by Sara Snow
“I’m sorry, bab—” He cleared his throat. “Georgia. I’m really sorry.”
“You know what? It’s fine. Better that I find out what you’re really like now.”
I was upset, but there was no point in dragging this out. He’d moved on, and I wasn’t that surprised. It would have ended eventually, anyway. Everyone moved on from me in the end. I thought that things might be different this time, but I should’ve known better. It was always going to be like this. Me against the world.
At least he had the guts to come here and tell me in person.
“Can I do anything for you? Get you anything at all?”
How about you get a real man to come in here and kick you in the crotch?
“Nope. I’m good.”
“When are they letting you leave?”
“A few more days. They want to run more tests, give me a little physical therapy.”
“Call me when you’re released. I’ll pick you up.”
“Like you picked up a new girlfriend?”
He grimaced, but didn’t respond to my comment. “I want to do this for you. Seriously. It’s the least I can do.”
“Nice try, Adam, but you’re not exactly turning this into a Hallmark moment.”
I guess he feels a little guilty.
The first time I really needed him to be there for me, and he’d let me down. Now, he was trying to assuage his guilt by offering me a ride? It was like slapping a band-aid on a bleeding artery.
“I guess I better go,” he said, standing. “You take it easy. And call me when you need a ride.”
As he left the room, I knew that I wouldn’t call. I didn’t want to depend on him for anything, not even a ride. I’d have to just figure something out. I had no idea what had even happened to my car.
When he was gone, I couldn’t hold back anymore. Tears flooded my eyes and spilled over, running down my cheeks. I should have known better than to count on Adam, or anyone else for that matter. Everyone let me down.
What was that saying? Right...don’t rely on other people because other people suck. It was a lesson I’d first learned from my own mother at the tender age of eight years old.
I was on my own in this life, and I tried to tell myself that I was better off that way. I was the only person I could fully depend on and the only person I needed.
“It’s the craziest thing,” Dr. Porter said the next day, as he watched me walk across the hospital room. “There are no signs of muscle atrophy at all. That’s almost unheard of in a case like this.”
I wasn’t sure what to say to that. I actually felt great. The nausea had subsided, and I’d eaten a huge breakfast this morning—my first meal in months. My throat felt better, and I didn’t even have a headache anymore. Yesterday, when he’d been running through the cognitive tests with me, Dr. Porter had prepared me for the likelihood that I would suffer from a loss of muscle tissue. He basically guaranteed it, saying that I would need to work with a physical therapist until I got my strength back again.
But here I was, walking around the room without trouble or even pain. Dr. Porter was looking at me like I was a medical miracle or something.
“Honestly, I can’t find anything wrong with you physically. Your brain scan looks good, and you’ve passed all your cognitive tests. I almost can’t believe I’m saying this, since you just woke up yesterday, but I think I can discharge you.”
“Really?” I asked, hardly daring to believe it. “It’s about time I got some good news.” It had only been a day from my perspective, but I was already eager to get out of the hospital. It was depressing here, surrounded by sickness and injury.
“As long as you promise to call me if you notice anything strange, physically or mentally. Your healing is unprecedented, and I want to know if I’m missing anything.”
“Well, I don’t have any friends, so I can definitely add you to my contact list.” At least someone wanted to talk to me, even if it was just my doctor.
Half an hour later, I was wheeled out of the hospital. After calling around this morning, I’d discovered that my car had been impounded, since no one knew what else to do with it. As the victim of a crime, I could retrieve it without paying an enormous fee, but I had to get there first. Instead of calling Adam, I ordered an Uber. Maybe it was stubborn of me to pay for a ride, cutting into my already-meager savings, when Adam had offered to drive me, but I was determined to take back control of my life on my own terms. I didn’t want his charity.
When I got to the impound lot, there was a strange feeling of happiness that came with sliding behind the wheel of my own car. The thing might have been a piece of crap, but it was my piece of crap. At least it was familiar to me. Even the delayed start was less annoying now.
Eager to get home, I drove straight to the apartment that I shared with Olivia. I hadn’t contacted her, so my arrival would be a surprise.
I should have noticed the Jeep, I realized later, parked across the street from the apartment building. I would have recognized it immediately. Instead, I was lost in thought, my mind focused on the fact that I would have to restart my last semester of school and find another job, since I had called the gas station earlier only to discover that they had replaced me. I was still lingering on these issues when I inserted my key into the door, unlocking it and throwing it open to find none other than my recent ex-boyfriend, Adam, sitting on the living room couch with Olivia, her legs draped over his lap while they watched TV together.
We all froze. At least Adam and Olivia had the decency to look guilty as they stared back at me. My heart seemed to skip a beat before taking off at a gallop.
“What the actual fuck?” I said, slamming the door behind me.
“Georgia,” Olivia said, taking her feet off Adam’s lap as if I wouldn’t have already noticed their intimate position. “What are you doing here?”
“I live here,” I snapped.
Adam and Olivia looked at each other for a long moment before he scooted to the edge of the couch, resting his elbows on his knees. “Actually, you don’t.”
