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“Can I come out?” I ask. “There are some things I need to look up for school.”
She shakes her head. “Maybe later. After dinner. For now, Dr. P would like you to write down everything you’re feeling.”
She leaves and locks the door behind her. I find a piece of paper and a pen.
What I feel is helplessness, I write.
But then I stop. Because I’m not writing as Dana. I’m writing as me.
The headache and nausea are subsiding. Although every time I imagine Rhiannon alone in the cabin, I feel sick again.
I promised her. Even though I knew the risk, I promised her.
And now I’m proving to her that it’s too risky to accept my promises.
I am proving to her that I won’t be able to come through.
Dana’s mother brings me dinner on a tray, as if I’m an invalid. I thank her for it. And then I find the words I should have been using all along.
“I’m sorry,” I tell her. “I’m really, really sorry.”
She nods, but I can tell it’s not enough.
I must have told her I was sorry too many times before. At some point—maybe last night—she must have stopped believing it.
When I ask her where my father is, she tells me he’s getting the car fixed.
They decide that I will have to go to school tomorrow, and that I will have to make amends to my friends then. They say I can use the computer for my homework, but then sit there behind me as I make up things to research.
Emailing Rhiannon is out of the question.
And they show no signs of giving me back my phone.
The previous night’s events never come back to me. I spend the rest of the night staring into that blank space. And I can’t help but feel it staring right back.
Day 6022
My plan is to wake up early—around six—and email Rhiannon with a full explanation. I expect she gave up on me after a while.
But my plan is foiled when I’m shaken awake a little before five.
“Michael, it’s time to get up.”
It’s my mother—Michael’s mother—and unlike with Dana’s mother, there’s only apology in her voice.
I figure it’s time for swim practice, or something else I have to do before school. But when I get out of bed, my foot hits a suitcase.
I hear my mom in the other room, waking up my sisters.
“It’s time to go to Hawaii!” she says cheerily.
Hawaii.
I access and find that, yes, we are leaving for Hawaii this morning. Michael’s older sister is getting married there. And Michael’s family has decided to take a weeklong vacation.
Only for me it won’t be a week. Because in order to get back, I’d have to wake up in the body of a sixteen-year-old who was heading home to Maryland that day. It could take weeks. Months.
It might never happen.
