Rayne & Delilah's Midnite Matinee(95)

“We’re gonna miss Rayne here at Midnite Matinee—especially me.” Delia reaches over and takes my hand. We grip tight.

“I’ll still be making guest appearances,” I say.

“I hope so, Rayne. So tune in next week, folks, because the chills and thrills aren’t over. I’ll be back along with Frankenstein, and who knows what’ll happen?” She suddenly sounds unsteady and faltering.

“Until we meet again,” I say, smiling and waving with my free hand.

“Until next week,” Delia says, waving with her free hand.

We sit, still and quiet, until Arliss says “Cut.”

But we stay seated there for a while, holding hands. I take in the small, dark studio of TV Six. Arliss, switching things off and winding up cords. Our makeshift little set. The dark camera lens. The plastic skull and candelabra on the table next to us. The knowledge that my image and voice will travel to the homes of people I’ve never met and never will meet, and I’ll be a small part of their lives and never even know. I’m not just leaving Delia behind. I’m leaving a piece of myself.

In my mind, I say, Remember, remember.

In my heart, I say Thank you over and over. Thank you, show. Thank you for being a part of the twilight of my childhood. Thank you for giving me my best friend and my boyfriend. Thank you for being the first step on my path to realize my dreams. Thank you for being something I helped build with my own hands and heart and mind.

Gripping me inside too is the profound ache of nostalgia for something that’s not even a part of my past yet.

Sometimes small and unspectacular things can be a universe.

???

We walk slowly, reluctantly, down the corridor to the door, carrying our decorations and costumes. Neither of us speaks. Arliss follows us, an abnormal occurrence.

Before he opens the door to let us out (another uncommon gesture), I set down the things I’m holding and give him a bear hug. He smells like cigarette smoke, warm cotton, and clean dog. It’s a comforting combo.

He stands there for a second while I hug him. Then he awkwardly pats the back of my head a few times like I’m a cat resting my butthole on his keyboard and he’s gently shooing me away. “All right. Good luck with everything. Don’t forget us when you’re famous.”

“Thanks for everything, Arliss. I know it wasn’t easy,” I murmur.

“Or fun.”

“Right. Or fun. Anyway, thanks for putting up with us.”

He grunts kindly and gives my head a couple more quick pats. “Okay, kid. Go be a TV star.”

“I’ll miss you.”

“Yep.” He closes the door behind us.

Now it’s just me and Delia. My heart slides down the wall of my chest like a raindrop down a window.

I was trying to think of things to say—the right way to express something I can’t express—and kept coming up empty. Fortunately, I don’t have to say anything. As if we planned it, Delia and I drop our things without a word, sink down together, sitting on the top step, and hug ferociously. Like a yawning, bottomless chasm has opened up beneath each of us, and we’re the only thing keeping the other from tumbling down it.

I breathe in Delia’s smell of incense and the kind of vaguely fruity lotion that’s no one’s favorite smell but that you buy in agreement with someone else because you can both live with it. I try to imprint it onto my brain, to summon up on some bleak day when it feels like no one loves me.

“I’ll miss you so much when you’re in Knoxville,” Delia croaks. “I know you’ll do great.”

“Promise you’ll come visit.”

“I will. Swear we’ll stay best friends.”

“Until we both die.”

“Even after that.”

“Our gross flyblown corpses will be friends. We’ll pick maggots out of each other’s eyeholes and paint each other’s yellow nails black and laugh about how we smell like dumpsters.”

“Deal.”

We both laugh, but it quickly dissolves into crying.

It suddenly hits me, more raw than it ever has before: everything ends. Some things last longer than others, but everything ends. Childhood feels like it takes forever when you’re in the midst of it, but one day you wake up and you’re eighteen and going to college. That basset hound puppy with the bow around his neck? You’re going to see his whole life pass. You may find someone you love and get married. And it might last a long time, but it ends one way or another. Maybe you’ll be together for fifty or sixty years, but one of you is going to get left behind. I’m glad things end, though. It forces you to love them ferociously while you have them.

There’s nothing worth having that doesn’t die.

Delia and I hug for a long time, our heads pressed together so hard it hurts, but not as much as it would hurt to not share one more moment of connection. We only stop when we startle at Arliss opening the door behind us to leave.





Walking into the studio feels like walking into a mausoleum, except I’d surely be happier walking into a mausoleum. I’d rather see the bones of strangers than the slow death of something I created. I’m already dreading seeing Josie off tomorrow morning. I’m doubly dreading doing the show alone for the first time.

I make it a couple of echoing steps inside when the armload of puppets and decorations I’m carrying slowly slips from my grasp. It’s twice what I normally carry.