Page 1 of It’s You

D arcy Turner fidgeted in the stiff waiting room guest chair, flicking her eyes to her wrist. The “doctor” was running seven minutes late.

Shooting a quick look at the receptionist, she wondered if the petite blonde would chase after her if Darcy suddenly got up and walked out the door without a word.

But then what? She’d still need answers she didn’t have.

As a rule, Darcy didn’t believe in holistic practices like hypnosis, which she regarded with a boatload of skepticism.

So the fact that she was sitting in the waiting room of the most well-regarded hypnotist in New England meant that she was miles away from her comfort zone. It also meant she was desperate.

She needed answers.

She needed to go back to that night in her mind and figure out what had happened, because the dream was relentless. Barely a night had passed in decades when she hadn’t experienced it all over again, and it was?—

“Mrs. Turner?”

“Ms.,” said Darcy, standing up and gathering her purse and jacket from the chair beside her.

“Sorry! Ms. Turner, Dr. Canard will see you now.”

Darcy took a deep breath, offering the perky receptionist a tight smile as she stepped toward the office door. She hesitated for a moment, but heard Willow’s voice in her head, What do you have to lose, Darce? I made you an appointment. Go for me. Just go and see what happens.

I’m only doing this for Willow , she thought, turning the knob and entering the dimly lit office.

“Darcy.” A tall, dark-haired woman stood up from an easy chair, holding out her hand. “I’m Dr. Canard.”

Darcy almost replied that one of them was a doctor, and it certainly wasn’t Doctor Canard, but Darcy rarely made use of the academic title conferred on her from Harvard almost ten years ago.

Instead, she offered the woman a weak smile and shook her hand before sitting down on the couch across from the hypnotist.

“Would you be more comfortable calling me Fanny?”

“Yes.” Darcy nodded. “I would.”

“Are you a skeptic?”

“I’m a scientist,” Darcy explained. “I have a PhD in Botany.”

“I see,” said Fanny, with a warm, confident smile. “Do you mind my asking why you’ve decided to be hypnotized?”

“I wouldn’t have chosen to come here. My best friend insisted I give this a try.”

“Ah. I assume she believes in the efficacy of hypnosis?”

Darcy took a deep breath, moving her jacket and purse from her lap and settling them on the couch beside her. When she looked up, Fanny’s eyes were wide and curious, warm and kind.

“She’s a doctor too. A medical doctor. But, yes. She’s always embraced whole body medicine. She says that we will never understand the human body completely, and that ancient and holistic medical practices have their place in our world.”

“I’d love to meet her.”

Darcy found herself smiling back at Fanny. “She’s one in a million.”

“Take another deep breath with me, Darcy.” They inhaled and exhaled together. “Feeling better? Less anxious?”

Not really . “Maybe a little.”

“It’s okay. It’s actually easier to hypnotize an anxious person.”

“Is that right?”

“Mm-hm,” said Fanny in her low, soothing voice. “That’s right.”

“Well, then I should be a breeze for you.”

Fanny chuckled softly, tilting her head to the side. “Tell me why you’re here today.”

Knowing her reason might sound crazy made Darcy hesitate for a moment. Then again, who did she have to impress? She dropped her defenses and started at the beginning.

“When I was fifteen, there was a boy I knew in high school. He was…” A flash of memory. It can’t be . It’s you. “He kissed me once. One time. During a school play. And I never saw him again after that. I never saw him again, period.”

“Okay.”

“I’m thirty-five years old…which means it’s been twenty years,” Darcy murmured, clearing her throat before continuing.

“I’ve dated. I’ve…slept with other men. I’ve even been engaged.

But my mind always— always —returns to that kiss.

I dream about it almost every night. I can’t forget it. I can’t shake it. I can’t…”

“You can’t get past it.” A statement, not a question.

“No. I can’t.” She swallowed over the lump in her throat, grateful for Fanny’s kind, sympathetic eyes.

“Willow—my doctor friend—thinks that maybe if I could regress my memory, I might see something, find something, remember something from that night that would explain my…intense memories.” My intense obsession.

“I understand. Do you have any substantial memories of that night?”

“Oh, yes! I remember it very well. I feel like I remember every detail. I’ve watched it happen in my dreams, over and over again, thousands of times, like a movie.

Honestly, even if I did believe in hypnosis, I don’t think regression will show me anything new.

