Down, Then Up: A Novella

by Beth Labonte

  “Because it smells like gym socks?”

  “No, silly. Because it’s different. The elevator is really a time machine. When those doors open, Jenna finds herself in sixteen ninety-two during the Salem Witch Trials. She has a hell of a first day, let me tell you. It turns out that if you get into the red elevator, and you wish your hardest that you were somewhere else, it transports you to another time and place. Jenna’s seen the Civil War, ancient Egypt, old Hollywood. My girl’s living the life.”

  “You’re brilliant,” says Jamie. “Do you sell millions of these things?”

  “I’ve sold a few.”

  “A few million?”

  I smile. “Last year I had my own booth at Comic Con.”

  “Whoa,” says Jamie. “You really are a big deal.”

  “I signed so many books and met so many girls that are into sci-fi and fantasy because of me. And I only got into it because of you. Do you want to know an embarrassing secret?”

  “Always.”

  “I dedicated the first book in the series to you.”

  “No way.”

  “Yes way.” I open the Amazon preview and scroll down to the first page. “See.” I cringe as he reads to himself.

  For Jamie, if only time machines were real.

  He smiles and puts a hand to his mouth.

  “If only,” he says. “You know, I’d always hoped that you’d turned out okay. I really wasn’t sure which way you’d go. But then I searched for you and saw the books, and then I knew. Well, at least I knew you’d become a success. I didn’t know if you’d gone all Hunter S. Thompson.”

  I snort. “To be honest, that’s how I started the books—with a bottle of vodka by my side. But then, I got better.”

  “I’m glad.”

  “You know, you could have tried to contact me sooner,” I say, gently.

  “I could say the exact same thing to you.”

  I open my mouth to respond, but realize that I don’t have the words. We just sit there in silence, looking at the Ent, time continuing to tick by.

  Eleven Years Earlier

  “I can’t believe you actually dressed up,” said Jamie, taking a step back to get a better look at me. “I mean, I’m still getting over the fact that you agreed to come here at all. But I never thought you’d put on a costume.”

  I spun around in front of the mirror. I was wearing a floor length, white, wispy dress complete with prosthetic elf ears and hair extensions. Jamie was wearing the male version of an elf costume, complete with long, blonde wig, and a bow and arrow set—a total bitch to get on the airplane, by the way. I don’t know what he was so surprised about. Lauren Oswald didn’t half-ass anything and he knew it. If I was going to fly all the way to California to attend Comic Con, I was going to do it right. Besides, I needed to be in disguise in case I ended up in any photographs.

  It was the summer after sophomore year, and Jamie and I were home on break. Comic Con was a mere four days out of my summer, so there was no reason my other friends would ever find out about it. That pretty much summed up my relationship with Jamie over the past two years. Everyone knew that we were friends, but they didn’t know the extent of it. Most of them thought he was tutoring me in physics. I was still too embarrassed to admit, publicly, that my idea of a good time—not a drink-until-you-puke kind of a good time, but a legit good time—was sitting in Jamie’s room, learning to play Magic the Gathering. I was a geek at heart, but I wasn’t ready to fully commit.

  “Would you have still worn that—” I gestured toward his getup, “if I hadn’t?”

  “Of course,” said Jamie. “I’m at Comic Con, what else was I going to wear? Khakis?”

  I smiled. “At least you look good in tights.”

  “I’m not sure if that’s a compliment.”

  “It was.”

  Jamie raised his eyebrows. “In that case, I didn’t know you’d been looking at my tights region.”

  I shrugged and turned back to adjusting my costume in the mirror. I hadn’t seen Jamie in over a month when we met at the airport to fly out to San Diego. I wasn’t expecting to be hit with the emotions that I felt when I saw him waiting there for me, all crinkly-eyed, at the gate. But there they were—the butterflies and the sweaty palms, and the fear that I sounded like a complete idiot every time I opened my mouth. Every clichéd crush symptom trampled me in a riotous, pitchfork-wielding mob, leaving me dumbstruck on the ground. Absence had made the heart grow fonder.

