Page 43 of The Backtrack
“You kissed him?” Rachel said incredulously.
“Jesus, I said I fell onto his face.” The seats of the Toyota Corolla were covered in a protective plastic that Sam squirmed against while buckling her seat belt.
Rachel leaned closer to Sam. “When you say youfell on his face, which part of you...?”
“Oh, my God, you and Pearl are truly disgusting.” Sam looked out the window.
“Would you mind not taking the Lord’s name in vain?” The Lyft driver, a pretty woman with a heart-shaped face and amazingly thick eyebrows, watched them in the rearview mirror, then pointed to the rosary hanging off it.
“Oh, sorry,” Sam said.
“She doesn’t want us taking the Lord’s name in vain, but doesn’t mind me asking if you sat on a guy’s face?” Rachel said in a hushed tone.
“I’m all for women’s pleasure!” the driver said with a smile. “But in my car, we follow the Ten Commandments, thank you very much.”
Sam and Rachel eyed each other. After what was perhaps a too-long pause, Sam eventually said, “I didn’t mean to kiss him, but I sort of tripped into him. It wasn’t even a kiss, just a lip graze. So I don’t think it counts. Right?”
Sam looked to Rachel for an answer, but her friend only slumped down in the seat. So she looked to the rearview mirror.
“Relationship advice will cost an extra tip and a five-star review,” the Lyft driver said.
“He has a girlfriend, though, right?” Rachel asked.
“A casual something,” Sam tried to say. Though, the mention of Marissa made Sam’s stomach clench. She was a terrible person. The worst human being on the planet. She’d sort of kissed another woman’s man. She was Julia Roberts inMy Best Friend’s Wedding, and she deserved to be always the bridesmaid, never the bride.
“Ohhh, girl,” the driver said. “One of those Ten Commandments says, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’”
“Yes, thank you for that.” Sam avoided looking in the mirror and instead grabbed Rachel’s hand. Rachel squeezed her palm, and Sam let her head rest on her best friend’s shoulder as they drove down the dark road lit only by streetlamps and the starry sky.
“Don’t think too much about this,” Rachel said. “We’ll talk more in the morning.”
Sam didn’t want to think any more about what had happened with her and Damon, because the whole situation was starting to feel too heavy. She let her eyes flutter shut and the blackness sink her into a deep sleep.
When Sam woke up, she was in her bed. The room was still dark, and the clock on her desk let her know that it was a little after three in the morning. She sat up and looked for Rachel but didn’t see her anywhere. There was a bottle of water and two Advil pills on the desk, along with a note that read, “Eat me and drink me.” Sam did both.
Her forehead was damp with sweat and she ran the back of her hand across it. She closed her eyes.
She was such a mess. Sam let out a sigh and stumbled into the hall. Her mom’s bedroom door was cracked open, and when she pushed on it, Rachel was tucked into the queen bed, loudly snoring. Sam wouldn’t wake her up.
The house was still, and Sam weighed what to do—go back to bed or get a snack—but just the thought of food made her stomach rumble. Sam wandered toward the kitchen. She opened the cupboard with the bread and bagels, but spied the tin of pralines tucked on the top shelf. She craved their salt and sweetness and instinctively reached for them. She pried open the lid, looked in and discovered where Rachel had hidden the CD player.
Sam stared at it, nestled amongst the candied pralines. She shouldnottouch it. She should put the whole thing back into the cabinet, walk to her bedroom and go to sleep. She’d tell Rachel to find a new hiding spot in the morning, or they’d burn it, or...
Or she could just listen to the next song and see what happened to her and Damon. Just make sure they were okay. No one would need to know, not even Rachel. Sam would hit Play, see another vision and go to bed. This could be her little secret.
She quietly removed the CD player from the tin, shut the cupboard and tiptoed her way back to her room. She didn’t bother turning the light on—not wanting to wake up Rachel. It would just be one song. She lay down on her bed in the dark, save for the purple lava lamp. She placed the headphones over her ears, opened and closed the CD player, and watched the screen light up. The next track was ready and Sam’s finger hovered over the button.
If she died in the alternate universe, would she even have a vision? What if she’d lived, but not Damon?
There was no more guessing. No more wondering. She was ready to find out. Sam pressed Play, closed her eyes and tried to relax into the mattress.
A rough thrum of electric guitar and a strong drumbeat came in as The White Stripes’s “Fell in Love With a Girl” began to play. The upbeat tune wasn’t exactly matching her apprehension. It would be weird to have a song about the confusion between real love and lust playing at a funeral, right?
The now familiarwhooshtransported her before she could think too much about that, and when Sam blinked her eyes open she was in her bedroom.
Oh, shit, was she not really having a vision? What did that mean? Her hands scrambled to take off the headphones. Warm, late-morning light poured in through the window and the clock read 11:30 a.m.—it’d been nighttime when she put the headphones on. What was happening?
Alt-Sam walked into the room with a towel clasped around her body. Her hair was wet and she detangled it with a paddle hairbrush. She favored her left side due to a large black medical boot on her opposite foot.
