“And what did you have for breakfast this morning?” she asks, dragging the chilly metal disk over my chest.
My eyes fly open. “Excuse me?”
“Did you have any coffee? Or some kind of energy drink?”
I stare at her in surprise. “No! What’s that supposed to —”
She holds up a finger to her lips, indicating for me to be quiet. Seconds tick by while I consider telling her about my missing sleep. I wonder if that’s the kind of vital information she should know about just in case I fall unconscious before the paramedics arrive. But before I can say anything else, she pulls the stethoscope tips out of her ears and sighs.
“I don’t hear anything wrong with your heart, Lily. I think you just experienced a palpitation.”
I prop myself up on an elbow. “A what?”
“Palpitation. They’re quite common and completely harmless. Probably due to a bad case of first-day jitters.”
On the tail of these words, the tight, burning pain in my upper body dissolves away to numbness. All that’s left is the awkward heat in my cheeks as Ms. Green reaches into the pocket of her white lab coat and pulls out a pink lollipop.
“Here you go.”
“Are you serious? That’s it?”
“I suppose if it happens again, you might want to mention it to you family doctor. But really, I wouldn’t worry.” She stands up, opens the door, and waves me out of the room. “Off you go. Back to class.”
Nice. I’m dying and nobody gives a toss. Now I’m really glad I didn’t tell her about my sleep crisis. She probably wouldn’t have believed that either. Ignoring her stupid lollipop, I scuttle out of the room and down the hall.
Man, didn’t I tell you the first day back at school always blows?
NINE
September 12th
The absolute bottomless black hole of the night is back again. But tonight, I’m not planning on waiting around for it to suck me into its evil vortex.
I swing my legs around the open window sill and let my feet hover for a moment above the landing pad of soft grass below. It’s now been seventeen days since I’ve slept. Well, seventeen nights actually. Just two days (nights) away from breaking the world record. Somebody get the Guinness people on the phone! Wonder what kind of proof they’re going to need to make it official? Would an autopsy report of my exhausted brain cells do? I close my eyes and choke back an angry sob.
Lately, I feel like a death row prisoner waiting for the electric chair to juice up. My eyes sweep over my room and land on Aunt Su’s pomegranate jar-of-death. I still haven’t figured out what to do with it yet. And unless I catch some serious zees soon, I’m going to run out of time. The General keeps harping on me, talking about how unsanitary it is to keep human remains in my room and how she doesn’t want ashes hanging around her house much longer. Between you and me, I think she’d be happy if I just flushed them down the toilet along with my morning dump. That way, she could finally be rid of her eccentric half-sister forever. I lean over as a wave of cramps pass through my stomach — I swear, that thought just made my insides turn to goulash.
Once the nausea’s passed, I run back into the room and pull the jar off the desk. You’re coming with me tonight, Aunt Su. Cradling the pomegranate in my arms, I hop back onto the window ledge, push off from the sill, sail through the air, and land with a rolling thud on the long grass below. As soon as I catch my breath, I look up to locate the moon. It’s resting on the treetops, a pale half-circle hanging in the sky. Like an empty cereal bowl waiting to be filled with Frosted Flakes and milk.
My stomach gurgles at the thought, but I ignore it and take off down the road with Aunt Su tucked under my arm like a football. This time, I know exactly where I’m headed. And it isn’t McCool Fries. Believe you me. Where am I going? I’ll give you a clue: I’m heading to the one place in the world where I’m positive my sleep is hiding out. Yup, I’m happy to report that my exhausted brain cells have finally solved the answer to that mystery.
Want another clue? Okay, fine, last one: if General MacArthur catches wind of this little field trip of mine, she’ll have a big, horny cow. That’s right, my sleep has been kidnapped by an evil zombie dude and is currently bound, gagged, and tied to a chair in a dark corner of Aunt Su’s cabin.
Okay … not really. So I know my sleep isn’t actually being held hostage at Aunt Su’s place. But being around her stuff has to help me find it again, dontcha think?
