Parallel

shot.”
    Tyler doesn’t answer right away. “Nah,” he says after a minute, his words slurring just a little. “I would’ve done something either way.” He glances over at me, then out the passenger-side window. “I mean, don’t get me wrong: It’s definitely easier knowing she feels the same way. But I wouldn’t have let the year go by without telling her how I felt.”
    I glance over at him, his profile illuminated in the moonlight. He looks older, somehow. Sure of himself. “So you didn’t even need me,” I joke.
    That’s when I hear the sirens. Approaching from the other direction. At least, that’s what I think until we come around the next corner and see the red lights. Traffic is stopped in both directions.
    “That’s Ilana’s car,” I hear Tyler say. He’s staring at the mangled white Mercedes on the shoulder. There’s an empty red pickup truck in the ditch across the street. Firemen and paramedics surround what’s left of the Mercedes.
    “Where’s Ilana?” I hear myself whisper.
    Tyler just points as a paramedic lifts a limp body through the broken windshield of Ilana’s car.

7
    HERE
MONDAY, OCTOBER 12, 2009
(my audition for the Yale Freshman Show)
    I scream as they wheel the stretcher past me, but no sound comes out. I run after them, but they close the doors in my face. I look back at the car and see Ilana lying on the pavement, her tiny frame bent like a rag doll. “Wait!” I yell as the ambulance pulls away. I try to run after it, but my feet are frozen in place.
    “Abby.” The voice is urgent. “Abby, wake up.”
    I squeeze my eyes shut. You’re dreaming, I tell myself.
    “You’re dreaming,” another voice says.
    “No,” I hear myself mumble. And then I’m awake.
    I blink my eyes open, and my bedroom comes into view. Marissa is kneeling beside me, her hands on my shoulders. Her eyes are wide with concern.
    “You were screaming,” she says.
    I just nod. My throat is sandpaper.
    “What were you dreaming about?” she asks me.
    I just shake my head, unable to push the image of Ilana’s broken body from my mind. “My phone,” I whisper hoarsely. “Could you get me my phone?” I point at my desk, where I left it plugged in.
    “Sure.” Marissa gives me another concerned look, then gets to her feet. She disconnects my phone from its charger and hands it to me. “I’ll be in the common room.” She closes the door softly behind her as she leaves.
    For the first time, I want less information, not more of it. I don’t want to know that Ilana was in a horrible car accident the night Tyler broke up with her. Or that my parallel is the reason he did it. But I already know those things. The memories are seared into my mind, bright and unflinching. What I don’t know is whether my parallel’s attempt to play Cupid cost Ilana her life.
    With trembling fingers, I make the call. It goes straight to voicemail.
    It’s Monday. Caitlin is in class until twelve forty-five. It’s only ten fifteen now.
    Staring vacantly at my screen, I scroll through my photo log. All the pictures are there. I should feel relieved. But seeing them only makes me feel worse. What if Ilana is dead? What if I’m here smiling for photos while she’s—
    Please, God, don’t let her be dead.
    I contemplate calling Michael, but I don’t have the energy to pretend that my dream was just a dream when I know that it wasn’t. Even if I don’t tell him about it, he’ll try to cheer me up as soon as he hears how upset I am, and I don’t deserve to feel better. Not until I know what happened to Ilana. I move from my bed to my desk, intending to Google the accident, but my fingers just hover above the keyboard. I can’t. I can’t see photographs of the wreckage. I can’t read some reporter’s sensationalist spin on the facts. The images in my mind are harrowing enough.
    My vision blurs as I picture Tyler throwing up in the grass as Ilana’s ambulance pulls away. The look on that police officer’s face as he tells us what happened. Ilana was coming around the curve when a pickup truck crossed over the center line going nearly twice the speed limit and hit her head-on. The driver was handcuffed in the back of a police car when we got there, passed out against the window glass, his only injury a broken hand.
    Another memory springs to the surface. One that feels like mine, even though I know it isn’t. Standing in the Grand Lobby of the High Museum, lying to Tyler’s face.
    Why did she do