"Don't Stop Believing"
The scene opens in the log cabin home of Sara Pettis, in Nome, Alaska. She knows that it's going to be awhile before she gets a chance to just relax here for awhile. So she's decided to go here to do just that while she can. In her mind, shes thinking about Reloaded this past week. She's sure that Gust gave her the win, and she replays the match over and over again in her head. As she stands on the back patio, looking into the beautiful wilderness of Alaska. People think of Alaska as being covered in ice all year round. But during the Summer, the ice does melt, and the land, the forest, everything becomes green, at least for a few months. She sighs as she thinks about what Nate said too her in their most recent meeting. She's certain he wasn't telling the truth, he has certain signs that she's picked up on over the years, but she isn't going to tell him that. The last thing she wants is for him to worry about her. He has almost as much going on as she does, and the fact that he just returned, she's sure he has a lot on his mind too.
She hears the slider door that leads to the patio open and close behind her. She assumes it's Kotomi. She feels sorry for her cousin, who she knows has too feel cooped up in this cabin lately.
"I'm surprised you're not sick of this place yet," Sara says not turning around, expecting to hear the thick Japanese accent of her cousin respond from behind her. Instead she's greeted by another voice. The same voice from in the locker room this weekend at Reloaded.
"Why would you say that, I haven't been here in years."
Sara quickly turns around...
...and sees nothing.
Sara is obviously confused, as she looks around, running to the edge of the patio, and looking down the hill below to see if she can see anyone. She quickly opens the slider door, and into the cabin.
"Hello? Anyone there? Kotomi?" waiting for a response,"KOTOMI!"
Kotomi immediately sprints down the hall upstairs, and to the banister overlooking the main room. She sees her cousin standing in the center of the room, obviously upset and confused. "Whats wrong Sara?" She asks.
"Kotomi, I have to ask you something. Is there anyone else in the house?" Sara asks, looking up at her cousin.
Kotomi gets a puzzled look on her face. "No Sara-chan. It's just me and you." She tells her.
Sara immediately falls back onto the couch in the main room, and rubs her face with her hands, "Oh god, I'm losing it." Sara says to herself, "I'm going fuckin' insane."
Kotomi has now walked down the stairs, and over to where Sara is sitting. She sits down next to her cousin, "What's wrong?"
"I...I keep...." Sara looks at Kotomi, "Never mind." Sara gets up and goes back up the stairs, with Kotomi watching her the whole way. She walks into the master bathroom. She walks over to the medicine cabinet and opens it, pulling out a bottle of Advil. She opens the bottle, and takes a couple, and then puts them back in the cabinet. She closes the cabinet and looks up in the mirror, and sees the reflection of the woman from the locker room again behind her.
"What the hell!" Sara yells startled, and turning around, and seeing no one there. She turns back around towards the mirror on the cabinet, and again, the reflection is gone. Sara hears the foot steps of her cousin racing up the stairs, and knocking on the door.
"Sara-chan? Sara are you ok?" She asks through the door.
Sara catches her breath, and turns on the water, splashing it in her eyes, and face. "Yea, I'm fine." Sara yells back.
"I'm coming in, is that ok?" She asks.
"No, I'm fine, I'll be out in a second." Sara tells her.
Sara reaches up and grabs a hand towel and dries herself off. Walks back to the door, and looks into the mirror again, and only sees herself staring at her. She sighs and opens the door, and is surprised by her cousin who is standing right there.
"Hey, are you ok?" Kotomi says to Sara.
Sara looks up at her, "What did you say?"
"I asked, if you are ok, Sara-chan." Kotomi replies in her normal, heavily Japanese voice.
Sara rubs her forehead, and walks past Kotomi and towards her bedroom. She goes in, and slams the door shut behind her. She looks over at her cell phone on her nightstand, and picks it up. She sees that she has a missed call, and voice mail. She checks the number on the screen, it's the home phone number back in Ozone Park. She sighs figuring it's her step-father harassing her. She punches in her own number, and her pass code to access her voice mail.
