The tombstones are quaint and gray. LILY WITTIMER and ROBIN WITTIMER in crisp letters, newer than a lot of the other plots around them. Dad’s funeral is brighter in my head, Mom’s is a shadowy blur, but I remember the preacher’s words like an echo coming back from a dark, steep cliff.
Too young. Too soon. Too, too, too.
Too everything. Too little time. Too few memories. Too few “I love you”s exchanged from me to Mom to Dad. Mostly Dad. I miss Mom too, but I miss her like you miss a distant, beautiful place you’ve heard about but never actually visited. Her face is blurry, her smile a blank. I can’t even remember what she sounded like.
But in my head, Dad’s voice is still there. I hold on to it like a buoy, afraid I’ll lose it in the storm of time.
“I found your costumes,” I tell the tombstone. “I wondered for a minute if you caused the leak because it kind of felt like you were there, you know? Like you’re still…”
I wipe my eyes with the back of my hand. Franco puts his head on my knee, his tail swishing against the ground, begging me to rub him behind the ears. I begin to but then my phone dings in my hoodie pocket. I pull it out as Franco whines, so I switch the phone to the opposite hand and adhere to the beast’s commands.
Unknown 8:36 PM
—Do you think the people on Prospero ever get homesick?
I slide my thumb across the unlock screen. This is the first time they’ve texted me first, aside from the first time.
8:36 PM
—Missing home, Carmindor?
Unknown 8:36 PM
—It was blown up, remember? Episode 43. The Last Turn of Time.
8:37 PM
—Doesn’t mean you can’t miss it.
Unknown 8:37 PM
—I miss parts of it. I don’t miss the actual place. That’s never as good as you remember it.
—Sorry, I don’t know what I’m saying. It’s stupid.
Not as stupid as he thinks.
8:37 PM
—Would it be weird to say I know how you feel?
Unknown 8:38 PM
—We can be weird together then.
—What place would you go back to?
What a question. Because the place wouldn’t be as good as I remember it. And now, knowing what I know, there’s only one place I’d go back to.
I want to text back that I don’t know—that it’s a hard question.
But that’s a lie. I know exactly where I’d go back to—to the exact moment, seven years ago, when I sat on the steps of the veranda, the story I’d written that day in hand, waiting for Dad to come home. I would tell that little girl to go inside. To lock the door. To keep the bad news out.
My phone buzzes again.
Unknown 8:43 PM
—Let me guess. You’d go back to when Starfield was still on TV, right?
I smile.
8:44 PM
—Never saw it live. Too young.
I realize too late that I’ve just revealed to a total stranger that I’m a teenager, which I know you should never, ever do. But then they ping back.
Unknown 8:44 PM
—Same. Syfy reruns? 11 to midnight? Falling asleep in homeroom the next morning?
8:45 PM
—Every. Day.
Whoever this unknown number is, they don’t feel like a stranger. Or even unknown. Clumsily, on the stupid number pad, I hit SAVE CONTACT and type in the name, one letter at a time.
CARMINDOR.
Franco sits with me as the sun sets behind the tree line. In the dusky darkness, the night watchman begins his rounds.
When he gets to me, he tips his hat. “Closing time, Miss Danielle.”
“Just a few more minutes?”
His rigid gray eyebrows soften. “Just don’t let that fat rat pee on any tombstones.”
“You wouldn’t pee on a tombstone, would you?” I ask Franco once the night watchman is gone. In reply, the dog slurps at my cheek, tail whipping through the air. “Not unless its Catherine’s gravestone, no you wouldn’t, no you wouldn’t!”
Frank woofs and jumps onto my lap, and we settle in for a moment longer. To be honest, the night watchman will let me stay as long as I want—and if I could, I would stay for hours. I would curl up by the gravestone and just talk with the dirt.
But tonight, I won’t. Tonight, for once, I actually have someone else who knows how I feel.
FIRST I FIND OUT THAT I have a bodyguard named Lonny, then the hottest girl in Hollywood tells me we’re dating for the next twenty-three days, and now I’m about to die. Probably.
Is it too late to cash in my insured abs?
“I think I need a moment,” I tell the stunt coordinator—who is, I’m pretty sure, insane, a thirty-something woman with dark hair and a dead-eyed stare. I adjust the strap that’s digging into my left little guy. As stunts go, this is the one I have been looking forward to the least.
“What, getting scared, hero?” She claps me on the shoulder. Hero is her nickname for me, which, given how scared I am, is probably ironic. Like calling Lonny “Shrimp.” Really flattering, in other words.
“I just want to, uh, write my will first,” I reply. Or at least I think I do. My pulse thrums so loud in my ears that I can’t hear anything else. I stare down, down, down the fifty-foot drop onto the green-screen landing.
If I fall now, I’ll land flatter than a pancake. At least my only consolation is that the camera guy filming me is coming along.
“You know, maybe we should take a break. Who’s hungry? You hungry?” I ask the camera guy.
He pops on his chewing gum, giving me a bored no-bullshit gaze. Am I the only one who thinks this is nuts?
“Can it, hero.” My stunt coordinator tugs on the wires of my harness, triple-checking that I won’t in fact hit the ground flatter than a pancake.
“We—we haven’t established a safe word yet,” I say. Stall for time, my mind chants. Stall for life. “I mean, you’ve got me into his compromising position, and I barely know you!”
She rolls her eyes and radios to the assistant director. “I told you we should’ve let Luis do the stunt.”
“Luis?”
“Your double.”
“Wait, he wanted to?”
“Want me to get him, hero?” She drawls out the last word.
Yes. “Nope,” I squeak.
“Good.” The stunt coordinator turns back to the cameraman and begins checking his harness too. He keeps messing with the settings on his camera as they talk about the scene.
I tug on my collar, staring down, down, down at all the people below me. I’m beginning to regret my decision to do most of my own stunts.
The scene sounds simple enough. Carmindor’s running for safety. In this part of the movie, the Nox lay siege to a council hearing, and the entire building on Andromeda Earth—the homeworld of the Federation—goes up in flames. Carmindor (me) rushes down a hallway, pursued by seven Nox knights. He’s heading toward a dead end, but because Carmindor is genetically enhanced, he can bust through the window at the end of the hall, hurtling himself to the next building’s rooftop to escape.