  Sitting in close proximity on the airplane only made things worse. As did the fact that we were going to be alone at a hotel for four whole days—the thought of which put my flip-flopping stomach into overdrive. Especially with all the turbulence. Every time we bumped elbows I felt like pulling down the oxygen mask and inhaling deeply. A gin and tonic over Illinois, and another over Colorado, served as adequate tranquilizers.

  “Well, I’m ready,” I said. “What’s up first?”

  Jamie picked a computer printout up off the bed—our itinerary. “We’ve got the Doctor Who Q&A panel at ten, then we’ll do lunch, then we have a preview of Alien vs. Predator at two.”

  “You’re such a dreamboat. Ah, crap.” I suddenly realized that I had no place to put my wallet. I had no pockets, and I couldn’t exactly bring my Coach bag. Talk about an anachronism.

  “Give me,” said Jamie, holding out his hand. He tucked my wallet into the small brown pouch around his waist.

  “You’ve got room in there? With all the Lembas bread?”

  “Lembas is small, but filling. Plenty of room for you, Lauren. Let’s go.”

  The San Diego Convention Center was packed, shoulder-to-shoulder, with people. I hadn’t been expecting such a huge crowd. I mean, this was supposed to be a comic book convention. I was expecting fifty people. I didn’t think there was a need to tell Jamie that without a couple of drinks I had agoraphobic tendencies. But there was no backing out now. Instead, I linked my arm through his and stayed close. Jamie didn’t seem to mind. In fact, as we wound our way around the booths, his hand eventually made its way into mine. As we walked around, hand-in-hand, I assured myself that it was simply his way of not losing me, while giving his elbow a rest. But the occasional squeeze of my hand, and the occasional stroke of his thumb, suggested that the handholding was slightly more than utilitarian. I had become so preoccupied by this development that I didn’t even notice the Wookie come up alongside me.

  “Ahh!” I jumped about a foot in the air as a huge, furry paw touched me on the shoulder.

  “UrrrRAAAHHH!” said the Wookie.

  “It’s okay,” said Jamie. “It’s just Chewbacca. Here, I’ll take your picture.” He fished his digital camera out of his elven fanny pack, and waved me over next to Chewie.

  “Say, Jedi!”

  “UrrrRAAHHH!”

  And so concluded the handholding portion of our trip. Thank you, Fuzzball. Fortunately, it wasn’t permanent.

  Spending so much time together over the next few days seemed to push our friendship into a blurry sort of gray area—with both of us too chicken to broach the subject outright. There was discreet handholding when we were in crowds, a subtle increase in arm-around-the-shoulder-time when evening temps got chilly, and an awkward lingering outside each other’s hotel rooms at the end of each night. After we said goodnight, I would lay alone in bed replaying every interaction that we’d had that day, and concocting some late night scenarios of my own. I had an inkling that I was falling for my best friend, and a longing to do something about it before I went out of my mind.

  All too soon, it was our final night in San Diego, and we stood in the lobby of the hotel debating where to go for dinner.

  “You look nice,” said Jamie, gesturing toward my sundress. “I haven’t seen you dressed as a human in quite some time.”

  “And you, as well,” I said. He was only wearing shorts and a polo shirt, but his skin had a nice, sun-kissed glow to it—a look I’d never seen on him back in the Northeast. “I hardly recogn
ized you without your wig.”

  “I could get it out again later, if you’d like.”

  I knew that was a bizarre thing for a man to say, but still. My stomach did a little flip at the allusion to me, Jamie, and a later.

  “Maybe we should go somewhere nice for dinner,” I said.

  “In-and-Out Burger isn’t nice?” he asked, referring to two of our last three dinners.

  I tilted my head from side-to-side. “We could do better.”

  The hotel concierge directed us to a sushi restaurant right on the beach. As we settled into our seats with two glasses of champagne, I felt more content than I could ever remember.

  “Cheers,” I said, holding out my glass. Jamie clinked with me.

