Rayne & Delilah's Midnite Matinee(58)

“In that—”

“A lot is riding on it, you know? Feels like our destiny.”

“Like the universe wants us to do it.”

“Exactly.”

“What if we make something huge happen?”

“We might make it so that this is our job. Hanging out together. While people go and become accountants and stuff.”

“Imagine us in a TV interview, telling how we got our start. This is gonna make such a good story.”

“I’m so glad I have you,” I say, the anxiety over whether to go see my dad softening into a far more welcome buoyancy. “I could never have done this show without you. What are the odds of us finding each other in Jackson, Tennessee, and making such a good team?”

Josie shakes her head. “It’s amazing.” But she suddenly seems to have taken a dip of her own, troubled in the way I just was. As if we swapped places.

“What?”

“Nothing.” She shakes her head again and smiles wanly.

“Can you believe what we’ve made together? We built a TV show. That people in other cities watch.”

“I never imagined I’d already be on TV by the time I was in high school. This has been my dream since I was old enough to remember.”

“I mean, this is how people get their start in the entertainment business, right? You get a lucky break.”

I’m getting so excited and sidetracked thinking about it, I have to slam on the brakes to avoid running a red light.

“Oof, DeeDee.”

“Sorry.”

“You are the squirrelliest driver.”

“I said sorry! So are you and Lawson going to make out in front of me the whole way down to Orlando?”

“What? No.”

“He has no idea what he’s getting into, being trapped in a car for twelve hours with the two of us.”

“Is that how long the drive is?”

“Yep.”

“Whoa.”

“I know. We need to start working up playlists.”

“Poor Lawson. This is gonna be the test of our new relationship.”

“If it survives this, I guess you’re meant to be.” And please be meant to be. Please be one more stake in the ground that ties Josie here.

I wonder a lot if I’ve made a mistake by letting myself need Josie so much. Life would be so much simpler if we didn’t allow ourselves to need anybody. We wouldn’t go through this world so easy to wound, our hearts beneath some paper-thin layer of skin.

The light turns green, and I go.

“So you heard back from Divine’s assistant?” Josie asks.

“Yep.”

“When are we meeting him?”

“Saturday afternoon around lunch.”

“We’re gonna be so tired by then.”

“Exhausted.”

We sit for a moment in our blossoming jubilation.

“This could happen,” Josie says. “This could make us big.”

“I know.”

“Like this could determine the entire course of our adult lives.”

“I know.”

“If we get big, I’m going to be really smart about money. I won’t be one of those celebrities who you hear about going broke.”

“If we get big, I wanna pay off my dad’s house. Make him feel super guilty.” I say it out my window, almost to myself.

“That would be the most amazing burn ever in the history of mankind,” Josie says.

“But the catch would be that he has to paint a mural across the entire front of it that has me as this benevolent queen.”

We laugh and laugh. It’s not all that funny, but that doesn’t matter. We like the sound of our laughing in harmony.

“We’re the worst,” I say, sighing through another peal of giggles.

“The absolute worst.”

“If we blow up, we should buy mansions right next door to each other.”

“With a tunnel connecting them that you get to by pushing aside a grandfather clock or a suit of armor.”

“So basically one huge mansion.”

“More or less.”

“And a big movie theater behind our houses where we screen our movies,” I say.

“Better yet! We just park you and your mom’s trailer behind our houses, and we’ll screen our movies there like the old days. To keep it real.”

I clap quickly, making the car swerve, and squeal. “And even though we could walk over to each other’s mansions through the tunnel, we should still text a lot, for old times’ sake.”

We sigh in unison. Envisioning this life gives me so much pleasure, it’s terrifying, thinking about how much it’ll hurt if it doesn’t come about.





“That’s a wrap,” Arliss calls. “Another completed masterpiece. Another piece of my legacy to the world. Another couple of hours closer to death.”

“Let’s go!” Delia yells. We race off the set to the restroom and frantically scour off our spackled-on vampire makeup, then jump out of our Rayne and Delilah costumes into long-road-trip clothes. We fold the costumes neatly. The plan is to possibly wear them at the con, depending on how we feel.

We hurry out. “Go!” I call to Lawson, who’s still picking up random board splinters. “Get changed!”