Substance abuse has not yet been ruled out.
“Lazy?” Dad pushes back his chair. “Who worked until—”
“Thea? ... Thea, do you hear me?”
Still under police investigation.
My phone starts to ding rapid-fire. The discourse between my parents heightens. A familiar tension fills my chest. The oatmeal churns in my stomach. Did one of them just say my name? The room is brighter. Too bright. I peer in the direction of the front window. Where is the window? The usual California shutters and collection of white cupboards blur. All I see are pewter knobs. I swing my head over to Dad and his dark housecoat. His silhouette is turned toward Mom, but his features are barely visible. What is happening? He is less than three feet from me. Why can’t I see his face? The haze thickens. Am I fainting? But there are no stars, no darkness—just light. Endless, blurring, white light.
I’m dying.
Oh please, no—I can’t be dying!
I open my mouth, but nothing comes out. The air is sucked from my throat. I can’t breathe. My ears pound. Strained voices fade.
Wait. What is that? A sound, soft at first, grows like a strong wind or a plunging waterfall. It overpowers my racing heart.
Be still.
These words are all I hear in my mind. I try not to move, try not to think. Hot tears form behind my eyelids.
Be still.
And then it’s over. Morning chaos resumes. Mom calls my name. With the cuff of my sleeve, I wipe away any possible evidence of what I’ve just gone through. But Mom has noticed. The bulging alertness in her eyes gives her away. She will wait, hands clenched, studying me until I share an explanation. But explain what? I don’t know what happened. I couldn’t even begin to describe it.
She asked me something. About leaving? What time is it? Seven fifty. I should be brushing my teeth by now. The sight of my instant oats brings a new wave of nausea. My parents are frozen, as though in tableau, waiting for me to say something. Anything.
I push my bowl away. “I’ll walk.”
Wow. Inspired. I may have almost died. Now would be an ideal time to share this with the people who care about me most.
There is no time to talk. And going for a run is out of the question. But this mass of uncontrollable tension needs to be released. Fast.
I bolt up the stairs, despite the strain in Mom’s voice. Maybe she is just chastising me for not putting my dishes away. But whatever she says gets muffled. The weight of my body pushes my bedroom door shut.
Tears release without restraint, falling freely as I slide toward the hardwood floor. I lower my head to my gathered knees and tangle my fingers in my hair. Expertly, I trace the path to a small section of scalp, cleared of hair follicles from past anxiety-ridden moments. I pinch a strand coarser than the rest. Yank. Release. A small section of my mind clears. But the level of fog that just encompassed me was nothing like my usual panic attacks. I search for another.
Ruffling from the edge of my bed skirt, Woolie emerges just before I pull the next strand. He saunters over to my side, seemingly aware I’m at my breaking point. It’s as if he knows his gray-velvet fur holds one of the few trump cards over doing something more destructive to myself. My parents’ rising voices drift through the vent in the floor, accented by a bass line of heavy pacing and fists against table. The front door slams shut, leaving an uncomfortable silence, broken only by Woolie’s purrs and my ticking wall clock.
My gaze shifts to the carved antique clock claimed from Grams’ room. Her words float to the front of my memories. Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom. Her soothing voice could often stop my racing heart when I was monitoring this same clock in her room. She was always sharing phrases at key moments picked from her frayed Bible. Most of the verses fell on deaf ears, but this one stuck. Probably because of my need for punctuality.
I lunge to my feet. I’m going to be late. Nothing like an unhealthy obsession with time to overpower the stellar habit of stress-induced hair pulling. The thought of being late makes my palms sweat. The awkward lineup at the office to explain my reason to a host of eavesdroppers. Slinking into class while everyone stares, and then needing to wait after class to figure out what I missed. Each hypothetical nightmare urges me to hurry on my invention of palm antiperspirant.
If I hustle, I can get rid of my jungle mouth, cover up some of my facial fiends—what I like to call my acne—and still grab a tea before school. Routine and caffeine, that’s what I need. Hopefully, it will clear my mind enough to arrive without any further freak-outs. I gather my math textbook and laptop from my desk and head for the washroom.
The shower is running in my parents’ bathroom. At least I can leave without any further encounters with Dad. The sharp mint of my toothpaste soothes me, and I wipe the last of my tears away with my free hand.
Wait. That sound. It is almost like the one I heard in the kitchen. Like a gentle waterfall, but more alive.
It’s just the shower, Thea.
I study myself in the mirror, half expecting my reflection to fade into a blur. Nope. There I am in perfect, flawed clarity. Dad’s narrow nose. Mom’s full lips. I scrunch my dark curls to calm the frizz and frown at the unkempt state of my thick eyebrows.
The rusted squeak of faucets closing pierces through my parents’ closed door. No more time for primping if I want to make a Dad-free getaway. I switch off the light and stare at my darkened reflection, hoping to see something unusual. If not for Dad’s pasty contribution to my gene pool, I would fade into the background. I must have low iron, or maybe I’m not getting enough sleep. Nothing serious, I tell myself. You’re a rational human being who will figure this out.
But the quiver that grows in my stomach from fear, anxiety, or maybe intuition tells me it wasn’t nothing. This is more than just some nutritional deficiency. This is just the beginning.
Of what? I wish I knew.
CHAPTER TWO
Despite my best efforts, the front door creaks. I yank it open, needing to escape this house, this family, this morning. A lingering fog spreads low across the park, stifling my vision and quickening my heart. Thea, chill out. It’s just fog. I take a deep breath of cool November air, holding it in my lungs as I close the door behind me. Let go. I exhale, and the familiar neighborhood emerges through breaks in the mist.
The muted sky casts an eerie gloom over the playground across the road. The maples rimming the park have lost all but a few auburn leaves, most torn away by the last storm. Only the sole spruce tree my old Girl Guide troop planted near the park’s center, carries a touch of life. A gust of wind sends a morning chill down my spine like dripping water. I tighten Grams’ oversized scarf around my neck. Maybe I should surrender to the change of seasons and pull my heavy jacket from storage, but I am stubbornly ignoring winter’s early onset. I hate the shorter days. Suffocating darkness creeps in earlier each evening, and the cold freezes a little more of the world come morning.
Daylight savings time helps a little with the mornings. A couple of weeks ago, I was rolling over when my two separate alarms dinged to a disorienting darkness that made me second-guess my whereabouts. Now when the chimes jar me awake, I can find them by the second tone. And when I open my curtains, my mind unravels. I catch the sun rising from beyond the rows of townhouses and semis. At least, that’s the case on clear mornings. Today, the clouds have come down to intermingle with the houses.