Book Six, Chapter 88: Bobby III

One year later…

The words appeared on the script so plainly, and yet they represented such an accomplishment. Bobby Gill stared at them while his eyes glazed over.

How had Riley been so confident that Carousel would accept such a bargain? One time skip, and suddenly the players and the enemies were back in sync. It was an impressive move, and while things like that had once inspired envy for the pettiest of reasons, now they inspired envy for another.

If Riley were searching for Janet, would he have found her already, assuming he didn’t already know where she was? Would he have figured out a way?

He had saved his friends, after all, though he had help.

Was Bobby’s failure to make meaningful progress in finding Janet due to how difficult the challenge was, or how inept he was at doing it?

He pushed away the thought.

One year later…

It was strange to think about.

What had his character been up to? Sulking around the apartment? Falling more and more behind on his bills? Searching fruitlessly for Janet in hopes that he didn’t actually have to play along with this insane cultish ritual?

Who knew.

Bobby awoke in darkness with the smell of earth all around him, but not just the earth. There was also the smell of something else.

Janet’s perfume.

He focused his eyes and searched his surroundings. He was alone in the dark, but not for long.

“Bobby,” a voice called out to him, echoing through his ribs like a deep bass.

He turned to his right and saw only darkness at first, more inky blackness that revealed nothing.

“Bobby, it’s okay. We can talk,” the voice called out—Janet’s voice. It was unmistakable.

His head went light, and his heart fluttered. What a wonderful thing to feel again.

Being in love with Janet was like having a crush on a pretty teacher. It was an impossible love and so out of Bobby’s depth that he never dreamed anything would come of those feelings.

Janet had been an administrator at the company where Bobby worked in IT. She felt like his boss; she felt like everyone’s boss, including their actual boss. That was something she could do: walk into a room and take charge.

At first, he had grumbled sourly to meet someone like that, but then the feelings came like a hot flash, like falling off the side of a building every time she emailed him. She had smiled at him, and it had woken him up.

And somehow, she had liked him back. Who could have ever predicted that? Not Bobby, that’s for sure.

“Janet,” he called out into the darkness.

His voice echoed no matter how quiet he tried to make it, and the way it bounced off the walls, he could tell he was in a large, cavernous room, right up against something solid.

He reached his hand out and felt cool glass, and the moment he touched it, the glass lit up red, like a firefly on Valentine’s Day. In the place where the lights shone through, he could see Janet’s favorite blouse, the white one with the yellow polka dots.

He began pawing at the glass wall, and as he touched it, more and more of it lit up, and he could see more and more of what appeared on the other side.

It was Janet, smiling. How long had it been since he had seen her smiling? The car ride to Carousel? That felt like a lifetime ago.

“I thought you stood me up again,” she said.

“I never stood you up,” Bobby said with a crack in his voice. “I just got lost. I told you that. I forgot the name of the restaurant and—”

“And then you went into the wrong restaurant and sat at a table waiting for me while I was at the right restaurant waiting for you,” Janet said, “and we both thought the worst of each other.”

A tear rolled down Bobby’s cheek.

“I could have sworn you said the Mediterranean place,” he said.

Janet shrugged. “I said one thing, you heard another. We hadn’t learned to speak each other’s languages yet. No harm done.”

Bobby laughed and put his forehead against the glass like he was talking to her through a window and just wanted to be closer.

“What is this place?” he asked. He mostly knew the answer, but he just wanted to hear her voice.

“You know,” she said. “This is our secret spot, and one day soon I am going to walk right through it and we will be together forever, just like we planned.”

Bobby smiled, but a pain grew inside him, and he clutched his chest.

“This isn’t real,” he said. He jolted for a moment as he checked to see whether he was On-Screen or Off-Screen.

It turned out the cameras were rolling. He needed to be in character. He wished more than anything he didn’t have to be.

“It can be real,” Janet said. “You know how.”

“I know,” Bobby said, “but I can’t.”

Stolen story; please report.

“You promised,” Janet said. “You said you didn’t care anymore. You promised you would do whatever it took to get me back.”

She didn’t sound angry or sad. She sounded disappointed.

“But not like this,” he said.

“Exactly like this,” Janet said. “Exactly like we planned night after night through this terrible glass.”

Bobby paused to breathe as he realized that she was talking about his character, who had apparently devoted a lot of time to coming here during the time skip.

“Sweetheart, I just want to know what happened to you. Where did you go?” he asked, and he meant it both for his character and himself.

“The answers you’re looking for are answers in a cold, dark world that I have never been to,” she said. “Don’t you understand? In this world, nothing happened to me, nothing that you couldn’t fix. Here, you saved me. You found me. You didn’t stop until you had me in your arms. You waited by my hospital bed day and night. Don’t you remember? Isn’t that what you want? A world where you managed to save me? Where the pain was all worth it?”

Of course, she wouldn’t know what happened to her character or what happened to the real Janet, because she wasn’t the real Janet, and she wasn’t his character’s wife. She was a doppelganger from another world with the voice and the face of the woman he loved.

A small woman, but powerful, and he had gotten her killed by bringing her here. She always seemed so untouchable, so smart, and it turned out that her biggest mistake was him.

“I don’t care if I save you,” Bobby said. “I just want you back.”

He started to cry. Carousel took mercy on him and ended the scene.

Off-Screen.

He looked up at Janet. She didn’t disappear when the cameras left. He was thankful for that.

“I wish I could have been here with you,” he said. “Like, really been here during the time skip. If that’s all I could have gotten, I would take it. I would take anything that brought me closer to you.”