Cassandra in Reverse

by Holly Smale

Where does a story start? It’s a lie, the first page of a book, because it masquerades as a beginning. A real beginning—the opening of something—when what you’re being offered is an arbitrary line in the sand. This story starts here. Pick a random event. Ignore whatever came before it or catch up later. Pretend the world stops when the book closes, or that a resolution isn’t simply another random moment on a curated timeline. But life isn’t like that, so books are dishonest. Maybe that’s why humans like them.

Maybe all my carefully arranged neurons have been mixed up, like the tiles in a Scrabble bag.

I should not know this, because that’s just not how time or knowledge or days of the week or meetings work. Admittedly, I’m not a scientist, but I feel like that’s basic entry-level physics.

“You know,” I hear Jack say not very quietly to Barry, “I’m all for equal opportunities and box-ticking and disability acts and shit, but I feel like you should have told us Cassandra was on the spectrum before we signed with you.” I briefly picture myself sliding down an iridescent rainbow. It seems unlikely that’s what they mean.

I’m going to be told I’m unlikable and unlovable, over and over again, and there’ll be nothing I can do about it, because even with infinite chances you can’t make someone like you or love you in less than twenty-four hours. There’s a solid chance I could be stuck in the third-worst day of my life for the rest of eternity, much like Prometheus: chained to a rock, doomed to have my liver pecked out by eagles every single day, then waiting for it to grow back every night so it can happen again. Except, instead of eagles, it’s other humans, and instead of beaks, it’s hurtful words, and instead of liver, it’s my entire fucking identity.

Because if things can be broken, then things can be changed; and if things can be changed, then it stands to good and logical reason that they can also be fixed.

And I don’t expect you to believe this, or even care, given that we’ve broken up, but I needed to tell someone, and frankly, you’re all I have.” The accuracy of this statement brings me crashing to a halt. Will is all I have. My ex-boyfriend of not quite four months is all I have. And this is exactly why you shouldn’t chase people down in the street without a script: you end up realizing devastating shit like that.

this is clearly my first meeting with Will and I just told him I’m his insane time-traveling ex-girlfriend who doesn’t have any friends. This isn’t a meet-cute. It’s a meet-horrifying.

It turns out rewinding your own life is both physically and mentally exhausting, a bit like changing all your bedding.

Thanks to my new gift, I am literally watching myself repel my future boyfriend away from me over and over again, and it’s making me wonder just how many people I’ve done this to in my life already, without even realizing it. How many people have I repelled with the wrong word in the wrong tone at the wrong time, with a hostile or blank facial expression, an inability to make eye contact? How many people were supposed to be in my life before I accidentally sent them spiraling away?

“You’ve traveled a lot,” I say, precisely on cue. Will looks up again in surprise, so I point at the battered stickers plastered all over his doomed laptop. Thailand. Australia. The Philippines. Iceland. I did make this observation last time too, but I feel a lot more confident in the assertion now I know the story behind every single one of them. “Not really.” Will beams, and something in my stomach abruptly glows. “I just like pretty and painfully stylish strangers in coffee shops to think I do. Sadly, my I’m A Very Interesting Person sticker fell off last week.”

I don’t think we talk enough, as a species, about how ridiculously difficult it is to make basic conversation. People act like it should be fun, but it isn’t. It’s like playing tennis, and you have to stay permanently perched on the balls of your feet just to work out where the ball is coming from and where it’s supposed to go next. Is it their turn? My turn? Will I get there fast enough? Have I missed my shot? Did I just interrupt theirs? Am I hogging the ball? Is this a gentle back-and-forth rally, just to waste time, or would they prefer one of us to just smack it into the corner? It’s exhausting even when I don’t know all the answers already.

“You got me in one. Shit. No wonder I’m still single.” No wonder I’m still single. And, just like that, we’re back to the original script. Will dropped that information and left it sitting there like gum the first time round too: knowing it would stick. Except last time, I wasn’t sure what it meant. Was he hitting on me? Alerting me to his dating availability? Was it simply an exchange of irrelevant data, the way conversation so often is? What if he was generally commiserating with me on his marital status because I looked like a person used to being alone for long periods of time too? Last time, this one sentence sent me into a spiral of anxiety and embarrassment and white-hot confusion. This time, I can feel the meaning: wedged in my shoe. “Well,” I say, finally making direct eye contact with an almost Herculean strength, like lifting a boar above my head. “Now you know, maybe you can work out why I’m still single too.” Will grins widely, meeting my eyes, and I cannot believe how much easier flirting is when you’ve already rehearsed it once before.

Behind the counter, the coffee machine hisses and bright yellow runs through me in a line, like a trickle of paint. I know what’s going to happen next, because it already has. For possibly the first time in three decades, I’m not weighed down by trying to read someone’s colors and their facial expression and their body language and their tone and their words and also look out for jokes and sarcasm and flirting and secret insults and what is implied and what is left unspoken and somehow simultaneously filter out the chatter around me and the milk frother and the sensation of the chair under my bum and the movement of my fingers and position of my own feet and the breeze on my face and the sound of the doorbell ringing and the sound of my own heart and breath and the muscles in my own face. For just a few seconds of my life I get to just be present, and it is joyful.

