Parallel

until her knees are resting on her triceps. “Has he said anything to you?”
    “To me? No.”
    In one fluid motion, she dismounts from the headstand and stands up. “I’m probably overthinking it,” she says. “People act weird sometimes. It doesn’t always mean something. Right?”
    “Not always,” I agree.
    Just usually.
    “Wow.”
    I follow Michael’s gaze over the rowdy crowd to the back of Woolsey Hall, expecting to see another elaborate costume. Instead, I see Caitlin, wearing plastic lab glasses, a form-fitting white lab coat, and five-inch magenta Louboutin stilettos . . . and not much else. Her long blond hair is tied back in a low ponytail, and her face is bare except for the five coats of black mascara layered on her lashes. She looks amazing. I suddenly feel very dowdy in my yellow uni-suit.
    “I’ll be right back,” I say, leaving Michael by himself in our overcrowded row. “Don’t lose our seats.”
    “I’ll try my best,” Michael replies, sliding over to the center of the three seats we’ve claimed. Marissa took Ben to “Haunted Yoga” at the Grove Street cemetery, so it’s just the two of us trying to hold three seats. “But hurry. I’m not sure how long I can fend off the seat vultures.”
    I make my way through the costumed crowd to where Caitlin is standing.
    “Sexy cops, sexy nurses . . . why should scientists get the shaft?”
    “My thoughts exactly,” she replies, curtsying a little.
    “Why didn’t you come to the party with us?” I ask her as we weave back through the crowd toward our seats.
    “Oh, I just had some work to do,” she says, keeping her voice breezy.
    “At ten o’clock on Saturday night?”
    “Yup.”
    Caitlin does not use words like “yup.”
    “Why don’t I believe you?”
    She sighs and looks me in the eye. “Ben.”
    I stop walking. A fat guy dressed as Buzz Lightyear crashes into me from behind, nearly knocking me over.
    “Sorry!” he slurs. Caitlin pulls me out of the way as he barrels past us.
    “Nothing’s going on,” she tells me in a low voice.
    “He has your number saved in his phone.”
    “He asked for it when he walked me home after your birthday dinner. He did it so casually, it didn’t feel like a big deal.”
    “He walked you home after my birthday dinner?”
    Caitlin nods. “Michael went with you and Marissa back to Old Campus, and Ben walked with me. I told him I was fine by myself—I think I was the least drunk of all of us—but he insisted. We got to talking, and before we knew it, it was three thirty.”
    “Those are alternate memories,” I tell her, keeping my voice down. “In the real version, Tyler called you right after Ben offered to walk you home, and you left. The four of us walked back to my room together.”
    “Why was Tyler calling me at two in the morning?” Caitlin asks.
    “It was your thing. You talked every night before you went to bed.”
    “Every night? Did he also wear a lock of my hair around his neck?” Caitlin makes a gagging motion. “Why do relationships make otherwise cool people act like morons? And I can’t even make fun of him for it.”
    I don’t respond.
    “Abby!” Michael motions for us to hurry. A guy in a rubber Bill Clinton mask hovers at the end of our row, stalking the empty seats.
    “Coming!” I call to him, then turn back to Caitlin. “What else?”
    “There’s nothing else. A few phone calls and emails. That’s it.”
    “He’s Marissa’s boyfriend, Caitlin.”
    “I know that, Abby.”
    “Do you like him?”
    “He has a girlfriend.”
    “You didn’t answer the question.”
    “Yes, I did,” she says firmly. Then, looking past me: “We should sit, the show’s about to start.”
    “Does he like you?”
    I see her hesitate and have my answer.
    “Poor Marissa,” I say then. She’s the one whose heart will be broken here, and she hasn’t done anything wrong. She’s just another casualty of the chain reaction my parallel started when she tried to play Cupid.
    Caitlin looks hurt. “I didn’t mean for this to happen, Abby.”
    “I know,” I tell her, giving her hand a squeeze as we inch down our row toward Michael. “It’s not your fault.”
    It’s mine.
    The Yale Symphony Orchestra’s annual Halloween show is more than just an orchestral concert. The musicians play the soundtrack to a student-made silent film, complete with several live-action sequences and a crazy pyrotechnic finale (there’s no way the fire marshal is on board with