AJ looked at Noah and smiled. He smiled back.
Then she ran at him, charging full force across the stage.
“Get down!” she cried.
But it was too late. A tree had crashed into their oasis, disrupting their lives and reversing their roles. W had managed to save F, but in the process, she had been cataclysmically wounded.
“This is bad. I can’t feel my arms,” she said, lying supine on the floor.
“Try not to move,” he said, phoning the doctor.
Despite F’s terminal prognosis, it was now W who required immediate and intensive medical care. As she lay on a bed constructed from the two prop chairs, he tended to her every need.
“It’s funny,” she said, forcing him to spoon-feed her. “I guess you nevercanpredict what will happen in life.”
“Well, we sort of can,” said Noah, pointedly. “I’m still sick. In all likelihood, you will still outlive me.”
“More soup, please,” said AJ feebly.
F, who had spent years identifying as sick person, came to find new meaning in his role as caregiver. But sadly, the damage to W was too grievous; not even Molten Ice could save her.
“It was supposed to be me,” he wept, kneeling by her deathbed.
AJ used her remaining strength to pat his hand. “Maybe. Maybe not. I guess I take comfort in the fact that someone goes first inevery couple. This isn’t unique to us.”
In the split second before the blackout, AJ felt Noah’s energy pulse.
They received a rapturous ovation and returned for three curtain calls.
Backstage, Noah wiped off his brow as AJ chugged water from her Nalgene.
“I thought that went well,” she said.
“It did,” said Noah. She could feel him eyeing her. “A little on the nose, don’t you think?”
“What?” said AJ, peeling off her now-soaked white tee and dropping it in the garment bag. “Oh. The subconscious, you know.”
“Right,” said Noah. As AJ tugged on a clean shirt, Risa and Ned burst in, BlackBerrys waving in the air like lighters at a concert.
“What a smash!” said Ned.
“Twitter’s blowing up!” said Risa.
The crowd outside the stage door was no less enthused. Otto and Oona had managed to elbow their way toward the front. Tonight, they were in Arho “street fashion”—XXS black leather jacket for her, XXL white wool peacoat for him.
“That wasincredible,” said Otto.
“Really something,” said Oona.
“What, no sign?” said AJ.
They turned on each other immediately. “Itoldyou we should have lettered up,” growled Oona.
As Noah thanked them, AJ could almost hear Eudora sighing in her ear.Damn Nauticals.
The next night, Noah played W and AJ played F. When it was his turn to initiate the improvised section, he chose a fun premise—an inversion of a locked-room mystery. W and F were trapped inside the house, while a man was mugged just outside their window.
“Everyone else is asleep,” said Noah. “We’re the only two witnesses.”