Worth a shot, at least. At this point, I’m seriously running out of options.
So there I am, walking down the dark road and scanning through the beam of my flashlight for something amazing to do. But all I can see are some random piles of trash lying by the grassy curb. A few soda cans, a cigarette pack, and a ripped plastic bag. I pick them up and carry them with me until I pass a garbage can. I guess cleaning up the streets is a start, but not a very good one. Definitely not amazing. Village custodial maintenance can’t possibly be what Aunt Su means for me to be doing, can it? If I really want to make a difference, maybe I should be looking for a solution to world hunger. I mean, if I can get General MacArthur going off on one of her stress kicks, she could probably force-feed the world.
Le sigh.
I feel like my life is a giant jigsaw puzzle and I’m missing the most important piece. And, don’t ask me to explain why, but I have the strongest feeling the missing piece is back at Aunt Su’s cabin. Like maybe if I do something amazing, I get to stay alive? My flashlight wavers as I crest the last gravelly hill leading to the cabin. As you’ve probably guessed, my anger has mellowed a bit since my last visit there. Let’s face it — there’s really not much use being furious with a dead person. At this point, almost all that rage has settled into an overdose of sadness — a thousand dripping tears slowly eroding away at my guts like some pathetic form of Chinese water torture.
Next thing I know, I’m standing in the driveway staring at Aunt Su’s little wooden shack. It looks smaller and thinner than ever before. And it’s leaning a few degrees to the left, like it’s tired and needs to lie down.
A sandstorm of nerves whips through my guts. This is going to be my first time inside Aunt Su’s cabin since she died. It’s going to hurt bad. I can feel my muscles start to tighten with anticipation. Before going in, I decide to head down to the little herb garden on the south wall to gather up some mint leaves. A cup of Moroccan Nana tea should help loosen my muscles and calm my nerves. It always does. Aunt Su used to make it for me whenever I got upset.
Oh God! Aunt Su.
I put the pomegranate down beside a swaying marijuana plant. The tears start forming even before I pick the first sprig of mint. The fresh, sweet smell is so powerful it manages to bring my dead aunt rushing back to me in a flood of memories. On the weekends when Mom let me stay over here at the cabin, Aunt Su would stay up most of the night with me. Sometimes, we’d just skip sleep entirely and talk until the sun came up. We’d sip on steaming cups of tea, curl up on the couch, and talk about everything you can imagine. She’d tell me about all the cities she’d visited in her life. She’d tell me about every person who’d ever betrayed her, every time she’d ever been in love, and every big adventure she’d woken up to find herself stuck in the middle of. And we’d talk about me. Aunt Su would always tell me how lucky I was — how I was getting to live a longer life than most people since I didn’t need to sleep as much of it away. We’d talk a lot about writing. She’d look through my scribbling stories and let me tap away on her laptop (yes, she’d finally upgraded her old manual typewriter to a MacBook) and listen to my dreams of growing into a writer just like her one day. She’d tell me the names of all her favourite authors and read excerpts from some of her favourite books and poems. Every writer is a reader first, Lily-girl. Keep reading, and one day I’ll be putting your books up on those shelves.
I drop to my knees in the dirt and let my tears pour out. I cry for the horrible image of Aunt Su ending her life all alone in her bed. And how I didn’t
get the chance to be there to hold her hand when she slipped away forever. I cry at the awfulness of never getting to say goodbye. I cry for the fact that I’ll never hear her voice again. I cry for the picture of her face in my head that’s getting blurrier with every day. I cry for the canyon of emptiness inside me that’s never going to be filled. I cry for my missing sleep. And the death sentence that’s hanging over my head.
