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“I don’t know, Heather,” Jade answered as her fi ngers ran like a spider toward the closest song book. She wrote out a slip while she blocked Heather’s attempts to peek at it by covering the small paper with both hands. When Heather tried to look over her sister’s arm, Jade jammed her fi ngers into Heather’s thigh. She knew it was Heather’s ticklish spot and that distracting her would buy her the minute she needed to run the slip up to Joey. Jade handed the slip to her ex-brother-in-law and turned around to shoot Heather a bird.
“Remember, I’ll always be stronger than you,” Jade sang to Heather as she ran past on the way to the ladies room.
It was true. Although younger, Jade had always been physically stronger than Heather. Their eldest sister, Lisa, was the strongest of all three and the thought made Heather fall into a memory of the drunken wrestling 162
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match her sisters got into a couple years before. Heather had been the photographer to her sisters’ backyard debacle.
It was one of the few good memories she allowed herself to keep of their recent reunions with Lisa. She could still hear their squeals of laughter as the three sisters let go of resentment and pain for one night.
“Where’d you go?” Jade asked. She had returned from the bathroom and was yelling over the music.
Heather tried to grab hold of the last remnant of the happy memory as it slipped away.
“I was in Lisa’s backyard,” she said.
“Drunken wrestling?” Jade asked.
Heather nodded.
They both shared the annoying habit of drifting off into different thoughts, despite whatever conversation they happened to be in the middle of. Whether it came as a memory, a fantasy or a deep thought, both went into an almost trancelike state when it took hold.
Jade giggled. “Yeah, that was fun.”
“So what are you singing?” Heather asked. She was trying to divert both of their attention away from thoughts of the sister who hated them. “Killing Me Softly?”
“No.”
“Gimme One Reason?” Heather tried again.
“No.”
“Somethin’ to Talk About?”
“No,” Jade answered again.
“Do you plan on telling me the answer at the end of this fun game?” Heather asked.
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“No, not really,” Jade answered smiling.
“Okay. Well as exciting as it’s been so far, I have to pee so I’ll be right back,” Heather said as she stood up.
She looked to the other side of the bar toward the location of the bathrooms. She dreaded walking through the game room but there was no other way to get to there.
Drunken men with pool sticks tended to make Heather nervous but her bladder forced her to bite the bullet. She walked through the crowd with her head held high.
After fi nishing her business in the stall, Heather stopped at the mirror for a quick touch up. She washed her hands and held them under the burning hot dryer for as long as they could take it and then she pulled her heavy black purse off of her shoulder and dropped it into the sink. She pulled it back out just as quickly so that she could make sure the faucets weren’t automatic. It was a lesson she once learned the hard way in the courthouse bathroom.
She patted a powder puff onto her face haphazardly before applying a fresh coat of shiny bronze lipstick.
Browns always looked best against her light skin. After wiping the remaining lipstick off her front teeth, Heather zipped her purse and turned to leave. She stopped abruptly and stared nervously into the mirror as her heart pounded out a scary tune. Something was wrong but she couldn’t explain to herself what it had been.
Her eyes remained focused on her own refl ection as she maintained an unwavering showdown with herself.
She tried to reconcile in her mind what she had just seen 164
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and realized her vocabulary didn’t possess a helpful explanation.
Heather paid the same subconscious amount of attention to her fl eeing refl ection as everyone else did.
This time, her hidden awareness alerted her to a change.
Something about her turn from the mirror didn’t make sense. Her movements and those of refl ection didn’t match. In her peripheral vision she noticed they weren’t synchronized as usual.
There was a difference between her real speed and that of her refl ection. Her mirror image didn’t turn as quickly as she did and her eyes stared back at her intently.
Suddenly anxious for the familiar breathing on her neck, Heather’s right hand fl ew up to the nape that held her head. She was trying to protect the sensitive hairs from another invasion.
Heather wanted to walk away but stood glued to her spot. She stared at her disobedient refl ection as she fought the instinct to crawl into a fetal position and hide behind one of the toilets. She quivered at the image of herself drooling from insanity and shook away the bad thoughts so she could better concentrate on the mirror. She moved her head to the left and then the right, trying to ensure that she and her refl ection maintained the same speed and expression.
Heather had no plan in the event she actually caught another discrepancy in the mirror. She knew the only real conclusion to that kind of scenario would be a loud running scream through the bar.
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Two minutes passed and she was still timing herself when the bathroom door slammed opened.
“Busted!’ screamed a female voice.
Angie stood in the bathroom doorway smiling and Heather couldn’t have been happier to see one of her closest friends. Jade said she had invited their circle of friends but Heather didn’t think they would show up on such short notice. Angie had no idea what she had just walked in on and Heather thought it was typical. Her friend usually tended to show up at her darkest hours.
“Angie!’ Heather yelled back happily.
Relief swept through her as she hugged her friend tightly. Heather realized her sister must have told them about her bathroom showdown with the disappearing man because Angie didn’t say a word about the obvious cut on her face. Normally, she’d have already had Heather lying down with a cloth full of ice to bring down the swelling.
