesn’t ask her questions and doesn’t seem proud of her in front of his friends. He literally stands a little bit in front of her all the time, which I have recently learned is actually called upstaging in theatre. He walks into rooms and has full-on conversations without introducing or acknowledging that Aimee is even with him so then she’s left to trail behind him like overlooked punctuation. Then she ends up explaining away every little thing he does that’s weird. I guess that if she’s a punctuation mark, she’s an asterisk.
Not to mention the night I don’t talk about. Not even with Aimee. It’s the one secret in our friendship. I keep trying to find a time to tell her about it, but then I wimp out.
“Okay, well … you and I are hanging out right now! I’m not going to his place until later.” Aimee keeps walking and I feel my heart completely sink as she pulls ahead.
I’m always afraid of her leaving me behind.
It was Aimee who grew out of playing pretend first, Aimee who was the first one to like boys. Now she’s the one who goes and watches Tarantino movies after the carnival instead of what we usually do, which is watch a movie we’ve seen a hundred times, talk through it, giggle and gossip until a parent stomps in to say we need to lower our voices, and then sneak more junk food from the kitchen once our parents are sleeping.
“I wish guys still dressed like that,” Aimee says when I catch up.
“Like what?” She can’t mean Theo and his skinny jeans, chain wallet, and pre-distressed band tees.
“Like in The Notebook.”
“Oh. Yeah. Same.”
“And that we did too. It would be so fun to wear those cute dresses and do the hair and everything. Mrs. Harper talked about doing an older play soon, didn’t she? Maybe it’ll be from that era.”
I don’t get a chance to answer before we hear a raspy, accented voice on the wind.
“Young ladies.… Get your fortune told.”
We turn—me sucking the last sticky remnants of a caramel apple off my thumb, Aimee elbow-deep in a bag of white-cheddar popcorn, prize teddy bear under her other arm.
“Do you wish to know your fortune?” asks the woman. With her very cool, very chic accent, it sounds more like D’yu wij tnoh yohr forchoon?
She really looks the part, and I start making involuntary mental notes to re-create her as a character.
The woman has heavy eyeliner, emerald eye shadow, and tattooed eyebrows that have turned blue. Her thin lips are painted dark maroon, and her old skin looks unsettlingly soft and papery. Coiffed copper curls peek out from under her headpiece. Aimee’s mom has the perfect scarf for me to wrap around my head like that.
She has a deck of ornately designed cards neatly stacked on her small table, which is draped in a velvet fabric that matches her eye shadow. A small tea light emits a gentle light from inside a scarlet glass.
Aimee and I look at each other, and I’m surprised to see that my friend, usually the most relaxed girl in the world, has gone a little pale.
Aimee nods for me to go first.
“Okay,” I say to her. To the woman, I say, “Hi.”
“Hello. Sit.”
I do as I’m told. She’s so commanding, I’d probably tap-dance if she told me to.
Let’s be honest—if it seems like it’ll get me some positive attention, I’ll tap-dance for anyone. And I’m not even good at it.
The woman stares at me for a moment and then holds out her hands. “Your palm.”
Like the skin on her face, her hands are ivory and seem silkier than they should be.
She stares at the lines on my palm and smiles. “You’re going to do great things. Loved by many. Famous.”
“Oh! That’s nice.”
“For a while.”
“Oh. O
The woman studies my palm more closely, lifting a pair of tethered glasses from one of those necklaces that only older women and some weird men seem to wear, resting them on her narrow nose. “This is strange.”
I don’t really believe in anything she’s saying—in fact, I don’t want to, because she said I’d be famous but only for a while—but when she inspects more closely, I still start to get nervous.
The woman laughs, shaking her head. “Your life goes in two different directions. It divides. It’s almost imperceptible, but undeniable. Look, you with your young eyes. Look for yourself.”
She points a long, unpainted fingernail along a line between my thumb and my forefinger, going toward my wrist. Diverging from it, there’s another.
“Okay…”
“Usually, there is only one line here. You have two.” She stares hard at me, as if I’m supposed to understand the significance of this. “Two lives, girl.”
I run my tongue along the braces at the back right of my mouth like I always do when I don’t know what to say. “Oh…”
She tuts and releases my hand. “Two destinies. Two lives. You will know when the time comes to choose which life is for you.”
I open my mouth to ask two lifetimes’ worth of questions when she flaps her fingers wildly in Aimee’s direction and says, “You, come.” Then to me, “You, go.”
My friend takes a slow step toward the woman, handing me the bag of popcorn, then dusts her hands off on her jean shorts. “Sorry. Cheese.”
“Comes with the territory,” the woman says, gesturing at our surroundings. As Aimee sits down, the woman reaches for her. “Show me.”
Aimee hesitates. I wrinkle my eyebrows at her. She doesn’t believe in this kind of thing, does she? Why is she being cagey about it?
She puts the teddy bear between her knees and gives over her palm.
The woman looks at it for a long, silent time. Too long, too silent. You know when it’s someone’s turn to talk and then they don’t? And then they don’t again?
The silence stretches on for probably only two or three minutes in real time, but in a context like this it feels like a very, very long time. And Aimee doesn’t look at me once. Neither of them do.
