Parallel

by Lauren Miller

  “Sure.”

  “So what time’s the boyfriend coming over?” Dad asks.

  “Not sure yet. He doesn’t have a car, so I’m picking him up.” I emerge from the pantry with the twine. “How long a piece do you want?”

  “I don’t know, check the recipe,” Mom replies, wiping away an onion-induced tear with her sleeve. “It’s on the counter over there.”

  “So are things serious with this guy?”

  “Dad.”

  “What? You’ve never invited a guy for Thanksgiving before. It feels like a big deal.”

  “Well, it’s not,” I insist, even though it feels that way to me, too. “He’s not that close with his family and doesn’t have any friends here because his parents moved after he was in college. So I invited him to eat with us. That’s it.”

  “Why isn’t he close with his family?”

  “I don’t know. But let’s not ask him that over dinner, okay?”

  “Maybe you should give me a list of approved talking points before he arrives.”

  I stick my tongue out at him. “Don’t you have a parade to watch?”

  “Have you talked to Josh?” Mom asks when I hand her the twine. The question stops me cold.

  “Uh, no,” I tell her, suddenly very interested in the burlap bag of cornmeal on the counter. “I should call him,” I say, because that’s what people say.

  “You should,” Mom is saying. “I obviously don’t know what happened between you two, but he was always such a nice guy. If you can save the friendship, you should.”

  “And next time you sever ties with an ex-boyfriend,” my dad pipes up, “clue us in, would ya? I had to hear from Josh that you stopped speaking to him. Over email, nonetheless.”

  My head jerks up. “What?”

  “When I sent you both that article about Lewis Carroll writing Alice in Wonderland in a rowboat,” he says. “A couple weeks ago. I asked if we’d see him while you were home, and he wrote back and said you’d stopped returning his calls.”

  My heart begins to pound. A couple of weeks ago? My reality hasn’t changed since Halloween, so if my dad sent me an email, I should remember getting it. “I don’t think I got an email from you about Alice in Wonderland,” I tell him.

  “Hm,” he says, puzzled. “That’s weird.”

  “Will you forward Josh’s email to me?”

  “Sure,” he replies.

  “Done!” my mom announces, stepping back from the turkey. “Put that sucker in the oven,” she instructs, then walks to the sink to wash her hands. I open the oven door for my dad, and he puts the bird inside.

  “Could you do it now?” I ask him as soon as the oven door is closed.

  “What time is it?” my mom yells from the sink.

  “Eight nineteen,” Dad and I say in unison.

  “Could I do what now?” he asks.

  “Forward Josh’s email. I really need to see it.”

  “Sure,” Dad says. “Lemme just go get my BlackBerry.” He disappears into the living room.

  “What did happen between you two?” Mom asks as she studies her to-do list. “Was it the distance?”

  I feel nauseous. If my mom is asking about the distance, it means Josh and I must’ve still been together when I left for Yale. Never did I consider that Caitlin might have been wrong: that Josh and I might’ve lasted beyond prom, and even past graduation. Okay, maybe I considered it, but I told myself it wasn’t possible. Only a certain caliber of high school relationships last past high school. The word “LOVE” is pressing in on me, but I will it away.

  “Uh, yeah,” I tell her. “The distance.” Too bad I don’t even know what kind of distance we’re talking about. I rack my brain, trying to remember where Josh said he wanted to go to school. West Coast somewhere. For crew.

  “Does he know about Michael?” Mom asks as she disappears into the pantry.

  Another wave of nausea. The idea that there might’ve been an overlap makes my chest hurt. Is it still considered cheating if you don’t know you’re dating the guy you’re cheating on? “Not yet,” I manage.

  “Well, he’ll hear about it eventually,” she calls from the pantry. “I’m sure he’d rather it come from you.”

  Dad reappears with his BlackBerry. “Where am I sending it?” he asks.

  “Hotmail,” I tell him, surprised that he’s even asking. He knows I only use my Yale address for school stuff.

  “Done,” he says, and sets his BlackBerry on the counter. “Now back to Michael. What’s he studying? Am I allowed to ask him about that?”