The Titan Eos has a really unfair reputation. Essentially the Bridget Jones of Greek mythology, the rosy-fingered bringer of dawn is known for two things: opening the gates every morning so her brother Helios can drive the sun across the sky, and being cursed by Aphrodite with a really shit love life for all eternity. So, while most of Olympus is indulging in endless torrid love affairs and pairing up like penguins, the immortal Titan Eos dates, and fails, and dates, and fails. She’s the original rom-com heroine: forever focused on finding love, wearing shades of pink, seen by all the other gods as a bit of a desperate loser. But, of all the goddesses, I think Eos is the most powerful. Love is a courageous thing to pursue, and to me Eos represents hope, and resilience, and light in the darkest hour. She represents the strength to keep trying, even when you know you’re doomed. She represents new beginnings and refusing to accept defeat. She also represents the ability to change your husband into a cicada when he gets very old and kind of annoying.

And obviously my answer is no. My answer is: I have never in my entire life been free tonight, because if we haven’t arranged it days in advance and I haven’t spent the day mentally preparing myself for social interaction, I am not coming.

“Good morning!” Will walks toward me, grinning like a handsome salamander.

“What the fuck is wrong with me? Honestly, I thought I’d know what I was doing with my life by my thirties, but I don’t have a single clue. I don’t know what I want. I don’t know what I don’t want. I don’t know what’s supposed to make me happy. In the meantime, the rest of the world seems to be just getting on with it. I look online and everyone I’ve ever met is having babies and getting engaged and getting promoted and buying a new kitchen. It feels like literally everyone I know is moving forward.”

get caught up with trying to read all the music around me instead of one note inside myself.”

Maybe I’m not overthinking it. Maybe I’ve been told I’m overthinking it so often, by so many people, I’ve convinced myself it’s all I’m capable of. But what if they’re wrong? What if I’m thinking it exactly the right amount? What if everyone else is simply underthinking it, continuously, and the deficit is actually theirs? Because something tells me I’m not in the wrong here: my instincts are spot-on.

That’s the thing I’ve never really understood about emotions. We’re given unhelpful words for them—sad, happy, angry, scared, disgusted—but they’re not accurate and there never seems to be anywhere near enough of them. How could there be? Emotions aren’t binary or finite: they change, shift, run into each other like colored water. They are layered, three-dimensional and twisted; they don’t arrive in order, one by one, labeled neatly. They lie on top of each other, twisting like kaleidoscopes, like prisms, like spinning bird feathers lit with their own iridescence. And then a therapist says How do you feel, Cassandra? and you’re supposed to somehow know, just like that. As if grappling for a rainbow you can feel in your hands.

There are infinite things you can do with time. You can save it, spend it, stitch it, kill it. You can beat it, steal it and watch it fly. You can do time and set it; you can waste it and keep it; it can be good or bad, on your side or against you. You can have a whale of it; be in the nick of it or behind it; you can have it on your hands. Memories are time travel, and so are regrets, hopes and daydreams. When we die, the people we love carry us forward into it. So if we’re all just moving forward and backward, living all the times at once—if time is an arbitrary concept that we can bend to our will—then what does 11:00 p.m. last orders mean, anyway? If time belongs to all of us, how can you possibly close it? And it’s saying this kind of drunk shit that gets both me and Artemis thrown out of the pub.

Ideally, I’d be paid money to sit in a dimly lit room, reading and talking to nobody. Apart from maybe on the rare occasion where I’m wheeled out to talk at someone about something I’m interested in, and everybody is forced to listen but not allowed to respond.”

And I suddenly realize that my life no longer feels paper-plate disposable; I can’t just throw it away or undo it. I don’t want to discard it because it’s not perfect, or because there are flaws in my tapestry. It’s not quite there yet—there’s still a long way to go—but I want my life to eventually become ceramic: one I can wash and keep, even when it chips. A life I can use every day; one I smile at because it makes me happy, like a picture of a cute hedgehog.

I know I promised I wouldn’t fiddle with time anymore—a promise I’ve broken once already—but for a few seconds, I genuinely consider erasing the entire last month of my life just to get out of this one social event.

I’m still trying to work out what changed between us. What exactly shifted the narrative? Was it the dress I gave her? Was it the chili Sal brought me? Was it a finger on her shoulder when she was crying, or the offered raw croissant I never ate? Was it sharing the truth with each other? Or did every tiny connection—every word, every gesture, every kindness—simply nudge us in a brand-new direction?

Where does a story end? It’s a lie, the last page of a book, because it masquerades as a conclusion. A real conclusion—the culmination of something—when what you’re being offered is an arbitrary line in the sand. This story ends here. Pick a random event. Ignore whatever comes after it, or write a sequel. Pretend the world stops when the book closes, or that a final chapter isn’t simply another random moment on a curated timeline. But life isn’t like that, so books are dishonest. Maybe that’s why humans like them.