Parallel

friend’s boyfriends . . . how’s Michael?”
    “What did Ben tell you?” I demand.
    “Nothing!” she insists. I raise my eyebrows, not buying it. “Okay, fine. He said that Michael told him you guys were an official thing now. I was surprised you hadn’t mentioned it to me, that’s all.”
    “That’s because it’s news to me!” Things with Michael are going well, but I didn’t think we’d reached label-level yet. “An ‘official thing’? What does that even mean?”
    “I’m pretty sure it means he’s your boyfriend,” Marissa replies.
    “But we’ve only been on two real dates,” I point out, then flinch. Boat ride. “I mean three.”
    “So?”
    My phone rings. “See?” Marissa points at my phone, the screen lit up with Michael’s name. “He’s calling to see how the audition went. Total boyfriend move. Accept it, Ab. You’re a couple.” My heart flutters a little at the thought of it. What it would be like to let myself get attached, to stop worrying that a new reality will sweep him away. Maybe I’m overthinking it. In every relationship there’s a risk that it’ll end before you want it to. That’s the nature of love.
    Love. My heart flutters again.
    “So? How’d it go?” Michael asks when I pick up.
    “Eh.”
    “You realize that’s not an actual response, right?”
    “I’m not sure I have an actual response,” I tell him. “The guy I read with shouted and spit his way through the scene. I’m not optimistic.”
    “Well, I’m sure you nailed it. What time are they posting the cast list?” he asks.
    “Not till seven,” I say.
    “It’s seven-oh-five.”
    “Ah!” I fly off the couch. “I’ll call you back!” Without waiting for a response, I toss my phone on the table and dash out the door.
    “Good luck!” Marissa calls.
    Although I didn’t really expect to see my name on the cast list, I’m still bummed when it’s not there. Not even an understudy role. The chatter of the crowd gathered around the theater intensifies and blurs, the voices melding into one indecipherable chorus. The words on the cast list are hazy, as if I’m seeing them through warped glass. My eyes fall to the sidewalk and a drop of water appears there, barely visible in the weak yellow glow of the bulb above the stage door. I study the wet spot, resisting the bodies that push against me, vaguely wondering where it came from. Someone murmurs, “She’s crying,” and it’s not until I touch my cheek that I know.
    Get it together, Abby. It’s just a stupid play.
    But it isn’t. Not to me. This was supposed to be my big identity-defining moment. My breakaway move. Getting cast in this particular play—one whose name means “transformation”—was supposed to be the beginning of my metamorphosis, from pathetic take-whatever-I’m-dealt Abby to powerful define-my-own-future Abby.
    It wasn’t supposed to go like this.
    I had the exact same thought three months ago, the night I found out the studio had extended production a third time, eliminating any remaining chance of my starting college on time. I was sitting on a stoop on the backlot, watching two men change the facade of the building across the street from a bank to a bakery. I’d walked off set and just ended up there, on a street I’d seen in a hundred movies but never in real life. Of course, in the movies, you never see that the road just ends. It doesn’t go anywhere or connect to anything. I remember thinking that as I watched the men across the street mount a giant cupcake over the building’s fake door. People think this road goes somewhere. They don’t realize it’s a dead end. I hadn’t realized I was crying until my phone rang. When I pressed it to my ear, the keys were damp.
    The moment I heard my dad’s voice, I started bawling. “This isn’t the path,” I kept saying, my words garbled with tears and snot. “It wasn’t supposed to go like this.” I remember feeling as though everything I had worked for had been snatched away. Dad saw things differently.
    “Well-worn paths are boring,” he said. “Embrace the detour.”
    But how can you tell a detour from a dead end?
    The crowd around the theater is beginning to thin. I blot my tearstained cheeks, grateful for the dark, and look around for Fiona, wanting to congratulate her on her part (cast as “Eurydice and Others,” she essentially got the lead). But she must’ve come and gone.
    As I’m making my way through the handful of people still