Layoverland

by Gabby Noone

  I’M RUNNING OUT of ways to stall Caleb.

  Today I’ve forced him to travel back and forth in his memory, extracting every embarrassing moment, every awkward run-in with a girl dating back to preschool, every time he’s accidentally called a teacher “Mom.” Yet he seems to have flatlined when it comes to being mortified. I need to up the ante.

  “Have you ever done anything you’re ashamed of?” I ask him.

  “Of course,” he says.

  I remember his earlier, brief visions of the night we both died. I don’t want him to think of them now. I can’t let him remember that night yet.

  “Something you’re ashamed of that had no consequences,” I clarify. “But still, it eats you up inside?”

  “Well,” Caleb says, swallowing once. “There was . . .”

  Suddenly we’re inside Caleb’s car again. He’s pulling into a Walmart parking lot at night. This isn’t his part of town. This is my Walmart. The one where Monica buys Grayson’s diapers and her corny pajamas. The one where people have gotten arrested for trying to buy and sell Oxycontin.

  Past Caleb pulls his car into a spot in the far corner of the lot. Across from him, a tan sedan flashes its headlights twice. He gets out of his SUV and swallows hard, then walks over to the driver’s side of the car.

  The driver lowers his window. He’s a nerdy-looking guy in his late twenties wearing glasses, a polo shirt, and a navy baseball cap with a mascot on it I can’t place.

  “Caleb?” the guy asks, his voice high and nasally.

  Caleb nods at him once. The guy hands him a yellow manila envelope through the window. Caleb reaches into his jeans pocket, pulls out a wad of cash, and hands it over in return.

  I always knew rich people sold drugs to each other, possibly even more than people who aren’t rich. They just don’t suffer the same consequences for it. The thing is, though, I never knew they could be so stupidly obvious when going about it.

  The man waves goodbye to Caleb and drives off. Caleb clutches the envelope, returns to his car, opens it, and slides out the contents.

  It’s not drugs. It’s the official answer key to this year’s SAT.

  “Oh, you have got to be kidding me,” I groan.

  Present Caleb shrinks next to me.

  “How much money did you pay for that?”

  “I don’t want to say.”

  “Caleb. You have to be honest with me. It’s part of the process.”

  He mumbles something inaudible.

  “What’s that?” I press.

  He stares blankly into the distance at an old lady driving through the Walmart parking lot on a motor scooter.

  “Fifteen hundred dollars,” he says quietly.

  I raise an eyebrow. On one hand, I have never seen that much money in my bank account, let alone as a stack of cash in real life. On the other, I know that’s chump change for rich people who want to get their kids into fancy colleges.

  “It was fake, wasn’t it?” I ask.

  He blinks at me twice.

  “How did you know?”

  “Fifteen hundred is way too cheap,” I say. “If I had the answers to the SAT on my hands, I would sell them for at least $10K. Who even was that guy?”

  “He was the cousin of a cousin of a guy on my lacrosse team. He worked at the College Board. Or at least, I thought he worked at the College Board. . . . I should’ve known it was too good to be true,” he sighs.

  I scoff at him.

  “Look, Bea, I know. It’s bad. I tried to cheat on the SAT—”

  “It’s not that,” I explain. “Screw the SAT! I think standardized tests are evil. It’s that you even had that kind of money to waste on trying to get ahead of everyone else.”

  “You’re right,” Caleb mumbles. “It wasn’t fair. But you told me the more honest I am with my memories, the sooner we can get to the bottom of why I’m here. So that’s what I’m doing. Is it really your place to pass so much judgment, Bea?”

  I cross my arms and stare at the car floor. He’s not wrong.

  “So what was it?” I say, looking back up at him. “Why were you so obsessed with getting into college?”

  “Isn’t every American teenager obsessed with getting into college?”

  “No!”

  “What? You weren’t?”

  “Stop deflecting. Look, you’re clearly not stupid—”

  “Oh. Thanks,” he says sarcastically.