"You...have......1...unplayed....message...press...7...to...play...this...message..." Sara presses the 7 on her phone, "Thursday....July...26th....11...41...AM..."
"Hey, it's me. Are you ok babe? I really want to talk to you, so just call me back, please. You don't know how hard I'm trying to reach you..." The message ends.
"Message...ended...that...was..your...last...message."
Sara stares at her phone, wide eyed. Her hand begins to tremble at the thought of who it is. She sets the phone down, and sits on her bed, and looks at it. A tear rolls down her check as she sees it light up, and play her little tune ring tone. She slowly reaches over, and looks at the display, which says simply, "HOME (NY)" on it. She breathes in, and holds it, as it rings again twice, before stopping, and displaying another missed call. She waits, and a minute later, she sees the voice mail display come on again. She nervously dials the number again, and goes to her voice mail.
"Hey Sary, it's Janey...listen, have you been calling here?" Sara lets out a sigh of relief at the sound of her step-sister's voice, "Because we keep getting calls from Alaska on caller ID, and the woman on the other end is asking for you, and we know it's not Kotomi. Is this like some kind of prank call, cause we don't get it. Just call us back whenever. Later." Sara shakes her head in disbelief at whats going on. Suddenly her phone goes off again, this time displaying the name "NATE."
"Thank god." Sara says as she answers the phone. "Nate, thank god you called, I'm losing it. I really need to talk to someone." Silence on the other end, "Nate? You ok?"
"Don't get scared...don't hang up...just turn around...please." The voice on the other end tells her. Sara slowly begins to turn around, towards the mirror against her wall. Her reflection can not be seen, but instead, it's replaced by her mother's. Becky Thompson-Schorg, aka Ice, is looking at her from the other side. Sara's lips tremble, and she steps back a little bit. Becky's reflection points at her hand thats holding the phone. Sara looks down at it, puzzled, and back at her mother in the mirror. The reflection points at her ear, as if to tell Sara to bring it up too her own. Sara's arm trembles as she brings it up her ear again, looking straight at the reflection. "Please, keep the phone here, it's the only way I can talk to you. Ok?" The voice on the phone says. Sara notices the reflection's lips never moved while the voice speaks.
"But....but...you're mouth isn't moving." Sara says, with her own lips quivering in fear and disbelief, "How are you talking?"
"Trust me, it's me talking to you. But this is the only way I can hold a conversation with you. So please, I'm begging you, do not hang up, we only get one chance to talk to someone on the other side." The voice on the other end says.
"One chance? What about the voice mail? And the locker room?" Sara asks.
"You never talked back. So those don't count. But now you have, and if you hang up, I'll never get a chance to talk to any of my family again while they're still alive. And don't ask any more questions, ok? There are rules to this. So please, don't ask any questions at all."
"Why not? What will happen if I do?" Sara asks, and then cringes, "Sorry mom."
Sara watches as Becky's reflection shakes her head in disappointment, and the voice on the other end says, "It's ok, this time. I didn't tell you the answer, and as long as I don't tell you the answer to certain questions, you will be fine. But instead of risking you asking a 'bad' (the reflection does the air quote thing) question, and me accidentally answering it, I'd rather you just let me ask questions, ok?"
"I guess so...this is all a little unbelievable though." Sara tells the voice on the other end.
"I know, just bear with me, ok babe?"
"Ok, I guess I'm ready." Sara says half confused, and anxious. "You have no idea what I'm thinking right now though."
"You're right, I don't know what you're thinking." The voice says, "Why the hell are you wrestling? How many times did I tell you when I was around that you would not wrestle?"
Sara's jaw drops. She is complete disbelief at what she is hearing on the other end of the phone, "Mom, I can't believe you. Are you....I mean...Why would....I mean...grrr...this is so frustrating!" Sara screams.
