Time of My Life Read online

  But at this point, can I really discount anything? I’m the one stuck in this damn time taco. “How do I get out of the loop?”

  “You’ve been stuck for a long time. And now? You’re only stuck because you think you are. You’ve been living behind a veil and the veil has been lifted. This isn’t a trap you need to escape, it’s an opportunity you need to embrace.”

  Frustration makes my jaw clench, my hands twist in my lap. “What does that mean?”

  “It means,” she spreads her hands out in front of her, “you’re not stuck, you’re finally free. Isn’t it a beautiful day?” She leans her head back, as if feeling the sun on her face, but when I squint up at the sky, it’s still foggy. Then she smiles again. “Sometimes life is as ridiculous as comparing time to a taco. Time is a construct. Past, present, future . . . these are things we’ve decided exist in some kind of order to try and force logic onto a more complex world. Minutes, seconds, days, years—humans created those concepts because we like to put things in their place. But reality, the here and now, is timeless.”

  I nod. I mean, I get it. And it sounds poetic and Buddhist and everything, but at the same time, philosophy can’t help me get out of this damn Monday.

  “Live in the now? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “I’m saying, focus on the things you can control and let go of the rest. You have today to have your tacos and eat them too. Does anything else really matter?”

  Yes! Like living the rest of my life! She wants me to let go? Let go of what? I can’t hold on to anything. I take a deep breath. “But what can I do then? To make things change?”

  Her eyes meet mine, full of knowledge and something else. Peace. “Change is inevitable. But it doesn’t matter. We all have to come to terms with the fact that we have no control over the world around us, regardless of the passage of time. Change isn’t anything to fear. Change that happens around you doesn’t matter. It’s out of your control. There is only one thing we truly have power over.”

  “What is it?”

  Her brows lift. “Ourselves, of course. If you truly want change, it starts with you. When you’re on the right path, you’ll know.”

  “How will I know?”

  “Look for the signs. Trust yourself. You’ll know.”

  Easy for her to say. I bet most of my signs will say “dead end.”

  “Okay.” I blow out a breath. “That’s great. I can change myself. Look for the signs. But that doesn’t really answer my question. How do I get out?”

  “The only way out is through, and the only way through is to love, Jane.”

  Well, that was basically useless. The only way out is through, and the only way through is to love. Love who? What does that even mean? Does it mean I have to fall in love with someone? Or get someone to love me? In one day? I’m twenty-five and I haven’t been able to get someone to fall in love with me in the two and a half decades of my life. Doing it in one day seems an exercise in futility.

  I pace back and forth in front of my couch, wearing a path in the carpet, throwing my hands up periodically, and muttering to myself.

  “I can control me.” Great. What about everything else? Everything that happens to me, everything other people do to me? How do I stop all that?

  I cease pacing and close my eyes.

  There have to be some positives to this situation and I have to find them or I’m going to drive myself into . . . something worse than what I’m already experiencing.

  List. I need a list. Lists put things in order. Being able to see it all written out in black and white, something I can control.

  Grabbing a pen and small notebook, I sit on the couch and start writing.

  What can I be grateful for?

  I’m still alive.

  I’m not in any kind of physical pain, only emotional.

  I never have to pay rent again. Or any other bill. My bank account balance will revert back to normal each day—at least I think it will since I can’t check it anyway. Should I write it down if it can’t be confirmed?

  Might as well.

  I can do whatever I want and no one will remember the next day. I could go into work naked and it wouldn’t matter. It would be like it never even happened.

  I snort out a laugh. As if I could ever do something like that, even if it would be forgotten by everyone forever. I can barely handle talking in front of people fully clothed, let alone naked.

  I want tacos. Food might help me think more clearly.

  A couple hours later, I’m heading home with a bag of food and a crap ton of beautiful fabric I’ve been eyeing for months but was never brave enough to buy without risking homelessness.

  And I found an old pay phone I had never noticed, back in the corner of the shopping center near the freeway. It was dirty and there was gum on the mouthpiece, but it worked. Tomorrow, if it’s still Monday, I’m taking a cab.

  I’m halfway down my block, almost to the front gate of my apartment, when a tall figure with sleek black hair emerges from the front entrance and turns at the sidewalk, heading in the opposite direction. Even from a distance, I know the stride, the set shoulders, the shiny hair.

  Eloise.

  My sister.

  I don’t call out. I don’t say anything. I don’t want to talk to her.

  Not yet.

  I glance at my watch. It’s just after three. Now I know what time to avoid running into her.

  Once she’s disappeared, I head upstairs and eat my tacos, alone in the comfort of my familiar apartment.

  Then I resume my endless thinking. And pacing. Thinking and pacing, while writing up a new ad idea for tomorrow. Something with love. If the child psychic says I need to get through this with love, that’s what I’ll focus on. Two lovers estranged, brought back together with the Splice app?

  I scribble down notes, mind a whir of activity.

  I’m going to fix this day. I’m going to come up with a new pitch and show them I can do it. That I have value. That I can fit. Maybe I’ll even get to keep my job. Maybe I can keep going over and over until I get it right, figure it out. Maybe this is a chance from the universe to get what I want.

