Элисон Скотч - The Theory of Opposites

My mom and Nancy fly up for the premiere, and Amanda and Nicky make their way in from Brooklyn. Nicky’s invited three buddies along, and they keep slapping each other high fives and saying things like, “Holy shit, dude, I can’t believe that you got to do this! You rock, bro!” And Amanda keeps checking her phone and saying, “Sorry. There’s a crisis in Nigeria. I’m not trying to be rude.” But Nicky doesn’t seem to mind, probably because he’s used to it, but also because, I like to think, he has me. (And he has Shawn, of course, too.)

Nancy sips Pellegrino, and my mom pours herself a Scotch.

“Maybe we should have invited your father.”

“Come on, Mom,” Raina says. “He put himself in this position. He wasn’t exactly supportive of Willa.”

So my mom sighs. “I know. I just feel bad for him these days. He doesn’t seem to have anyone on his side.”

“I think he might have a new girlfriend,” Raina replies. “I saw something on Facebook.”

I overhear them. “Dad’s on Facebook now? Jesus.”

And Ollie says: “I’m on his side. I’ve always been on his side. Though I don’t really believe that we should take sides because then it gets into yin and yang, and there is no good middle ground.”

And Raina says: “Oh, shut up, Ollie.” And then she bugs her eyes at him but she’s redone her Botox, so she can’t look nearly as annoyed as she likely is, so she just huffs and retreats to Jeremy, who is manning the bar, and then to find Gloria to see if she’s given all four kids their showers.

Vanessa whirls in and hugs me close. “Holy a-mahz-ing, I can’t believe you did it. I cannot believe you had the balls to do Dare You! ”

“We did it together.”

“True.” She kisses me on the cheek. “But you still did this on your own.”

Just before 8 p.m., my own phone buzzes:

Text from: Shawn Golden

To: Willa Chandler-Golden

Good luck 2night. Bet ull be gr8t.

And I smile because he’s still doing that annoying thing where he types “8” instead of using the extra few seconds to actually type the real letters, and I smile wider because I bet he’s also still using too much mousse and is back to calling people “dude,” even though he just wants to be the old Shawn. But without me, he’s had to figure out what that new old Shawn is.

Though I can’t say any of this for certain because I haven’t checked his Facebook profile since he headed back to Palo Alto two weeks ago — he moved there for good after I broke the news.

When I returned home from Dare You!, I asked Shawn out to dinner at Hop Lee (actually, I scheduled it on our Together To-Do! app, which I promptly deleted afterward), and I told him I was pregnant. And he got really excited until he did the math, and then he got a lot less excited. And I took a bite of an egg roll and explained that it wasn’t the pregnancy that made me decide, decide that we shouldn’t be Shilla. But that we should be Shawn. And Willa. Each on our own, each as our own. And that was why I was making this choice. Owning this choice. Learning to have guts and aim higher. Because with him, I would be eating eggs on Sunday forever. I’d never start running, even though what I always did was run from everything. He looked confused at that, and I clarified: “Like, running 5Ks. Or up mountains.”

And he said: “Well, if you wanted to start running or didn’t like eggs, you should have just told me. You didn’t have to get pregnant.”

“I’m pretty sure you know that’s not the point.”

“This never would have happened if I hadn’t been such an idiot.”

“Maybe not. But it’s probably better that it did.”

And I thought about that for a long time after he left. How life rose up and surprised the both of us. But it was more than that, too — it wasn’t just life that rose up; that’s how my dad would say it — but how we both rose up and changed our lives by exploring the forks in the road. Left or right? It can change everything. Nothing is meant to be, unless you’re talking fairy tales, and I was never much of a princess.

I texted Theo from Seattle and asked him if we could meet when I was back. There were things to say. There were things that I owed him. He was in D.C. consulting on a top-secret project for the State Department, but he took the Acela back into town and met me at the hospital the morning after Shilla was no more. I told him I was doing post-show medical tests, and I’d like him along in case I decided to sue.

He held open the door at Mt. Sinai as I hobbled in, and he ran his palm over the stitches near my eye.

“Is it as bad as it looks?”

And I said: “No, nothing’s really as it seems. I’ve actually never been better.”

And he looked at me for a long time, waiting for me to explain more, and I looked at him back, knowing that if he knew me well, he would know that I was here, ready, brave, chock full of guts, and no other words could do it justice.

Finally, he said: “Okay.”

And I said: “Now come on, we have an appointment.”

And he said: “ You have an appointment. I’m just here for advice. And counsel, in case you decide to sue.”

“No. We have an appointment. There are three of us involved now.”

“There…are…three of us? What? I don’t... The three of us have an appointment?”

“Sometimes, the first test fails.” I smile.

“What?”

“But the second time around, the second chance, that’s the one you never doubt.”

“What?”

I placed his hand on my belly and rested my own palm over his heart.

And I said: “You really don’t know everything in the world, now do you?”

And he said: “Is this what I think? Oh my God, is this actually what I think?”

And I said: “Y.E.S.”

Daring Yourself to a Better Life!

By Vanessa Pines and Willa Chandler

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

There are so many people to thank for this book, but we have to start with our readers. It’s hard to believe that DYTABL has now gone back to press twenty times! While we made headlines for bumping Dr. Richard Chandler’s (my dad’s) own book out of the number one spot on the New York Times bestseller list, what has truly been the most gratifying is hearing from you, our fans, who have also become our friends, our family. We have received over 400,000 posts on our Facebook page (Facebook.com/daringyourself), and your tweets and quotes and daily thoughts bring us joy every single day. Yep, that’s really us replying, really us “liking” your own dares that you are kind enough to share.

Also, thanks to you and your outpouring of support, we have been lucky enough to partner with Dare You! and establish a fund that sends 9/11 children (and other children who have lost parents) on solo wilderness hikes, and because of this, we aren’t just changing our own lives, but others’ lives, too.

But this is a section for thank-yous, so in no particular order, here goes:

Thank you to Richard Chandler, who recently friended me on Facebook. I accepted his request. Que sera sera, you know?

Thank you to Kylie Chandler-Brackton, who was born after twenty hours of excruciating labor (in which I abandoned any belief in God), and then started sleeping through the night at eight weeks (in which I started believing again) and is sometimes so close to heaven, that she almost convinces both Vanessa and me of serendipity.

Thank you to Raina Chandler-Farley, who is guts personified, and also, to her husband, Jeremy, who has proven to be a surprisingly excellent occasional emergency babysitter. (Who knew?)

Thank you to Ollie, who challenged me to discover conviction but who also taught me about inner peace. It turns out I was doing the whole breathing thing wrong.