I’m no longer the nerd, at least not on the outside.
Yet part of me still marvels at the children I’ve produced—Josh, the double varsity star, Emma the valedictorian, popular and pretty. I’m amazed that they came from me, that they have half of my genes. And they do—Josh has my toes, Emma my dimples.
I’ve outgrown the shy, stammering geeky girl I was, and when I’ve laughingly told people I was a nerd in high school, brushing it off in an instant, they always looked surprised. You, Ally? No…
“Anyone who peaks in high school is going to be disappointed later in life,” I’d quip blithely, but part of me would always feel hot with both shame and triumph at my admission, and I never want to go into it too much, to tell people how I was bullied, marginalized, made to feel like a freak.
Perhaps that’s why I am able to empathize with Dylan now, in a way that Nick doesn’t seem to be able to. I was the weird kid, too.
And yet so was he, surely, at least in a way? “Can’t you sympathize,” I ask him now, “considering your own childhood?”
Nick gives me the same sort of double take he did when I asked that question hypothetically, back during our training. It feels far more loaded now. “I don’t know what kind of childhood you think I had,” he says in a final-sounding voice, “but that wasn’t it.”
What was it, then? I almost say the words, but I’m too tired, and we haven’t even resolved the issue of Emma’s family weekend, not really.
I sigh and sip my wine, making no reply, and after a couple of tense seconds, Nick clicks play on the remote, and the opening credits of the TV show begin to roll.
11
BETH
The morning of the court hearing, I wake up with a gasp and a jerk, staring at the ceiling as I try to reorient myself in reality. I’d been having one of those strange dreams where you’re awake enough to control what’s happening, and everything makes total sense, although as soon as you regain consciousness it absolutely doesn’t.
In the dream, Dylan was small, maybe three or four, and although he didn’t look like himself—he was blond and blue-eyed—I knew it was him. We were on a train, one of those old-fashioned trains you find in Europe, with separate compartments and sliding doors. I was holding his hand and stumbling along the corridor, looking for seats, but all the compartments were full of blank-faced people, utterly indifferent to us.
I could hear a conductor lumbering behind me, and I was afraid, even though I knew I had a ticket. I reached my hand into my pocket and held it, anchoring me to the reality that I was allowed on the train, that we were safe.
I had finally found an empty compartment, and slid open the door, filled with relief, when I turned behind me and saw that Dylan had disappeared.
I wake up with my heart thudding, the fear of Dylan just disappearing trickling through me as I blink at the ceiling and try to remember my real life. Then I look at the clock, and my heart seems to stop right in my chest. It is eight o’clock, and the court hearing is in an hour.
I scramble up from bed, my mind darting in a dozen different directions. I tell myself not to panic, but I already am. An hour… I was meant to be so organized. I was going to get up early and go through all my notes, practice what I’d say… as it is, I will be rushing just to get there in time.
Last night after Marco left, I drank two glasses of wine, and on an empty stomach, and with my low tolerance, it was enough to send me stumbling to bed at eleven o’clock, my mind dazed and spinning.
I can’t believe I was that reckless, but I’d felt so unbearably low, so utterly alone, me against the whole world, with no one—except maybe Mike the UPS guy—that I could call on. No one to back my corner, no one to hold my hand. No Dylan to put my arms around, to feel his solid warmth. I couldn’t stand it, the gaping emptiness at the center of my life, and in any case, I didn’t think two glasses would affect me so much, although obviously they did.
I didn’t even mean to drink two—I drained the one, and then I poured another, but I