Fourth Comings_ A Jessica Darling Novel - Megan McCafferty [122]
“The heart or the soul or whatever you want to call it.” She yawned loudly. “Whatever you want it to be…Whatever…”
She didn’t say it with the disaffected inflection, the trademark ambivalence that makes a laughingstock out of our generation. She said it in an optimistic, inclusive, open-ended way that could turn the most hardheaded cynic into a believer.
Hope brought to mind the “Whenever/Wherever” postcard I’d swiped from the W after my disastrous interview with Dr. Kate. If I were as clever as you, I would have sent it days ago. It would be waiting in your post-office box right now. WHATEVER could have been the ideal substitution for FOREVER. But I didn’t send it. I didn’t even think to send it because such flimsy ambiguities cannot hold up under the weight of real life.
Just when I thought she had fallen asleep, Hope whispered, “Jess?”
“Yes?”
“Would you rather see Marcus only on weekends or not at all? Move to Princeton or stay in New York City? Break up now or later…?”
All week long, my instinct was to shout, “Can’t be answered with the information given!” Because there’s never enough information. There’s always the unknowable. Other options. Opportunities. Counterfactuals.
But you’re returning to campus tomorrow. And I can’t let too many choices become an excuse for not choosing anything at all.
saturday: the ninth
seventy-four
I’m on the train from Penn Station to Princeton, and there’s only a pinch of pages left in this notebook. I’m running out of space. And time.
And like a minor winner at the Oscars (for Makeup or Art Direction), I’m hearing the quiet strains of the orchestra, and I’m starting to sweat through my awkwardly fitting floor-length gown bought off the rack and in a color that doesn’t show well on TV (a queasy green, burst-blood-vessel purple) because no designer is jumping to outfit the nominees for Makeup or Art Direction (it’s swelling) and I’m feeling the pressure to hurry up and finish my big moment already (louder), to hurry up, to hustle through the joy (I won!), hurdle through the gratitude (I won a category that is televised and not shunted to the daytime awards presentation of technical achievement!), and bring this once-in-a-lifetime moment to a satisfying and memorable conclusion before the full orchestra drowns me out (blaring now), before I’m dragged offstage by the sequined Amazon serving as the official arm and eye candy of the 78th Academy Awards, and the briefcase-clutching goons from Price Waterhouse Coopers, having thanked my agent, and the studio head, and my other agent, and my business manager, and of course the whole cast and crew in New Zealand and in Toronto, and even my third-grade art teacher, who always believed in me, but not (I suddenly realize, with a dramatic cymbal crash) my beloved husband in the audience, nor my mom and dad, who are staying up late, watching from home, and who have waited their whole lives to be thanked by their child on live TV in front of a billion people…
WHAT THE HELL AM I EVEN RAMBLING ABOUT?
See? I’m panicking here. Let me try again.
seventy-five
For the past seven days, I was compelled to write. I can’t explain why I surrendered to this drive, though I suppose it’s similar to the compulsive need others have to indulge in food, drugs, sex, art.
You understand this.
It would be misguided to attribute any deep significance to the past seven days. Everything takes on greater weight when written down. It changes from ephemera in my mind to something tangible. Something meant to be preserved. Remembered.
And in retrospect, I probably went about this all the wrong way.
I’ve kept a journal, on and off, for about six years now. In those notebooks I was wholly uncensored. I never intended for anyone else to read them. This notebook is addressed to you, and written with your eyes in mind. And though I repeatedly strove for that same level of candor, how was that even possible when I knew all along that you were going to read it? Writing for an audience turns it into