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I miss it all so fucking much.
The shampoo running down my face smells like summer vacation, and I can’t stop the tears or the memories from coming now. I remember my dad taking me out into the ocean so deep that I could barely touch and showing me how to find starfish with my toes. The heartbroken look on his face when Mama said we had to throw them all back. The one he smuggled home in his suitcase that caused the entire car to smell like dead fish for months.
The memories come faster and faster, slamming into me from all sides. Now, the overgrown grass is smashed beneath my knees, my shins. Cool mud squishes between my fingers as I dig them into the soft earth, desperate for something to hold on to as the pain slices through me.
Fireworks on the Fourth of July.
S’mores around the burn barrel after raking all the fall leaves.
Christmas movies. Curling up with Mama on the couch. Slightly crooked stockings. Very burnt cookies for Santa. Catching my dad at three in the morning, wrapping presents with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth.
And then I see Wes … beautiful, guarded, wounded Wes … asleep in my bathtub after burying them both.
I test my legs. I have to crawl away from this nightmare. I have to get back inside. I have to get away from the smells and the textures and the sounds of this deleted world. On wobbly limbs, I claw my way back to the door and don’t stop until it’s firmly closed behind me.
Pressing my back to the cool metal again, I suck in as many deep, mildew-scented breaths as it takes for my heart rate to finally begin to return to normal. When I open my eyes, I expect to feel relieved. I’m back in my safe new world now. I never have to open that door again.
But the second my gaze lands on the entrance of the Hello Kitty store, that’s exactly what I do.
I turn and push that sucker wide open.
So that my puke will land on the sidewalk.
May 3
Rain
A knock on the door makes me jump, causing the brittle pages of the ancient tuxedo catalog I’m sitting on to crinkle loudly.
“Come in,” I call out, but my voice doesn’t want to work, possibly due to the hours I’ve spent sobbing in this very spot since yesterday.
I clear my throat to try again but decide not to. I don’t care who’s there. I don’t want them to come in.
The Savvi Formalwear office door opens anyway, letting in a slice of light from the hallway. It tears across the floor, missing me by inches.
“Yo, boss lady …” Lamar steps into the doorway. His silhouetted short, messy dreads bounce as his head swivels from left to right, scanning the dark room for signs of life. Then, he snorts out a laugh. “What the hell you doin’ down there?”
I peer back at him as if I were viewing him from the grave. As if the activities of the living were beyond my grasp. Speaking. Feeling. Giving a damn. I remember doing those things. I just don’t remember how I did them.
“You sittin’ under the desk ’cause Mr. Renshaw took the rolly chair?” Lamar laughs. “Or was there a tornado warnin’ I don’t know about?”
I stare back, waiting for the words to come, but they don’t.
I’m sorry. Rain’s not here anymore. I cried her out. This is just her fleshy wrapper, left under a desk like a wad of chewing gum.
Lamar’s smile fades as his eyes adjust to the darkness of the windowless office. When he finally gets a good look at me, he says, “Hey … you all right?”
Flipping my hood up over my head, I turn and face the wall.
“So, uh … Quint’s feelin’ a little better since gettin’ cleaned up yesterday. I think I’ma try to take him to get breakfast. You wanna come?” There’s a note of hope at the end of his question. “I hear they’re makin’ eeeegggggs …”
I don’t respond.
I hear the air leave his lungs, taking the wind out of his sails along with it.
“C’mon, Rainy Lady,” he whines. “I had to help him shower and feed him by myself last night.”
If there were a shred of feeling left in this husk of a body, the fact that Lamar is more concerned about getting help with his brother than finding out why I spent the entire night curled up in a ball under a desk in a dark room might hurt. But it doesn’t. Nothing can hurt me anymore.
