Parallel

gathered on the sidewalk, trying not to appear dejected, a male voice calls out to me.
    “Abby!” The show’s director is sitting on the theater’s main steps, away from the hullabaloo, smoking a cigarette. He waves me over.
    “Hey,” he says as I approach. “Great audition today.”
    Unsure if he’s sincere, I respond with a vague “Thanks.”
    “I had ulterior motives for not casting you,” he says then, his words punctuated by little puffs of smoke. “I want you to audition for the Spring Mainstage, and rehearsals overlap by a couple weeks.”
    “Oh,” I say, trying to process this. I don’t really know what the “Spring Mainstage” is, but the words “main” and “stage” lead me to believe it’s a big show. “Are you directing it?”
    He shakes his head. “I’ll be busy with this one. But you’d be perfect for the part of Thomasina.”
    “As in Coverly?”
    He smiles. “You know the play.”
    I’m too rattled by the coincidence to form a coherent response.
    “So I was right about your being perfect for it,” he says. “Auditions are the week before Thanksgiving. I’ll tell the director to look out for you.” He drops his cigarette and stamps it out. “Have a good one,” he says, then slips around the corner of the building, disappearing into the shadows.
    “Thanks,” I say, even though he’s not around to hear it. Then I raise my eyes to the sky and say it again.
    Arcadia. Of all the plays he could’ve suggested, he picked the one that changed my life. A story about the connection between past and present, order and chaos, fate and free will.
    You’d be perfect for the part of Thomasina.
    A young girl who thought that nothing was random, who believed that everything—including the future—could be reduced to an equation.
    It doesn’t sound so crazy anymore.

8
    THERE
Thursday, October 30, 2008
(the day before Halloween)
    “Ugh, hurry up!” I shout at the red brake lights in front of me. Of course, the day I have to be at school super early, there’s a torrential downpour. I left my house six minutes ago, and I still haven’t made it through the first intersection. The traffic lights must be out. Up ahead, lightning zigzags across the sky. I brace for the thunderclap, but still jump when it comes a few seconds later.
    The clock on the dash clicks from 7:16 to 7:17. Crap. Dr. Mann’s review session started two minutes ago. With our midterm just over five hours away, this is my last chance to get a handle on the two concepts I still don’t understand before I have to write about them. I accelerate, riding the bumper of the black Toyota in front of me, willing its driver to go faster.
    “C’mon, c’mon, c’mon—”
    The Toyota stops short and I slam on my brakes to avoid it. My bag flies into the dashboard, spilling its contents onto the passenger-side floor. The car behind me leans on its horn.
    And . . . standstill. Again.
    “Could this day be any crappier?” I mutter, then instantly feel guilty for it. Yes, this day could be much crappier. Ilana could still be in a coma. I could be the one in that hospital bed surrounded by machines, my face swollen and bruised. And I’m bitching about a little traffic?
    The first three days after the accident were the worst. The doctors weren’t sure Ilana would ever wake up, and they warned that even if she did, there was a good chance she’d spend the rest of her life in a permanent vegetative state (a phrase I made the mistake of Googling). Yet despite the scary medical speak, the idea that Ilana might not be Ilana anymore just wouldn’t compute. I kept waiting for her to saunter into the waiting room and make some snide remark about my outfit. She was fine at the party, I kept thinking. She was fine, she was fine. She was fine until she came around that curve on Providence Road at the exact moment a speeding pickup truck crossed into her lane.
    When she squeezed a nurse’s hand on day four, the crowd gathered in the waiting room cheered. I overheard her mom telling Ms. Ziffren that she never knew Ilana had so many friends. I went to the bathroom and threw up. We aren’t her friends. The four girls huddled in the corner wearing pink rubber “Awaken Ilana” bracelets are her friends. The rest of us are spectators to a disaster we can’t comprehend.
    Thank God she woke up. Exactly a week ago, on day twelve. She couldn’t have any visitors for a few more days after that, but as of yesterday, non-family members