Page 67 of The Backtrack
SAM AND DAMON’S MAGICAL PLAYLIST
Track One: “Bring Me to Life” by Evanescence. Otherworldly song about being understood by another human. Tybee High parking lot. Questionable amounts of eyeliner. Alt-Sam kisses Damon. Missing earring is found.
Track Two: “I Believe in a Thing Called Love” by The Darkness. A bop about being head over heels for someone. Alt-Sam and Damon are officially dating. Myles continues to disappoint. Marissa didn’t have an awkward phase in high school. JanSport backpacks are timeless.
Track Three: “Supermassive Black Hole” by Muse. Inarguably the best song and movie scene pairing ever. Damon and Alt-Sam make out duringTwilightand get kicked out. One too many hickies.
Track Four: “Want You Bad” by The Offspring. A banger about a bad boy wanting to corrupt a good girl. Myles gets owned by Alt-Sam. Damon skips detention. Alt-Sam skips her extracurricular. I miss Dunkaroos.
Track Five: “Dance, Dance” by Fall Out Boy. A song about a guy meeting someone he likes at a school dance, and the angst of trying to desperately impress them. Damon tries to impress Alt-Sam and they get into A GODDAMN CAR CRASH. Soffe shorts. Condoms from Pearl. Looks like I never get to go to prom.
Track Six: “Fell In Love With a Girl” by The White Stripes. Can I ever hear this song again and not think about Alt-Sam and Damon sneaking around (??) and probably having sex (??). Alt-Sam’s vision problems continue AND she’s getting a C on an essay?
Track Seven: “Read My Mind” by The Killers, which is all about uncertainty. Makes sense, since in Alt-Sam’s high school graduation, I’m not valedictorian and waiting on a surgery to get into flight school.
Track Eight: “Over My Head” by The Fray. Written about a fight, where one person was totally out of their depth. Alt-Sam is pregnant and moving in with Damon. Maybe they’re not ready to be parents?
Track Nine: “Maps” by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Damon’s starting nursing school and not a brewery. Wanting someone to stay is the theme of the song, and maybe Damon wants Alt-Sam to know he’ll stay by her side and through the miscarriage?
Track Ten: “The Curse of Curves” by Cute Is What We Aim For. Myles at the ice cream shop being a little too friendly with Alt-Sam, much like the song suggests. Eye surgery set for the next day. Damon and Myles acting like weirdos.
Track Eleven: “My Happy Ending” by Avril Lavigne. Saw anything but a happy scene. Alt-Sam and Damon at Farrah’s bar’s opening night, big fight. Eye surgery didn’t work. Damon asked Alt-Sam to see a therapist.
Sam shook out her hand, so unused to writing that even those few lines made her fingers cramp. She couldn’t see a pattern. Or rather, she didn’t understand why the last few songs had sad memories when the other universe was meant to show that she and Damon were fated. She understood no one was perfect, and even the best couples had rough periods.
“But what am I missing?” Sam asked to the room.
She took her phone out and tapped the screen, but there were no new messages.
What she was missing—in this life at least—was a reply from Damon. And the realization of that hit her like the loud booms of thunder just outside her grandma’s home.
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Sam wasn’t angry, exactly, but also...a little mad, yes. She’d texted Damon a simple question to check in. And all he had to do was send a response—any response, really. Something like,I’m fine and I know we had sex, so I want to acknowledge you as a human being, for example. She’d even take a “k” at this point.
But no, he hadn’t sent anything. So she was left to think that he’d either been swept away in the storm or was just plain avoiding her. Either option wasn’t great and left her feeling like no matter what she tried to grasp, everything was slipping through her fingers: Damon, Alt-Damon and keeping Bonnie out of her life.
She just wanted to be carefree Pilot Sam again. But for the moment, the only place she had was her room, and the only thing in it of any use was her phone and her CD player. The phone, however, was a reminder that Damon wasn’t answering her. And the CD player, well...the thing had started to turn her moments of voyeurism into confusion.
Still, the CD playerwouldgo back to happier visions. After all, there were just two songs left. And if she’d learned anything from aughts teen movies, the leads always got together in the end. Alt-Sam and Damon were endgame, and their love story wasn’t over—she just had to keep listening.
Sam cautiously returned to her bed, where the player waited for her. Two more songs would really just be a few minutes of her life. She could listen and see her very own happily-ever-after. Maybe even glean some insight from the visions to apply to her present-day no-text-back predicament. Crazier things had happened, like the magical playlist itself. She put the headphones on, settled into place and hit Play.
The plucking of strings was familiar, and within a few seconds she recognized “I Write Sins Not Tragedies” by Panic! at the Disco, which was a song about cheating. This was totally something she and Damon had listened to—everyone had. But if she was hearing a song about betrayal, then that might mean her happily-ever-after wasn’t about to hit her. She lifted her hand to yank the headphones off, but she plunged down and found herself unable to move until she landed on a chair.
Cold AC blasted and Sam quickly blinked her eyes open to the creamy white walls of the ice cream shop. She grabbed the sides of the bistro table and peeled off her headphones just as the band sang the catchy chorus over the shop’s speakers.
She had two minutes and fifty-five seconds left, and what she knew about the ice cream shop was that Alt-Sam worked there, along with...
Her gaze caught on Myles, lifting a tub of fresh ice cream into the glass case. Alt-Sam came out from the back and took her apron off to reveal skintight jeans with holes at the knees and a button-down plaid shirt.
Sam pushed up from the table and crossed her arms. She suddenly never wanted a cup of cookie dough with gummy bears again. Which was very sad indeed. But as if reading her mind, Alt-Sam grabbed an ice cream scoop, reached just past Myles and scooped herself a cup of cookie dough. He shoved his hands into the pockets of his khaki shorts and watched her as she worked, but Alt-Sam didn’t seem to notice. She then went to the toppings and loaded up with way more than a standard serving of gummy bears. She set the cup down on the counter, then hoisted herself up and started to eat.
“I just wiped that down and now you’re putting your ass all over it,” Myles said, though he didn’t sound annoyed at all.
“Don’t worry,” Alt-Sam said through a bite. “My ass does a better job of wiping these counters than you do.”
Myles raised an eyebrow. “The boss makes jokes,” he said.
