“Business has been booming!” Laurie says. She’s holding up an empty crystal basket as evidence. “We’re the store that used to employ a star. People love it.”
“How do people know?” I ask. “It’s not like you have a poster in the window. Oh God, do you?”
Laurie waves a dismissing hand at me and goes to the door. She hands me a wooden sign: FORMER WORKPLACE OF PAIGE “PG” TOWNSEN.
“Wow,” I say.
“Honey, it’s like gold.” She frowns. “You’re not upset, are you?”
“No?”
“Good. Because I tell everyone the Patchouli Petal Body Scrub is your favorite. We can’t make it fast enough!”
It’s nine AM, and the store doesn’t open till ten, but I already see a few tourists eyeing the entrance.
“Sometimes we have a line,” Laurie tells me. “Imagine if they saw you in here!”
“That’s okay,” I say quickly before she gets any ideas. “I just stopped by to say hi. I have some errands to run today.”
I hand her back the sign, and she takes it. “Oh, I almost forgot, I have something for you.”
She ducks into the back room, and I run my fingers across the counter. The same ancient computer buzzes in the corner. I think about how many days I’ve spent behind that thing, dreaming of being on the other side.
There is a basket of “Locked lockets” and a little box filled with “August amber.” I imagine Laurie coming up with these names. She must have gone to the library to Google the book. She doesn’t read, and no way that ancient computer behind the cash register could do an Internet search.
Laurie emerges in a cloud of basil and orange. “Here,” she says.
I take the package wrapped in purple tissue paper. Inside is a little incense box.
“Turn it over,” she says.
I flip the box and see two dates, four years apart.
“The dates you worked here,” she says, finishing my thought.
A lump catches in my throat. “So there’s no chance of a part-time job this summer?” I ask her.
She smiles, the wrinkles around her eyes softening. “You don’t belong behind that computer anymore, honey.”
“No one does,” I say. “That thing is basically dead.”
She laughs. “Just don’t be a stranger, okay? I can handle you being a star but not a stranger.”
“You got it.”
“And you tell that friend of yours Jake that he’s welcome to keep his flyers up, too,” she says.
I don’t have the heart to tell her about Jake, or Cassandra, who I still haven’t seen even though I’ve been here for close to a month since I got back from Seattle. I’ve been holing up at home, which is essentially what I did on that film set, too. Hole up. Hibernate. It was so different from Locked. It was a bigger cast, but I was the youngest by a lot, and everyone really bonded. It was cozy and warm and light—a welcome reprieve from the pressures of Locked. And the pressures are here now. I’m starting to get recognized on the street. All the promotional stuff is up for Locked, which opens in two weeks in L.A. I’m set to fly back at the end of next week.
Rainer, Jordan, and I have seen each other three times since Hawaii. Rainer has been filming a movie in London, and Jordan has been lying low in L.A.—I only know that from some online stalking. Okay, a lot of online stalking. I haven’t spoken to him. Jordan, that is. Even though I’ve seen him, it feels like our relationship ended on that mountaintop. Holding hands, our fingers intertwined. Even Rainer has been suspended somehow. Our L.A. trips have been so busy, and we’ve had basically zero downtime. Just photo shoot after photo shoot after interview. I haven’t even been alone with him for thirty seconds, let alone the time it would take to have the conversation we need to have. We’ve e-mailed, but he mostly tells me about filming, a family trip he went on to Italy, and how good the coffee is in London. He doesn’t ask about us, and I know he won’t. I kept thinking that maybe he had moved on, maybe he had already fallen for someone else. The thought of it made me feel totally panicked, but I also knew it wasn’t unreasonable. He’s Rainer, and he’s been all over the world—without me. But then I got this e-mail: “I miss you. Nothing seems to be the same without you anymore.” I felt wildly, epically relieved. And that’s wrong. I shouldn’t feel relieved. Not yet. Not when there is still so much in front of us all.
I haven’t taken off his necklace, though. Not once, except when I had to shoot. And even then I kept it in my pocket—a reminder of something I’m only beginning to understand.
I look at Laurie. “Thanks. I will.”
She pulls me into a hug. I remember recoiling in the past at her embrace. Not because I haven’t always liked Laurie, I have, but because her smell is so intense you could get hives from just breathing close to her. But this time, I let her. I don’t even hold my breath. Something about the intensity of rose water and incense and something else—ginger?—is strangely comforting. Like nothing has changed even though everything has. It’s funny—I spent my whole life wanting everything to be different, and now that it is I miss the way it was.
I wave over my shoulder and open the door, the familiar twinkle of bells and chimes going off as I do.
It’s a Thursday, which means everyone is in school. I decide to forgo wandering by my old high school—too depressing—and instead head somewhere I know I can curl up in a corner and disappear.
I push past the double doors of Powell’s and walk up the stairs to the second floor. On the left side, in the back, is where the scripts are kept. They’re alphabetized by title, and I run my hand over the stacks and stop at S. They have the original shooting script of Singin’ in the Rain. I’ve read it probably a dozen times, but not since I’ve been gone, and the last time I listened to it was at the audition. I pull it off the shelf and settle with my back against the stacks, my knees pulled up to my chest.
