Chapter 1
The pressure of my cheek on the cold concrete is nothing compared to the pounding in my head, and the painful ringing in my ears. My left arm is screaming in pain. There is an uneven weight on top of me. It’s pinned me to this spot but it seems to shift slightly everytime my body involuntarily shakes - a reaction to the fear coursing through me. I can vaguely make out the sound of footsteps all around me; loud bursts, and people screaming. The screams kick my survival instincts into gear and I force myself to lay perfectly still and slow my breathing, grateful that the pounding of my heart can’t be heard. I keep my eyes shut, but even without looking I know what is happening around me. I’ve seen it enough times on the news to know how this plays out. I never thought it would happen to me. This sort of thing happens to other people. People in far away places, people in big cities.
The explosive sounds are getting closer and my arms almost jerk involuntarily to cover my ears. I do my best to let the weight of whatever is on top of me keep me still and keep me calm. I feel the trickle of wetness begin where my arm hurts. I’m desperate to wipe it away. It spreads up to my shoulder, moving languidly up my torso until it starts to pool around my face. The smell reaches my nose giving me news that I dreaded. The red liquid is dripping from the weight above me and onto my exposed cheek. I know for sure that blood isn’t mine: each drop landing louder than the one before. Keeping in my screams seems impossible.
The bangs suddenly stop and I start to hear shouting, not the screams of panic. There is a large thud. Did they say he was down? Muffled shouting ensues and suddenly the lights turn on. I’m still too scared to open my eyes. To see the scene before me. As long as I keep my eyes closed it isn’t real. My body refuses to move. I lay there frozen, desperately wishing for it to be over, not trusting my senses. Suddenly someone touches my shoulder and I cry out surprising myself. More voices, more touching follows, coaxing me to open my eyes. The weight on top of me shifts, not of its own accord, but because they’re moving it. I hear them say the person on top of me needs to be identified. I suddenly feel light and exposed. Dead weight is supposed to be a burden. In that instant losing it made me feel more alone than I ever had.
I wake up from my nightmare with my heart beating out of control and throw every last cover I have off of me. They can’t weigh that much, but they feel as if they are slowly suffocating me. I kick until they’re all on a pile heaped on the floor and I press my palms into my eyes, rubbing until I see spots. I regulate my breathing just like Anne told me to do at our last session. Her calm voice comes through in my panic. “Deep breath in for one, two, three four….and slowly exhale...five, six, seven, eight. Just do that a few more times, Jess. Feel your heart rate slow down and return to normal.”
The breathing doesn’t work and I grasp my forearm. It feels like it’s burning. I press my palm over and it hold it tight until the blood flow is cut off completely and I don’t feel anything there anymore. When I release my hand, the soft yellow glow of the parking lot light outside my window shows color coming back into the skin there. I use my right finger to trace the words I’ve just gotten tattooed there only two weeks prior. When my finger hits the second ‘e’ I feel the rough circular scar the letter covers and take my final deep breath. The phantom pain of the scar recedes completely and I’m back to reality.
I sit up and peel my Dad’s old NASCAR t-shirt off my sweat slicked body. It’s the one of the few clothing items I own that isn’t packed up in my car. I honestly forgot I had it still until I was packing up my things this week. It was shoved back in my dresser, inside the very last drawer. Now that I know I still have it, I’m not sure what I’ll do with it. I just know it’s not going with me. I walk over to the paint chipped pink dresser I’ve had since I was eight, gently running my fingers over it. I can’t take this old thing with me either. I lift up and pull open a drawer slowly so it stays on the track, and find an old pair of shorts and a tank top I’m not bothering to take with me tomorrow and throw them on. It’s still dark outside but I don’t feel as if I’ve slept long enough to say for sure what the time is. My throat aches for a glass of water.
I tiptoe out of my room, passing Mom’s closed door in our too small hallway. The hallway opens up into a kitchen about the size of my room, which isn’t saying much, and into a living room that can fit our couch, tv and two sleeping bags for when Kelsey’s parents allow her to sleep over. I turn left into the kitchen and grab a glass in the dark, filling it with water. As I drink in the darkness I note the window over the sink, the sliding glass door that leads out to the tiny balcony, and the entryway I just passed into. That’s three exits. I don’t need a light, having traversed this apartment all 19 years of my life. I gulp the glass down greedily and then fill another. I quickly make work of the second and quietly close the cupboard when I’m done.
“You sure are thirsty.”
I jump and almost drop the glass in my hand. My eyes dart to the sliding glass door as the best exist, but just as quickly as I freak out, I relax when I finally register that the voice belongs to my Mom.
“Mom. You scared me.”
“Sorry, baby girl.”
She flips on the switch and I see her sitting at our tiny table with three chairs that sit in the kitchen. She must have got up after she heard me moving around.
“Nightmare again?”
“No,” I lie.
“Uh-huh.” Mom is skeptical, but she lets it go this time. “It’s only 11pm. You should get some more sleep sweetie.”