  “I mean, why did you need to cheat to get into college?” I elaborate. “Based on your other memories, it seems like you were prepared.”

  “Believe me, I was. . . .” he says, his memory shifting again. Now we’re in an old Victorian-style house with books stacked up along the walls. Caleb sits at a long wooden table while an old professor-looking man sits across from him, pointing out mistakes on a practice test.

  “There was weekly SAT prep tutoring for months . . .” he says. “The test key was just supposed to be a backup plan. Not to mention, my résumé of activities was stacked.”

  “You had a résumé?” I ask, blinking rapidly.

  “Of course,” Caleb says incredulously. “Model UN . . .”

  We’re transported to a school gym filled with tables. Caleb sits behind one with a placard that reads FINLAND.

  “Isn’t Finland ranked as, like, the ‘happiest country’ in the world?” I ask, making air quotes. “I can’t imagine it was that hard to represent.”

  “No country is perfect, Bea,” he says, and clenches his jaw. “Anyway, there was that, and I was editor in chief of the newspaper. . . .”

  We move to a classroom where Caleb stands in front of a small handful of other students spread out among desks.

  “Thank you everyone for your hard work on this issue. I’m all for having fun, but I just think given the state of our world, our cover story should be something a little more serious than . . .”

  He flips up an issue from a stack on his desk. Its headline reads “BEST MEMES 2019!!!”

  The other students start to boo him.

  “Guys, c’mon . . .”

  They ignore him.

  “Anyway,” Caleb says next to me, irritation in his voice. “I also ran cross-country . . .”

  Now we’re in a perfectly manicured field that smells of freshly cut grass, lined with trees with yellow and orange leaves. I recognize Caleb among a group of sweaty, hulking boys running past us in one terrifying mass.

  “And played lacrosse . . .”

  The trees turn green and the same boys are now wearing helmets and wielding nets on sticks. I can’t identify Caleb out of any of them. Even though I’m technically invisible, I flinch and duck my body toward Present Caleb.

  “Keep this montage moving, Max Fischer,” I say. “A stampede of boys running with sticks is my nightmare!”

  “Max who—like from Rushmore? You like Wes Anderson movies?” he asks, the corner of his mouth twitching.

  “I wouldn’t say I like them. I’ve just seen them,” I explain loudly over the noise of screaming coaches and grunting boys. “My sister had a phase where she was obsessed with Moonrise Kingdom and checked out all his other movies from the library. I swear that’s the only reason she dates her nerd boyfriend. Because he seems like he would be in one.”

  “You have a sister?” he asks.

  “I got sidetracked,” I say, shaking my head. “What else was on your résumé?”

  “Why are you avoiding my question?” Caleb presses, eyebrows raised.

  “Because we only get four hours a day to sort through your memories,” I say, ducking away from two boys fighting for the ball with their nets, even though I know they theoretically can’t hurt me. “I shouldn’t waste this precious time talking about myself.”

  “I guess,” he says, closing his eyes.

  Next thing I
know, it’s quiet, save for a television playing a talk show on low volume. We’re inside what feels like an extension of someone’s grandma’s living room. There’s seafoam carpet and fake flower arrangements and a bunch of easy chairs lined up around mahogany tables. About a dozen elderly people sit playing board games. I follow Caleb’s gaze to where he watches himself sitting directly across from a white-haired woman in a kaleidoscope-print muumuu.

  “Ugh, I’m all out of options, Caleb!” the woman exclaims. “You really screwed me over when you got quixotry. Thanks a lot, you son of a—”

  “Brenda!” another woman with reading glasses perched on the end of her nose calls from a table over. “Watch your mouth. That’s my grandson you’re speaking to!”

  Even though her hair has gone completely gray, I recognize his abuela from his earliest memory.

  “I organized a Scrabble club at my abuela’s retirement home,” Present Caleb says next to me as he looks at her with a glint in his eyes.

