“I’m not,” I said, lowering my voice and trying to get the corners of my mouth to turn down. Kat burst out laughing and she got me too, both of us giggling and trying to stay upright.
“What are we even laughing about?” she laugh-whispered when we’d composed ourselves slightly.
“No idea,” I said, taking a breath and trying to stop the last giggles, the ones that kept escaping, like hiccups. I had a feeling a piece of it was just that we wanted to celebrate that we could do this again—that we could laugh, that things were okay, that we were back together, that we’d gotten through, in the end, everything the night had thrown at us.
We’d crossed though the looking glass and had a night that I knew nobody would believe, and even though we were back in the real world again, it felt maybe like we could take some of the magic with us. Like maybe our ordinary lives wouldn’t seem so ordinary, now that we’d hung out with movie stars and discovered fortunes hiding in plain sight; now that we’d found the answers had been in our pocket all along; now that we’d faced our dragons and slain them—or at least, in my case, come to a better and more communicative understanding with them.
But maybe, I realized as I started to turn the doorknob slowly, not wanting to wake up Teri or set off any alarms, our lives weren’t so ordinary after all. Maybe the regular life you take for granted becomes unspeakably precious once it’s not yours anymore. When Amy and I had found ourselves together in a corner of the loft, she’d asked me about the theater department, and whether I was going to act in college.
“I… don’t know,” I said, trying out every word carefully. I was in unchartered territory, now that I no longer had the easy answer. It was suddenly like the world was a whole lot wider than I’d realized. And it meant that I no longer had a plan… but maybe that was okay. “Maybe?” I finally said. “I’m still deciding, I guess.”
“Just enjoy it,” she’d said, smiling at her fiancé, who came over bearing a drink for her. “Before it all matters so much. Before it’s how you pay the rent. There’s something so wonderful about that.”
I’d nodded like I understood what she was talking about, and she just smiled at me. “Have fun,” she’d said, before giving me a quick hug (!!) and disappearing back into the crowd.
Now, I turned to Kat on the landing of the guesthouse, to make sure we were somewhat in control. She gave me a thumbs-up and I smiled back at her.
My best friend. I was never going to stop being happy to see her.
I pushed the door open slowly, and after Kat followed me in, closed it just as slowly and turned the lock. Since it was after three in the morning, I’d expected that Teri would have been in bed ages ago, but the TV was on, showing the changing screen saver—the Golden Gate Bridge, Hong Kong, a wide-open plain—and in the glow of it, I could see that she was stretched out on the couch, fast asleep. There were empty snack wrappers spread all around, and Kat’s phone in the center of the coffee table, just where we’d left it.
I was about to point it out to Kat but found myself hesitating. It had not been fun to be so without our phones tonight—very inconvenient, undoubtedly scary, and incredibly frustrating. But even though I wasn’t going to make a habit of it, there had been some good things about it too. I’d had to be in the moment, not able to duck out when things got too real or uncomfortable. And on the ride home, even when Kat and I weren’t talking—looking out the window or just sitting in comfortable silence—we’d both been there. We hadn’t been comparing experiences, watching someone else’s night. We’d been too busy living our own.
Kat smiled at Teri, fast asleep, then grabbed a blanket off the other couch and draped it over her.
I reached for the remote, figuring that Teri might sleep better without the TV light flashing all night. As I did, I must have woken the TV up—because there was Teri’s Netflix queue, showing us how she’d spent her night.
“Jeez,” Kat whispered as she looked at it. She turned to me in the glow of the TV light, her eyes wide. “Did she watch all these movies tonight? She’s gonna have crazy nightmares.”
I looked at the screen—Adventures in Babysitting, The Bourne Identity, Midnight Run. “She looks like she’s okay,” I said, and we both glanced down at her. Teri was still in her clothes for some reason, with a brown streak across her forehead that looked like dirt, her hair tangled at the ends. “What is that?”
Kat peered closer, then shrugged. “Maybe she did a mask or something.”
“Hey,” I said, picking up Kat’s phone and holding it out to her. One night was one thing, but it wasn’t like we were going to live like it was 1992 again. And who would want to? But as she reached out and took it, I was suddenly, surprisingly glad that there were no pictures of tonight—no stories, no narration, no shaping the night for other people to see it. No proof at all. We’d just have to remember.
She took it from me and held it close. “Thank god,” she said, and I laughed. She went to unlock it, then stopped, her hand hovering over the screen.
“Something wrong?”
Kat looked up at me, hesitated for a moment, then handed her phone to me. “Here.”
“What?” I asked, not understanding. “You need me to unlock it?”
“No,” she said, holding it out to me. “You should take it. I know you’ve backed your phone up recently—”
“Yesterday. Why you don’t ever back your phone up is beyond me—”
“So you can just transfer everything over. Move your number over, the whole thing. Here.” She stretched it out farther to me, and after hesitating a moment, I took it.
“You don’t have to do this.”
Kat shook her head. “I do,” she said, her voice rising. Teri stirred in her sleep, muttering something that sounded like helicopter, and Kat and I both took a step away from the couch. “I do,” she said again, more quietly. “It was my fault your phone got broken. I have to take responsibility for once. This was my fault. So take the phone.”
I took it from her and turned it over in my hands once. I knew it was a largely symbolic gesture at the moment—it was still Kat’s phone, after all, with her numbers and texts and all her information, and lots of technical Genius Bar things had to be done before it was mine—but that didn’t mean I didn’t appreciate it. “Thanks, Kat.”
Kat smiled at me, but halfway through it turned into a gigantic yawn. “God, I’m tired.”
“Really? Why would that be?”
She laughed and headed back toward the guest room we’d be sharing.
The screen saver was back on the TV again, and as I watched, the ocean view transformed into a panorama of New York City at night. I looked at it for a moment—the impossible buildings, the bright lights, the millions of stories. I smiled, and looked at it for one moment more before I pointed the remote at the TV and turned it off.
PART SIX Saturday
CASEY
And you can see, not that much happened here tonight. Nothing that you can point to. But we can all feel it. One world ended and another began.