“11? We leave in four hours. What are you doing up?” I turn to her as my eyes adjust and see that for once she’s not in her scrubs from the hospital. I take in a nice pair of jeans without holes, a flower printed tank top, and as my eyes narrow to what I think is lipstick she quickly moves to wipe it off with her hand. She never wears makeup and I can’t even remember the last time she was in scrubs. “I thought you were working late.”
“They let me off early. I came home at 8, and thought we’d spend a last night together, but you were already asleep, so I went to Spanky’s.”
I wrinkle my nose at the mention of the dive bar next to the auto repair shop in town.
“It’s not that bad,” Mom says defensively.
“Did you go with Stacy?” I ask. It’d be nice if she picked up with some old friends now that her schooling is finally complete and I’m leaving the nest.
“Are you all packed?” She deflects my question, but I let her. She let the conversation about nightmares go, so I owe her one. It’s a dance we’ve been doing all summer.
“Yeah I got most of my stuff into my car this afternoon. Jim was able to help me haul some of the heavier boxes. I caught him as he was heading down the stairs to let Rocko use the bathroom earlier in the day. I just have a few more things I need to get out of my room in the morning and that’s it.”
It hadn’t been easy. Jim and I had shoved nearly all my belongings into the tiny trunk and backseat of my crappy silver Pontiac. I got it for my sixteenth birthday after years of saving up money from babysitting the kids in the apartment complex. It only cost me a few thousand, and I kept up maintenance on it enough that it should be able to get us to Seattle tomorrow. My Mom wanted me to fly my belongings and ourselves out for my first quarter, but I insisted on the car. I don’t know where my research is going to take me once I get there, and I want it just in case. Plus, I just can’t bear to leave it here for nine months without anyone to drive it around and give it love.
“Jim did that?” My Mom laughs. “It’s like pulling teeth to get that man to help a neighbor out.”
“Yeah well, he owes us a good deed,” I say, thinking of how over the years Mom and I have lied to our landlord for him enough times. Usually about him not being home when the rent was due, even as we could see him peeking out of his curtains, Rocko panting at his side.
“That’s a fact,” she says, chuckling.
A silence falls between us and wait for her to say what I know she needs to.
She pushes out of the chair and comes over to where I’m standing, tucking a piece of my hair back behind my ear. “You know you don’t have to do this. You could always take a year off. There is no rush.”
“Mom, we’ve been over this,” I say softly. It’s an argument that started off heated at the beginning of the summer, but now it’s become resigned. It wasn’t until Anne said it would be a good idea for me to still go that Mom finally relented.
“I know, I know,” she concedes, giving me a half smile and letting me go. I can tell she doesn’t want to and I’m a bit reluctant too. I don’t want either of us to start crying again though.
She looks tired, but in the best spirits I’ve seen her in in months. Even when she’s exhausted, my mom has always been gorgeous. Over the past few years, the addition of laugh lines and graying strands that have streaked her otherwise flawless brunette shade, have somehow only made her more beautiful. I’m not modest enough to deny that I’ve inherited most of her good looks. I’m grateful that I don’t look more like my dad. The only thing we don’t have in common is my long five finger forehead I got from him, and my eyes are dark brown like his, where as my mother’s are vibrant blue.
Despite her brains and her beauty she has refused to date anyone since my father left, not that many a local man haven’t tried. Gary at the Auto World tried every single time we got an oil change and even Matt the pharmacist after his divorce as well as a few times after his second marriage. I would have been fine with her dating, but she want any distractions while she was working towards her nursing degree. Luckily, when she graduated last year she found an amazing job at a hospital in Salt Lake City. It’s a little over an hour drive, but the pay is worth it. I’m hoping she considers moving there once I leave, just for a change of pace. She was born and raised in Evanston, Wyoming too, and it really is high time we both got the hell out of here. The apartment we’ve lived in my entire life isn’t much to look at, but it’s still home. It’d be weird for it not to be anymore, but if there’s anything I’ve learned the last few months it’s that things change. I know my mom never wanted to stay in Evanston after dad left, but we could never really afford a move. Evanston was too cheap.
“You were excited for me just a few months ago,” I counter. “At graduation you made that grandiose speech to essentially the entire town at Bon Rico’s? ‘Can’t believe my baby girl is off to college’ are what I believe your exact words were.”
I fill up another glass of water to chug as she sits back down at the table.
“I know sweetie, but that was before.”
Before. Before the hospital. Before Anne. Before Mom hovered around me every chance she got with a worried look in her eyes. Before Kelsey stopped talking to me.
I finish my water and place the glass in the sink. I should wash it.
“Go back to bed,” she insists with a yawn. “I’m headed there myself in just a sec. We have a long drive tomorrow.”
“Yeah, and then you have a long flight back and a long night shift after that. You get some sleep too.”
“I’m on it. Right after I eat something.”
“I love you Mom,” I say, walking over to her and placing a kiss on her forehead.
“Love you too baby girl,” she hums back, squeezing me slightly before letting me go.