  “Every Friday afternoon, I would set it up, keep tabs on everyone’s scores, verify that words were real—that kind of thing. You’d be surprised at how some of these people behaved,” he says, eyes dancing. “I caught Brenda stealing letter tiles on multiple occasions. She was almost banned.”

  “So this was your favorite thing that you did with your free time?” I ask, watching the past version of him walking around and offering a tin of butter cookies to each of the tables. The residents smile up at him like he’s some kind of god.

  “I don’t know if it was my favorite,” Present Caleb says with a dismissive shrug. “I liked all my hobbies equally.”

  “Really? This seems a lot more rewarding than lacrosse.”

  “It was. Don’t get me wrong,” he says. “It’s just, Harvard wanted well-rounded applicants, so I did everything I could.”

  He gives a single bitter laugh and shakes his head.

  “Harvard?” I choke out.

  “What about it?”

  “I didn’t even realize actual people go to Harvard. I thought it was only for, like, the children of presidents or famous people.”

  “Regular people go to Harvard all the time,” Caleb says, glowering at me.

  “No regular people who I’ve ever known.”

  “You just said this isn’t supposed to be about you.”

  “True. Thanks for keeping us on track,” I say sarcastically. “So what were you planning on doing once you actually got to Harvard? Like, what was your passion? Shouldn’t your activities in high school reflect what you want in the future—”

  “I don’t know!” he blurts out quickly, his face reddening. “What kind of question is that? What was your passion? Maybe I didn’t have a passion, but I had a goal. Did you even have a goal, Beatrice?” he asks, spitting out my name.

  I purse my lips for a minute and think it over. Did I have a passion? I spent most of my time being miserable and hating everyone around me. I liked hanging out with my sister and watching trashy TV and filling virtual shopping carts with clothes I couldn’t afford and would never buy.

  “My passion?”

  “Yeah,” Caleb says, indignant.

  “Okay. You want to know my favorite thing to do? In the whole wide world?” I say at last, staring at the floor. “It was walking around the supermarket the hour before it closed. I love that feeling when no one else is there, except maybe some guy stocking the shelves, and soft rock is playing and it’s peaceful. I can pretend that I’m not at the supermarket, but my very own postapocalyptic bunker, protected by a fortress of soup cans and sheet cakes. And everything’s going to be okay because how could it not be when there’s so much . . . I don’t know . . . abundance . . . around me?”

  I look up at Caleb. His face goes soft.

  “Does that sound crazy?” I ask. “I know that makes me seem like some kind of doomsday prepper, but it’s different than that and—”

  “No,” he says, staring at me like I’ve just appeared in front of him for the first time. “That doesn’t sound crazy.”

  My cheeks start to burn. Why did I even say that? What am I even doing?

  “Anyway, to answer your other question,” I say, looking away from him. “I didn’t have any goals. I was just getting by. The idea that you should know what you want for your whole life at age seventeen is ridiculous.”

  “No, it’s not,” he says, slipping his hands into his pockets and screwing up his face. “It’s responsible.”

  “You know what? I’m wrong,” I say. “You know what’s truly ridiculous? Paying someone for the answers to the SAT because it might help you get into Harvard!”

  “Well, what’s the point of having this argument?” he asks. “Because responsible or not, look where we both ended up.”

  My body thrums with rage. If it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t be here.

  “Can you just shut off the machine, please?” Caleb says quietly. “I think I’ve had enough of this for today.”

  I close my eyes and slam down the Memstractor’s switch.

  “I thought you would never ask.”

  24

  “Girls! Girls! Where do you think you’re going? You can’t leave without a pass!” a hall aide yelled at me from her post at the cafeteria doors.

  I turned and looked at her. She was wearing a Christmas-themed sweatshirt with a matching turtleneck embroidered with candy canes underneath, its cheeriness offset by her strict demeanor.

  “My sister’s having some kind of personal crisis, I think,” I explained through panting breaths without stopping.

