“Why are you looking at me like that?” he asked. “Do I have sauce on my lips or something?” He fumbled with his napkin.
I shook my head quickly, feeling the heat rise to my face. “No,” I said, looking away. Then I turned my head back to face him. “It’s just, well, your eyes. They’re amazing, incredible. Like, they’re really, really cool.” My words came out all fragmented, and I wondered whether he thought I was a complete idiot.
“Oh, you mean the heterochromia,” said Rad.
“Is that the scientific term?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he smiled. “I hated the fact that my eyes were different when I was growing up.”
“Are you kidding? I would love to have your eyes.”
“Well, we can swap if you want; I’m not that attached to them.”
“You don’t want my eyes. They’re kind of goofy. My mum says they’re too big for my face.”
“I think your eyes are really pretty,” he said and then looked immediately embarrassed. “Sorry, I didn’t mean it like that.”
“Of course not.”
There was an awkward silence.
“You know there’s this series where the main character has different-colored eyes,” I said.
“Yeah?”
“Uh-huh. His name is Spike Spiegel.”
“From Cowboy Bebop?”
I nodded. “Have you seen it?”
“Yeah, but it was a long time ago. It must have been when I was going through my anime phase.”
“I’m probably still in that phase.”
“You are? What’s your favorite?”
“Uh, Macross . . .”
“Which series of Macross?”
“Super Dimension Fortress.”
“That’s definitely the best one,” said Rad. He shook his head and smiled. “Talk about a trip down memory lane.”
“I can’t believe you’ve actually seen Macross. I don’t know anyone else who has.”
“Me neither, come to think of it,” said Rad.
“I tried to get my boyfriend to watch it with me once, but he wasn’t keen.”
“Your boyfriend?”
“Yeah, Duck.”
“You have a boyfriend named Duck?”
“Well, that’s what we all call him. His actual name is Brian Duckman.”
“Oh, that makes sense.” He picked up his burger again. “So how long have you been together?”
“Since we were kids, basically. But we have literally nothing in common.”
“No?”
I shook my head. “We disagree on just about everything. I can never play my music out loud around him. And he’s not really into books. But I suppose they say opposites attract.”
“He doesn’t read books?” said Rad.
“No. Well, actually, there’s a book he’s reading at the moment. I think it’s called Yes—Now What’s the Next Question?”
“Isn’t that a self-help book?”
“Yeah, something like that.”
“I suppose you prefer fiction?”
I nodded. “Definitely.”
“What’s your favorite book?”
I thought for a moment. “The Land of Laughs, I think.”
“That’s a good one.”
“Do you remember the scene where Thomas is traveling through mountain towns while working on his father’s biography?”
Rad nodded.
“I think that’s always been my dream.”
“To write your dad’s biography?” There was a hint of a smile on his face.
I laughed. “Not exactly. But I would love to write something, maybe a book. I want to travel to a small town someday—one with fir trees and snowcapped mountains. Then I would spend an entire winter writing to my heart’s content.”
“I like the sound of that,” he said.
We were quiet for a few minutes.
“Actually,” he looked embarrassed, “I’ve been working on a book.”
“You’re writing a novel?”
“Yeah, I mean, it’s early days.”
“What’s it about?”
He frowned. “I’m not sure exactly. It’s a little hazy at the moment. I’m still waiting for the idea to come together.”
“I know what that’s like.”
“So I guess you’re working on something too?”
“Not really,” I said, looking away. “Only stuff for the school magazine.”
“Well, that still counts,” he said. “What have you been writing?”
“Mainly short stories. A few articles here and there.”
“Short stories are so underrated.”
“I know.”
“Have you read ‘All Summer in a Day’?”
“By Ray Bradbury?”
He nodded.
“I love that story,” I said.
“My teacher read it to our class in the third grade, and it’s always stuck with me. I remember feeling bad for the girl.”
“Yeah, me too.”
I thought of Margot, the sad, pale girl in the story who was shut up in a closet and robbed of her time in the sun. A cold shiver ran through my body.
“‘Mars Is Heaven!’ is great too,” Rad said after a few moments.
“I love that one as well.”
By now the stars were coming out one by one like pinpricks through a veil. I let the cool, crisp air into my lungs and tried not to think about small, confined spaces.
“There was a book I read when I was a kid,” said Rad. “I can’t recall the title or the author. But it was about parallel worlds. Sometimes I feel like I’m in an alternate universe. Like I switched places with another version of me, and I’m stuck here, in this world. I don’t know if that makes sense.”
“It does,” I said. “I feel like that sometimes too.”
“You do?”
I nodded. “Absolutely.”
“I suppose it’s like being a character in a book. The author has this idea of where the story line is going, and she sets up her characters accordingly. But it changes as she goes, right? All of a sudden, it’s the second draft, and you’re stuck with a different name and a whole other backstory. Then she writes you into an alternate ending. You know, sometimes I get this tiny glimpse of what things were, before the new reality takes over.”
“Exactly,” I said. “I know what you mean by a glimpse. It’s more of a feeling.” I frowned. “Well, I don’t know what it is exactly, but it’s something intangible. Which is why it’s so difficult to explain. There is a sense of something else—a different reality altogether—but then you’re snatched up by the present one, and you’re stuck here. I suppose the most obvious comparison is that moment when you wake up from a dream, and there are those first few seconds of adjustment. Only, I think I have felt that while I was wide awake.”
“You’ve just described it perfectly,” said Rad. “But the idea is crazy, right? I’m sitting here on this park bench talking to you, and it feels solid and real. But maybe in the original version of this story, we were never here.”
“Which means the park bench never existed in the first place.”
“Scary thought, huh?”
“Yeah,” I said. “But I like your theory—about us being characters in a book.”
“Do you think it’s possible?”
“I do,” I said.
“Then who do you think created us?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s like one of those mirrored rooms where you see a thousand versions of yourself. Someone created us, someone else created them, and it goes that way in an infinite loop.”
“Well, if that’s the case, my creator must be a masochist.”
I could tell he was only half joking.
My mother was up when I got home later that night. She was standing in the hallway, her face a storm cloud of anger. “It’s two in the morning, Audrey,” she said. “Where the hell have you been?” I opened my mouth to speak, but she held up her hand to stop me. “You know what? I don’t want to hear it. I know it’s going to be lies anyway.” She glared at me, wrapping her sleeping gown tighter around herself. Her voice dropped, but it still retained every bit of its venom. “Everyone at the reception saw you leave with that boy,” she hissed. “Do you have any idea how that looks?”