Page 64 of In What World

“I’m just gonna sleep on the couch,” I say, popping barely more than my head in through the bedroom door.

“There’s plenty of room on the bed,” Cilla tells me.

“It’s fine.”

“Is that aCatsshirt?” she asks.

“Yes.”

“They’ve given us complementary ensembles.”

Poking my head in the tiniest bit farther, I make out little cats in a printed pattern across what looks to be the collar of a classic button-down pajama shirt. The rest of her body is covered, because she’s under a quilt she’s placed atop the comforter.

“You know, my grandma made that,” I say, gesturing to the quilt. “It’s all of our high school show shirts stitched together.”

“That’s very sweet.” Cilla runs a hand across it. “All of my show shirts are long gone.”

“Where’d they go?”

“My mom cut them all up on graduation day, right after I told her I was moving to LA. I imagine they ended up in whatever landfill the trash service uses in Garden Meadows.”

Her mom still lives in town. I see her on occasion, but we don’t have the kind of relationship where I’d say hi. I’m not even sure she knows who I am, or if Cilla ever confided in her about our rivalry the way I regaled my own parents with the tales over breakfast most mornings before school. I only know her mom didn’t make it to many of our shows in high school—not any, come to think of it. I always chalked that up to the messy divorce she’d gone through with Cilla’s dad years prior, something I knew about from scraps I’d pick up during conversations with our castmates. Her mom had to work two jobs to support them, and she didn’t have a lot of free time for Cilla. Or so I assumed.

“Why did she do that? Was she mad you were leaving?” I ask.

“I don’t know ifmadis the right word. Maybe more likeresentful.”

“Was she…not proud of you?” I try next. These are the exact kinds of questions I should not be asking, because personal ones will only bring us closer, when what we need to do is grow further apart.

It just seems impossible that her mother wouldn’t be proud of her.

Cilla laughs, but it’s bitter and quick. “She’d want me to make it clear that she’s plenty proud now.”

“What about back then?” I ask.

“Back then, I was a nuisance to her. So I figured leaving would be no problem. I’d finally be out of her way. I didn’t realize leaving would make her jealous. When I got my first acting agent in LA, she found their information online and submitted herself, too. My agent thought it was a joke. I had to pretend it was.”

I creep toward the bed to perch on the smallest sliver of space that will hold me. “I didn’t know your mom wanted to be an actor,” I say.

“She didn’t,” Cilla says. “My mom had no idea what she wanted. Growing up, she was a chameleon. Every two years, she became someone totally different. She wanted to be a jazz singer. A therapist. She had plans to open a restaurant. Then it was a spa. Then it was an arcade. She’d work all these weird jobs to save up the funds, and then poof, she’d change her mind right when things started making sense, and it was like none of it ever happened. I’d teach myself a jazz song to impress her, and she’d tell me she hated that kind of music. There was never any figuring her out. Definitely no pleasing her. Even my own name was another one of her phases. She was obsessed with Elvis when I was born. By the time I was old enough to ask about it, she didn’t care about him at all anymore. So Ican’t really buy the idea that she’s ‘healed from all of that’ as she claims. How could I trust that this time is different than the last, oh, four hundred?”

“I had no idea any of that was going on in high school,” I say.

“Wasn’t the kind of thing I could open up to you about. Or anybody. Not even Jaz, though I’m sure she figured out some of it.”

I feel the glow of privilege and the wobbly shock of trust. She’s handing me a piece of herself she’s never given to anyone else. Who would I be to turn that away?

“I mean, how can anyone ever trust that someone’s truly different?” I ask.

It’s meant to be a question for her, but the answer comes to me first.

“That’s what faith is for,” I say.

Faith.

How funny to offer this solution when faith is the very thing that’s escaped me for so long. Somewhere along the way, I lost my faith in myself. My dreams, my accomplishments, my own desires. Right here, in the crammed guest bedroom of another version of my life, my faith is attempting to return, a boomerang that’s spent sixteen years arcing its way back to me, slamming into my chest with so much force I can’t ignore it anymore.

“Your mom should be very proud of you,” I tell Cilla. “You’ve accomplished so much, and you did it all on your own.”