Aimee stares at the woman.
The woman stares at her palm.
I stare at both of them.
Around us, the world spins. The jazz plays on, a song my dad likes called “Where or When.” The crooning voice singing, Oh the tricks your mind can play …
The golden string lights cast a glow on future memories of hundreds of sugar-high kids as they laugh and push each other and hold hands for the first time. The old rides creak and spin and rotate as they’ve done countless times before and will do until they break. Corn pops and cotton candy is spun; apples are dipped in salty, sticky caramel or molten hot, toxically red sugar. Our moms sit at some splintery picnic table somewhere with that wine I hate the smell of, chatting about who knows what.
And then there are the three of us, locked in an endless moment that feels altogether different in a sudden and dark way I cannot describe.
You are smiling, you were smiling then, but I can’t remember where or when …
The candle on the table flickers violently, growing double in size, and I see Aimee’s and the woman’s eyes jerk in unison toward the flame.
The woman releases Aimee’s hand, abruptly but kindly and without a word. Her sudden benevolence is somehow more unnerving than the curtness of before.
Aimee gives a small shake of her head, like, well?
The woman responds with a sad, sorry sort of smile, her eyes tenting into an empathetic expression that makes no sense.
“What does that mean?” I ask. “Um, excuse me? What’s going on?”
“Be well, little girls.”
My skin rises in goose bumps.
If Aimee was pale before, she is a ghost now. I can see her heartbeat in the pulsing of her uplit jugular. Even so, as if in a trance, she pulls a five-dollar bill from her denim pocket.
“No,” says the woman, closing Aimee’s fingers on the money. “Be well.”
Aimee stands up.
“Come on, let’s go,” I say. “This is creepy.”
She comes to my side, putting a sweating hand in mine, and we quickly leave. Once gone, I could swear I hear the woman’s voice far off in the wind saying, “Drive safely, girls.”
Or maybe that’s just how I remember it.
CHAPTER ONE
present day
The gun feels cold and hard where I hide it against the small of my back.
I lean on the rolltop desk and watch Kim cross in front of me, her chiffon pantsuit hanging loosely around her frame. I will the tears to come to my eyes. It’ll be better if I look upset.
“It wasn’t my fault you left. That was your choice,” I say. I try to sound strong, but I don’t hide the sadness and anger either.
“You couldn’t accept that you were wrong; you forced me to leave. It was your fault and you couldn’t stand that you made such a huge mistake!” She puts her hands on her hips and stares me down, the massive fake diamonds around her neck catching the light. I allow my eyes to be drawn to them only momentarily before I lift my gaze back to hers.
“No,” I say, exuding calm, despite my voice shaking a little.
“You were too damn proud to listen,” she says, a humorless smile playing at her lips.
“Proud?” I scoff, blinking the tears away, and underplay the next words where someone else might scream them. “If there’s one thing in my life that I’ll look back on with pride”—I pull the gun out from behind my back and aim it squarely at her exposed, ample cleavage—“it’s this.”
I pull the trigger. Kim falls back against the grand piano. Her underweight body drapes against the keys, sounding a discordant crash before she slides down to the ground.
I walk over to her, and before her eyes go blank, I yank the necklace from her. “I’ll think of you every time I wear it.”
She struggles to speak, and I lean closer to hear her say, “You … bitch.”
I laugh. A little. Then a lot. Maybe too much.
“Cut!”
The grin falls from my face and I clear my throat and stand. “Did we get it?”
The director, Devon, bursts out of the control booth and comes over, tearing his headphones off. He puts his hands on my shoulders and his voice echoes through the cavernous studio. “Lana. You knocked it right out of the park. I’m not kiddin’, you knocked it right out of the city!”
There is a massive cheer from the crew, all of whom are beyond ready to wrap for the season. The firearm-safety guy comes over with great caution and takes the fake gun.
Devon pulls me toward him, then drags me over to video village, saying, “I gotta show you that last take. It was absolutely mesmerizing. You’re such a talent. I’m so glad Martin introduced us, and that I got to be the one to discover the great Lana Lord all those years ago.”
I am desperate to get the hell out of here—the stage lights, which have the heat of the surface of the sun, and the many bodies in here have made this place a sauna—but I go with him, ignoring the way his hand has drifted down to my lower back. He seems to assume that since he’s gay, I won’t mind.
I sigh, too worn out to bat it away like I usually do.
“Take it back to right after Velma’s monologue,” he says to the camera operator. “Yeah, right there, right there.”
He hovers two fingers in front of the monitor, and between them I notice where his spray tan has settled into the webbing. Then he hands me a pair of headphones and I hold one ear to mine and watch.
I never get used to it. Seeing myself this way. The blazing lights make my eyes look bluer and clearer than they are, and the waist cincher beneath my dress gives me an impossibly angled silhouette. Not to mention the fake eyelashes, the big-hair wig, the intense contouring, and the actual nose job I might never fully adjust to.
In post, they’ll retouch us all to death, giving us that soapy, perfect look. It’s good that they do, because it’ll make a Botoxer out of anyone to see themselves this close up, unedited. No line or pore can hide from these cameras.
