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My head isn’t a safe place. It’s full of happy memories and traitorous thoughts.
It’s freezing, but then, winters in Chicago usually are. For February, the city was still in an icy grip up until this afternoon when it thawed and became warm, but now the stone-gray skies have solidified. The sky is pitch black with the night now, but the clouds are still there, wet and heavy. The sleet has been falling for a few hours now, on and off, but I’m still sitting out here.
Out here is what feels like the edge of the world, back in the city where my life started. I purposely chose not to go straight into the center of it. I wanted to stay on the outskirts. I had a cab take me from the airport to some shit motel where no one ever stays at the edge of the city. It’s the perfect place for someone who wants to be alone. Depressing and cold. Actually, it’s wretchedly cold for someone who has grown a little too accustomed to the nice San Diego days.
Normally, I can tuck inside myself into that black hole of nothingness where I think and feel nothing. Not the cold, not the turmoil of my thoughts, not happiness, and not pain. The whole theory of what it takes to be absolutely adept at something is to keep practicing—practice your whole life, basically. This is one skill I’ve perfected, but this time, it’s not working.
Instead of cutting out and cutting straight through to a rational decision, all I see is Cass. I can hear her laughter, smell her sweet peaches and cream scent, and feel the silkiness of her skin, the heaviness of her limbs twisted up in mine, and the fine satin of her golden hair. I keep falling into the sea blue of her eyes, and she’s not even here.
The sound of the sleet striking through the more-than-drenched thin jacket I have on and pelting both the sidewalk and the concrete blocks of the motel walls can’t drown out the soft whisper of Cass’ voice in my head. She cuts through me like a knife and ties me up like a ribbon. There isn’t any escaping, and there isn’t any going into that place where I feel nothing.
Cass has undone me. I don’t think I’m ever going to be able to get back to that place again. She’s filled up all the hollow spots inside me. She’s entrenched herself into the very fabric of my being, sewing herself in like the stitches of a quilt.
When Granny adopted me and gave me a new life and when I got to know my brothers and found out that there were people in the world who were just like me—a little bit broken, a little bit hopeful, somehow still able to smile sometimes, and people who could still see the good even after the shit mountain they had to plow through—I learned there was another side to living that I hadn’t experienced before.
This is a brand new side I’ve never known, and man, it’s harder than a rock and rockier than rocks, and half the time, it feels like I’ve swallowed rocks or have rocks bouncing around in my skull. Somehow, it’s not a totally terrible feeling, and maybe that’s the scariest part. I’ve felt alive before, but this? This is a brand new way of living.
Cutting through the darkness in the middle of nowhere and down a road that’s more holes and pits than actual asphalt is a wide swatch of bright golden headlights.
I sit up a little straighter in the plastic lawn chair outside the motel door. The tiny overhang above does little to shelter me from the sleet, and I’m aware that I’m beyond drenched. I didn’t feel cold until right this moment, and I’ve been sitting out here for hours, so maybe the whole inhabiting my own self and ignoring everything else thing worked a little bit.
I shiver as I’m momentarily blinded by the headlights, annoyed that someone else would choose this shit box place that’s as out of the way as you can get to spend the night. This is my sorrowful dump. Go find another rundown, nineteen-dollar-a-night motel to drown your sorrows in.
The car stops right in front of me. Literally. It parks right in the spot in front of my room. The headlights cut off, and I move to stand, ready to give someone a chewing out about finding a different spot to park in at the very least, but my legs, frozen from sitting so long, give way, and my ass hits the chair so hard that it gives out, the plastic legs splintering like toothpicks. I land on my ass on the wet, crumbling sidewalk, and my back hits the concrete bricks hard. There is probably going to be a wicked bruise there come morning. I tilt my head up, my watery eyes finally adjusting and focusing enough to take in the shape of a large, long car. A station wagon?
