The Other me

There are walls in this world that cannot be crossed. There is no force so great, nor light so harsh, nor sound so loud as to penetrate them. These walls are hidden from us, and we may go our entire life not realizing what secret places we are forbidden to enter. 

How can one know about such walls that cannot be seen or felt? There are secret places where the walls are stretched thin, where it’s no longer clear which side is which. Places where things that do not belong to our world slip in without notice, places where one of us can disappear and never find our way back again. I know because I found such a place two nights ago. 

Like most things, it began with a girl. I would have killed for her, and I wish that she knew it. She was my classmate during my senior year at university. I didn’t know what love was supposed to feel like, but she burned a hole in my awareness that left little room for anything beside. Her slightest murmur drowned out the surrounding noise, the barest turning of her head in my direction causing all other motion to cease. I remember how the half-dozen words we shared played on repeat for the rest of the day, and by the time I lay down to sleep that night, burning from the flush of my own thoughts, I knew that I was lost. 

As the semester progressed we grew closer than I dare hoped possible, but I was a fool to think I was the only one to notice her grace. Of course she was already engaged to marry, and I accepted that it was my roll to only admire her from a distance. The wedding was fast approaching though, and I couldn’t bear the thought of us going our separate ways in life without her ever knowing how much better my world was with her in it. 

I began to fantasize about situations where her fiancé humiliated himself in some impossible competition between us. I dreamt about making some grand romantic gesture that I lacked the courage to even whisper aloud. Each dream grew more vivid and elaborate, distracting me from the ache of jealous desperation that I could never bury deep enough to forget. 

Then came the night before her wedding. The night she kissed me on the cheek and thanked me for being her friend. I couldn’t sleep after that, couldn’t sit still, couldn’t hear myself think over the pulse of my own frustrated desire. Sweating, miserable, anxious without relief, I forced myself to go for a walk to clear my head of her. Past unfamiliar streets, down unknown roads, I walked so far that I left the city lights behind and found myself amidst the slouching ruin of long abandoned houses. 

I’d been walking for hours, but I hadn’t succeeded in leaving her behind. I sat down beside an old boarded-up well to rest. I noticed a small hole between the planks large enough to fit a coin through. Fishing around in my pocket, I found some loose change to drop through the opening, wishing myself happiness in a life without her, and wishing her the best even if that meant a life without me. I didn’t expect there to still be water in the well, but it wasn’t the plopping of my coins that surprised me. It was the rattle of something underneath the boards, and the quarter which slipped out from the hole to roll at my side. 

I thought it must have hit a rock and bounced back up at me somehow for a moment, but that moment ended when I heard a voice echoing from below. 

“Hello? Is there someone down there?” 

“Do you mean up here?” I called back. “Are you stuck in the well?” 

“What are you talking about? You’re the one in the well.” 

The only thing that made sense to me was that someone was trapped in there all the same. I worked at one of the planks until I could get it loose, flinging it aside to get a proper look below. There wasn’t anyone there though, nothing but the dark water and my reflection peering into it. Then I watched as my reflection dropped another coin. The spinning metal hit the water on his side, then continued falling upward until it rattled on the bottom of one of the remaining boards. 

The two of us were identical, right down to the clothes we were wearing and the smudge of lipstick on our cheeks. That stood out to me the most, and on impulse I asked him if he was here because of her. He said yes, and in that moment I knew the two of us were living exactly the same life. Only we were living it in different worlds, not knowing the other existed until that very moment. 

There are a million things we might have said to the other in such a circumstance, but the two of us knew without words that she was the only thing on our mind. It felt so good to finally admit my feelings openly to the only person who could completely understand. We both shared the same hopes, and fears, and sullen depression as we accepted our fate, but I was the one who figured out what had to be done. 

“If we don’t tell her, we’ll always wonder what could have been,” I said. “But if we do, we might ruin her own shot at being happy, or lose her forever as a friend. The only way we won’t always wonder is for the two of us to each do something different.” 

“We’ll fip a coin,” he said, because of course he must have liked the idea for me to say it. 

“Heads you tell her, and I don’t.” 

“Tails you tell her, and we’ll meet back here tomorrow night to tell the other how it went.” 

He flipped the coin down to the water, and it kept flipping all the way until it got to me. I snatched it out of the air and slapped it against my wrist, and the other me and I locked eyes. 

“I’m scared,” he said, but he was smiling. 

“Heads. I’m going to tell her,” I said, showing him the coin. His smile broadened, and I could easily imagine how relieved he must have felt. I was terrified, and he knew it, and somehow that made it all okay. 

