Read Online Parallel by Lauren Miller - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Lauren Miller
Tags: english eBooks
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photo of me that was supposedly taken last week, and why is there a student ID card with my name and picture on it?
I sigh, opening my eyes just as my computer finishes booting up. Any uncertainty about whose laptop this is disappears when I see the home screen. The background image is a picture of Caitlin, Tyler, and me, standing on the Brookside football field, wearing caps and gowns and grinning like we just won the Super Bowl. It’s a graduation photo, obviously. But where did it come from? I missed graduation. I was already in L.A. by then, doing preproduction for the movie. Saturday, June 6, 2009. I remember calling Caitlin that afternoon to see how it went.
How is there a picture of me at graduation if I wasn’t there?
I stare at the photograph, trying to remember that moment, but I can’t. I have absolutely no recollection of being there, which makes sense, because I WASN’T. All of a sudden, I’m annoyed. Annoyed that whatever is going on has made me doubt my sanity, made me doubt reality. I have been in Los Angeles, living at the Culver Hotel, shooting a movie with Bret Woodward since May. That I know. That I remember. That’s what’s real.
Right?
Confronted with inconsistencies I can’t explain, I jump into journalist mode. I’ll fact-check my life the way I’d fact-check a newspaper article, starting with the movie I’ve spent the last four months shooting. I launch my web browser, which redirects to a secure log-in screen for the Yale network, with boxes for my student ID number and password. Undeterred, I pull out my ID card and examine it. Under the bar code is a ten-digit number, which has to be my student ID number. I type the numbers into the top box. Now for the harder part: the password. I’ve been using the same password since we read Through the Looking Glass in seventh grade.
I type w-o-n-d-e-r-l-a-n-d into the password box and hold my breath as I click the log-in button. A few seconds later, the log-in screen disappears.
I’m in.
Buoyed, I type the words “Everyday Assassins movie” into the search bar and hit enter. The top hit tells me what I want to know. Directed by Alain Bourneau and starring Bret Woodward, Everyday Assassins is a high-octane thriller about a renegade military sniper and his band of teenage assassins. I scroll down. Bret’s name is right where I expect it to be, at the top of the lengthy cast list. The next three names are all ones I recognize. So far everything is exactly as I remember it. I keep scrolling, looking for my name. There’s Kirby. There’s the guy who plays Bret’s other sidekick. My name should be next.
Please let it be there, please let it be there.
It isn’t.
I think back, remembering my audition. That tiny studio office. The loud hum of the window AC unit. The casting director’s encouraging smile. Then I go back further, remembering the night of the school play . . . then even further, to the day I found out I’d been cast as Thomasina . . . then further still, to the first day of senior year, when Ms. Ziffren handed out copies of Arcadia and told us auditions would be held the following week.
I squeeze my eyes shut, replaying my conversation with Ms. DeWitt that morning. I remember her telling me that Mr. Simmons had canceled History of Music, and that my options for a replacement were Drama Methods and astronomy. But I also remember—just as vividly—Ms. DeWitt telling me that astronomy was my only option . . . that there had been other classes available, but they’d been filled already . . . that because I was late, I was the last of Simmons’s students to be rescheduled.
But I wasn’t late. I’m never late.
The earthquake.
A stream of new memories floods my mind: sitting in traffic on my way to school, getting stopped by Ms. DeWitt as I was coming out of the auditorium, complaining to Caitlin at lunch, pretending to listen to my astronomy teacher while staring at the new guy next to me.
Same day, two completely
I sigh, opening my eyes just as my computer finishes booting up. Any uncertainty about whose laptop this is disappears when I see the home screen. The background image is a picture of Caitlin, Tyler, and me, standing on the Brookside football field, wearing caps and gowns and grinning like we just won the Super Bowl. It’s a graduation photo, obviously. But where did it come from? I missed graduation. I was already in L.A. by then, doing preproduction for the movie. Saturday, June 6, 2009. I remember calling Caitlin that afternoon to see how it went.
How is there a picture of me at graduation if I wasn’t there?
I stare at the photograph, trying to remember that moment, but I can’t. I have absolutely no recollection of being there, which makes sense, because I WASN’T. All of a sudden, I’m annoyed. Annoyed that whatever is going on has made me doubt my sanity, made me doubt reality. I have been in Los Angeles, living at the Culver Hotel, shooting a movie with Bret Woodward since May. That I know. That I remember. That’s what’s real.
Right?
Confronted with inconsistencies I can’t explain, I jump into journalist mode. I’ll fact-check my life the way I’d fact-check a newspaper article, starting with the movie I’ve spent the last four months shooting. I launch my web browser, which redirects to a secure log-in screen for the Yale network, with boxes for my student ID number and password. Undeterred, I pull out my ID card and examine it. Under the bar code is a ten-digit number, which has to be my student ID number. I type the numbers into the top box. Now for the harder part: the password. I’ve been using the same password since we read Through the Looking Glass in seventh grade.
I type w-o-n-d-e-r-l-a-n-d into the password box and hold my breath as I click the log-in button. A few seconds later, the log-in screen disappears.
I’m in.
Buoyed, I type the words “Everyday Assassins movie” into the search bar and hit enter. The top hit tells me what I want to know. Directed by Alain Bourneau and starring Bret Woodward, Everyday Assassins is a high-octane thriller about a renegade military sniper and his band of teenage assassins. I scroll down. Bret’s name is right where I expect it to be, at the top of the lengthy cast list. The next three names are all ones I recognize. So far everything is exactly as I remember it. I keep scrolling, looking for my name. There’s Kirby. There’s the guy who plays Bret’s other sidekick. My name should be next.
Please let it be there, please let it be there.
It isn’t.
I think back, remembering my audition. That tiny studio office. The loud hum of the window AC unit. The casting director’s encouraging smile. Then I go back further, remembering the night of the school play . . . then even further, to the day I found out I’d been cast as Thomasina . . . then further still, to the first day of senior year, when Ms. Ziffren handed out copies of Arcadia and told us auditions would be held the following week.
I squeeze my eyes shut, replaying my conversation with Ms. DeWitt that morning. I remember her telling me that Mr. Simmons had canceled History of Music, and that my options for a replacement were Drama Methods and astronomy. But I also remember—just as vividly—Ms. DeWitt telling me that astronomy was my only option . . . that there had been other classes available, but they’d been filled already . . . that because I was late, I was the last of Simmons’s students to be rescheduled.
But I wasn’t late. I’m never late.
The earthquake.
A stream of new memories floods my mind: sitting in traffic on my way to school, getting stopped by Ms. DeWitt as I was coming out of the auditorium, complaining to Caitlin at lunch, pretending to listen to my astronomy teacher while staring at the new guy next to me.
Same day, two completely
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