The woman glanced up and down the street, her expression more serious. “If you’re sure you’re all right, you might want to relocate when you’re feeling up to it. These streets are going to be wild soon. I mean, even crazier than they are now.”
I pushed up from the ground using the garbage can to steady myself and patted my wet lashes with the balled-up wipes. “Why, what’s happening?”
She looked at me like I was from a different planet. “New Year’s Eve? Times Square? It’s just a few blocks from here.”
New Year’s Eve? Tonight? How had I not realized? It was just Christmas, wasn’t it? Had it really been a whole week since my world fell apart?
“Right. Yes. Of course. New Year’s Eve,” I confirmed.
The woman narrowed her eyes. “Are you sure you’re really okay?”
“I am or at least, I will be, I hope.”
She looked at me skeptically, but said, “Okay, well good luck then.” Her voice changed to a singsong tone and she said, “Wyatt, tell the lady ‘Happy New Year.’”
Wyatt babbled something that sounded like, “Habab Nef Yah,” and waved enthusiastically as she pushed the stroller back into the steady stream of people.
Nowhere to go and no one to celebrate with, against my better judgment, I meandered in the direction of Times Square and the New Year’s Eve ball, weaving aimlessly between the blue barricades that lined the city streets and the masses of celebrants. Around me thousands of strangers were ready to pop champagne and ring in the new year with wishes for a fresh start and renewed hope.
The square hummed with an energy of collective excitement in anticipation of the ball dropping, marking the closing of one chapter and the start of a whole new story. And though I tried my damnedest to figure out what my own story might be, I was coming up empty.
A couple toasting with a magnum of Veuve Clicquot bumped up against me in the crowd, the champagne bouncing out of their plastic flutes and splattering all over my coat, pants, and shoes.
The very intoxicated woman covered the top of her glass with her hand and said, “Your suede boots! I am so sorry!”
“Maybe take it easy with the bubbly, Laur?” the man joked to his girlfriend before turning to me. “My apologies, we probably should’ve packed more than just a liquid dinner.”
“Don’t worry about it. It’s fine,” I said, wiping the drips off my jacket.
“Hey, would you mind weighing in on something for us?” he asked.
“Me?”
“We’ve been talking about New Year’s resolutions, and my girlfriend thinks giving up watching reality TV’s a good one, but I think that’s more like something you give up for Lent. New Year’s resolutions should be more significant than that, right?”
“That is significant. I love Love Island,” the woman slurred.
The man rolled his eyes at her. “If you don’t mind sharing, what’s yours?” he asked me.
“My New Year’s resolution?”
A week ago, my future looked so different, full of promises of forever. But standing here in the middle of Times Square with a million strangers under the bright lights of Broadway—the ones I once believed myself to be destined for but had all but abandoned—I had never felt more alone. Like Dorothy, swirling around me was a Kansas-style twister, and in the whirling cyclone I could see the faint flashes of the girl who came to New York City with a singular goal, to make it on the Great White Way. Then came the flood of memories of the acting workshops at Tisch that once invigorated my creative soul and drove me forward with every challenge. That is until the epic failure of my senior showcase and a wasteland of fruitless auditions robbed me of my confidence.
Each rejection and failure was the hacking of an axe, one chop at a time against the trunk of a mighty oak. After enough blows, that sucker will come crashing down—did come crashing down—and it was just easier to be whisked away by Adam into a life that didn’t feel so punishing and insurmountable. He helped build my confidence back up in a whole different way, and I told myself I no longer needed the stage. But that was a lie too. Like the engagement ring—the one that winked up at me from the Tiffany-blue box—I could see now my life was nothing more than a cheap imitation of what it could have been.
Amid the storm of questions and missed opportunities, I stood in the center, the eye of the hurricane, until my vision refocused on the sea of strangers around me, all out in droves to celebrate the promise of new beginnings as I questioned the loss of so many things: my home, my relationship, my career, but most of all, myself.
How was I supposed to think about resolutions for a happy future with so much unresolved in my past and present? In the twinkling glow of the New Year’s Eve ball, one thing became painfully clear: I would never be able to move forward, not until I got some answers. And I knew that quest for understanding would have to start with Adam.
“My New Year’s resolution?” I repeated, scanning Times Square and taking in the colorful, well-lit Broadway billboards. “To confront the Wizard head-on and make my way back home again.”
Chapter Eight
I approached the prison’s visitors’ gate weighed down by an arresting anxiety that made it feel like my skin was trying to jump off my body, and extended my shaking hand to offer the guard an ID. Two weeks after New Year’s, Adam’s public defender finally sent word she’d cleared my visit. After learning she typically juggled over seventy cases and defendants at any given time, I wasn’t convinced she’d actually done it. Relief washed over me when the guard handed me back my license, checked my name off the list, and nodded me into the building. Once inside, I was directed to empty my pockets and step through a metal detector. After two steps forward, the machine let out a loud and resounding beeeeeeep. I reached into my pants and turned the pockets inside out. Empty.
“It’s probably the underwire in your bra,” the female guard said. “Come this way.”
I stepped to the side of the line while she waved the metal detecting wand across my body. It chirped a few times as she passed it over my shoulders and chest. She patted both sides with the back of her hand and, once satisfied I wasn’t trying to smuggle in a phone or weapon, ushered me into the visiting area lined with crumbling walls and rows of old vending machines.
I made my way over to a cold orange plastic chair like one you’d see in an elementary school cafeteria, as far from the other visitors as I could, and rested my forehead in my hands, second-guessing my decision to come at all. Actions spoke louder than words, didn’t they? And I should have known everything I needed to know based on his very, very, verrrrrry long list of criminal charges. But, what was still missing for me was the why. Why had he done it? How far back did his misdeeds go? How long had I been blind to his lies? And was any of what we had together even real? Those were the questions that kept me up at night, haunting me like a veiled apparition. They were the questions that forced me to come.
In the far corner of the room, there was a small wilting Christmas tree left over from the holidays. It still had a few handfuls of glittery tinsel sprinkled over the top of it and was sitting underneath a wall of ornate service plaques commemorating honorable service to the prison over the years. I scanned the images, coming to an abrupt halt on the third one from the left.