“What?” I asked faintly.
“I had to get another roommate,” Olivia explained. “I had no idea how long you would be in the hospital. or if you’d even wake up. What was I supposed to do?”
“Maybe not steal my boyfriend,” I spat. It was one thing to know that he’d moved on, but with my roommate? He’d replaced me with her, and she’d replaced me with someone else.
“It wasn’t like that,” Adam said, placing a hand on her knee to stop her when she started to get up. “I came over to help her pack up your stuff and remove the furniture.”
“You did what?” I couldn’t remember ever feeling so angry in my entire life. “Where’s my furniture?”
“We sold it,” Olivia said, biting her lip nervously as I turned my glare on her. “I had to. I had a new roommate moving in.”
“You. Had. To.” My things were gone. My property.
“I’ll give you the money I made,” she said, brushing off Adam’s hand and hurrying to her bedroom.
“You didn’t think to mention this when we talked yesterday?” I asked Adam. I felt hot, like my anger was literally burning through my body.
“I thought you’d be upset.”
“Well, you were right about that!” Something occurred to me. “Oh my god. That’s why you offered me a ride. So that I wouldn’t show up and catch you guys together.”
“We didn’t want to hurt you. This wasn’t planned—we just fell for each other.”
“I’m very happy for you,” I said, sarcasm dripping from my voice. My emotions felt out of control. Suddenly, a framed picture of Adam and Olivia flew off the coffee table, hitting the wall and shattering.
My eyes went wide and Adam jumped to his feet.
“What the hell?” He looked wildly from the broken frame to me, but I was just as astonished.
“Here.” Olivia returned, holding out a very small stack of twenty-dollar bills. “We sold the bed
and dresser and got three hundred.”
It wasn’t much. I’d be lucky if I could replace the furniture for that amount, if I could even find a new place. The rest of the furniture in the apartment belonged to Olivia. She’d had it before I moved in.
Adam came over to Olivia, wrapping an arm around her waist and pulling her into his side while looking at me warily.
“Where’s my stuff?” I asked, taking the cash and shoving it into my pocket. I was ready to get the hell out of there.
“The hall closet,” Olivia said, folding her arms across her chest. “It’s just five boxes and the guitar.”
“Help me with them,” I demanded, glaring at Adam.
He hesitated, and I felt that same out-of-control emotional response as rage coursed through me. He’d been happy enough to come over here, pack up my personal possessions, and flirt with my roommate, but now he didn’t want to help me put the boxes in my car?
This time, it was more than just a single picture frame that moved without being touched. The clock fell off the wall, the TV remote soared across the room, and books even flew off the shelves.
“What’s happening?” Olivia shouted, grabbing onto Adam’s arm while he let out an incoherent cry of surprise.
Somehow, I knew that I was doing it. It was crazy, and I felt shock reverberate through me as it happened, but I had no doubt that it was my doing.
Great. As if I needed to become the monster in this freak show while Adam gets to play the hero for the damsel in distress.
I took a deep breath and gulped it down before backing toward the door. “Bring my boxes out to the car,” I told Adam. “I don’t want to come back in here.”
I could see by the frightened looks on their faces that they agreed with that sentiment. So, I left the apartment, my mind reeling as I went to wait by the car for Adam to bring my things. In the lobby, I saw a handsome man who triggered a memory I had lost during my coma.
Victor. His name was Victor, and I’d met him the night I was shot. He’d been charming then, but now, he looked at me with a dark hunger in his eyes that made my uneasy.
But I didn’t give enough of a fuck to worry about him, not with what had just happened in the apartment at the forefront of my mind. Adam brought down two boxes at a time while Olivia stayed in the apartment, but I could see her peeking out at me through the curtains of her bedroom window.
Adam was stiff and silent as he loaded up my backseat and trunk, and I could see that he wanted to get away from me as quickly as possible. Not that I could blame him for that. I was freaked out, too.
When he was done, I put my guitar—tucked away in its weathered old case—in the passenger seat beside me and drove away, on the road to God-knows-where.
3
Georgia
I slept in my car for a few days. It wasn’t exactly the highpoint of my life, and a small part of me couldn’t help focusing on the fact that I’d been much better off in the hospital. But I wasn’t going to allow myself to remain homeless and jobless. I found a shelter that didn’t have any empty beds for me, but they did allow me to use their shower. So, I cleaned myself up, put on my nicest clothing, and went on a job hunt.
A little determination in the third-largest city in the United States can go a long way, and I found a job after two days of searching. It wasn’t the best one in the world—working at a customer service call center for a cell phone company—but it would cover my bills, hopefully. And it was enough to get me an apartment, combined with pretty much every dime I had left in my savings account as a deposit.
The place was a studio apartment, fit for just one person, which was perfect because I’d soured on the idea of living with someone else. It was too bad that I didn’t have any furniture. I bought an air mattress for now, which doubled as my couch and bed. That cheap air mattress would have been perfect for a camping trip—maybe camping under a bridge. I wasn’t exactly living my best life.
