27. Whole

I hear the scream in the shadows of the woods and feel myself running toward it.

I’m out of breath running toward the sound, toward the girl who’s screaming.

I hit a branch and feel blood coming out of my side and I get this weird sense of déjà vu.

You’ve done this before, haven’t you?

Then I reach a small clearing and see it.

The bridge.

The bridge with an opening beneath it. An oval opening like a mouth screaming or gasping for life.

I see Kelsey standing at the base of the hole.

She’s screaming as she’s being held by two figures. Dark figures, faceless, nameless, soulless figures.

“Chris, help me!”

I keep running, but I suddenly realize this is a dream.

Doesn’t matter ’cause dreams are real too and you know this.

I run down the hill and slip and fall on my back.

By the time I get up, the opening to the bridge is empty.

Kelsey’s nowhere to be found.

I hear another cry, but this one sounds worse. Like someone being hurt and tortured.

Like someone being killed.

I race down and look into the oval opening, but suddenly it’s pitch black.

Then I remember the lighter. The one that belonged to Walter Kinner. I flick it with my thumb, and I see them.

Hundreds of them.

Hideous dark figures blending into each other, standing guard, looking out and waiting.

Waiting for me to take a few more steps in.

Waiting for me to come to them so they can swallow me whole.

And that’s when I wake up.

As I’m getting ready, wondering if I should use some of Uncle Robert’s cologne that I found earlier, I notice the picture on the desk.

There I am, smiling and looking carefree on what appears to be a summer day.

The picture that once faded has come back into focus again. No reason why, not that I can see. But the picture is full and colorful and perfect.

I’d really like to be that guy smiling there.

Somehow even though it’s me, I don’t believe that the picture is real. It feels made up. I pick it up and shake it as if the image is going to go back to being fuzzy. But it doesn’t.

It remains.

For some weird reason.

An hour later I realize I really need to get a haircut, because when I get to Kelsey’s house my hair looks like I got struck by lightning. I don’t have dress pants, so I hope it’s okay that I’m wearing jeans. They’re nice, dark jeans, but they also have mud on them from riding my bike.

Kelsey doesn’t seem to notice any of that when she opens the door.

And when I see her I forget about what I look like.

She is a yellow rose sprouting in January in a dark, muddy field.

I want to pick this flower and put it in a vase and hide it forever. Yet all I can do is stand there and look like some stupid boy who doesn’t have a clue what to say.

“Good morning,” Kelsey says.

“I feel like I should probably go home and change.”

“Why?”

“’Cause next to you I look like a bum.”

“Oh stop. Come on in. We’re almost ready. You don’t mind riding with us?”

Kelsey really does look amazing in her long yellow dress and matching sweater. Everything about her is opposite of how my life has felt since coming to Solitary.

I wish I could tell her that and explain what that means.

Instead, I only manage to make small talk and then hit the bathroom to wet down the volcano of hair on my head.

Before heading out, Kelsey thanks me for coming.

“Yeah, sure,” I say.

Such an understatement.

Such a cool, casual comment.

I follow Kelsey and her parents out to their car to head to church, the way any family might get in their car on a Sunday morning. I long for a time when I don’t have to be understated with Kelsey. When I don’t have to be cool or casual. When I can simply tell her that she is and always has been a breath of fresh air.

A breath of fresh air in a life that occasionally feels the need to stop breathing.