  “I have to say,” said Jamie, “None of my friends are going to believe that I took you to Comic Con. Toby will probably have a stroke. Good thing I brought my camera.”

  The look on my face must have spoken volumes.

  “Not that I’m going to spread it around or anything,” he added.

  “No, it’s okay,” I said. “You can tell your friends.”

  “But not yours.”

  I squirmed a bit in my seat, clearly uncomfortable with the statement. In no way did my discomfort prevent Jamie from continuing.

  “Can I ask you something?”

  “Sure.”

  “What would happen if you decided that you didn’t want to go to parties every weekend?”

  “Um, let me think. I would have to find all new friends.” Just the thought of it gave me anxiety. I took a sip of champagne to calm my nerves.

  “Would that be so bad? I mean, they don’t even really know you. Not the real you.”

  “Hey,” I said, getting defensive. “I was lucky that those girls befriended me freshman year. Because I was shy, and I was nervous, and if Sarah hadn’t let me tag along to parties with her, I would have ended up just like—”

  “Me?” said Jamie. He was smiling, so I knew he wasn’t seriously offended. But still.

  “That’s not what I meant.” I reached across the table and took his hand.

  “Look, Lauren,” he said. “I don’t want to tell you who to be friends with. But I worry about you. The nights that I don’t hear you come back to the dorm—those are nights that I don’t sleep.”

  My chest suddenly felt very tight, and I didn’t know what to say. I mean, I always knew that Jamie had no love for my lifestyle, but I never knew that he had actual concerns for my safety.

  “I’m fine,” I said. “You don’t have to worry. Sarah, Kelly, we all look out for each other.”

  Jamie shook his head. “I wouldn’t trust Sarah and Kelly to watch my dog, never mind you.”

  “Hey,” I said, pushing his hand back across the table. “Those are my friends you’re talking about.”

  Jamie shrugged. “I never said you shouldn’t be friends with them. You guys just make poor choices when you’re drinking, which is pretty much all the time.”

  “We don’t make that many poor choices.”

  “Oh, really?” Jamie leaned back in his chair and put his hands behind his head. “How about last semester when I bailed the three of you out of a New Hampshire jail, at two o’clock in the morning, because you thought it would be a smart idea to spray paint a—what was it again?”

  Oh, God. Not that.

  “A penis,” I mumbled.

  “Yes, that’s right. Because you and your friends thought it would be funny to spray paint a giant penis across the Welcome to Keene sign. How old are you?”

  “That was Kelly’s idea, not mine. I literally stood there and held her jacket while she sprayed. You know I’m no vandal.”

  Jamie sighed. “Like I said, I worry about you.”

  Poor Jamie. He really was our hero that night, posting bail, and then driving us an hour home. We never even paid him for the gas.

  “Okay, fine,” I said. “You’re right. Sometimes I do get in over my head. But I’ll tell you one thing. I love the way that I feel when I’ve had a few drinks and the night is full of possibilities. I love that I’m not shy and I’m not nervous and I’m not obsessing over what people are thinking about me. I love it, and I’m not giving it up. And if that means living some sort of a double life, so be it. You’ve taught me all about orcs and elves and hobbits, mister Jamie Mullins, but maybe it’s time you learned a little something from me.”

  I slid the bottle of champagne dramatically across the table. Jamie caught it before it went over the other side. He looked at me seriously for a few seconds, and then poured himself another glass.

  We didn’t say another word for a long time. We just sipped champagne and looked out at the ocean, until the waiter arrived with our food. Jamie and I had never before been at a loss for words in each other’s company—but this trip had steered us into uncharted territory. Pleasant, for the most part, but uncharted.

  We finished dinner just before sunset, and headed down to the beach for a walk. Jamie stopped to take some pictures, as I walked on ahead to the edge of the water.

  “Lauren!” he called.

  I turned and looked at him over my shoulder, the wind gently blowing my hair, the sun a fierce, orange ball on the horizon.

