WHAT’S PAST IS PROLOGUE
Everything feels like a memory in a city when it snows.
It goes all blurry around its edges, like even as it’s happening it’s already an old photograph. The whole world seems softer, gentler, quieter. And when New York is the city where it’s snowing, it’s more like the version that’s suspended in my snow globe collection, where everything about it appears to be small and clean and pretty, and where anything feels possible.
I climb the sixty-six slippery stairs that lead to the Manhattan-bound platform at the subway station closest to my family’s Brooklyn apartment, looking down at my floral combat boots and humming along with the Nina Simone song swimming through my headphones. And for a moment I feel happy.
But the snowy morning is making me nostalgic for something I can’t name; for a place or a moment that doesn’t really exist. I think of the past but also of new beginnings bright with possibility. I can’t help but think of Shakespeare, my favorite writer, whose stories are old but somehow still so right. My mind keeps spinning to friendship.
I haven’t spoken to my best friend, Layla, in twenty-seven days, but the snow is making everything feel a little less real—even that. As I look out at the blurry city, I embrace the illusion that everything is fine because it’s snowing. And in the snow, I can pretend that the sad things in my life are just dreams I’ve misremembered.
Maybe it’s the weather; maybe the song. But I hear Gigi’s voice in my head. My grandmother’s been gone for four years now, but memories of her still hit me in waves. Today is the day your life changes, Little Bird, I hear her say. Today things can be different and new and maybe even better.
But then my wintry, soundtracked, semiperfect bubble bursts when I slip on the platform. And as I slam into the ground, the harsh truth of my own reality lands heavily, right on top of me.
“Damn, girl! You aight?”
“Oh my God!”
“Is she okay?”
“Everybody, back the fuck up!”
“Give them some room!”
“Pull her up, pull her up!”
About eight arms reach for me all at once. My left earbud has fallen out, but my right one is still tucked into the curve of my ear so that I hear the screech of trains entering and exiting the station and everyone’s concern on one side and, now that the Nina song is over, Louis Armstrong singing “What a Wonderful World” on the other.
A little kid hands me my glasses, scuffed but unbroken, and a woman wearing a hijab, hipster glasses, and bright red lipstick digs through her backpack and offers me a Band-Aid without taking out her own earbuds.
“Thanks,” I say to the kid and all the other strangers, because it’s times like these when I really don’t get why New Yorkers have such a bad rep. When shit goes down, they’re there for you.
Once I’m upright, I tuck the other earbud back into my ear so I’m drowning in sound again, just the way I like it, and take stock of my unfortunate situation. The leggings I’m wearing under my uniform skirt are ripped and one of my knees is scraped and bleeding a little, and worse, I see that my shoe is untied. I don’t know if the rogue lace is the reason for my fall, but with my luck, it probably is.
Totally-Avoidable-and-All-My-Fault is kind of my brand.
People are still staring at me and I feel my chin wobble, an embarrassed rage-cry in the making. But then a garbled announcement that no one understands peals through the station.
“What?” a dude with a handlebar mustache says to no one in particular. “What the hell did it say?” There’s some kind of delay and everyone groans. A dozen hands pull out a dozen phones. And just like that, no one cares about me anymore. This is why I both love and hate New York. In a city like this one it’s easy to fade into the background. But it’s also inevitable that at some point, by someone, you’ll be overlooked. Or completely forgotten.
And that’s when it hits me the way it always does: the fact that I’m alone; the fact that Layla is really lost to me. The unshakable certainty that we are never going to be friends again.
It’s just like it was—just like it still is—with Gigi. I can forget about her for hours or even whole days, and then the truth rushes back like a brush fire, burning me from the inside out.
That person you loved? They’re gone.
Gigi taught me to pay attention when the world is trying to tell you something. So for a second I allow myself to look and listen, to notice the world around me. But inevitably, that leads to noticing my utter aloneness, and to thinking of every ugly thing I’ve done that has led to this moment.
I limp over to the closest bench. I pull out my water bottle and squirt a little of its contents over my bleeding knee. And instead of taking in the world, the way I know Gigi would have wanted, I sulk.
There’s a line in The Tempest about the past being prologue to everything that comes after, and I can’t help but remember it as memories of Layla fill my head. The thing I didn’t realize about having a best friend while I still had one is just how wrapped up she is in everything I do. Every outfit I wear or song I listen to. Every place I go. Losing someone can leave you haunted.
I look up, through the lens of still-falling snow, feeling the familiar burn of tears forcing their way to the surface. The Louis Armstrong song that reminds me too much of the day I met her is still pouring into my ears. I swallow hard and yank out my earbuds. I push the tears back down.
I’m sick of crying every time I see or hear or feel something that reminds me of her. But before I can move on, I have to shake off the weight of my past. Of our past. I need to rewrite our prologue before it destroys me.
So that’s exactly what I’m going to do.
A THEORY & A SNOWMAN
When the train finally shows up, it’s so crowded that I end up smashed into a corner between a stroller and the doors, and the guy in front of me is wearing a backpack he refuses to take off. One of the buckles is pressing against my boob.
I want to growl at this guy to put his bag on the floor, for everyone to give me some goddamn space, but I don’t, because I don’t do stuff like that. If Layla were here, she’d tell the dude off.
But she isn’t! I shout inside my own head. For fuck’s sake, stop torturing yourself.
So I imagine a clean sheet of paper. Mentally, I start making the list I need to rid myself of thoughts like these. The steps I need to take to rid myself of Layla…for good. The systematic way I’m going to unhaunt my whole life.
I get off a few stops later when we reach Layla’s station—the one where she’d hop on the train every morning and find me. I’d always sit in the first car so she’d know to walk to the front of the platform to wait. When the train pulled in, I’d look for the smear of her black hair, or the blur of her hand as she waved at me. We met and rode to school every day that way.