  “Sure,” I say, distracted by the email that’s now waiting in my in-box. “I should get into the shower. I’m supposed to pick him up in an hour, and I still don’t know how far away he lives.”

  Taking the stairs two at a time, I book it to my bedroom. My dad’s email is the only unread message in my in-box. The subject line is “Alice in Coxswainland.” I click on it.

  Josh’s second reply message is the first one I see, sent from Josh.Wagner@usc.edu.

  University of Southern California. Yes, distance would definitely have been an issue.

  Hey Mr. Barnes,

  Abby stopped returning my calls and emails a few weeks back. So no, I don’t think I’ll see you over Thanksgiving. Hope you and Mrs. Barnes are doing well.

  Take care,

  Josh

  Holy terse. No pleasantries, no euphemisms. Just: Your daughter is a bitch. I keep reading. The message right below that one is from my dad.

  Josh—Glad you enjoyed it! I thought you might. Will we see you at Thanksgiving? Anna is already scouring the internet for recipes.

  Hope you’re doing well.

  Best,

  RB

  P.S. Tell that daughter of mine that it’s rude not to respond to witty emails from her dad.

  I keep scrolling. At the very bottom is my dad’s original email, addressed to Josh and to me at abigailhannahbarnes@gmail.com, an address I’ve never seen before today.

  My heart is pounding as I type abigailhannahbarnes into the Gmail username box. Holding my breath, I type w-o-n-d-e-r-l-a-n-d in the password box and hit enter. Two seconds later, I’m staring at my sixty-eight unread messages. At least half of them are from Josh. I hover over the earliest one, sent October 31, 2009 at 7:08 a.m. PST.

  I take a breath and double-click.

  Abby,

  I just left you a vm. I really need to talk to you. I have a plan! Call me when you can. My cell’s not working, so call my landline. 310-555-1840.

  J

  My rib cage contracts. Those calls on Halloween were from him. He’s the L.A. phone number I couldn’t place, the voice message I couldn’t retrieve. Even though I’ve only ever heard his voice in my head, I imagine how it would’ve sounded on my voicemail that morning, asking me to call him back and expecting that I would. But of course, I didn’t call him back. Not that day or since. I’m struck with a deep, hollow pang of regret. If I hadn’t lost my phone that morning, I would’ve eventually listened to his message. I’m not sure how I would’ve handled it, but I certainly wouldn’t have frozen the poor guy out. But now I have. Not for a day or a week, but for nearly a month.

  Chest tight and getting tighter, I click on a more recent message, dated November 10, 2009. Ten days later.

  Abby,

  Not that it matters anymore, but the coach at UConn offered me a spot on their team. I was going to transfer. That’s what I wanted to tell you. That was my big plan. I was going to leave a school and a team I love to be closer to a girl I love even more. But I guess it’s a good thing I didn’t, since clearly she doesn’t give a shit about me.

  —J

  I stare at my screen as if staring at a train wreck, unable to look away.

  He hates me now.

  This awareness affects me more than I expect it to. I’ve never even met Josh—not in person anyway. He exists only in fragments, as mere memory, void of the emotion of experience. But in this moment, I remember more of
him than I thought I possessed. Images pop into my head, new but familiar. Alternate memories I’ve been struggling to ignore. Josh carrying my bag for me. Josh singing along to the radio in his Jeep. Josh running his hands through my hair. The caramel corn sundae we split on our first date, and the slow kiss on my doorstep when he dropped me off, his lips still sweet from the ice cream and candy. The giant blue teddy bear he won for me at the Georgia Fair. The self-portrait we took with his phone at the top of the Ferris wheel. The way he looked in the moonlight on the drive home.

  All of a sudden, I wish I could switch places with the parallel me. Not permanently. Just . . . for a day. An hour, even. Just long enough to know what it’s like to hold Josh’s hand, to kiss him, to feel his breath on my neck. My eyes flutter shut and I’m back there again, on that bench by the pond in his neighborhood, my lips on his, tasting cinnamon and Ivory soap, willing the clock to stop so I won’t have to go home. I give in to the memory, soaking in every detail. I haven’t let myself do this, not once, afraid of where it might lead. What I might feel. But that was a mistake, because there is truth in these memories. Raw and bright. Of course Josh and I were still together after we left for school. That’s not the surprising part. The surprising part is that we broke up. From these memories, it seems impossible that we could.

