Parallel

smoggy, it’s also hazy. But today I can see all the way to the foothills. When was the last time the sky looked like this? My mind dances on the edge of a memory, unable to make the connection.
    “Ticket?” comes a voice, snapping me back to reality. I’ve reached the turnstile, where a girl in a maroon-and-gold hoodie is collecting tickets.
    I look at her blankly. Completely forgot about the ticket factor. “I, uh, don’t have one yet,” I tell her. “Where can I buy one?”
    She laughs. “You’re kidding, right? The game has been sold out for months. There are scalpers around, but I doubt any of them are selling for less than two fifty.”
    “Two hundred and fifty dollars? For college football?”
    The girl looks past me to the bear of a man behind me, dressed from head to toe in powder blue.
    “Ticket?”
    The man brushes past me, nearly knocking me over.
    “I can sell you a ticket.”
    I turn to see a junior high kid in an oversized USC sweatshirt on a bike that looks like it belongs to a five-year-old. The kid looks around the parking lot like a cop might be waiting to bust him. I sprint to the curb.
    “How much?” I ask in a low voice. “I can’t pay a lot.”
    “Fifty bucks,” he replies, pulling a single ticket out of his front pocket and holding it up for me to see. “It’s real,” he adds, coming to a stop a few feet from me. “It’s a good seat, too. UCLA side.”
    The other side of the stadium from where Josh is sitting, but at this point I can’t be choosy. “I’ll take it,” I tell the kid, digging through my bag for my wallet.
    “You don’t look like the football type,” he tells me as he waits for his cash. “Who you cheering for?”
    “I’m not. Hey, I only have twenties and two ones. Will you take forty-two?”
    “Sixty.”
    “But you said it was only fifty!”
    “And you said you don’t got fifty. What do I look like, an ATM?” Glaring at him, I hold out my three twenties. He pockets the money, hands me the ticket, and pedals off.
    Once inside, I easily find Section 11. Making my way down the cement stairs, I crane my neck for a glimpse of Josh’s dusty blond head. When I finally reach his row, my heart is pounding and the backs of my knees are clammy with sweat. Here it goes. I step down one more step so I can see the entire row and scan it, person by person, waiting for the moment that my eyes hit his familiar face.
    But he’s not there. There are two empty seats in the middle of the row, but no Josh. I recheck the text from Tyler to make sure I’m in the right place. Section 11, Row 89. So where is he?
    I quickly dial Tyler’s number.
    “He’s not here!” I moan when Tyler picks up.
    “Who’s not where?”
    “Josh isn’t where you said he’d be. Section 11, Row 89.”
    Just then, USC scores a touchdown, and the coliseum erupts with noise.
    “You’re in L.A. ?”
    “I came to tell Josh how I feel about him. I wanted it to be a surprise.”
    “Aren’t you dating his brother?”
    “We broke up.”
    Tyler says something in reply, but USC has just kicked the extra point, and I can’t hear anything over the deafening roar. It’s a good sixty seconds before he’s audible again.
    “He’s there,” Tyler tells me. “He just texted me back. He’s with some girl he knows from junior high.”
    “With her, like, dating her?”
    “If he were dating her, I’d hope he wouldn’t refer to her as ‘this girl I know from junior high.’ No, he just ran into her on the way in. Her seats were better than his and she had a couple extra tickets. Section 6. Third row.”
    “Thanks,” I say, already halfway up the stairs. “I’m on my way.”
    “It’s a pretty ballsy move, Barnes, flying all the way across the country like that,” Tyler muses. “What if he tells you to go to hell?”
    “Thank you, Tyler, for the vote of confidence. Good-bye.”
    By the time I get to the entrance of Section 6, I’m a frazzled, windblown mess. Lovely. A quick stop in the ladies’ room helps, but also confirms that I look like a wild-eyed crazy person. Probably because I am a wild-eyed crazy person. With sweaty armpits. I stare at myself in the soap-splattered mirror, wondering what happened to the cool and confident girl who flew across the country this morning. “What’s the worst that can happen?” I ask my reflection. I don’t wait for my reply.
    This time, Josh is easy to spot. He’s the only guy in red in a sea of blue and yellow. He’s sitting