I collapsed on the bench, my chest rising and falling rapidly. I snapped my rubber band again and gripped the side of the bench, forcing myself to concentrate on my hand, to acknowledge that it was connected to something solid. I clutched the bench like a life raft.
It felt like an eternity before I managed to get my breathing under control. Then it was like a fog clearing, and, gradually, I felt as if I was back in the real world again, and I became aware of the odd looks I was getting from passersby.
I reached into my satchel, my hands still shaking, and took out every last thing in there, hoping I would now find the page from Ana’s diary. Maybe I could put it back in the box before Rad noticed it was missing. But I looked and looked, and it was nowhere to be found.
I grabbed my phone and called Lucy.
“Hey, Audrey.”
“Hey.”
“Are you okay?” she asked, even though she must have known from my voice that I wasn’t.
“I don’t know. I’m at Bondi Beach. Can you come and pick me up?”
“Sure, sweetie. Just hang on—I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
Lucy took me home and settled me onto our blue couch. She wrapped our large throw around me and squeezed my shoulders.
“What happened today?”
I told her about my morning, how I found the time capsule Rad kept in his apartment.
“Oh, Audrey,” she said with a sigh. “You shouldn’t have looked in there. I mean, most people keep old love letters, and it hasn’t been that long since Ana died. I don’t think it would in any way diminish what he feels for you.”
“I know. I guess I just thought what we had was the most amazing and rare thing. I suppose I always imagined his relationship with Ana was similar to the one I shared with Duck. But now, seeing the poem and the photo . . .” I didn’t mention the diary entry.
“I know. It must have been a shock for you.”
I nodded. “I hardly ever think about Duck anymore. I still care about him but not anything romantic—that faded so quickly. But I think it’s different for Rad. Even though he never talks about Ana, his pen tells me she’s still there in his heart. She’s in every damn line he writes.”
“Audrey, if you had the choice, would you rather be his muse or be in his arms?”
“I want to be both. I know it’s the exception rather than the rule, but I can’t help what I want.”
“Of course not, sweetie,” she said, giving me a sympathetic smile.
“Do you know about Schr?dinger’s cat?”
Lucy nodded. “Yeah. It’s the theory about the cat in the box with the flask of poison. The idea being that the cat in the box is both simultaneously alive and dead—it’s only when you open the box that it is one or the other.”
“Exactly. If I had never looked into that box, it would still be a pile of old trading cards—at least to me. But I’ve opened up a new reality, and I want to go back to the old one.”
“Audrey,” Lucy let out a deep breath, “this kind of thinking isn’t healthy. All these what-ifs. You can go on and on forever.”
“I know. I just can’t believe he would lie about what was in the box. I think that bothers me more than anything. That he could look in my eyes and tell me something that is completely contrary to the truth.”
“I don’t think he did it out of malice, Audrey. You just caught him off guard. I mean, we’ve all been guilty of that at some point.”
“I suppose you’re right.”
“Haven’t you ever told a lie that you regretted?”
Out of nowhere, an icy cold finger traced a line down my back. I shivered and pulled the throw tighter around me.
“I mean, everyone does,” Lucy continued, oblivious to the effect her words had on me. “Freddy still believes I’m a natural blonde.”
“Seriously?”
She nodded. “He has no idea.”
“He hasn’t noticed that the carpet doesn’t match the drapes?”
She looked at me and shrugged. “Now you know why I’m so OCD about my waxing appointments.”
I gave her a wry smile. “Well, your secret’s safe with me.”
Later that night, I got a text from Rad.
Want to go for a drive?
Sure
It had been a long day, and I wished I could just close my eyes and fall asleep. But my mind was racing, and I was on the verge of a panic attack. I didn’t know if seeing Rad would soothe my anxiety or make it worse.
He was outside my house about twenty minutes later.
“We haven’t done this in ages,” I said, as we turned the corner.
“No.” Rad turned and smiled at me.
“It feels nostalgic.”
We drove for a while with no destination. The moon swam through the sky, pale and ghostly, dipping in and out of clouds like a retro arcade game. I looked over at Rad, and as usual, a feeling of tenderness swept through me. Sitting there beside him in the car—it was all I wanted for the rest of my life. “I know you looked inside that box,” he said suddenly. My entire body prickled with fear. I kept silent. “It’s okay,” he continued. “I think in a way I wanted you to.”
He must have noticed that the page from Ana’s diary was missing.
He switched gears and slowed down, then turned into the empty parking lot of a supermarket. He parked the car and looked at me, his face partly covered in shadow.
“Did you read anything?”
“Only a poem,” I said truthfully. “And there was a diary entry, but I only read the first few lines.”
“I noticed it was missing from the box. Do you still have it?”
I shook my head. “I’m not sure why, but I stuck it in the pocket of my jacket, and now I can’t seem to find it. It must have fallen out somewhere. I’m sorry.”
“Oh. Hopefully it will turn up.”
“Why did you have a page from Ana’s diary?”
“I took it on the night of her wake. I knew she kept her diary under a loose floorboard in her bedroom. I’m not sure why I went through it.” He shook his head. “Grief makes you do weird things.”
“You don’t have to explain. I probably would have done the same thing myself.”
“I’m not sure why I chose to tear out that page in particular. I suppose I wanted to punish myself in some way for what happened to Ana. I wanted something that would hurt me each time I read it.”
“But that’s crazy, Rad. Why would you do that to yourself? It’s bad enough you lost her.”
He looked at me, and a strange expression crossed his face. “Audrey, I’ve never told this to anyone before. What happened to Ana was my fault. I’m the reason why she did it.”
“Why on earth would you think that, Rad? How could it be your fault?”
His eyes, pained and haunted, looked straight into mine. “You know that rumor that was going around, the one about Ana screwing her dad?”
I swallowed hard. “Yeah.”
“I was at her house right before they found her in the bathtub. I went there to confront her about the rumor.” He closed his eyes, as though it hurt him to remember. “She told me it was a lie, that someone had made it all up. But I got the feeling she was hiding something from me. I told her I thought she was lying, and we got into a fight—the worst fight we’d ever had.”