We pull into the nearest parking lot. Colin turns off the engine and starts to get out of the car, but I don’t. I’m suddenly terrified of facing that place again.
Colin looks over at me. “You ready?”
I shake my head. He waits, but after awhile, he gets out. I watch as he comes over to my side and opens the door.
“Come on,” he says.
“Hold on,” I say. He stands there while I sit and try to think. “It’s just . . . nothing about tonight is going to make sense,” I say. “And it’s more than kind of crazy. It’s sort of . . . demented.” I suddenly realize how warped this is, how I’m basically trying to chase down a ghost. “Maybe it’s not fair of me to ask you to be part of it.”
He stares at me. “You’re a really strange girl, Frenchie.”
“I know,” I say. “And I’m probably only going to seem stranger after tonight.”
“Well,” he says and looks out at the parking lot. I sit and wait, sure he will get back in the car and drive my strange, demented ass home. But instead he leans down and looks directly at me. “A few things: I don’t mind strange. And I’m already a part of this. No backing out, right?”
I stare back at him and know that Colin will probably take me anywhere I ask him tonight. But not back home. Not yet.
“So,” he says. “Let’s go.”
I take a deep breath, will myself to move, and finally get out of the car.
We head toward the Stage and I get the same feeling I did earlier. That sense of déjà vu. I’m walking to the Stage now, with Colin, but somewhere else, I’m walking to the Stage alone and my whole night with Andy is just about to begin.
I turn and look over my shoulder, half expecting to see Andy, but only Colin is there, looking at me.
When we get to the door, we flash our wristbands from earlier and the guy at the door lets us in.
“You ready?” Colin asks. I nod and we go inside.
Sugar’s equipment is no longer onstage, and the music is now being provided by a DJ set up in the far corner of the room. The music he’s spinning is loud and pulsing and the place is dark without the bright lights from the stage. The few lights that are flashing are just like in my dream, just like that night, and I feel like I’ve found a wormhole somehow. Like I might actually be able to step back and forth, between now and then. I have a strange desire to go to the middle of the dance floor and lie down, just to see if it will open up and swallow me. Maybe Andy will be in that hole. Maybe I can finally ask him what I’ve been dying to know.
Lily and Joel are dancing and Robyn and Bobby are making out. I slowly make my way around the outside of the crowd, hoping they don’t notice me. Colin follows. I stop in front of the wall at the far end of the club, opposite the stage, where you go if you don’t want the lights of the dance floor to hit you. Where you go if you don’t want to be seen. I lean closer to Colin and say, “Will you wait here for me? I’ll be right back.”
He nods. “Yeah, sure. I’ll be right here,” he says.
“And don’t let any of them see you,” I say and gesture toward Joel, Lily, and Robyn. “I don’t want them to know I’m back.”
He looks out at the group. “Okay.”
I turn around and set my eyes on the red velvet curtain that covers a doorway on the wall to my right. I make my way toward it, not knowing exactly what is on the other side, but knowing this is where I need to start. And somehow, behind that curtain, is the opening to the wormhole that will lead me to that other night. The night where Andy is still alive, the night where nothing has happened yet.