5:13 a.m.
Try as I might, I have yet to convince the sun to rise early to please me. As if it were my mother, it always disappoints me. I will have to wait for it to wake and offer its light. It’s 5:14 a.m. now. Sunrise is two hours away.
A fluffy, thin layer of snow blankets everything. I’ll be scraping the car before I leave. Sadly, that will not take hours. Time would fly by if there were a television here. Silynn isn’t a place where you go to unwind and unplug. Despite the lack of cell service, it’s never your intent. Who thought skipping on a TV and DVD player was a good idea? Even if they only had boring movies, I would be able to fill the silence.
I start a fire if only to occupy my time. I wish I had to cut down a tree to get the wood. Me using an axe is a recurring dream I have. I stand in a darkened forest, much like the one I’m in now. Instead of trees, copies of me at every age fill the spaces. Some are elongated; others have shrunken heads. A bulbous-eyed version of me in my late twenties whacks at a grotesquely pudgy three-year-old me with an already bloodied hatchet. The gashed-open child-me retaliates, picking up a dagger made of roots and gutting a paper-doll cut-out of me on my wedding day. I watch on as thirty or so different versions of myself hack each other to bits. When each of them is bloody and sobbing, I fling the original axe back onto myself. Only then can I wake up. The first time I had the dream, I was thirty-three. I woke to soaked pajama bottoms and a urine-soaked mattress. Since, I have had a plastic sheet on the new bed and carried a plastic picnic blanket with me whenever I overnight somewhere.
Just thinking about the dream keeps me from going back to sleep.
As an avid reader, I chastise myself for not trying another book. I am in chaos, so my attention is divided. I pick up a new thriller and attempt a page. The first line is—I am going to visit Lynn Pond. I pick up a romance—okay fine, it’s erotica—and read a page. Laura Hurst’s face appears as a pattern in words. I sigh. These books aren’t poorly written, but they aren’t attention-grabbing enough. It isn’t the books, Ada.
I have done this since I was in middle school.
For my tenth birthday, my uncle bought me a beautiful bike. When I couldn’t ride it, I blamed Peter for scaring me the first time I tried to switch from a tricycle to a bicycle with training wheels. I put my hand on my hip and proclaimed, “You don’t understand! Peter gave me PDST. Do you even know what that is? It’s Pose Dramatic Stress Troubles.” I knew everything when I was ten. In high school, I blamed the C I got on my geometry test on a friend. “She passed me notes during the test. I was distracted!” I wasn’t telling that to my uncle or aunt—not really. They were not upset about my C. I was.
So am I surprised that I am blaming literature for my inability to shake fear and worry? Not in the slightest.
I will have an early breakfast. In the dark, still nauseous from a sweat-drenched sleep, I will make eggs and drink flat soda.
I know I have made the right decision because my stomach curls in when the refrigerator light fills the room. The chill is a welcome reprieve from the heat.
Stove coils warm to orange under the oversized sauté pan—the only cooking vessel I could find. Rachael yaps on my shoulder like an angel. “Don’t you put your hand on that, Ada. Do you hear me? I can see you’re thinking about it. Don’t you do it.”
I crack the eggs directly into the pan. I smash them harder than I had planned to; the yolks burst and bits of shell float in the clear ‘white’. I don’t fish them out. The roof of my mouth anticipates the tiny cuts I will get; my throat, the quick gag and momentary soreness. Watching them get lost in the cooking egg as the ‘white’ finally earns its name, a memory hits me. If it were a physical object, I’d be doubled over begging it to stop—like in college when an asshole named Kelin punched me in the gut. When I fell, he kicked me in the chest. As his leather boot swung for the third time, a hottie named Derek showed up and clocked him in the face.
Bubbling, cooked eggs bring me back to the pan in my hand, then toss me backwards in time much further than college.
I ate eggs with chunks of eggshells and Lucky Charms marshmallows the day I found Laura. Peter overfilled my bowl of rainbow freeze-dried cow bone, sugar, and chemicals with milk. The pink color it turned matched my jumper; the melting horseshoes matched my tights. Hungrier than when I woke up, I left the house without winter wear—a dare to my overworked mother. After trudging through a long day of first grade, coloring letters and numbers as if we were still in Kindergarten, Hailey sent me off to walk home alone for the very first time. I took the less populated route back over the small bridge. Wind bit through the thin corduroy fabric and whipped at my skin. My cheeks stung from the snow fall’s violent swirls.
The thick green jacket currently stuffed in my childhood box still hung by the front door. Bitterly, I blamed my mother for being too distracted and rushed, packing graded tests and pop quizzes in her tote, to notice I had left without it. The next ten minutes or so is a blank wall of static—unimportant. Birthdays and names of co-workers have taken its place.
I smell smoke. Lost in a shaping moment of fear, I forget to flip my egg. Though the edges burn, the center is only a little too fried. I’ve eaten worse at diners. The eggs are crispy and slimy and need little chewing. But I hate wasting food. The fragility of my nervous stomach gives way, and I rush to the bathroom. Heaving yields the egg bits in their whole form but more needs to come out. Acid settles in the back of my throat.
Without looking, I know my face will have red freckles—burst capillaries—which I usually find to be a satisfying visual of a job well done. It’s like seeing a badge of honor. When I go through hell—or at least a few levels of it—the least I can get is some proof. Like bruises after a fall.
I curl up on the bathroom floor. It’s not very clean; the grout is stained, and there are a few dark curly hairs under the sink pedestal. Tilting over the toilet, I stare at the filth—still nothing. The roots of my eyelashes itch and burn. I thought I cleaned this place well enough.
I give up after another five minutes of dry-gagging and address my trichotillomania. Trying to remove only the most painful of lashes, I use my nails to gently pull at each one until I find the culprits. When my eye begins to water, I’ve found them. There are four. My eye feels relief once they’re gone, but I do not need a mirror to know that my eye is near-bald once again.