  Or I’m dead and this is hell.

  Or tomorrow, I’ll wake up and it will be Tuesday and I’ll just have ruined my own life by blowing most of my money on fabric, tacos, and teenage psychics.

  I put all the fabric I purchased in the closet, along with some written ideas for a new pitch.

  Tomorrow, we’ll see what happens.

  I lie in bed and try to think more positive thoughts. I can find a way to do something—take action. Like with the magic closet.

  The neighbor is crying again. Muffled sobs. The soundtrack of my new life.

  I pull a pillow over my head.

  I have control of my choices and actions. I can get out through love.

  The teenage psychic told me so. Spiritual advisor. Bah!

  Except . . . disbelief wars with hope in my brain, a thought I’ve been avoiding all afternoon rising to the surface.

  She called me Jane. I’m sure I never told her my name.

  Chapter Six

  Sprinkle me.

  Well. It’s Monday. Again.

  And I need to check the closet.

  I scramble out of bed.

  The fabric is still there. The papers scribbled with new ad possibilities survived too. Everything I put in the closet survived the night. I turn around. Everything I didn’t put in the closet is back where it was on the first Monday. The phone, the clothes, the briefcase . . .

  It is a magic closet.

  I spend ten seconds dancing around, my limbs a spastic blur divorced from the music’s tempo, but whatever. Something is different, something I can maybe use to my advantage, and it makes me inordinately happy. I can control something in this weird . . . whatever this is.

  I stop dancing and reconsider the confined space full of work clothes and boxes. Maybe I should sleep in the closet. It’s small, barely large enough for me to sit in comfortably, but it might work. I’ll try tonight. Something I can control, right?

  I’ll figure it out later. For now, I have to go get fired and then dumped by a narcissistic malcontent.

  My stomach lurches.

  I hate talking in front of people, and knowing I’m going to get fired at the end is like an extra turd on a giant crap cake.

  But it’s not a life-or-death situation like my mind wants to believe. Like my body seems to. My own thoughts make it worse. They always have. How do I escape my own self-defeating thoughts?

  But what else can I do? I have to get through this, right? At least I have a brand-new pitch to try out.

  And I have an idea on how I can avoid the train.

  I bring sanitizing supplies to the pay phone on the corner, clean it off, and then call the yellow cab.

  I arrive at the office ten minutes sooner than I would have if I had taken the train, and I’m poop-free.

  It’s already a better day.

  This is totally going to work.

  Instead of asking Hannah or Presley to tell the others I’m here, I go straight to the conference room. I miss running into Alex but, oh well, it’s not like he’ll notice or care.

  And still, knowing how this ends, knowing I won’t die or anything doesn’t change my body’s response. I’m sweating. Again. My heart is racing. Again. Black dots swarm the edges of my vision.

  No.

  I can do this.

  This is just a meeting. I’ve been here before. But why does my body respond like I’m surrounded by black mambas?

  Ugh. Get over this, Jane.

  It’s great. It’s fine. I’m going to sweat like a pig and screw it up and I hope I do, I hope it’s terrible, I hope they go all Lord of the Flies and band to
gether and kill me.

  I almost laugh at the thought, the ridiculousness of my thoughts dropping my anxiety down a notch.

  What’s the worst that can happen? It already has. They’re just going to fire me. It sucks, but it’s not death.

  “It opens with a brief clip showing the development of a budding romance, two lovers meeting for the first time at a restaurant. More clips of them dating, kissing, moving in together, a whole relationship revealed in the span of seconds. Then they’re fighting, yelling in the rain, at night. They’re both alone.

  “But then she’s walking along the street near their first meeting. She gets a notification and he’s there, at the restaurant they first met. They reunite, it’s very romantic, and the tagline reads: a splice of life.”

  Blade and Drew exchange a glance. Did Blade roll his eyes?

  Okay, maybe it’s not the best pitch but I came up with it in the span of an afternoon, shouldn’t that get me something? I thought it wasn’t half bad. And it’s about love. That’s what’s supposed to get me through this, right?

  “Jane, it’s fine, but it’s not quite there,” Stacey says.

  I let out a breath. I know what’s coming next.

  “So, you’re firing me.” I deflate like a popped balloon.

  “Don’t think of this as a door closing. It’s a whole bunch of new doors waiting to be opened.”

  “Right.” I gather up my papers but then stop. “Wait.” The last thing I want to do is extend this conversation, but I have to know. I force the words out, my voice quavering through it. “What could I have done differently?”

  “We want something with more emotional punch. But I’m not sure you have it in you, Jane,” Drew says.

  Basically what they’ve already told me.

  I leave and head straight out the back into the alley, avoiding Mark, avoiding Alex, avoiding everyone.

  There has to be something I can do. Something that can adjust or shift or something. I will find a pitch that works, even if I have to work on it all day every day for a month of Mondays.

  I am not giving up. I will change this one thing about this day if it kills me.

  Over the next however many Mondays, instead of working on keeping my job like I declared I would, I work on doing anything and everything I can think of to get out of it.

