It obviously had not worked. I clearly never resolved my past, never really moved on.

Which caused more guilt. How dare I be unhappy with such a glamorous, charmed life?

Aimee had texted me early in the morning, the quiet vibration of the phone on the nightstand enough to rocket me out of unconsciousness. As soon as I saw her name on the phone, a fresh jolt of adrenaline coursed through me, but it was just the file of the new script, sent without comment. I had opened it and read it in its entirety, over and over until the sun started to tinge the sky dusty periwinkle and sleep took me over.

When I finally got out of bed, Kiera was gone, a note left behind again, the corner tucked under the partially burned candle.

You’re a good person. Love ya, xx, K

I put it on the fridge with a magnet, and then went on memorizing lines.

They’re easy to remember for three reasons: One, she wrote the dialogue in a voice very similar to mine. Two, my professional experience. And three, I am so desperate for pieces of Aimee that I consume her words the way a Hungry Hungry Hippo goes after little white marbles.

When I arrive at the Avalon Playhouse, I am instantly swarmed by feelings. It’s like déjà vu, and I realize that that’s what a lot of my time in Avalon has felt like. When I knew where the whiskey was, when I knew my sweatpants were in the back of the closet. When I look at Cillian. That scene I saw at his apartment. There’s a sense of familiarity but no memory alongside it. I wonder if this is what déjà vu is. What if it’s different realities bleeding through?

Somehow, that’s a comforting theory.

The theater is grand and warm. Ancient and broken-in, a content wisdom in its walls. I can practically hear the echoes of all the ghosts on the stage and in the audience.

I know a lot about the theater, since it’s attached to the school. Or more accurately, the school is attached to it. Both were built in a Tudor style and are surrounded by lush grass and ancient vines.

As the story goes, the Avalon Playhouse was built in the late 1500s for Queen Elizabeth I by a secret lover. No one knows if she ever visited it, and there are a lot of questions about it due to the fact that Ireland was in revolt and tensions were high with the English, to put it incredibly lightly. She was busy colonizing the place and the Irish wouldn’t have wanted her around, so the idea that she had a secret Irish lover is all the more salacious. Another version of the story says that it was some psycho wealthy guy who built it for her but that she never even knew him.