Page 3 of Dark Ugly Places

“So?”

“So you know this isn’t a good start. You have to go. It will be fine …”

She glares at me. “I really don’t feel like I can face it.”

I take her in, a million micro-signals at once. Her hunched shoulders, the marks on the back of her hand—ballpoint pen, drawn by her, but who could guess? The friendship bracelets that were on her wrist from the summer before last, faded and fraying, now bombarded by dark leather bands and multiple hair ties. Her nails bitten down to short nubs. Her head, shaved at the side where her scar is, parted unintentionally along where her braid used to be. I feel a jolt of grief in my core before the usual wave of rage rises up inside me, a hot, ruthless tide. I force it down again.

“You know, Em, it’s okay to feel the way you do. You’ve been through a lot. We’ve been through a lot.”

I try for genuine emotion without anger. It’s so much easier to be angry. Anger is my default. Anger is a nice, easy substitute. Anger gets the job done.

Emmy turns, her face bright, like she’s realized something. “It’s okay. You’re right. I’ll go.”

A forced smile spreads across her face. She ducks her head low and finishes her cereal with three whopping bites. Her scar seems to wriggle while she chews.

“I’ll go,” she repeats quietly.

“Honey,” I start. I pause, searching for the words. “It’s okay to hate it. I hate it, too.”

She smiles that same weak smile, like there’s something I’m missing, something I just don’t get. Outside, a siren blares from the main road, and Emmy jumps. I try to make it seem like I don’t notice.

Emmy jumps in her sleep now. Her body jolts like she’s being electrocuted. It’s like when you’re falling asleep, and you dream you’re actually falling, and your body twitches. That’s what Emmy does, except she does it over and over again. I asked her if she was dreaming of that day. She said she wasn’t, but it didn’t start until six months ago.

I scoop some kibble into Scotch’s bowl. The tiny brown pebbles ting ting ting against the cold steel. He nudges toward me and sits, waiting until I finish. Emmy sets her half-eaten bowl of cereal in the kitchen sink and runs the water over it.

“Can we get soy milk next time?”

“Yeah, whatever you want.”

“Good,” she says, looking pleased. “Ready to go?”

Upstairs, I quickly brush my teeth and hear my stomach growl. I hear it but don’t feel it. That’s the thing about Topamax. You know you’re hungry, but you never feel like eating. I pull up my tee shirt and examine my frame. I can’t tell if I look different, except for the hollowness that’s formed around my cheeks and under my eyes. The scale says differently. Thirty pounds fell off me over these past six months. And I haven’t even been trying.

In the bathroom, I pry open the mirror door to the medicine cabinet facing me and reach for the day’s setup: a Topamax and a couple of Imitrex. Imitrex, my old faithful, goes into my pocket for the migraine that will return later, just as it does every single day. I also know that aspirin or over-the-counter fare won’t cut through the fog, the nausea. The sensitivity to light, sound, and smell—and the blinding, throbbing pain. It’s not if I’ll get a migraine, but when.

The tap runs cold for what feels like an eternity, and I swallow the extra painkiller, then wash my face in freezing cold water that lightly smells of chlorine.

Technically, I’m considered an “eggshell claimant,” which means there was something considerably wrong with me before the accident. A “migraineur,” or a person who suffers from chronic migraines. They got a lot worse after that day, after I rolled off the hood of the Rolls-Royce. The police didn’t believe me, but I knew it was a Rolls-Royce that had sped through the stop sign, taking the turn at a whipping pace, accelerating into the three of us without a hint of braking.

Rolling off a Rolls. It’s almost comical now. For a quick moment, I peer down near my navel and rub the small circular scar where the hood ornament—a lady with wings—punctured my left side and sliced into my pelvis, leaving the slight impression of a pointy feathered wing on my skin.

The thing is, only a Rolls-Royce makes a hood ornament like that. I know because Ben wanted one for a long time. He said the Mercedes didn’t have the same feel now that Mercedes-Benz started embedding their hood ornaments on the front of their cars, making them all nice and flat. I guess they knew their drivers drove fast and their Mercs were hitting a lot of people. Maybe Rolls-Royce doesn’t care that its status symbol is basically akin to a deadly weapon.

The strangest thing—I haven’t seen a white Rolls-Royce since that day.

From the medicine cabinet, I take out the bottle of bright blue mouthwash and gulp a mouthful.

One swish. Don’t think about it.

Two. Don’t picture it.

Three. It’s all in the past.

Four. You don’t have to be afraid.

Five. It won’t happen to you again.

Spit. But it might. It could.