“A snakebite.” His eyes double in size. “Wait, you were there? Youdidgo to that show?”
“I must have.” I stare hard at the grass, trying to remember. “I-I did, because that drink got spilled on me. I remember that bit like yesterday, just not who the band was.” Our eyes lock. “Because I never made it in.”
“You left. Because of the drink.”
“Yeah. I did. But you didn’t? August, do you remember who spilled that drink on you?”
“I don’t know. I don’t remember. I think it was some girl.”
“Sarah. Her name was Sarah.” My heart’s pounding in my chest now. I’m half with him, and half back there, that night, sticky floor ripping at my sneakers, the smell of stale beer and musty old couches. My white shirt, purple, stuck to me. The way she took my arm. “She wanted to help me clean up.”
He turns to me, eyes narrowing over the memory. “That’s right. I remember her being so insistent.”
“And we went into the women’s bathroom with her?—”
He shakes his head vigorously. “No. No, I didn’t. That was when… I was going to be late for the show. I was going to be late, and I thought I could go see the band, or?—”
“Or you could call it quits and just get cleaned up.”
This is it. The air comes alive with the electric realisation, the lives that reached across universes until this one choice snapped the thread.
“I went to that show,” August says. “I told her, thanks but no thanks, I’m fine. And I thought, fuck it. So what if I smell like snakebites? I was by myself anyway. And I remember it. I remember all of this because that stain was the very thing that made Jon notice me. I was in the front row with this purple sticky mess of a shirt. And he kept looking down at me. Then he got one of his people to invite me backstage afterwards.”
We recommence our walk deeper into the park, me needing to do something with my legs to work off the energy of the revelation. “Right. And while that happened in your world… I was off with Sarah, in mine.”
“The whole time? So you… She was…” The way he stumbles over his words draws my sharp attention. “Was she… special?”
“She was very special.”
He looks down at his feet, hiding his eyes for a moment. When he turns his face to me again, it’s that lopsided smile. A smile he’s forcing. “Did you go out with her?”
“A few times. Like that.”
“Wait. You’re bi?”
“No,” I laugh, half scoff. “No. And that’s… That was my last try. She was cute. You probably don’t remember, but she was very pretty. And she was kind. And she was funny. And… I don’t know, she liked me, so I thought, why not? I’ll give it a go.”
“I’ve been there.” He laughs too, then quiets, nothing but the sound of two sets of feet on wet grass. “So it didn’t work out?”
“Not that way. No great surprise there. It was maybe two dates, and I had to tell her. It just wasn’t working. And she was so good about it.” I pass him a genuine smile, one I wish I could give to her. “She became my best friend. Ever. My absolute best friend in the world. We did everything together. I loved her deeply.” Walking up some hill now, deep in the black of this park, I’m glad to have the cover of night to hide my emotion as all the memories come back. “I miss her a lot.”
“I’m so sorry. I can’t imagine what it’s like for you. Your whole world, everything you knew, gone like that.”
A fresh shard of sadness and guilt stabs at me. “No, she died before that. She was already dead. When that place existed.”
“Christ, that’s so sad,” he says. “She would have been so young.”
“And it was such a stupid death too. It wasn’t noble, or poetic, or poignant. It was a brain aneurysm. That was it. Just some random thing that happened one day for no reason at all. And she was dead. And in the ground. And she was twenty-five. And she was my friend.” He doesn’t say a word as we trudge up the hill. Maybe he knows on some level how rarely I can think about her now. That I never talk about her. That she’s locked away with every other horror I’ve faced since that time. “I found out on social media. Of all things. RIP Sarah Sunderland. And there was her face. A whole lifetime, my whole way of life, gone overnight.”
“And after our parents…” He trails off. He doesn’t need to say any more than that. He’s reached straight into me and squeezed my insides black.
“It was hard. Really hard.” The memory’s top-heavy, the air thick with melancholy, so I try to lighten it a little. “I’m not going to say I’m glad you met Jon instead. But I’m glad you didn’t meet her. So you never had to go through that.”
“I guess I would have liked her.” Of course he would have. He’s me.
“She would have adored you. But it was a long time ago now. And I’ve seen a lot of death since then. And I’ve learned to cope.”
He lets the words sit between us, perhaps deciding whether he wants to delve deeper into all of that, or let me lick my wounds.
