The hallway goes silent. All the doors have closed.
I’m going to be late for class, but I still can’t move.
Something hits the floor loudly, like fireworks. Whatever it is, it’s coming from behind me. I want to turn around, but I can’t.
Boom!
A beat of silence.
Boom!
I spin around.
A girl stands at the end of the hallway with her back to me. Her arms are down at her sides.
Blood courses down her wrists to the tips of her fingers. The drops hang suspended for a moment, and then fall to the linoleum floor.
The sound of fireworks—boom!—each time a drop of blood hits the floor.
Now that I can move again, I hurry to class. Mr. Barrett’s earth science, three doors down to the left. My seat will be empty. I’m afraid I’ll be marked tardy. Three tardies and I get detention. Detention means I’ll be grounded on the weekend and won’t be able to hang out with my friends. Which means that they’ll probably spend much of that time talking about me behind my back.
Despite all this, I walk past Mr. Barrett’s door.
Toward the girl with her back to me.
Olivia?
No, it’s not Olivia. Of course it’s not. Why would it be Olivia?
When I’m just yards away, the blood starts pouring faster from the girl’s wrists. The drops of blood fall now like raindrops. Boom boom boom boom! The two pools of blood at her feet start spreading.
The girl doesn’t move.
I’m feet away. I don’t want to be here. I want to be in earth science, listening to Mr. Barrett enthusiastically discuss continental drift and seafloor spreading and the theory of plate tectonics.
But I can’t control my body in this dream—and I know now this is a dream, a nightmare—so I lift my hand to reach out toward the girl.
The tips of my fingers are inches away.
All I need to do is take one more step.
Just one more step . . .
I jerked out of sleep so quickly it felt like I’d punched the girl in the dream. Not only had I punched her, but I could hear her too.
Only it didn’t sound like a girl crying out from being hit. It sounded like a man, and his voice was somehow familiar.
“Jesus Christ.”
A second later, I’d gained better consciousness and become aware of my surroundings. I was in the living room. The TV was on. And Daniel was stumbling back, holding his face.
I sat up straight, jumped to my feet. “Oh my God. Are you okay?”
He raised his other hand, holding me off. “Yeah, I’m fine. Just wasn’t expecting it. That must have been one crazy dream.”
I opened my mouth to respond, but nothing came out. I looked around the living room, as if an appropriate response might be hiding somewhere.
Daniel still had on his brown scrubs. He must have just gotten home from the hospital and found me in the throes of a nightmare on the living room couch.
“Emily, are you okay?”
I swallowed, forced myself to nod. “Yeah, I’m okay. Like you said, one crazy dream.”
“It sounded like a nightmare.”
I ignored this and took a step forward. “Let me see your face.”
I went to gently push his hand aside, but he shook his head, stepping away.
“I’m fine.”
“Daniel.”
“I said I’m fine. I’m going to take a shower.”
He turned away and started toward the stairs. I watched him, helpless, not sure what to say or do.
He was halfway up the stairs when I spoke.
“What do you want to do for dinner?”
He paused, shrugged. “I don’t care.”
“You want to do takeout?”
“Takeout’s fine.”
Before I could ask him what kind, he started up the stairs again, his hand touching his cheek.
Daniel came back downstairs just as I’d closed the door on the courier. He’d brought Chinese. Daniel and I had gone to the restaurant often during our first year together. Now all we did was open an app, tap a few buttons, and voilà: food. Sesame chicken for me, moo goo gai pan for Daniel, along with two egg rolls.
Daniel checked his container, grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge, and sat down at the table, his focus on the phone in his hand. I sat across from him and absently probed the sesame chicken with my fork.
Daniel must have sensed me watching him, because he looked at me, forced a smile, and then shifted his focus back to his phone.
“Your face looks okay,” I said.
He glanced at me again with a frown. “Um, thanks?”
“I mean, on your cheek. Where I hit you. It doesn’t look bad from where I’m sitting.”
He shrugged, taking another bite of food. Next door, Andrew and Barb’s Jack Russell terrier started its nightly yapping.
I glanced back down at my dinner. Because of Daniel’s schedule, we rarely ate together anymore. I usually nuked a Smart Ones meal in the microwave or made a sandwich, sometimes just a bowl of cereal.
A few years ago, Daniel and I had made the decision that when we were home together for dinner, we would sit at the kitchen table like grown-ups, and while that tradition had continued, I’d begun to wonder what the point was. Daniel rarely asked me how my day went, as he knew I couldn’t really talk about my clients. We both worked in the medical field. We knew how HIPAA worked.
Years ago, Daniel would sometimes tell me about his day and the people he dealt with in the ER, maybe some gossip from his coworkers, but eventually that had tapered off. Now we talked to each other when we needed to, simple communication, but never much outside the basics.
I didn’t put all the blame on Daniel. He’d been open before, warm and loving. Sometimes I wondered what our relationship would be like if my father hadn’t died. If we’d gotten married and moved out of the town house. If maybe then things would have been different, and Daniel and I wouldn’t spend so much of the time we shared together in silence.
“My friend Olivia killed herself.”
I said the words without really thinking why. I just wanted to break the silence between us.
Daniel glanced up, pausing midchew, and stared back at me.
“It happened a couple days ago. I found out today. My mom told me.”
Daniel swallowed, set his phone down on the table, and used a napkin to wipe his mouth.
“Who’s Olivia?”
“She was an old friend. From middle school. We were close then, but I haven’t talked to her in years.”
“I’m sorry.”
Why I kept talking, I had no idea. “The funeral is Saturday.”
“Are you going?”
“I’m not sure yet.”
Daniel watched me for another moment, waiting for me to say something else, and when I didn’t, he said, “Well, shit, I’m sorry to hear about that. That’s awful.”
On an alternate timeline, I imagined a completely different reaction. That timeline is the one where my father is still alive. Daniel and I have been married now for two years. We’ve left this town house and moved into our own home. Maybe we have a dog. We still go hiking when the weather is nice. We drive north during the winter to go skiing. We go to the bars with Daniel’s friends, to their cookouts and parties; sometimes I even accompany Daniel to the Boys & Girls Club, where he still volunteers.