  I scroll down, past the unread messages to the ones marked read, clicking on one dated August 29, 2009. The day I left for Yale. There’s a sweet I-miss-you-already message from Josh and a reply email from me. I stare at my screen, marveling at the fact that, because of some freaky cosmic accident, I’m reading an email exchange my parallel self will have with her boyfriend nine months from now.

  I click on the next message and the message after that, needing to read every one. The first few are brimming with I love yous and I miss yous and talk of upcoming visits and holiday breaks. But it doesn’t take long for the tone to shift, for anxiety and doubt and fear to take hold. My parallel starts writing things like, Maybe it was crazy to think we could do this, and Josh starts writing things like, Let’s not make any decisions right now, okay? But he should’ve known better than that. The Abby he loves isn’t a wait-and-see kind of girl. The Abby he loves doesn’t know how to handle uncertainty, so she runs from it, the way I used to, before.

  Subject line: Tonight. Sent September 25, 2009.

  Abby,

  I’m sorry I reacted the way I did tonight. I just wish we could’ve had that conversation in person. I know the distance is a lot. But we knew it would be, and we won’t always be three thousand miles apart. Please, don’t do this. What we have is worth fighting for. Let’s figure this out, together. I love you.

  Josh

  I sit, unmoving. Unhinged. Seeing the words in black and white, knowing how it’ll end, and when, and why—this awareness should comfort me. But instead I have this hollow feeling in my gut, the way you feel when you drink coffee on an empty stomach. She was afraid, so she gave up. Of all the reasons for their relationship to end, that has to be the worst.

  I scroll back up to an earlier email, my favorite of them all, and read it again, allowing myself to imagine, just for a moment, that it was intended for me.

  Abigail Hannah Barnes,

  You changed my life. A year ago today, when you walked into it. “Are you here by fate or choice?” you asked me. I said choice. Now I know better.

  I love you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Happy day before your birthday.

  Josh

  I sit with these words, basking in their simple truth. Then it dawns on me: My parallel will still be with Josh on her eighteenth birthday. According to the emails I just read, they won’t have “that conversation” for two more weeks. But if that’s true, then my relationship with Michael couldn’t have started the way I remember it. But clearly it did. I’ve got a picture of him scream-singing the lyrics to “Whatta Man” on the dance floor at Alchemy to prove it.

  How is that possible?

  “Easy,” Caitlin says after I explain the situation to her. “It’s just cause and effect.”

  “Okay, new rule: When we’re talking about cosmic entanglement, you’re not allowed to use the phrase ‘it’s just.’ It’s never ‘just’ anything.”

  “Would you like me to explain this to you or not?”

  “Yes. Go.”

  “If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, did it make a sound?”

  “I’m serious, Caitlin.”

  “So am I! You asked why your parallel’s relationship with Josh hasn’t affected your relationship with Michael. I’m giving you the answer: because no one knew about it. Think about it: The only person at your birthday dinner who knew you in high school was me, and I had no idea that you and Josh were still together. I stopped keeping up with your love life when we stopped talking.”

  “Ugh. It just feels so gross,” I moan. “I kissed Michael that night, and I was still with Josh.”

  “Abby, you weren’t actually with Josh. He just remembers it as though you were.”

  I know this, but I still feel weird about it.

  “Abby!” my mom calls from the kitchen. “What time are you leaving to get Michael?”

  Yikes. I’m supposed to be at his house in half an hour, and I still haven’t showered.

  “I have to go,” I tell Caitlin. “Call you later?”

  “Have fun,” Caitlin calls in a singsong voice. “Fingers crossed your dad does something super embarrassing.”

  “I’m hanging up on you,” I say, and do.

  Five minutes before I’m supposed to be at Michael’s house, I gun it out of our driveway, one hand on the steering wheel, the other fumbling with the clasp on my grandma’s pearls, which I’m wearing for good luck despite the fact that they in no way go with my outfit. After this morning’s revelations, lucky pearls seemed appropriate.