Once the herb garden has been watered thoroughly with tears, I wipe my face with the sleeve of my hoodie, pull myself back up to my feet, pick up the pomegranate jar, and go get the key. The obscene little gnome is waiting for me in his usual spot. I grab him and flip him upside down. There’s a teeny round hole carved out at the bottom of his pointy gnome shoes. With one big shake, the cabin key clatters loose and lands at my feet. I pick it up and open the door quickly, before I can change my mind. Stepping inside, I flip on the ceramic elephant lamp Aunt Su had brought back from her last trip to Thailand and peer around the main room. Everything looks exactly the same as it always did. Truly. For a split second, I half expect Aunt Su to walk out of her bedroom wearing her favourite purple kimono. Comfy clothes, she always called the drawer full of nightshirts and bathrobes she liked to wear when she was writing.
“You got to be comfortable so the words can flow smoothly from your head to your fingertips,” she’d say. “Ideally, every writer would work naked. Think of all the incredible ideas that would help to release into the world. You know I’d go commando all day long if I didn’t catch a chill so easily.”
And I knew she would, too. She was just that wingding-ish.
Suddenly, out of the shadows I hear a rustling noise coming from the direction of Aunt Su’s bedroom. My heart freezes. Oh my God! What’s that? And then the craziest thought skips through my head.
Maybe they’re wrong. Maybe she’s not dead. Maybe they cremated an empty casket and Aunt Su has been hiding out in her cabin this whole time, laughing hysterically about the big joke she’s played on the world. Har-har. Gotcha good, Lily-girl!
I wouldn’t put it past her. Nervously, I lift the lid of the pomegranate jar and peer inside. But it’s too dark to tell if there are actually ashes in there or not.
“Um, hello?” I whisper, replacing the lid and taking a baby step forward. “Is somebody here?”
One more small step and I’m inching open the bedroom door.The hinges reply with a long wavering creak. Another rustle and then a trio of teeny brown mice run scurrying away from the light. My heart slowly goes back to normal speed. Just a few rodents. Relax!
I sweep my eyes over the snarl of stuff in Aunt Su’s room. The collection of Inuit soapstone statues collecting dust on top of her mahogany dresser, the teetering wall-to-wall shelves of paperback romance novels, the futon with its leaf-coloured sheets, all crumpled up in the middle of the mattress like a giant discarded green tissue. I reach out to straighten them but stop. Aunt Su never made her bed once in the fifteen and a half years I knew her. Seems only right to leave it be.
Pulling the mint leaves out of my hoodie pouch, I head over to the kitchen to make myself a cup of Nana tea. On the way, I sidestep the obstacle course of scattered stuff that makes up Aunt Su’s decor. The wooden black rhino carving she liked to use as a footstool, her pile of stuffed frogs (not the fuzzy kind — these frogs were of the Derry’s Taxidermy and Cheese Shoppe persuasion), the tangled garden of overgrown indoor plants (which were now completely keeled over with thirst), the eclectic mishmash of furniture collected from garage sales and antique markets, and, of course, more teetering bookshelves reaching up to nudge the ceiling. To call this place cluttered would be an understatement. Funny, the clutter was never so obvious to me as it is now. Guess I never paid too much attention to all the crazy stuff before; it was just part of the eccentric background that was Aunt Su’s home. But tonight every single piece of it seems to have fallen out of context. Without Aunt Su here, none of this stuff makes any kind of sense anymore. Like the whole collection has lost the one thing that used to tie it together.
All this eccentric bequeathing stuff.
All of it mine now.
The kitchen is at the back of the cabin, adjacent to the wall of windows that looks out onto the lake. All of the windows in Aunt Su’s cabin are bare. When she had this place built, her one request was lots of big, naked windows. “Artists need light. And lots of it,” she used to say. “Curtains are a waste of money when you’ve got a view like this.” I remember once asking if the lack of privacy ever bothered her. “There’s no one around for miles. What do I need privacy for? So nobody sees me writing my next book? Or dancing around in my birthday suit?”
“What about the weed? Aren’t you worried about someone seeing that? It’s illegal, you know.”
“Not when you have a prescription,” she said, turning her face away from the light.
At the time I didn’t understand what that meant, and she didn’t offer to explain.
Think I just figured it out. It’s legal for cancer patients.
