Page 53 of The Someday Daughter
The headache clustered at the front of my skull gives a dull throb. They talked about me at some point—she knew I was in here, sleeping. I feel like someone’s ward. Like I’m being babysat.
“I don’t think so,” Silas says, and Camilla says, “Let me check,” and I brace myself.
“I’ll give you a minute,” Silas tells her. When the door opens again I swallow the realization that I don’t want him to go. He’s not mine; he doesn’t owe me anything. But the room feels darker and more desperate without him in it.
“Audrey.” My name is accompanied by Camilla’s cool hand landing on my forehead, her body sinking the mattress next to my waist. I let the cold from her fingers seep through to my headache—it feels so good and for once I just let it be. “Are you still sleeping?”
I don’t know what makes me do it. Maybe the moment at the Bard on the Barge, the flicker of the secret person my mother might actually be. Maybe the memory of her sleeping in the bednext to mine that night in Chicago, wordless but watchful. Whatever the reason, I open my eyes and look at her.
“Hi,” she says. When our eyes meet I see it all: the Audrey she’s made me, thesomeday daughter. Captured contextless on her social feeds, all of my wins cataloged there for the world. The last time this happened and it turned into the Sex Summit instead of what it actually was. There’s no place for this version of me; I’ve let both of us down. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“No,” I whisper. Her cool hand moves into my hair, brushing it off my forehead. It makes me feel very young.
“All right,” she says. Her hand keeps moving, rhythmic. “I’ll just say this, then. You can honor this feeling. Grieve the loss of something you wanted very much.” In this dim, unfamiliar room she could be a dream; a version of herself I’ve never known to exist. “But these feelings are like waves. We’re better for acknowledging them, for leaning in as they sway us. Allow this to move you but don’t let it drag you under, Audrey.” Her thumb traces a line between my eyebrows, up into my hair. Cool and centering. “It’ll pass, honey. And you’ll still be standing.”
I don’t believe her, but I nod anyways. Maybe so she’ll leave, maybe so she’ll see me as the person I want her to see me as: stronger. Still standing.
“And consider moving,” she says, her cool fingertips leaving my skin. “A walk outside, or something fun somewhere other than this hotel room. The world isn’t this job, though I know it feels that way now. You might need to see it with your eyes to remember.”
I nod again. I can’t imagine moving.
“What do you want to do?” she asks me. And I don’t quiteanswer, because what I want to do is disappear. I tell her what I have to do instead. The inevitableif/when.
“I need to call Ethan.”
It’s not something we do unprompted. Call. We always text first:Is now a good time?As if we are both something the other needs to prepare for. Calling Ethan feels like I’m ambushing him.
“Hello?” he says, and I close my eyes. The room is empty except for Puddles and me; she’s still at the foot of the bed, breathing steadily in the quiet. It’s dark. It feels like I’m occupying a different universe from Ethan, and hearing his voice in this space splits some kid of chasm right between my ribs. Like I am two Audreys: the one Ethan knows and the one in this room, a stranger and a failure.
“Audrey?”
I’ve been quiet for too long. I love the way Ethan says my name—I always have. He has the kind of calm, even voice that makes any word sound like it’s worth the world.
“Ethan,” I say softly. “How are you?”
A pause. It’s perfectly quiet where he is; maybe his dorm room. I picture him there alone and hate the way it makes me feel.
“I’m studying,” he says, and once that would’ve been answer enough. But it’s not an answer, really. “What’s going on?”
Everything’s changing, I think. That’s what’s going on, but if I say it it’ll be true. And I still want to be Ethan’s Audrey, reliable and sure of herself and right. Constant and constantly enough.
“I didn’t get it,” I say.
And Ethan does the worst thing he could do, which is that he makes me say it again. “What?”
I drag the words up like dead weight. “I didn’t get it, Ethan.”
Silence. It stretches and stretches and I can’t believe he’s doing this to me.
“Ethan, I didn’t—”
“I heard you.” I know him well enough to know that the way he says it means he’s thinking. That my words are actively processing through him, problems he’s already working to solve. “Did they say why?”
I realize then that I haven’t even read the whole email. But I can’t bear to look at it, so I just say, “No.”
“Have you tried calling? There might be someone in the admissions office who could help. Reconsider.”
It’s incomprehensible to him. He sounds like he did all the way back in Los Angeles, when I called him from Camilla’s backyard and he couldn’t believe Penn had given my place to someone on the wait list. For a brutal flash of a moment, I see myself the way he does: a shoo-in for this spot. And I know that this outcome doesn’t match his idea of me, and that my failure to meet this expectation is intolerable. He can’t even process it; his first reaction is to change it.