  “Okay, well, are you also?” the aide pressed.

  “Yeah. Maybe I am.”

  “Well, then I can give you a pass to the nurse’s office. Just give me a second. . . .”

  I ignored her and ran. Down the hall, the swinging door to the girls’ room flew open and shut. I figured that was the only place Emmy could’ve gone. She was definitely not daring enough to straight up ditch.

  When I got inside, I didn’t see her, but several of the stall doors were shut.

  “Emmy?” I called. No answer.

  A ragged sob came from the handicapped stall at the end of the row. I leaned down and caught a glimpse of Emmy’s pink Vans.

  “Em?” I said, quieter this time, walking toward the stall. “Please. Talk to me.”

  After a moment she finally opened the door and stared at me, her face already wet with tears.

  “Would you be mad if I did something that was kind of a big deal?” she said, sniffling. “And I didn’t tell you I did it, not because I don’t trust you, but because I was scared it’d mean you’d do something to someone else?”

  “What?”

  Emmy was never this cagey with me. We told each other everything. Or at least that’s what I thought.

  She took in a sharp breath, pushed her hair back, and then pulled her phone out from the sleeve of her sweater. She unlocked it and handed it to me.

  On the screen there was a photo. The resolution was blurry, but its contents were clear: it was Emmy, walking out of a Planned Parenthood clinic. I could tell by the logo on the door. The photo was candid, taken from across the street, as if Emmy were a celebrity and the paparazzi had been waiting for her.

  “Oh . . . kay,” I said. “So, you went to get birth control? Why didn’t you ask me to come with you? You know I would’ve . . .”

  Emmy shook her head at me and glared.

  “Wait a second, who took this picture of you?”

  “Bea, I don’t know,” she said impatiently. “But can you just think for a second about why I was really there? Why do people hate Planned Parenthood?”

  I stared down at the picture again. Emmy’s arms were crossed tight to her chest. Her face was puffy like she’d been crying earlier, like how she would probably look again an hour after this.

&n
bsp; “Oh. Emmy . . .” I said.

  She started to cry all over again. I pulled her in for a hug.

  Even though we’re only a year apart, Emmy looked and felt so young to me in this moment. Like she was six, not sixteen.

  “I’m going to kill Skyler,” I said, holding her in my arms and talking into her hair. As the words came out of my mouth, I realized they were not a figure of speech. I wanted with every fiber of my being to run him over with my car. Twice.

  Emmy had told me, much to my displeasure, about her and Skyler’s first kiss. He’d invited her over to watch that documentary about the dark side of SeaWorld, and during a scene in which one of the trainers is attacked by an orca, Skyler leaned in and kissed Emmy, accidentally knocking into her teeth with his own. Obviously, I hadn’t given much thought to their physical relationship beyond that, and I didn’t really want to. But if they’d gotten serious, I imagined Emmy would have at least formally announced it to me.

  “That’s the thing,” Emmy said, looking up at me, shaking her head. “Skyler and I have never, you know, done it.”

  25

  I should be thrilled. Not only did I manage to embarrass Caleb and make him seriously question his life decisions, he even asked me to end the session early. At this rate, he’ll blow through these thirty sessions without ever reaching a conclusion. He’ll be forced back into the lottery, stuck here indefinitely.

  Not like it matters, but he doesn’t ask me to eat lunch and I don’t see him at dinner, or around the rest of the airport, not even running around on one of his silly jogs. I think that maybe Caleb has totally given up when the clock strikes a quarter after eight the next morning and he still hasn’t shown up to the departures counter.

  It seems like everything is going according to plan, but somehow I’m left with an awful sinking feeling in my stomach.

  “Sorry I’m late,” Caleb says, breathless, when he finally shows up.

  I just turn toward the exit onto the tarmac and he follows me. We ride the golf cart in silence.

  “I was rude to you yesterday,” he says at last when I park.

  “Yeah,” I say, staring ahead. “You were.”