"Frustrating? No, you have no idea what frustrating is babe. Frustrating is having to watch your oldest child, throw away all of her potential on some pipe dream where the rewards are significantly less then anything she could gain doing anything else with her life." The voice responds, "Sara, theres a reason I didn't want you, or Jane, or the twins to wrestle. I don't want you turning out like me, or Will."
"Mom, wrestling didn't kill you." Sara says into the phone, "You not wrestling wouldn't have prevented it."
"I'm not talking about my death. This isn't about my death. I'm talking about everything I went through. The pain, the mental strain, being away from my family. Sara, I wanted more for you. And you have every opportunity to go down any path you want. Why wrestling? Why the one thing you knew I didn't want you too do?" The voice asks.
"Because, it's what I wanted to do." Sara says into the phone, "I...I want to be like you."
"Sara, you don't want to be like me," The voice tells her. "You found that pill bottle. You saw what they were. And I know you were thinking about taking one. Sara. All wrestling does, is wear you down, and break you. Maybe wrestling did have a part in my death."
"Mom, you had Ovarian Cancer. It happens to women everywhere, who do a lot of things. Wrestling had nothing to do with it."
Sara hears a sigh on the other end of the line, and looks up at the mirror. She sees the reflection in the mirror has walked over to the bed in the mirror and sat down. Becky's elbow is on her knee, and shes holding her forehead with her hand, "Sara, you know how mentally broken I was when I was diagnosed? I was so broken, I really didn't want to fight. I only mustered up enough to fight it as long as I did for you kids. I didn't want to live for myself anymore. I gave up on myself a long time before that. Probably when I was pregnant with you. From that point I only cared about you kids. And you were the only reason I keep on living. When we thought I had it beat, and they told me it came back, that was it. I didn't even have enough fight for you guys anymore. I had mentally gone through so much, that I was just willing to accept death right there. If I hadn't wrestled, and had to deal with everything that I did, I might have fought it and still be alive, with you today."
"So, you're disappointed in me?" Sara asks, not caring that Becky had told her not to ask questions.
Sara watches the reflection turn and look at her, "I never said that." the voice on the other end responds.
"But you just said..." Sara begins...
The reflection gets up from the bed and walks to the front of mirror, and glares at Sara. "First, stop asking questions, what did I say about asking me questions?" The voice on the other end asks.
"Not to ask them." Sara responds, "Mom, I know I was only 6 when you left us, but I'm grown up now, please don't talk to me like I'm still a little kid."
"I'm sorry, I've only ever talked to you as a little girl." The voice apologizes, "But I never did say I was disappointed. I'm proud of what you've done, and what you're doing. But I wish you were doing something else. I mean, you have so much potential to do something good for the world. You're so smart, and beautiful, an talented. I know you have scholarship offers to so many great schools. Why can't you go to one of those schools and do something that helps the world?"
Sara looks at the reflection of her mother in the mirror. She looks long into her mother's eyes, and thinks about her response, "The same reason you didn't do anything else." Sara responds, "Mom, half of me is you. And the other half....is Amp. It's like Nathan said. I'm like the Frankenstein's monster of wrestling. Part Andrew Mitchell Pettis, part Becky Thompson, assembled by Will Schorg, and brought to life by Nathan Gust. You can't expect me not to want to do what I'm doing right now. Because with as much as this business made who you were, I have it 2x worse...at least."
"I guess that makes sense." The voice says, "But I still don't think you should be doing it. I'm going to be honest with you babe, I probably never will."
Sara sighs, "I know mom. I kinda figured that."
"But if it's what you want to do, I'll accept it. I hope nothing but the best for you babe. I always have, and I always will." The voice tells her, before Sara's phone beeps, "What was that?"
"Oh just my phone, the battery is about dead." Sara says looking down at the display, "I'll just go get my charger and plug it in, it's in the den."
