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I stopped to look at my Nissan Rogue out in the middle of the driveway. Regret mixed with relief, a strange combination, filled my insides.
The strange thing was, Jamie no longer sat in my car.
There were no signs of him anywhere.
I almost laughed then. Didn’t take much for him to quit. But then, what did I expect?
“See?” I shouted at the top of my lungs, throwing my hands up in the air. “You can’t save me, Jamie. No one can save me. Because everybody always leaves me!”
Chapter Twenty
Home
I shivered as I stepped, clinging on to the banister. Droplets of water splattered across my bare arms. Little goose bumps prickled beneath the layer of wet. Slowly, I ascended and turned the corner, trudging to my bedroom. My eyelids grew heavy, threatening to shut as I made my way upstairs.
Sleep. I needed sleep.
Was everything still working inside of me? It all seemed to stop. I seemed to stop. As if a part of my essence no longer resided in my own body.
The hallway light flickered in the ceiling. Yet another thing that needed to be replaced in this house.
My focus shifted to the doorway which led to my sanctuary. But, really, was there a such thing as a safe haven for me? Terror clung to my skin. Terror at the idea that one of two things had happened.
Either I had gone completely crazy.
Or… worse.When the lights went out, the computer didn’t simply shut off.
I slid into my bed, wet hair sticking to the sheets. Staring up at the popcorn ceiling, I made a conscious effort to breathe. Made a conscious effort to feel my soul resting inside my body. Made a conscious effort to remember I was somehow still apart of the world where I no longer felt as though I belonged.
The tears burned as they slipped down my face. Tickled as they reached my chin and upper neck.
I tightened my hands in a fist, then released, then tightened again. Trying to remain present in the moment. Something Dr. Wiig had once suggested during one of our visits. But no matter how hard I gripped, I couldn’t latch onto anything.
It was then that something finally dawned on me.
Seeing Jamie looking so alive… I now realized how dead my soul was in comparison. I’d died a long time ago. It wasn’t that death escaped me.No, no, no, no.Death had come for me many times, over and over and over.
It was my physical body that lingered.
My soul had died a long time ago.
There was no saving a person who was already dead.
Chapter Twenty-One
Awake
The tinny sound of my doorbell played in my drowsy mind as I turned over in bed.
Waves of sound danced from the first floor, entering and exiting my bedroom. Replaced with silence— a crescendo of white noise gnawing through the blank spaces of my mind.
I furrowed my brows. My eyelids melded together so tightly that opening them proved to be as hard as detaching Velcro that had been heated by the sun.
The doorbell rang once more.
Suddenly, my brain registered that ithadbeen ringing before. I forced my eyes open. Light crawled into my bedroom from my windows, stinging my retinas. My arm hung over the edge of the bed, limp and lifeless. I glanced around, checking to make sure I was alone. I breathed in a huge sigh of relief when I noticed no signs of Jamie—no sighting and no sensing of him—and hoped to fuck that perhaps the whole thing had been a dream.
Maybe this was some sort of Groundhog Day experience, without the waking up in the same day over and over again part, and I’d come to learn that today was still Sunday. That I had yet to go to teach my class. And that I could redo the entire day.