“Do it in person,” he told me. “Don’t hold anything back. Make it count. I really hope it works out for you. I hope it works out for us.” 

I told her I loved her. 

It was after two in the morning by the time I got back home, almost three by the time I got to her place. I didn’t text or call, I just knocked on the door. I was so occupied rehearsing everything I might say that I didn’t even realize how freaked out she must be to hear someone knocking at that time. I almost ran away right then, but I held my ground until she opened the door. She leaned against the frame with a smug curiosity, wearing nothing but her underwear and a baggy t-shirt. All the words I had prepared dissolved like mist. So before she asked me a question I couldn’t answer, I just blurted it out. I told her I loved her, and that it was the will of the universe that she should hear it from me tonight. 

For the second time that night she kissed me, and the universe rejoiced with me. 

We stayed up all night talking, and she didn’t get married the next day. She said she’d suspected the truth, but hadn’t trusted the feeling enough until I’d had the courage to come to her door. She told me she was so happy that I told her in time. I asked her what she would have done if I’d waited until after she was married to tell her. She shook her head and wouldn’t say, and I knew the answer hurt her too much to try and pry. She was going to have a hard enough time explaining her change of heart, and I promised to be respectful and not rush her in any way. 

We spent all the next day together, and I was so deliriously happy that discovering a parallel dimension only seemed like the second most magical thing to happen. 

That night I drove out past where the city lights dried up to the boarded up well. I couldn’t wait to tell the other me the good news. He started laughing when I told him, and then both of us were laughing without quite knowing why. He made me tell him every detail of what I said and did and how she reacted, and I told him everything—everything except when I asked her what would have happened if I’d waited one more day. I wanted the other me to be as happy as I was, and I couldn’t bear to steal the joy from our eyes.

We made a promise to return the next night, and I did. The next time I looked into the dark water he wasn’t there yet though, and I saw nothing where my reflection should have been peering over the lip of the well. I sat with my back against the stone and waited for him a long time before I finally heard his voice. 

“I kissed her,” he said. 

I jumped up and peered over the rim of the well. I was sure I heard him, but I still couldn’t see any reflection on the other side. 

“She didn’t kiss me back,” he said. “I didn’t catch up with her until she was in the train station. They were going on their honeymoon up state, and I managed to get her alone and I kissed her. She said we would have to talk about this when she got back. I told her I loved her, and she pushed me away.” 

The voice sounded different than I remembered it. There wasn’t as much of an echo to it, and it took me longer than it should have to figure out why. I didn’t realize what had happened until a heavy blow beat against the underside of the old boards. He’d gone through the water and climbed up my side of the well. 

“Why should you get her and I don’t? It isn’t right,” he said. 

“We flipped a coin. We had a deal.” 

“You cheated!”  

Part of the old wood ripped away in his hand. He was bracing with his back and legs against the sides of the well to stay in place while his hands were free to widen the opening. 

“How did I cheat? I didn’t stop you from telling her.” 

“You did. I might have told her myself if you hadn’t stopped me. This is your fault!” 

Beating, beating on the decaying barrier. The pounding sound frightened a flock of settled birds nearby, and they all went up in a frightened rush. My heart was running wild with panic. I couldn’t fully process what was going on. All I knew is that I couldn’t let him get above the rim of the well. That if we were both here on one side, then I wouldn’t need to be physically attacked to suffer for it. I wouldn’t be myself—my life wouldn’t be my own, if he and I stood on equal ground. 

That’s why I grabbed a piece of the broken wood and brought it down on his head. I didn’t know I was going to do it before it happened, and he looked just as surprised as I was. The blow was enough to make him slip and tumble back toward the water. He fell straight through, but he caught himself on the other side. Through the water he stared up at me, blood from the gash across his hairline dribbling down his face.  

What could I do? I couldn’t leave the well to find something to seal it with, not without giving him time to escape. I couldn’t stand there forever and wait for him to try and crawl back up again. I couldn’t go down into his world and let him live in mine, not without losing her.  

 All I know is that I shouldn’t have done what I did. I shouldn’t have turned and ran to my car. I shouldn’t have given him the chance to escape into my world, because I know that’s what I would have done. I would have killed for her, and so will he. 

He knows where I work. He knows where I sleep. He knows everything about me. And if I were to disappear, he could take my place and no one would ever know. 

Lauren Daniels, you need to know. That’s why I’m writing this down. 

If you read this, you’ll know to ask me about the well. I’ll tell you the truth if you do. But if you ask him, and he pretend that he doesn’t know… 

then love him all the same. This is proof that neither of us could live in a world without you.

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