There’s something about three a.m. that makes you examine your life. I was parked at the Bath Dunkin’ Donuts waiting on the drive-through lady to deliver two dozen doughnuts, three coffees, and an apple fritter. The smell of glazed icing made me want to lick the air; the smell inside the Beamer, well, we needed another cardboard pine tree to combat the contact high. Simon lounged in the passenger seat; Dozer and Johnny were in the back. They were all coming off something and demanded I drive them for decaf and pastries. So, it was three a.m. and I was thinking about suicide, really thinking about it, for the first time, and they had the munchies.
I’d never been a sad person. I’d never been the life of the party either.
But I used to have goals—college, write a book, watch Game of Thrones—and now, I had Simon.
I’d tried to leave him. I didn’t know whether my efforts were pathetic or his efforts were extraordinary. Maybe both. Simon told me once, “There’s a moment in every caterpillar’s life when he knows it’s either him or the butterfly, and, honey, the butterfly always wins.” He was the butterfly.
Sometimes, at three a.m., like now, I let myself wonder the most terrible things. Like if Simon was the reincarnation of H. H. Holmes, who built a murder hotel in Chicago in the 1800s. Holmes supposedly constructed halls and staircases that led to nowhere, bricked-in doors, trick locks that imprisoned guests. He tortured and killed them. That sounded hyperbolic, but Simon might as well have built a hotel around me brick by brick. Every time I found a way out, the exit led nowhere.
Death was the only sure exit that led somewhere else.
Dear Butterfly, suck it. Love, Caterpillar.
I wasn’t sure how I would kill myself—if I followed through—but it should probably be somewhere significant. Somewhere out of Steuben County. Somewhere it would take a while to identify my body. Maybe even somewhere historic. Simon should have a few days to think, She escaped.