  At the first stoplight, I enter the address Michael sent into my phone’s GPS, expecting at least a fifteen-minute drive. Estimated driving time four minutes? I pull over onto the shoulder and look at the map on my screen. Lilac Lane is a short street in what looks like a big subdivision. I scan the names of the streets near it. Daisy Court. Rose Terrace. Gardenia Place. Apparently, the builder had a flower fetish.

  One name jumps out at me: Poplar Drive, two streets over. We had a party there junior year, before the road was paved. We left our cars at Tyler’s house and walked over. Now the flower names make sense: Poplar Drive is in Garden Grove, a little enclave of newer homes in Tyler’s sprawling subdivision. Michael’s parents live in Tyler’s neighborhood? Whoa. That means if they’d moved here four years ago instead of two, Michael and I would’ve gone to high school together. Would we have dated? Would my parents have allowed me to date him? They let me go to prom with Casey Decker freshman year, but he was only a junior because he skipped first grade, and he only asked me to the dance because the girls in his own grade called him Casey Pecker. I don’t think my dad would’ve been as keen on Casey if he’d looked like Michael.

  I wonder what my dad thought of Josh when they met. Not what he told my parallel, but how he really felt. Judging from the tone of their email exchange, Dad was a big fan of Astronomy Boy. Did he like him instantly, or was it a gradual thing? Will my dad like Michael less because he’ll compare him to Josh?

  Would I like Michael less if I could compare him to Josh? Truly compare them, not just how they appear on paper or in memory, but how they really are when you’re with them. Michael is smart and charming and confident. Josh is . . . a different version of that. Less . . . knock-you-off-your-feet. More . . . what? The word right keeps pounding in my head. Right, right, right.

  I pull up in front of a modest two-story brick colonial at the end of a cul-de-sac. The numbers 4424 are painted on the curb. Wait, is this right? I thought I turned on Lilac, but this must be Poplar. I’ve definitely been on this street before. Turning around in the cul-de-sac, I drive back to the beginning of the street to check the sign. It’s Lilac, all right. Puzzled, I head back to 4424 an
d park in the driveway. As I’m walking up the sidewalk to the front porch, I take in every detail. The gray-blue shutters, the flower bed, the bird feeder in the front lawn. I’ve definitely seen this house before. My mind is on the brink of placing it when Michael opens the front door.

  “Sorry I’m late,” I call. “It was farther than I thought it’d be.” I’m kidding, but he doesn’t know that. His face falls in mock disappointment.

  “Bummer. I was hoping we’d live close enough for me to walk over to your house at midnight and throw rocks at your window.” He sticks his head back inside the house. “I’m leaving!” he calls to whoever’s inside. Without waiting for an answer, he closes the door.

  I step up onto the porch. “Should I be offended that you’re not inviting me in?” I joke. Sort of.

  “Definitely not. I want you to meet my mom, but tension is a little high right now. I just told them I wasn’t coming home for Christmas again this year.”

  “Don’t you spend Christmas with your dad, anyway?” Michael gives me a funny look. I flounder. “When you said you spent Thanksgiving with your mom, I assumed that meant . . .”

  “My dad died four years ago.”

  “Oh,” I manage, wanting desperately to rewind the last ten seconds. “I didn’t know.”

  “I guess I just assumed Marissa would’ve told you,” he says. “Otherwise, I would have.” Like you’ve told me so much other stuff about yourself? I fight annoyance. My boyfriend just told me his dad died. I’m supposed to feel sympathetic. I’m not supposed to be annoyed that he’s never mentioned it before. But we’re supposed to be a couple, and couples are supposed to tell each other everything. Michael tells me almost nothing. Then again, my brain is cosmically connected to a girl living in a parallel world, and I haven’t said a word about that.

  “Hey,” he says softly. “I wasn’t trying to keep it from you or anything. It’s just hard for me to talk about, that’s all.” I nod, feeling like a bitch for being upset about it. He leans in and kisses me softly on the lips. I expect a quick peck, but it turns into a serious kiss. When I feel his tongue on mine, I pull back.