"Wait! No stop!" The voice tells her frantically, the reflection waving her arms, "You can't leave the room with the mirror, or else our conversation is over."
"Well, then I'll just get Kotomi to bring it up here." Sara tells her.
"That won't work either. Only one other person can be in the room with the mirror, or else our conversation will end that way too...these are the rules." The voice tells her.
"Sorry mom, I don't know the rules...so what are we going to do." Sara asks, starting to sound a little worried.
"I guess we're going to have to speed this up then...Boyfriends?"
"Not now, not ever...next." Sara responds anxious.
"Will and the others?"
"He's still crazy, Janes in school, Ricky and Chris just got their first jobs as camp concilors or something for the summer." Sara blurts out.
"Uh...uh...uh...how much time do we have left?"
"Maybe five minutes." Sara answers her.
"Crap, alright then, I guess its time to say it...come here, and put your hand on the glass."
Sara walks over to the mirror, and places her hand on the mirror, where her mother's hand is. Her mother looks at her daughter, and smiles at her, her other hand is moving around, like its brushing against Sara's face.
"Close your eyes babe."
Sara nods, and closes her eyes, and she can feel her mother's touch again, for the first time in over a decade, she feels her hand rub against her cheek, and through her hair. She feels two arms embrace her tightly, but she doesn't open her eyes, tears well up in her eyes, but she doesn't move the phone from her ear. She listens as she can hear crying on the other end of the phone line, accompanying her own.
"Please, keep your eyes closed until I'm done, ok?" The voice on the other end tells her.
"Ok, Momma, I promise."
"Sara, baby, I miss you so much. You don't know how much it hurts to be away from you, and the others. I want so badly to just hold you forever. But I can't. So please, PLEASE, tell the others. Please let all of them know how I feel. I know Will has been treating you like crap. But his heart is in the right place. And I know it hurts him to do it. So please, don't hate him. Don't hate him because of the way he thinks. Thats just the way he is, just like I can't help who you are. You're right babe, you were born to be a wrestler. It flows their your veins, and makes you who you are." "We're almost out of time, aren't we?"
Sara has completely lost it, crying uncontrolably in her mother's arms, "Y...yea...almost." She is barely able to squeak out.
Becky sighs, trying not to completely lose it herself, and talk for as long as she can, "I'm sorry I couldn't tell you everything you want to know about who you are. I saw the charm you're wearing. My mother's old star of David. I know what you must be thinking. But I can't tell you who you are, or what you believe. Only you can. I know you want to know so much, and I really wish I had the time to tell you...all I want to make this last as long as I can."
Sara doesn't respond, or open her eyes, fearing what might happen if she does, she just squeezes the body she can feel tighter with her free hand, as if it'll allow her too keep it there forever. Sara doesn't worry about the phone anymore, and lets it drop to the floor, and grabs the person tightly with her second hand. She whispers something to her, knowing that time is all but up.
"The...last time...I touched you...you were so cold...I forgot how warm you really felt."
With that, Sara feels the hands run up and down her back, and the warmth of breath against the back of her neck. Suddenly the phone starts beeping, singaling that it's out of power.
"I promise mom, for as long as I live, I will never forget how you feel again...I swear."
Sara's phone stops beeping, and she feels her the grip on her loosen. She squeezes as tightly as she can, trying to keep hold of her, but soon the solid body she was holding just slips away from her. She opens her eyes, and can see her mothers reflection fading. She can see her mother's tears roll as she signs..."I...<3...You..." and blows a kiss to Sara before fading away entirely, only to be replaced by her own reflection.
Sara's knees buckle, and she shakes, before falling to the floor on her knees. She can't hold herself as she begins screaming in sadness. Kotomi is on the other side of the bedroom door.
"Sara!?! Sara!?! Please, I'm going to come in!" She yells before opening the door of the bedroom. She walks in and sees Sara on her knees, with her face in her hands on the floor crying uncontrollably. She runs to her cousin's side. And tries to lift her up.