“Hey girlie, what’re you doing in here?” Angie asked.
“We’ve been sitting at the table for like three minutes waiting for you.”
She looked beautiful as usual with long, dark, silky hair and a big white smile. She reminded Heather of a Pantene commercial and Heather knew the guys in the pool room were probably counting the minutes until Angie’s return.
“We who?” Heather asked carefully.
Angie counted on her fi ngers.
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“Me, Erin, Jeannie and Frankie,” she said.
Neither woman gave life to the truth that draped itself over them. Benny couldn’t be included in their list anymore.
“We felt like singing tonight,” Angie lied.
“Bullshit. What’s going on?”
Heather’s friends rarely went to places that offered karaoke. It wasn’t their style. When they got away from their children and their lives, most of them just wanted to go dancing.
“Nothing, honest,” Angie answered with a hand to her heart.
She pretended to be hurt that Heather would believe she had a hidden motive.
“Come on,” Angie continued. “Let’s drink and laugh at people. You can pretend you don’t speak English,” she encouraged.
Heather followed Angie back to the table as Joey announced a new singer. He introduced Jade as his special guest and Heather scooted herself into the booth as she watched her sister take the stage. Despite Jade’s huge belly, she was quite graceful.
Jade accepted the microphone from Joey and started to sing. Heather still couldn’t listen to her sister sing without getting tears in her eyes. Even when Jade was very small
her voice had been very big. It could fi ll an entire room and fi ll its occupants with a sense of empowerment and pleasure.
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Joey fl ipped on his fl ashing lights and turned on the smoke machine and created a dramatic setting. Jade sang Angel and Airwaves’ hit, The Adventure. She knew it was Heather’s newest favorite. Angie squeezed in beside her in the booth but they both kept a watchful eye on their eyes on the singer.
“Hey, girl,” whispered a female voice.
All of Heather’s friends had arrived during her battle with her refl ection. They stood halfway and reached over the table to give and take short hugs from one another.
Without another word, they turned their attention back to the stage. Heather listened to the words her sister was singing to her. If Jade were speaking through lyrics, she’d be telling Heather she would always be there to pick her up when she fell. When the song ended, Heather clapped the hardest.
The song came to a beautiful end and the customers stood up to cheer and applaud. Standing ovations weren’t a typical audience reaction at karaoke shows but they were always a typical reaction to Jade’s voice. Heather clapped until her hands were sore and watched her sister walked off the stage, deciding to let herself enjoy the night despite the impending doom.
“What’s up, Rocky?” Frankie asked.
“Very funny,” Heather answered, fi ngering her eyebrow to check for fresh blood.
Frankie had become their token boy in a friend group made up of mostly girls. He used to have a balance when Benny was alive but was left as the only remaining 168
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member to offset the estrogen. He was the same age as his female companions but looked ten years younger than all of them. Heather hated him for that but not for anything else.
She appreciated her male friends; especially because she got to ask them about guy things. Through Frankie, she heard the male points of view and got to be witness to their behind-the-scenes tricks. His laid back attitude usually classifi ed him as a stoner but Heather knew her relaxed friend was the same, stoned or not. He was just a starving artist whose history in the military had taught him to never take life too seriously.
Frankie had been the guide to Heather’s untapped political beliefs and had introduced her to the fantasy movies she’d always ignored. His belief in oneself over a belief in a universal God had pushed her own fragile beliefs to their limits and then teased her to travel farther.
She cherished her friendship with him as much as she did those with her girlfriends.
Angie, who had practically saved Heather from her own shadow moments before, sat between her and Frankie. Her petite friend tried to make room for everyone to sit comfortably. She had always been the nurturer of the group and had always been the most generous of all of her friends.
Angie once insisted on loaning Heather several hundreds of dollars during a Christmas season when her friend felt Heather suffered silently from fi nancial 169
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struggle. Angie had been right and she had been the only one to offer her more than good luck. Heather had accepted reluctantly and didn’t rest until she paid every penny back, plus some. Not once after lending the money to her did Angie ever question its return.
Angie was sweet and fun and she gave off comfortable vibes to almost everyone who met her. In addition to her striking outer beauty, Angie was beautiful on the inside as well. She never had a harsh word to say behind someone’s back and was the fi rst to jump up and protect a friend, emotionally or physically.
Angie passed the pitcher of beer across the table to Erin, who had started out Jade’s best friend but ended up being claimed by both sisters. She was the snottiest and the funniest of the group, either turning her nose up at a guy who had forced her to “waste a glance” or laughing along with the others at something that came fl ying out of her own mouth.
Men loved Erin everywhere she went. Her glasses did nothing to camoufl age her pretty face and her meanness toward them seemed to turn them on. She was a challenge to men and women alike and Heather had always found it endearing that Erin claimed to follow in her footsteps.
