Please, somebody save me from myself.
A pause from Ryan Baker, who must’ve been reevaluating his decision to call and check in on me. “So…you think we might still be falling? Right now?”
“No. No.” God, this was why I didn’t try to flirt. “I just keep thinking about it.”
But I wondered if he felt it too, wherever he was, the gust of air coming in through the window, off the mountains—like we were rushing through it still.
“I haven’t slept,” he said. “At first I thought it was just too much adrenaline, but now I don’t know. Every time I close my eyes, I think maybe they won’t open again.” He paused. “So, there’s that.”
I shifted on my mattress, tipping my head back on the pillow again. “We’re hilarious,” I said.
He laughed. “You really are funny,” he said.
“So…,” I said.
“So…you’re kind of okay, but kind of not, and we’ve established that I’m the same. And I have to work the rest of the weekend. I’ll see you Monday, then?”
“Yes,” I said. “See you in math class.”
His laughter filled my head as I hung up the phone.
—
Something woke me Sunday morning, and it took me a moment to realize it was the sound of my phone vibrating on the bedside table. I rubbed my eyes, trying to focus, as I opened the message from Ryan. It was a picture of the firehouse—all brick and red paint, like a cartoon—with the caption Home for the next 14 hours.
I texted back: Looks like fun.
By the time I got out of the shower, I had another message from him. This time, a picture of the bathroom floor, with a mop and a bucket, caption: Not exactly. This is what I get to do here most of the time. Sorry to shatter the illusion.
I went to the window, positioned the phone between the bars of the grate, and snapped a picture of the mountains in the distance. I sent it to Ryan with the caption Illusion: peaceful and serene. To the people who’ve never driven off the side of one.
A few minutes later, he sent a picture of the protective gear the firefighters wear, hanging from a peg. Illusion: nothing can touch you.
When Mom called me out for lunch, leftover casserole lumped on a plate, I quickly snapped a picture before she sat down: Illusion: edible.
She had dark circles under her eyes—a telltale sign that she wasn’t sleeping. But she was out of her room, and she was cooking, and she smirked as I slid the phone under the table. “You sure are glued to that thing today,” she said. And she had this faint smile, like she knew.
Faced with deciding between two equally difficult options—talking to my mom about who I was texting or eating her food—I took the martyr stance, shoved a heap of food in my mouth, and gave her an exaggerated thumbs-up.
“Is there something you want to tell me?” she asked, moving the food around on her plate.
“Delish,” I said, still chewing.
She sighed. “I hoped we wouldn’t be like other mothers and daughters.”
“Don’t worry. We’re not,” I said, chasing the bite with an entire glass of water.
She cringed but said nothing. And I remembered that she’d grown up in a home without a mother at all, and with a father she probably wished had not existed, either. I remembered all that had happened after, and that she was doing the best she could.
“It was a joke, Mom.”
“Mm,” she answered, pushing the food around her plate.
After lunch, I had another picture from him, the backs of several men hovering around a kitchen. It looked like they were cooking. Caption: I’ll fight you for title of worst lunch.
“Kelsey?” Mom called from her office. “I’m about to place the grocery order. Anything you need?”
I stood behind her at the computer, scanned her list on the grocery-delivery site, and said, “Shampoo, please.”
“I just bought you shampoo,” she said.
“It’s terrible. It doesn’t do anything except sit on top of my hair.” Mom had the perfectly straight, no-need-to-style type of hair. I, on the other hand, did not. “Go back to the old kind.”
She sighed, but placed the order. I saw she’d set the delivery time for after school Tuesday, so I’d be here to take it in. This office was where she spent most of her time, for work and for research. This computer was her lifeline. Security screens stood guard in the upper corners of the room, and pictures of the two of us lined the walls, a timeline from infancy to now. And beside the door, a shadow box framed my first artwork—a swirling mess of finger paint—where it had hung for as long as I could remember.
I shifted from foot to foot. “Any word on the car insurance?” I asked.
My mom raised her eyes from the screen for just a moment, then went back to staring at the bright light, her eyes unmoving. “No,” she said.
I searched for the box of returned things from my car, thinking about sending a picture to Ryan, sure he would understand, that it would need no caption to say what I was feeling—but I couldn’t find it. Mom must’ve moved it, or trashed it. I hurried back to my room, planning out my next photo message, but found a message waiting for me again:
Is this Ryan’s girlfriend???
It had been sitting unanswered for over twenty minutes.
The phone chimed when it was still in my hand:
Sorry. I work with assholes. Gotta go.
I debated how to respond for an embarrassing amount of time, finally settling on See you tomorrow. A literary masterpiece.
—
I didn’t hear from Ryan again that night, and I slept fitfully, thinking I heard the vibration of my phone every time I drifted off. It was just after midnight, and I checked my phone one more time, but there was nothing there. Pathetic, Kelsey. I rolled over, pulling the sheets up to my chin, and heard a shout. I bolted upright in bed, tiptoed out into the dark hallway, feeling for the light switch.
I checked the alarm display next to the front door—the red light, the house armed and ready. “Mom?” I whispered.
I heard a sharp intake of air from her room, like a wheezing gasp. The word “No.” And I was running.
My feet skidded along the cold, tiled floor. Her door was closed, as she always kept it. I turned the handle, held my breath. The door creaked as I pushed it open, and Mom sat upright in bed, breathing heavily, the whites of her eyes catching the glow from the hall light. “I thought I heard you…,” I said.
Her eyes skimmed the walls around her, and I imagined what she was checking for. Spiders, crawling over the walls, the furniture, her. It was the only thing I ever knew about her nightmares. “The spiders, get them off,” she’d once said, half-asleep, as I tried to shake her awake.
I’d told Jan once, back when she first came into our lives. That Mom was afraid of spiders. And Jan must’ve told Mom, because after Jan left, she grabbed my arm, tighter than ever, and shook me—asking where I’d heard that.
“In your nightmare,” I’d told her, and she released my arm. I knew better than to ask again.
I dreamed of them too after that. Spiders spilling out of the corners of a room. Spiders crawling over her skinny, pale body as she lay curled up on a cold basement floor somewhere, with burns on her back. I’d feel them myself, the spiders creeping between the covers of my bed as the fears settled in.
“Mom? Are you okay?” I asked, taking a step inside her room.
She ran a hand over her shoulder, looked at the red glowing numbers of the clock, stared at me again, like she was orienting herself. “Go to bed, Kelsey,” she said.
I shivered as I closed her door—the goose bumps rising across my arms and legs—and smelled the faint whiff of gasoline-soaked gear, like a lingering memory.