” Darcy paused. “I’m desperate, Fanny. Maybe there’s one little thing I’m forgetting that will explain its strange hold on me.

I just don’t want to be trapped. Not trapped, per se, but it’s like that night is holding me hostage or… or…”

She couldn’t think of the right words to explain the strange grasp that night— that kiss, that boy —still had on her, but the connection was like a fetter, keeping her chained to it despite the passage of time.

She didn’t understand it, and she couldn’t explain it. She only knew she wasn’t free from it.

“Well, I have everything I need,” said Fanny gently. “Are you ready to go back, Darcy? Are you ready to discover whatever’s there?”

Darcy nodded, knowing that she didn’t really have a choice and feeling that she had nothing to lose.

“I’m ready.”

“Then let’s get started.”

This is my favorite part of the entire play.

High school sophomore Darcy Turner knew if she stayed inconspicuous, concealed behind the thick curtain of velvet, she would be left alone to watch the onstage action in the darkness. Leaning her cheek against the soft, musty fabric, she closed her eyes.

The moment the auditorium house lights went dim, the hum of intermission conversation dissolved to a murmur.

She heard the pitter-patter of actors taking their places on the centuries-old, high school stage: the girls in their silly dancing poses that would elicit light laughter when the curtain opened, and the four boys in pinstriped barbershop jackets, walking out in unison and taking their places downstage next to a papier-maché street lamp.

A quartet that included the most beautiful boy she had ever seen.

Jack Beauloup.

Thinking of the tall, dark baritone standing just a few feet from her, butterflies filled Darcy’s stomach, beating their wings close to her pounding heart.

All was silent now. She clutched at the velvet and willed every bit of longing in her fifteen-year-old body to focus on him, pleaded wordlessly with every bit of magic in that old high school theater to find him in the darkness, and to let him know…

I wait here every night for you.

She opened her eyes when the curtain parted and heard the audience’s predicted chuckle. They’d worked hard on the play for weeks, and Darcy was proud of their success, but on the heels of triumph was a fast-approaching melancholy. Tonight was the final performance.

Darcy regretted that she had never mustered up the courage to speak to Jack Beauloup directly during the weeks of practices.

She had first noticed the handsome new student in the library at the beginning of the school year and had secretly watched him over the ensuing weeks, desperate to know if he was brooding or just reserved.

Sometimes she felt him watching her too, but when caught, he would look away so lazily as to suggest she was merely in his line of sight, not the object of his gaze.

Jack had paid her no special attention during the two months of rehearsals, but he often left the theater at the same time she did.

Crackling with awareness, she felt him following her, though he never spoke to her or otherwise sought her attention…

except for one time, when he grabbed her arm.

She was distracted that day. Walking and reading at the same time, she missed a car coming sharply around the parking lot curve headed for her.

“Be more careful.” Jack had growled at her, his fingers digging into her skin, his face sharp with anger as he held her eyes. Startled, she’d glanced down at his hand, and he’d dropped it instantly before stalking away.

The next day, right after the quartet’s performance of “It’s You,” Darcy held her breath as he exited to stage right. She stood in his line of sight, fully composed and ready to thank him, only to be disappointed when he gave her a terse nod that made her swallow her words.

You’re too young.

You’re not pretty enough.

You’re too bookish and boring.

Not to mention, he was graduating in May, while Darcy still had two more years of high school left to go. She was a ridiculous, love-struck toddler with a crush on a boy who barely acknowledged she was alive.

The ladies finished their silly dancing routine, and Darcy giggled and clapped quietly from her place in the wings.

Her smile faded completely, however, when the music director played a short note on the harmonica.

As the barbershop quartet hummed the first chord of “It’s You,” preparing to sing the sweet, old-fashioned love song, Darcy’s teenage heart clenched with yearning.

It was the final time the boys would sing the song onstage, and she felt—desperately, unreasonably—that time was going too fast, that there should be a hundred more performances, that she needed more time to make him see her, notice her, want her.

The quartet took a simultaneous deep breath, and she closed her eyes to savor their voices, picking through them for Jack’s strong baritone.

It’s you in the sunrise; it’s you in my cup.

It’s you all the way into town.

It’s your sweet, “Hello, dear,” that sets me up.

And it’s your, “Got to go, dear,” that gets me down.