  “Beautiful,” he said, looking at the tiny screen on the back of his camera. I rolled my eyes and stuck out my hand.

  “Come on.”

  We walked along the beach for what felt like a mile, before Jamie came to an abrupt stop. He pulled me back and wrapped his arms around my waist. The champagne had worked its magic. Or maybe it had been the elf costumes. Or the meet and greet with Sir Ian McKellen. Maybe it was a combination of everything. As we stood there on the beach, pressed up against each other at last, I realized that it didn’t actually matter what had brought us to this point.

  “Hey,” I said, weakly, looking up into his face.

  “Hey,” he said, looking down into mine. “Laur?”

  “Yes?”

  “Do you think it would cut some of this tension, if I kissed you right now?”

  My stomach was so full of butterflies that I felt as if I might throw up. As long as it remained a feeling, and not an action, we were in business. Oh boy, were we in business. I nodded.

  I closed my eyes as he brought his lips down to meet mine—warm, with a hint of Prosecco—and I placed one hand on each of his shoulders. Except for the sounds of the ocean, time seemed to stand still. I ran a hand down the back of his head, partly to keep him from pulling away, and partly to confirm that it was really Jamie standing there with me. I felt his hair between my fingers, and the stubble on his chin. I smelled his familiar, woodsy scent. There was no doubt. I had memorized every feature of the man over the past four days, and they were all present and accounted for underneath my fingertips.

  Time lurched back into motion as I became aware of the crunching of sand beneath the feet of people passing by.

  “Someone’s going to tell us to get a room,” I murmured, pulling away just a little.

  “That’s fine,” said Jamie, pulling me back in. “We have two of them.”

  4

  “Come on,” I say, standing up. “There’s one more thing I’ve been wanting to do before we leave tomorrow. But the girls have never seemed quite sober enough for it.”

  I lead the way out of The Bellagio, down the driveway, and across the street to The Paris hotel. Its half scale replica of the Eiffel Tower looms overhead. I glance at the time. We should be able to make it. I locate the gift shop and plunk my credit card down on the counter.

  “Two, please.” I look over at Jamie. “My treat.”

  “You two will be the last trip up tonight,” says the woman behind the counter.

  “Perfect.” I sign the receipt and we head toward the elevator. “Have you ever been to the real one?”

  “I have. I actually went to Europe with Toby after graduation.”

  “Wow, I wasn’t expecting that,” I laugh. “Whatever happened to Toby?”

  �
�He co-founded an Internet dating site and used it to meet an extremely hot woman who, for reasons unknown, felt the need to use an Internet dating site. Then he sold the site to Facebook and hasn’t worked since.”

  “You’re kidding?”

  “Wish I was. How about you? Ever been to Paris?”

  “Once,” I say, still recovering from the news about Toby as we step onto the elevator. “For a book tour. I was alone though, so it wasn’t as romantic as the time you and Toby went.”

  I make a few kissy noises until Jamie gives me a shove. I’m still giggling as the elevator starts its ascent. It’s then that a very sexual, breathy woman comes over the loudspeaker reminding us that this is an attraction best enjoyed with someone special. I immediately stop giggling and stiffen up. They must have switched on a special recording for the late night crowd. Oh good, now it’s repeating. Don’t they realize people might come up here with their parents? Or their children? Or their ex-boyfriend to whom they are trying to appear casually detached? My palms are starting to sweat. Maybe it was a bad idea to bring him here. I mean, I just wanted to see the view, and now he probably thinks I’m trying—

  Oh.

  Right, then.

  As the elevator comes to a stop, Jamie puts his arm around my shoulders and guides me onto the observation deck. Let me rephrase that. It was a fantastic idea bringing him up here. We walk right up to the railing and look out over the city. The view, especially at night, is incredible.

  “This is amazing,” I say. “All those lights and people and noise. We’re above it all up here.”

  Jamie nods in agreement and points across the street to Caesar’s. “Which room do you think is yours?”

  “Did you have to point out the one place that I was trying to get away from?”