At least I was feeling well-rested, which made sense, considering how I’d spent the last couple of months. I had gone through the boxes that Adam put in my car, and it looked like most of my possessions were there. The most important thing in the world to me was the acoustic guitar, and it was the first thing I brought into the apartment after I signed the lease.
Without a TV or the internet, there weren’t many entertainment options in the apartment, so I spent the evening sitting cross-legged on my air mattress with the guitar in my lap as I plucked at the strings, easily finding a familiar melody. It was a song that I wrote back when I was in high school, after I bought this guitar with the money I’d saved up working after school and on weekends making beds at a nursing home. I couldn’t afford lessons and my foster parents weren’t going to help me with that, so my boyfriend at the time, who was in a garage band, taught me how to play. I spent weeks learning and started playing around with writing my own music right away.
This first one had lyrics and as I played, I started to sing them, softly at first, but once I got into it, my voice got louder, echoing in the practically empty apartment. It was a song about being on the outside looking in, trying to be a part of something even though you don’t quite fit in. I had poured my heart into those words when I wrote them five years ago, and they were just as relevant to my life today.
When I went to bed that night, I was already thinking of how I would spend my first paycheck the next week. I hated to plan that out before I even had the money, but I needed to furnish this apartment. Right now, the interior of my car looked like a penthouse compared to this.
I lay there on the mattress, covered by a turquoise bedspread, trying to decide between buying a dresser or a TV. One was more practical, of course, but I wouldn’t mind having something to do at home while I was too broke to go out. Before I knew it, my thoughts had transferred to images in my mind, and I was lost in a dream.
At first, I was shopping in a furniture store, trying to pick out a couch, but every time I tried to sit on one to test it out, it shrank, getting smaller and smaller until it was the size of doll furniture. Then, a salesman would appear and tell me that it was all I could afford anyway.
I got angry and left, but instead of walking outside, I found myself walking into the gas station where I used to work. Lisa, the cashier who worked the shift before me, frowned when she saw me, looking at a huge watch on her wrist as she shook her head.
“You’re late again,” she said. “Sean is going to be so mad at you.”
“Sean?” I blinked, confused. I had a bad feeling here, somehow knowing that something terrible was going to happen.
Lisa just shook her head and walked away. The next thing I knew, I was at the cash register. The place was starting to look like a confusing mix of the gas station and my new apartment. I knew it was wrong, but I couldn’t pinpoint how.
The door opened and Adam came in with two men carrying guns. I tried to back away, but I was frozen in place. I let out a strangled cry. I couldn’t move, but I could still talk.
“No,” I said to Adam. “That’s not right. You weren’t with them.”
“Open the register, bitch!” one of the men shouted. Carl. I wasn’t sure how I knew it, but that was his name.
I tried to do as he said and frantically pushed buttons on the register, trying to get it to open, but none of them worked.
The other man, the one who had facial sores that kept multiplying every time I looked at him, raised his gun to my face. This was Sean. I could remember that much.
“I’m not leaving without my money,” he said, before aiming the gun at my face and pulling the trigger.
BANG!
The gunshot sounded like an explosion, and the next thing I knew, I was sitting up in my bed, gasping for air as the boxes containing all of my belongings flew around the room.
Everything fell to the floor as I gasped.
I had tried to forget about what had happened in my old apartment with Adam and Olivia, telling myself that it was not what it seemed. As if i
t was just the result of an active imagination, even though we’d all three clearly seen it happen. It just seemed too far outside the realm of possibility.
Now, I couldn’t deny it any longer. There was something very strange going on.
It was only four in the morning, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep. So, I sat up on the air mattress. I didn’t know how I was moving things without touching them, but I was going to try to figure it out.
My eyes landed on a half-empty water bottle across the room, sitting on the kitchen counter where I’d left it after eating my frozen pizza dinner. Walking across the cool hardwood floor, I grabbed it and brought it back to my air mattress.
Taking a deep breath, I tried to focus every bit of my being on that bottle, from the clear liquid inside to the blue and white label. I willed it to move, imagining it floating up into the air or even just moving a couple of inches to one side or the other.
Nothing.
Clenching my jaw, I redoubled my efforts, feeling like I could pop a vein in my forehead as I ground my teeth and concentrated.
It was pointless. “Damn it,” I mumbled, my frustration mounting. “Just move already!”
As I said the word “move,” I gestured angrily with my hand, then froze in place as the bottle moved just a few feet away from me.
“No. Way.”
Experimentally, I lifted my hand again, gesturing. Nothing moved.
I frowned, looking at my hand for a second before trying again. Was that not the reason that it had worked before? Then, what could it be?
I remembered how irritated I was with myself and this whole situation. I’d been frustrated and the bottle had moved. Maybe...
Closing my eyes for a moment, I conjured up a bad memory of something that made me angry. Going from one foster home to another like I had for so much of my life, I had plenty of those.
Clinging to feelings of bitter anger and hopelessness, I refocused my attention on the bottle. This time, when I imagined the thing moving, it went all the way across the apartment!