“I didn’t realize.” I worry my bottom lip, combing back through my memories, guilty that I may have perceived everything all wrong.
“Probably because by the time you came out and befriended Drew, you relegated me to the sidelines of your life,” she says, almost as if she’s rehearsed that exact line. It’s not lost on me that CeeCee is speaking of the Nolan I was, not the Nolan I became. Those actions she’s referring to aremyactions frommytimeline. Maybe this version of me isn’t as far off from who I was as I originally thought. “And I don’t blame you for that. I went away to school. I met new people. But I was your first best friend, Nolan, and Mom and Dad’s first kid. It hurt knowing that you were pouring all your friendship into Drew and Mom and Dad were pouring all their parental concern into you.”
All this time I thought Mom, Dad, and CeeCee were a three-ring circus of stability and I was the sad boy left outside without a ticket, but it turns out CeeCee also felt that way. Perhaps because I carried myself like the ringleader, convinced myself I was a showman, she was able to believe it.
“I guess I always thought you were the perfect child in their eyes. That everything I did was always being put up against your accomplishments,” I say. I was too loud and too focused on myself to see it differently.
“Mom depended on me,” CeeCee confesses, sighing heavily. “First by confiding in me about Dad’s depression, and then by asking for help gettinghimthe help he needed.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“When I graduated, I took on this silent burden. Mom and Dad poured a lot of money into my tuition, which I appreciated, but that money, well, they needed it too. Mom’s health insurance was kind of shitty, so I pushed myself to get the highest-paying full-time job I could in the shortest amount of time possible so I could help her,” she says.
“So you didn’t seek out Doop?” I ask, shocked and not trying to cover it up.
She snorts. “No. Not even close.”
“I just assumed since you seemed so…in it.” She spread the good word of Doop like her life depended on it.
“That was part of the job. Selling the brand, living the lifestyle,” she says. “Having everybody fooled was how I knew I was good at it. How I knew I’d be able to rise through the ranks—while there were still ranks to rise through, anyway.”
In hindsight, it seems so obvious. CeeCee never had an affinity for meditation or twelve-step skin-care routines. What I perceived as willful change was necessity.
She continues. “Mom was adamant we didn’t tell you. ‘He can’t handle this stuff. Not like you,’ she’d say. For a while, it felt like I was an only child, having to keep that from you, even when we’d both moved out. It weighed on me, and I took it out on you without ever explaining.”
“I never really gave you the chance to, did I?” My breathing becomes labored.
CeeCee shakes her head, crossing to the railing and looking out on the yard. When she turns back, she’s got one palm pressed to her belly and the shimmer of tears rimming her eyes. “I don’t want them to end up like us. Imogen and the little one in here.”
“Me neither,” I say, because even though I don’t know exactly what got us here, I was there for the decision that catalyzed it all. And if I’m stuck here like I think I am, this is the only relationship with CeeCee I’ll ever know. There’s no undoing what’s been done.
“Imogen asked constantly about when she’d have a sibling, and every time she did, with those big, wise-beyond-her-years eyes, I thought of you and how you’d hurt me, and how I never wanted her to experience something like that,” she says, trailing off for a moment. “Though, I guess, it wasn’tyou,was it? If what you said in the emails is true?”
“No, it wasn’t me.” I’m adamant about that, even if remorse bites at me.
“It started with a scar cream,” she says, abruptly changing subjects. Maybe because the tears subsided. Maybe because she realized what she wants to say can only be said to the thirty-year-old me. At times, I wish I was him. For real. Things would be so much easier. I’d have my memories. I’d have (hopefully) matured. I could take ownership over my actions and properly make amends. All things I’ll have to let go of or make exceptions for.
“What did the scar cream do?” I ask.
“Removed scars overnight like some sort of cosmetic miracle elixir,” she says, obviously still baffled by it. “When one of my bridesmaids messaged me about it, I said, ‘That’s the Doop guarantee,’ and then left the rest of her messages on read. I didn’t know any more than she did.”
“Jesus.”
“When James and I got back from our honeymoon, I started asking questions at work, and the higher up the ladder I went, the cagier and more cryptic the responses became. When no executive would talk to me, I tried to get access to the Doop lab at the end of the secret hallway with no success. I even attempted to make friends with development associates I knew worked in the lab, but they were under strict orders not to speak about their projects. Company policy or some shit. I watched as everything I was told to want, everything I helped build, crumbled because there was so much going on behind a curtain. Some serious Wizard of Oz–level nonsense.”
“What exactly happened?” I ask, riveted.
She runs her tongue along her top front teeth, stuck in some bout of intense thought before she speaks. “The more messages I started getting about the wedding favors, the more I knew it wasn’t a fluke. The scar cream had gotten rid of the scar. The Go to Sleep, Bitch candle had put people to sleep. The blue light glasses Drew got really did minimize your blue light exposure by reading your mind. And for some reason, none of it scared me.”
“Why not? I’d have been freaked out,” I say, heart rate jumping up. “Iam stillfreaked out.”
“Because I heard they were working on memory-enhancement chews,” she says. “They were trying out new cognitive-support dietary supplements, and if I was to believe my wedding guests who had these out-of-body experiences, then these should’ve been magic too. I stole some…for Dad.”
I nod with somber understanding. “Did you get caught?” I ask, leaning in.
“No, or at least I don’t think so. If anyone knew, they didn’t care because I’d signed an NDA,” she says. “They knew I wouldn’t snitch. There would be legal consequences if I did.”
“Did they work? The chews, I mean?”