I leave her as she gets up to make something. I stifle a laugh thinking of my Mom at Spanky’s. And without scrubs on. It’s not a dirty place or anything, but the local clientele leave a lot of be desired. She hasn’t been out of the apartment for anything that wasn’t about work or school in years. I’m not sure what the sudden desire to go out was about. I feel a stab of guilt, thinking maybe she’s trying to mingle with people in town again now that I’m leaving. Making connections so she doesn’t have to be so lonely.
Back when my Dad lived with us, she was a stay-at-home mom. Her friends came by the apartment all the time, I remember the play dates, and she was able to keep a fairly vibrant social life. Dad traveled a lot for work, but always made sure Mom was able to take care of me so she wouldn’t have to get a job and I wouldn’t have to go to daycare. When I was eight we found out that it wasn’t a job he was always leaving for long periods of time for, it was his other family. His first family. They lived in Cheyenne and that’s where Dad decided to stay. It was where he always lived, which became glaringly obvious when we looked around after he left and realized he fit all his possessions in two duffle bags. Everything that was left was ours except for my Dad’s fifteen drawer Craftsman tool chest.
I guess he couldn’t fit it in his candy red 1967 Dodge Charger getaway car so it had to stay. The Craftsman would never have fit. He was big car guy and some of my earliest memories are of him placing me on top of the wheeled chest that we had to keep in my room, and wheeling me out our front door to the parking lot and his chariot. I would sit and play with the tools on a blanket on the grassy easement in front of the reserved space where he always parked his car. I hadn’t seen him or that car since he packed up and left. Unlike most kids with Dads who never came around anymore, I didn’t even get a birthday card in the mail every year. Mom pretends like he never existed and I do the same. The tool chest still resides in my room and I’ve managed to add to the collection over the years with each new project I set out on. At least he left the tools. And one day when I get my own place tha tool chest is coming with me.
I drag myself back down the hallway and back on my bed, not bothering with the covers that still lay heaped on the floor. The tool chest in question shines red in the corner. I need to go back to sleep, but even with the big deal ahead my mind is still haunted by my recurring nightmare. It usually takes a few hours to calm myself down and get back to sleep. A few hours I don’t have.
I pull open my side drawer and take a look at my two bottles of medication. I pop a Propranolol to help me sleep and ignore the Sertaline that’s been untouched for the last few weeks. Prop and Sert, my constant companions. Mom wouldn’t let me do anything without them. I take one Sertaline daily and flush it down the toilet so she thinks I take it, but honestly I feel better without it. My head is clearer this way. I just need help sleeping sometimes and for that, the Prop does wonders.
I really want to get up and open my bedroom door. In my dorm room I’ll need to keep the door closed at night. At Anne’s request, I had been trying to leave my bedroom door shut for the past few weeks, but I still haven’t managed to go an entire night with it shut. I decide to make a compromise and I keep the door shut, but crack a window. That makes one exit. My eyes start to wander around the room, thinking of a second exit. I peer under my bed and move a few shoe boxes full of old mementos around and slip myself under it. I feel like an idiot, but once I realize I fit perfectly, it’s a good enough hiding space and when a back up exit isn’t possible a nice hiding place works too. Satisfied, I roll back out from under the bed and flop myself on top of the mattress where I’m supposed to be.
Knowing I have options if an emergency happens, I start to feel a bit more relaxed. I hear my Mom’s bedroom door shut and I’m glad she’s at least going to get some rest before our drive. I can’t help but feel a little guilty about leaving her here. When I was thirteen she added going to school part-time on top of her stocking shelves at Walmart at night and working at the gas station during the day. I hardly ever saw her, because she worked so damn hard to make sure I had some help with college, and to keep a roof over our heads, all while trying to better herself.
The last few months she’s been an overbearing shadow on me though. When she first started at the hospital last year she worked all kinds of shifts, which usually included some overnights. The last few months she’s been on these 11am-7pm shifts so I almost always see her in the morning and at night. I’m convinced she’s begged the hospital to give her normal hours until I leave for school, just to keep an even closer eye on me.
Even though it’s late, I can’t get myself back to sleep. I pull my phone off of it’s charging cable and text Kelsey.
Me: My Mom doesn’t want me to go. Just say the word and I won’t go either.
I wait for a reply for ten minutes, but I know she won’t answer. I let my message sit there, scrolling through all the one way texts I’ve sent since June until I find the last one she sent me.
Kelsey: It’s not as if I am opposed to Floating On, it is a favorite of mine in the book. I see what you were saying about the syntax, but I just can’t stand line 16 and I know you feel the same way about it so you can’t argue with me on that one. Anyway, I’ll head over in a few.
I shake my head, plugging the phone back in its spot after checking the alarm one last time. I miss her. I toss and turn, pulling the covers back on, then off again, and finally I settle with just one blanket. Details from my nightmare start to surface and I use my breathing techniques while I let the Prop pill do its magic to help me sleep. I distract myself and start to think about the days after the shooting and before I can stop myself my thoughts spiral uncontrollably to my hospital stay and Kelsey.
Always Kelsey.
