Parallel

eleven months. The longest Caitlin and I have ever gone without talking is three days. Memorial Day weekend 2003, after she didn’t save a seat for me on the bus to the aquarium for the sixth-grade field trip (I found out later that Ms. Dobson told her she couldn’t).
    “We stopped being friends over a guy ?” I say. “Over Tyler ?”
    Caitlin hesitates for a second, then says, “The fight wasn’t about what you told Ty. Not really. I was upset about that—and embarrassed about what he did in the lunchroom, and horrified about what you said about Craig—” Her voice breaks a little at his name.
    “Oh God, Caitlin. I can’t believe I—I’m so sorry.”
    “It’s okay,” she says. “I said some awful things, too. I was just so angry at you already.”
    “Angry at me for what?”
    She looks away, but not before I see the hurt in her eyes. “You promised to edit my essay for Yale.”
    Her personal statement . The one thing Caitlin asked me to do for her last year. The one thing. How many times did I promise to edit it? Half a dozen, at least. I remember being annoyed that she felt like she had to keep asking me after I’d already said I’d do it. As if I needed to be reminded how important it was to her. I knew how self-conscious she was about her dyslexia. How much she was relying on my help. And I never even read it. The worst part is, I didn’t even realize I’d forgotten until now.
    My armpits tingle with shame. I can blame my parallel self for lying to Tyler and for saying what she did about Craig, but this broken promise is on both of us, because I forgot, too. Between classes, play rehearsal, cross-country practice, and my own college applications, there wasn’t a lot of space left in my own brain last fall. I remember feeling frazzled and overwhelmed for most of the semester, just trying to keep track of everything I had to do. How many other promises did I break? Who else did I let down?
    I’m a jackass. A self-absorbed jackass.
    Now it all makes sense.
    “Cate, I’m so sorry,” I tell her, my eyes welling up with tears.
    “I’m sorry, too,” she says, hugging me as my tears spill over. “I should have just told you why I was upset . . . or reminded you again. I knew you’d just forgotten. But you were so busy with your own stuff, and I figured the essays wouldn’t even matter that much if my SAT score was high enough. When it wasn’t, I freaked.”
    I pull away and look at her. “What are you talking about?”
    “I choked,” she says. “Two hundred points lower than my lowest practice score.”
    “Oh, Caitlin. Why didn’t you tell me?”
    “I was embarrassed,” she replies. “I didn’t tell anyone.” My chest aches at the thought of her going through that alone. How disappointed she must have been. How anxious and afraid. “When I didn’t get in, it was easy to blame you for that, too,” she explains. “I was still so mad at you. I told myself that if my essay had been better, the score wouldn’t have mattered as much.”
    “Wait, what ? You didn’t get into Yale early?”
    Caitlin shakes her head. “Wait-listed till February,” she says. “That’s not how you remember it?”
    “No! In my version, you got your acceptance letter the day before Thanksgiving.”
    Caitlin looks puzzled for a moment. Then something clicks. “Martin Wagner,” she says. “I’ll bet he was the reason I got in early.”
    The name is familiar but I can’t place it. “Who’s Martin Wagner?”
    “Josh’s stepdad,” she replies. “He was supposed to do my Yale alumni interview. Josh was helping me prepare. After our fight, I requested a different interviewer. The woman I ended up with was a total nightmare.”
    “So that’s what you were doing,” I say. “My parallel saw you and Josh in the chem lab that morning.” At the mention of his name, another memory comes to mind. Sitting with him on a wooden swing, feeling his fingertips on the inside of my arm as we kiss. “Wait, were we a couple?” Even before Caitlin responds, I know the answer is yes. There is no way that kiss wasn’t the beginning of something. The muscles around my rib cage contract, like a corset. “For how long?”
    “I’m not sure,” she replies. The corners of her mouth form a small, sad smile. “You and I weren’t exactly dishing relationship details. All I know is it ended before prom.”
    Prom. In the real version of things, I was in L.A. and didn’t get to go. At the time, I told