“So sure of yourself,” I joke, swiveling in the chair once more.
“I mean if you’re not sure whether it was good or not, we could always try it again. You know. For science.” He’s grinning and that pull in my chest becomes so tight I can hardly breathe, but it’s in the very best way.
“I could never deny science.” I stand, cross to the bed, and crawl onto the mattress with him, lying on my side so that he mirrors my position. Our hands find each other and fingers link between us as we stare at one another in his one-lamp-lit bedroom. He’s looking at me with such adoration, but there’s another layer behind it—worry—that he’s trying to bury for this moment between us. “I’m okay. I can’t promise you that every single day is going to be perfect, but I what I can promise is that I’m trying my very hardest. It’ll be amazing and sometimes it’ll be terrible, but I’m in here fighting to stay afloat. For the first time in years, I have people I trust to talk to about it. Besides a doctor, I mean. You see me, and because of that, I don’t want to disappear anymore.”
He touches his nose to mine and brushes his lips softly over my chin. “And if you ever get to that place again?”
I lean back and hold up our hands between us, my palm open to his, fist unfurled. “I have a hand to reach for.”
I can’t find Audrey in this swarm of people, and it’s beginning to make me nervous.
“Elliot! Elliooootttttt!” Cline is waving frantically at me from one of the vendor booths, his beer sloshing over the side of the cup he’s holding in his hand. I follow where he’s pointing and can’t help but laugh at what he’s freaking out about. A group of girls are waiting for the next act to take the stage, and they’re all wearing a Dims t-shirt. They’ve cut them up so that they’re basically shredded tank tops, but if they want to trash a thirty dollar t-shirt, that’s not my business.
Seeing a group of girls wearing our shirts with rainbow poop cookies on them at a four-day music festival in Memphis is a little surreal, though. Even after all these months.
A pink head of hair stops in front of me, and Audrey’s eyes appear beneath the neatly trimmed bangs. She’s holding VIP passes in one hand and cold water bottles in the other. “Did you see them? The girls in the shirts?”
“Of course, I did. Cline was freaking out and not being the least bit cool about it,” I tell her as I take a VIP pass and a water from her.
September and Thursday arrive just seconds later, both wearing wigs as well, one bright blue and the other electric green. It was an act of solidarity when Audrey realized she wasn’t going to be able to go to the festival without being recognized as the face of the wildly popular game/app Dims the Stars.
When a college kid makes that kind of money, in that small of an amount of time, press gets wind of it, and then there are news outlets involved and magazines get called. I wasn’t going to lie and say that I’d created it on my own. Audrey and Cline were stakeholders as far as I was concerned.
I paid off mom’s mortgage. Put some money away for a rainy day. I still took the internship at Ten2One, but essentially they offered me a regular position, and I couldn’t handle the load with school work, so they’re holding it for me until after I graduate. If I still want it.
Who knows, though? I might just be able to start my own company after this.
It took an adjustment period for Audrey to accept that people related to her through the game. When she did an interview and shared her battle with depression and anxiety, the outpouring of support and people sharing their stories with her was overwhelming to the point that she actually had to go offline for about a week.
“I can’t be someone’s role model,” she said. Pale and shaking, she pushed the laptop away and shook her head over and over. “I didn’t sign up for this.”
“And if you save one life? Just one because you were honest enough to tell other people that they’re not alone, and someone out there understands even just a glimpse of what they’re going through … wouldn’t that be worth it?” That was September, who we had to call, because it was one of those low moments that Audrey had said would happen but we were still unprepared for.
I think it took two days for her to let it sink in that what she’d been through could end up helping someone else. We had a discussion. I set up a website, and she wrote a blog. Then she added an anonymous question button for anyone who wanted to ask her anything. Some stuff was easy, and she answered it with grace. Others were harder, and it took some hand holding to get her through it.