And as Erica continues holding forth about punctuation, a vivid mental image springs into view, like a particularly intrusive daydream. I’ve been seeing it repeatedly ever since I moved back.
There’s the pool across the street from the office, where Iused to work as a lifeguard in the summers. And I’m standing in it, mouth open and filled with water.
I’m there in the shallow end, and I’m on the sidelines watching myself at the same time. How absurd to drown there when I could straighten my legs, unbend my knees. Stand, if I wanted.
But I am absurd, and there I am, head slightly underwater, eyes glassy.
After all, I had training. I know how to recognize drowning when it’s not obvious. And now I’m letting it happen in plain view of dozens of people, and I have only myself to blame.
My mouth opens wider and wider. My eyes stretch like saucers.
“Just stand up!”
I can’t see her, but Mom’s voice rings in my ears, echoing off the tile into the blue sky overhead.“I didn’t sacrifice so much for you to drown in this pool!”
“Ruby!” Erica snaps on the other end of the Zoom.
My face nods in the little square. “Yes! Yes, I’m listening.”
As soon as the call ends, I open TKMART’s website to stare at the pillows. Sleeping is my favorite thing lately. The one piece of new furniture I bought since moving back is a new bed—it made me feel too pathetic, sleeping in the old twin I’d had since elementary school.
I stop scrolling and linger on an image of a bedspread covered in pillows. It looks so cozy, I can imagine nestling in there and taking the longest nap.
So I send it into the Slack DM that’s just for me, for private notes and reminders. At my old job, I used it as a tunnel from the rest of my life back to work—when I’d think of pitch ideasas I was falling asleep, or when I’d be grocery shopping and have a flash of inspiration.
Now the tunnel mostly goes the other way: daydreaming at work and sending myself things I want to buy later.
But this time, a couple messages pop up in reply:
Too many pillows!
You’ll give yourself a double chin sleeping like that!
Shit!Did I message someone else by mistake?
But no, it’s definitely the DM that saysruby.ocampoat the top. Private to only me.
I look again, and the messages are gone. My cursor blinks against the empty space underneath my sad profile picture.
There’s a sensation like someone has just left the room. Like a flock of birds has departed, but you can still hear the beating of their wings.
That’s how Mom talks.That mix of irritation padded with affection. Her voice, right here, then gone again.
It’s nothing—a figment of my imagination. And even though it’s silly, I feel breathless, like I lost something all over again.
Chapter
2
It really does feel like I’m back in high school. I did track in twelfth grade, and now for the first time in years, I’m running again in the mornings, up and down these sleepy suburban streets. Getting some fresh air first thing helps clear my head, even though I have yet to master the art of getting out the door on time.
As I’m driving off in Mom’s old Honda Civic, her voice rings in my head saying,Don’t let the mail pile up!So I toss the week’s worth of accumulated letters into my passenger seat before pulling out. At a stoplight, I flip through the pile—junk, junk, bill.An invitation to my high school reunion.
It makes me shudder. This is such a company town, a bunch of people I went to high school with also work at TKCORP. I can even see some of them as I pull into the parking lot. Steve from Pre-Calc has become Steve the Project Manager. Grace from Physics is Grace from Sales.
I catch a glimpse of the old swimming pool across the street and get a weird sense of déjà vu for something that never happened. The city owns it now, but TKCORP originally built itas part of the corporate campus. Back then, they had all these offerings to take care of their workers: health clinics, a movie theater, a bowling alley, all since demolished or sold off. A remnant of the age of the big benevolent lifetime employer that ended before I was born.
I’m antsy in the elevator, and when the doors open on the eighth floor, it’s like I sense it before I see him.