It was an honor that her friend saw her as someone she wanted to emulate. After carefully pouring a beer for herself as well as one for Heather, Erin passed the pitcher to a patiently waiting Jeannie.
Her last friend to arrive scooted into the booth across from Heather. Jeannie was a fellow social worker from an 170
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old agency they both worked for and had recently revived their friendship. Heather’s habit of pushing people away and Jeannie’s habit of not allowing people to freeze her out confl icted and they had lost four precious years together because of their differences.
Heather was glad to have her old friend back in her life. Jeannie had always been good to her and her family.
She and her husband doubled dated with Heather and Joey more weekends than not. Jeannie had fallen in love with both of her boys. With no children of her own yet, she lavished her love onto Tommy and Jack.
“Whatcha singing tonight, Heather? Aerosmith?”
Erin asked.
They all knew Heather would enjoy thoughts of Steven Tyler, no matter how upsetting her life became. She had fallen in love with Aerosmith’s singer when she was only seven years old. Most girls her age were watching Pete’s Dragon and Bamb i while Heather pressed the play button on Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band so many times she had broken it.
Though he played the villain who killed her heroine, Strawberry Fields, Heather’s heart ached for Steven each time she watched the silly movie. She’d stare at his red bandana and grungy clothes and wish that she herself were Strawberry Fields. She still tingled for the full-lipped, sexy singer and always hoped in the back of her mind that she would meet him one day. Every time a limousine with tinted windows drove by, she pretended it was him. She’d look at her boys and they would all say it at the same time.
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“Look, it’s Steven Tyler!’
Jeannie giggled.
“We don’t have to call you Strawberry again, do we?”
she asked Heather.
“No, not tonight,” Heather answered with a smile.
“Look,” Erin said pointing at the wall clock. “It’s 11:11.
Happy 11:11!.”
Wishes of a happy eleven-eleven went around the table and everyone drank to the toast.
“Why do we do this exactly?” Erin asked.
“Heather thinks it’s good luck,” Frankie offered.
“No, I don’t. I think it means we’re going in the right direction when we see it,” Heather corrected.
“Why do you think that?” Jeannie asked smiling.
Heather paused. She hated coming off as crazy but there was no way around it.
“It’s a number that’s come up my whole life,” she answered. “It’s been my offi ce number and my extension and my change from receipts and the only time I look at the clock every day,” she explained.
“It’s your license plate number,” Angie laughed.
“Well yeah, now it is because it’s important,” Heather defended.
She looked around at her friends as they tried to subdue their amusement.
“I’m serious!’ Heather insisted but still maintained her smile. “Look it up!”
Their amusement turned to laughter.
“Look it up?” they asked almost in unison.
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“Why? Do they have a website for your crazy thoughts now?” Jade joked. “Must be a busy site.”
“No, asshole,” Heather came back. “Look up 11:11.
They have explanations from the other people who’ve noticed it,” Heather said.
“Oh,” Erin joked, looking around at the group mysteriously. “There are others.”
“Laugh
all you want but I’m telling you, it’s true. Every one of you has noticed since I told you about it, how much it comes up. Don’t act like you guys don’t believe it.”
“Okay,” Frankie interjected. “What do they say it’s supposed to mean?”
Heather continued.
“They say it’s a pre-encoded trigger that we were all programmed with before we got here and that it comes up to remind us whether or not we’re going in the right direction,” Heather fi nished.
“But what do you mean by before we got here?” Angie asked seriously. “Before we got here from where? And why?”
“I don’t know,” Heather pouted. “I guess it’s for each one of us to fi gure out for ourselves.”
Heather took a long sip of beer and asked the waitress for their tab. She decided having Joey pay the tab wasn’t worth the guilt she’d been feeling since she’d asked him.
It was time to stop telling herself he still owed her if she really wanted to maintain a healthy relationship with him. She decided to pay for the wings and pitcher of beer before Joey or anyone else had the chance.
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Who says that exactly?” Jade asked with skepticism.
“Is it the voices?” Jeannie jumped in.
“Whatever,” Heather retorted. She wasn’t really mad.
She didn’t mind when her friends teased her. She gave them the reaction they were looking for but someplace inside, Heather laughed at her own strange beliefs along with them.
“The people who have the websites say it,” she continued. “I only looked it up because of how many times it came up for me and, sure enough it’s all over the internet.”
Heather was glad to see the food come just then.
Angie made sure everyone grabbed from the tray of wings before getting any herself. The smell of hot spicy food energized Heather and she stuck a napkin into the top of her shirt like a bib. She smiled at the new singer taking the stage, her smile widening when she saw the song he chose.
Within seconds, a bad remake of Strawberry Fields poured out of the speakers and Dolly reappeared with their tab. Heather looked at the amount and smiled as she stood to face the bathroom. Deciding to let her friends mull over the coincidences in her absence, she placed the bill back onto the table and pushed it toward them. The amount on the check had been circled in red and Dolly had drawn a happy face right beneath it. Heather handed the bartender her credit card as she passed the bar.