Past the precisely trimmed bushes, the windows are dark and the curtains are still.
I check the time. Assuming my mother’s schedule hasn’t changed—and it almost certainly hasn’t, even in nearly ten years—Dad’s at work and she’s at sewing club.
I thank the driver and tell him he can go. He offers me his business card, and I stuff it into my pocket.
My feet carry me around the back of the house.
I find myself on my knees at the base of an old oak tree, digging with my fingers, pulling out clumps of grass and weeds.
The hole had seemed so, so deep to my child brain, but I’m barely four inches down before my fingers brush cool red metal.
I dig out the rest of the toolbox that Dad always thought he lost when he was working on Grandma’s shed.
Carefully rolled up inside, brittle but still intact, is a crumpled poster. I smooth it out along the grass, revealing the bright colors of a trapeze artist mid-swing, and the marker scrawl of a dozen cast members, each signing under their little picture.
I pull the matchbox I stole from Christine’s hotel room out of my backpack and strike a match, holding it near the edge of the paper.
Mom was right.
I always should’ve dreamed smaller.
As I bring the match toward the poster, and the edge begins to brown, my phone rings. I startle and yank my hand back from the poster, flicking the match to put it out and tossing the smoldering wood into the metal toolbox.
My phone is set to only ring when one person calls: my agent.
I answer. “Hey Eddie, sorry I?—”
“Sorry doesn’t even begin to cut it!”
Eddie’s words make me wince, but his tone is… cheery?
He continues, breathless, “Dude, you could have at least texted me! Holy shit! This is amazing!”
“Uh… sorry?”
“Your career is on a rocket ship to the moon, Mylo. I told you. I always told you, you’re gonna get your big break.”
My temples throb, and I pinch the bridge of my nose. I think the paradoxical impossibility of talking to Eddie in my hometown is making my head spin.
“Sorry, Eddie, I drank a lot last night and I think you might need to catch me up.”
“Dude… how much did you drink to have amnesia that bad?! I’m not being punked, am I?”
“Not as far as I’m aware.”
“Look… Lana’s people sent it over first thing this morning. Haley O’Hare’s adding you to her contract!”
I give a frustrated sigh. Christine can’t take ‘no’ for an answer, after all. I was right to leave when I did—while I still could. The last possible second when I still could.
“Eddie, it’s complicated, but I can’t… I can’t work with Christine again.”I can’t work at all,I should say, but the words stick in my throat.
“Um, okay,weird. You’re going to have to explain that one to me—or not, I guess. Haley has a guaranteed solo movie, and it’s being fast-tracked into production.”
“Wait…what?”
“How do you not know this, Mylo?! Just how hungover are you?”
“It’sverycomplicated!” I force a deep breath. “I thought… there waszerotalk of a solo movie for Melinoë. None.”