I read for a while. It’s comforting being back here. How many afternoons have I spent doing the exact same thing? The only difference is that this time Cassandra and Jake don’t show up, and my head isn’t plagued by math homework—instead it’s the same question, scrolled across my mind like a proposal in the sky. Are you ready? it asks. Is this what you want?
And I think, I know, what my answer is. I’ve known all along. I’ve just been afraid of what I’ll lose by making this choice. We’re going to be together soon, and I need to tell Rainer I can’t do this. Maybe if we were just average people, if this weren’t going to be something we had to do in front of the world, it would be different. But I don’t think I can make that choice for myself yet. I don’t think I’m ready to take the other one away.
When I get home, Annabelle and my sister are gone, but my mom’s car is parked in the driveway. Strange. She never takes a day off from school, or even leaves early. I think she’s been absent exactly twice in her entire career. Once was when all four of us got the chicken pox, back when I was still a baby; the day is legendary in our family. The second is the day Annabelle was born.
“Mom?” I set my bag down on the counter and take the stairs two at a time.
I find her in her room, sitting on the edge of the bed, a sweater in her hands.
“Mom?”
“Hi, honey.” She looks up like she’s not at all surprised to see me, like maybe she’s even been waiting.
“Um, hi. No school?”
She shrugs. “I took the afternoon off. I thought maybe we could spend some time together.”
“I’m sorry,” I say. I look down at my sweater. “I didn’t know.”
She nods. “Come here,” she says.
I walk slowly over to the edge of the bed and sit down beside her.
“We haven’t really talked too much lately, you and me.” She sighs, shakes her head. “I’m not sure we ever have, really.”
“What do you mean?”
She looks over at me. Her eyes look sad. Tired. “By the time you came along, we had a busy household. I always thought this acting thing was maybe my fault, that we didn’t give you enough attention as a kid.”
I feel my pulse quicken. Anger spikes. “Acting isn’t a thing,” I say. “It’s my life now.”
“I know, honey,” she says. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. This dream—”
“It’s not going to just be a moment,” I say. “I’m not going to give it up the way you did.”
My mom looks at me, her eyes hurt. “Is that what you think?”
“I’ve seen your stack of theater tickets and playbills,” I tell her. “I know what you wanted.”
She squints at me and then stands. She goes to her jewelry box and removes the top layer. She takes out the envelope, the one I’ve run my fingers over dozens of times before. The same one that’s yellowed on the top and frayed on the side.
She comes back to sit next to me on the bed and opens it. She takes out a ticket for Hair and hands it to me. “The first play I saw,” she says. “My girlfriends and I snuck in the back and stood the entire performance. I found this ticket on the floor and kept it.”
She takes out another. West Side Story. She smiles. “The first play your father took me to. It was our third date. Our first kiss, too.”
A third. “This is the play I saw the night I had Tom. When my water broke, your father wanted to walk out before the second act, but I insisted that the baby would wait.”
She hands me ticket after ticket. Birthdays and anniversaries, and once, just a free summer afternoon. “I hired a babysitter and went,” she says, a twinkle of mischief in her eyes.
When she’s handed me the last ticket, she looks at me. “Do you understand now?”
I don’t say anything. I’m not sure the lump in my throat would let me.
“I don’t keep these things as mementos of what I don’t have. I keep them as mementos of what I do.”
I swallow. I can feel the tears starting to well up. Tears of shame and sadness and guilt. Love, too.
“I wasn’t like you,” she continues. “I didn’t have the talent for it. And I realized once I had children that I had a lot of love to give. I wanted to be where I was most needed. That wasn’t on the stage, sweetheart. For me, it was in the classroom. Sometimes you give things up because it’s the right thing to do. And doing the right thing feels good. It feels better than the dream. Because the dream isn’t real.”
“Do you think my dream is real?”
She sighs. “Sometimes I worry about you. It’s a tough business, and I try not to focus on it too much or talk about it, because more than anything, honey, I want you to know that it’s not everything. There are things much, much more important than success.”
She looks at me and smiles, almost laughs. “You’re smarter than that.”
I sniff. “Sometimes it’s like you don’t even care. I have a big blockbuster movie coming out, and you act like it’s a school play.”
She takes her hand and runs it down my back, then up to smooth my hair. “I may not understand the film world, and selfishly, I want you home, but I never want you to doubt for a minute how proud of you I am. You were always different,” she says, her voice catching. “I guess I ignored it because I hoped maybe if I did, it would mean you’d stay here and be my daughter.”
“I’m still your daughter,” I say.
“My daughter the movie star.” She smiles, straightens up. “What do you say you take your mother to dinner, huh? Just us.”
“I’d like that.” I move to hand her back the tickets, but she shakes her head.
“Keep them,” she tells me.
“But, Mom—”
She puts her hand over mine. “I’d like you to have them. Maybe they’ll remind you of what’s really important.”
She touches her forefinger to my nose. “Now let your mother get dressed. We’re going someplace nice.”
I stand up, the tickets pressed into my palm.
“I’ll take good care of them,” I say.
My mother may not have jewelry, but these pieces of paper are her heirlooms. Because there’s something in my hand you can’t buy. Something sacred.