Page 37 of In What World
“Intention counts.”
“Intention in what?” I ask desperately. The pressure of everything has started building behind my eyes—the responsibilities I left behind, the people waiting for me back home. I’ve accidentally done exactly what my Dallas did. I’ve left without a trace. And here I am, knee-sliding across the floor.
This Dallas lingers on my face for a while before he says, “Our show’s going up in twenty minutes, if you’d like to stick around and watch.”
That’s it. This Dallas Winthrop has closed the curtains on this production. There will be no more information.
“Sure!” Cilla says with her frustratingly false good cheer. “We’ll get out of your way until then. We know how you like to prepare.” She puts her arm around my shoulder and directs us back toward the auditorium.
With every step we take, my breathing constricts, until all I can muster are short, frantic huffs.
I stop, leaning against the wall to collect myself.
“Whoa,” Cilla says. “Are you okay?”
“No,” I tell her, trying to grab a breath that won’t come. “We’re lost in the infinite universe!”
“We sure are,” she confirms.
“I have so many responsibilities back home. Only I know how to get them done. Especially with Dallas gone. The kids are counting on me, and every Dallas we meet wants to be the Mad Hatter about it. How are we ever going to get back if he never tells us what to do? We’re ruining everyone’s lives right now, disappearing the same way he did, and he won’t help us fix it.”
She places a hand on my back. My body tenses in preparation for whatever counterargument she’s sure to make, telling me it’s not that bad or that I should try to enjoy this more.
“I know,” she says instead.
Her agreement startles me so much I can do nothing but look at her, bewildered. There is no trick to her expression, no gotcha I can uncover beneath her kind gaze.
“I do love that all Dallases still speak in riddles for the sport of it, but it’s so not the vibe right now,” she continues. “It’s like, please be straightforward. Just explain how this works! We’re begging!”
“We’rebegging,” I echo.
“Too bad for us that Dallas Winthrop hates a beggar,” she says.
“Loathes one,” I confirm.
“Remember when Jessie Longino went to his office and sobbed to him that she should get to be Audrey inLittle Shop of Horrors, and he told her that if she wanted the part so much, she should spend her time preparing her audition and not bullying him into casting the show her way?”
“Wait, how do you know about that? I didn’t hear that story until I started teaching with him.”
“I happened to be outside his office when it happened,” she says.
“You happened to be a lot of places in those days, didn’t you?”
“What can I say? I’ve always had exceptional timing.”
It’s only when I go to roll my eyes that I realize my breathing has evened out. My fear isn’t gone, but it’s not crushing me either.
Did she know she was doing that? Did she just…help me on purpose?
“I can’t believe I’ve spent twenty years trying, and I still don’t understand Dallas’s mind,” I say. “Or yours,” I add, compelled for some reason to mention this.
“What is it about mybeautifulmind that you don’t understand?”
“Most of the time, you’re smiling and laughing and letting people get away with just about anything,” I explain. “But then you’ll have these flashes of what seems like honesty that come out of nowhere. I never know how real they are, because as fast as they show up, they disappear again, and you act like none of it ever happened. You’re like a walking illusion.”
The light in her eyes dims, and I’m acutely aware that I’m the one who’s snuffed it out, when all I meant to do was make sense of her, of us, of anything at all.
“Got it.” She nods with pursed lips the same way she used to do when Dallas gave her tough performance feedback. Feedback she’d swallow like a pill with no water, taking it in stride no matter how hard it was to choke down. “You know, we should probably split up. See if we can learn anything on our own that might be useful. We can meet back in the auditorium for the show.”
