Twoooeee-toooo-tooo-tooo

I woke up at five to the sound of the mourning dove who lives near my bedroom window. I never liked mourning doves. I knew what mourning was, and the bird wasn’t mourning.

The window was about six feet high by ten feet wide and was separated into three sections. Just outside my window there was a line of flowering fruit trees. The mourning dove sat in one of them, singing that horrible song. Twoooeee-toooo-tooo-tooo.

When I looked at the bird, I saw things.

Strange things.

I saw its ancestors. I saw its great-great-great-grandfather getting hit by a car, feathers exploding in all directions. I saw its children. I saw its great-grandchildren. I saw the bird’s infinity all the way to extinction. To dust.

Just like I’d seen Jupiter the night before.

I felt that familiar panic. I shook my head and stretched my shoulders back to relieve the tightness in my chest.

Today was going to be normal and I was going to buy a dress for graduation at the mall. Very simple. Maybe later, I’d meet up with Ellie and say something like “Whoa, that was weird, eh?” and we’d laugh.

Ah ha ha ha ha.

I took a shower. I did the thing my dad taught me when I was little when my brain would move too fast. I kept the bathroom light off. I tried not to think of anything except the water hitting my face. I tried to be there. I breathed in and out. I smiled. I did neck rolls. I felt the water hitting my face. I smiled again.

I still felt wrong. I felt like Max Black the bat. I felt invisible wings in my back. I felt like eating bugs. I could hear for miles.

I was different.

More neck rolls. Water hitting my face. Smile. Glory, don’t be so dramatic.

I stuck my camera (the Leica M5 with black-and-white film) in my bag in case I wanted to stop on my way to the mall to buy a dress. Sometimes I did that. I just disappeared and shot pictures with real film. I considered it a family heirloom—claiming time alone exploring shit that no one else found interesting. Carving those interesting things into real negatives. I considered it my right.

Darla O’Brien stuck her head in an oven, so now I got to pretend I was her sometimes. Whatever she was. Whoever she was. I got to pretend like I knew. Twoooeee-toooo-tooo-tooo.

Dad was settling into the couch when I left. He talked to me as I washed out my cereal bowl in the kitchen.

“You okay?”

“Yeah. Going for the dumb dress,” I said.

“You don’t have to wear a dress, you know,” he said. I could see Darla saying that. Or maybe she wouldn’t.

“I know.”

“Good.”

Truth is, I didn’t know what else girls wore to be dressy. I didn’t want to wear some business suit or anything. I figured I could just go to the mall and look and then if I couldn’t find anything, I could stop at the vintage thrift store on the way home and buy one of those 1940s housedresses. Something casual and roomy. Something I could wear with Doc Martens shoes and no one would care.

Everyone already thought I was weird. Glory O’Brien, voted Most Likely to Not Be Your Friend. Glory O’Brien, voted Most Likely Not to Touch Your Tipi. Glory O’Brien, voted Most Likely to Stick Her Head in an Oven.

When I parked in front of Sears, a car pulled into the space beside me and I looked at the driver and she looked at me and I saw a… vision. A whole bunch of them, actually.

Transmission from the woman parking next to me: Her mother was in jail. Her grandmother loved jazz. Her grandson will flunk out of high school. Her other grandson will become a senator and finally get equal pay for women in the workplace. It will be the middle of the twenty-first century. That senator will have a second home in Arizona, and the day he brings that bill to the Senate floor in Washington, DC, people in Arizona will burn his other house down.

I looked away from the driver and shook my head.

That was insane.

Maybe you are insane.

You broke.

Like Darla.

Twoooeee-toooo-tooo-tooo.

The driver didn’t even notice I’d been staring at her. I don’t think I was. I think the transmission—it came in like a second or less.

I walked toward the front door of Sears convinced that I was imagining things. No way does drinking a dead bat make you hallucinate that much—to see other people’s futures or pasts or whatever. I’d read about frogs you can lick and mushrooms you can eat and other crazy shit like nutmeg. No bats.

Nothing about bats.