  Having a panel of critical people staring at me and judging me and finding me lacking is . . . worse than having a mouth full of bees. I push through it, trying new things a half dozen times, but I need a break.

  So I run some experiments.

  First, with the closet. The magic closet only works for inanimate objects, and it doesn’t work for everything. When I try to sleep in the closet anyway, I end up back in bed the next morning. Twice.

  Most inanimate objects stay in the closet without disappearing, like fabric, papers, toiletries, books. Everything but money. Money and me seem to be the only things the closet spits back out overnight.

  The universe wants me to be miserable and poor. There’s my sign.

  Attempting to stay awake all night doesn’t work either. I black out from forces beyond my control at around five a.m. And it’s a terrifying and sudden blackness. Not a fun experience, one I do not wish to repeat, so that one becomes a hard pass after the first attempt.

  Leaving the city is impossible. When I go to the airport in the morning, the planes are grounded because of fog and low visibility on the runway, and there are no rental cars available. June gloom. Dammit, Karl.

  I also go to a few different doctors. A neurologist first. They run tests—CT scans, blood work, an MRI—to rule out brain-tumor-induced hallucinations and any other physical cause. Everything comes back clean. As far as I know anyway, maybe they’re part of the hallucination too. Who knows? Also, a majority of the tests don’t have results for a few days. Ha. Yeah, “We’ll call you tomorrow” always gets a good laugh.

  I try a psychiatrist, but I’ve done therapy before for my anxiety and they want to schedule future sessions and prescribe medication.

  So I’m stuck. Even if it’s all a dream, it’s one I can’t get out of.

  And the only way out is through. So time to choke on some bees.

  “The scene is a crowded dance club. The camera fixes on a group of friends showing up together and having a great time dancing, but they get split up in the crowd. Both groups end up leaving. They need food after a long night, right? And then one group gets a notification that their other friends are at a restaurant nearby, and they find each other and eat together. The tagline can be: Splice up your life.”

  Stacey winces. “Well . . .”

  “A splice of heaven?”

  “No.” Drew shakes his head.

  “A family over the holidays, getting together, sharing the love, any way you splice it!”

  The room is silent. Three sets of eyes staring at me.

  Stacey smiles, but it turns into a wince. “Um. What exactly are we splicing?”

  “The greatest thing since spliced bread.”

  Blade sighs, his pen tapping on his notepad. “Jane, the demographic that would recognize that cliché is not using mobile apps.”

  “Grab a splice of the action!”

  Drew frowns. “I’m not sure dinner could be considered action.”

  “And I don’t think the client wants to spend ad money on explosions.” Blade raises his brows at me.

  “CGI may be too expensive, I’m afraid,” Stacey adds.

  “Splice it right up your pie hole!”

  Stacey frowns at me. “Wait. Um. What?”

  “Never mind. I’ll see myself out.”

  After twenty-odd failed pitches, however, the sting aches less and less. My nerves and anxiety aren’t quite as debilitating. They’re still there. I can’t imagine them ever going completely away, not with three people staring at me with their beady little judging eyes. I guess immersion therapy works somewhat though, because I keep screwing up, over and over and over, and gradually, I stop caring as much about their reactions.

  Getting fired doesn’t hurt nearly as much the fiftieth time.

  And that’s where my silver lining ends.

  The Mondays continue and no matter what I say, over the course of weeks and weeks of Mondays, the results are always the same. I can affect some things, like how I get to work, who I talk to each day. I may be able to avoid getting poop on my hand and sleeping with Mark, but that’s about it. I still get fired. Over and over and over.

  The more days pass, the more I realize how vile he is. Why did I ever hook up with that jerk? Ugh. It makes me want to spew just looking at him now.

  He is definitely not what this love thing is all about and if he is, the universe is messed up.

  I want to let him know exactly what I think about how much of a repulsive, sickening, revolting turd he is. I have a whole speech planned out in my head, crafted over the course of so many Mondays, using a lot of adjectives, but despite the anger bubbling in my veins every time he’s in my general vicinity, I can’t do it. I try a couple of times. I open my mouth to tell him off and the words stick in my throat and my heart starts beating too fast, and I just can’t. So I run away.

  I try to stay positive, but frustration gets to me after getting fired for the zillionth time.

  One Monday, after getting fired again and avoiding Mark by mumbling something about being on my period, I leave out the front for the first time in a long time, shoving open the door and exiting without looking back, my mind trying to drag me into the mire of depression.

  What’s the point of reliving the same day if I can’t actually change the major outcomes, the things that made it so shitty to begin with? It’s been almost three months of this now.

  Footsteps pound the pavement behind me.

  “Hey, Jane. You okay?”

  “Alex. Hey. Yeah. I’m all right.” I’m not but what can I do about it that I haven’t already done?

  “How did the pitch go?”

  I shake my head. “Not great.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry.”

  Alex is among the things and people I’ve been avoiding. When I run into him, he’s sweet and concerned and he asks about the interview and I brush him off. I don’t want to admit I’ve been fired. It’s embarrassing. Shameful. But I hate lying to him. He’s always so honest and open about everything.