Behind me, I can hear the kettle rushing and racing into a high-pitched whistle, like an oncoming train. I make the tea, drop in some mint leaves, and bring the steaming cup to my mouth. My eyes sting from the burn of the steam, but it feels good. In a weird way, it helps to take my mind off the pain coming at me from inside.
One burning sip.
Another.
Better.
Cradling the cup in my hands, I let my eyes creep over the room again. God, what am I going to do with all this stuff? There’s a fine layer of dust covering the furniture and nests of cobwebs draping the upper corners of the room. Aunt Su was never much of a housekeeper. If she wasn’t writing or riding her moped, she was spending time with me. Cleaning was never very high on her priority list. I don’t even think she owned a broom, unless it was to chase away the mice. I could probably empty the pomegranate out right here in this room and nobody would even notice the difference. Yeah, those ashes would blend in perfectly with all the dust. But that doesn’t seem right. No, there’s got to be a better spot for them.
Eventually, my eyes come to a stop on the bookshelf nearest to me. Putting down the tea, I wander over and find the shelf with Aunt Su’s books. Shoshanah M. Chase. That was her pen name. I slide my fingers along the row of titles.
Thump, thump, thump over the long line of spines. There are dozens of them. Had I ever paid attention to how many books she’d written? There’s a virtual library of Aunt Su’s words here. I’m suddenly overwhelmed with the urge to read one. Maybe just hearing her words in my head will bring back my sleep.
My fingers pause on a spine that’s sticking out slightly from the otherwise neat row. The title swirls with green and purple letters. Aunt Su’s favourite colours. This is the one. I pull it out from the shelf and stare at the cover. There’s a girl dressed in a low-cut peasant top standing in front of a long-haired guy in a half-ripped tie-dyed shirt who looks like he wants to eat her for lunch. It’s called Summer of Love. This one must be from her hippie romance period — I’ve heard Mom mention these books a few times. It was her best-known series.
Every writer is a reader first.
I flip it open and scan the first page.
That summer changed everything. For me. For Jason. For the entire world. That day I brought home Sergeant Pepper’s and put it on the record player. I could tell from the cover it was going to be great. But what came out of that speaker was like a message blasting across the universe. I shook when I heard it. Nothing was ever going to be the same again.
No sleepy feelings. But Aunt Su’s words feel good. Like a layer of Vaseline smoothing over my injured insides. I close the book with a soft slap and sneak it into the pocket of my hoodie. Why shouldn’t I take it home to read? It’s not technically wrong, is it? These books do belong to me now. Mr. Duffy said so.
By the time I get home, the sky is just beginning to get light. Mom’s car is nowhere to be seen and the front door is locked. Inside, there’s a note waiti
ng for me on the kitchen table.
Lily,
Didn’t want to wake you, but I’ve left for an early meeting — see you after school.
There are waffles in the freezer for your breakfast. I’d like you to take a break from cereal.
And there’s a message for you on the answering machine. Somebody named Emma’s inviting you to a party.
???
Mom
Emma? A party? Why on earth is she inviting me? A tornado of irritation touches down in my frontal lobe. With a scowl, I press the glowing red button on the ancient answering machine to hear what she has to say.
“Hey, Lily. It’s Emma. Call me back as soon as you can. I just found out there’s going —”
My finger stabs the “erase” button, killing the message mid-sentence.
Ça craint!
What’s going on here? Why the hell has the universe suddenly decided to bequeath me a wannabe friend?
TEN
September 13th
Emma Swartz is standing right beside my locker the next morning at school. It almost looks like she’s waiting for me. I slow my steps to a crawl, just in case. As soon as she spots me coming down the hall, she rises up on her tiptoes and waves me over. My feet come to a dead stop as my brain buzzes with questions.
What does she think she’s doing there? Why is she hounding me? Can I get a restraining order or something?
I wait for a few seconds to see if she’ll leave. But when she drops her backpack and smiles at me, I know I’m going to have to go through with it. I trudge up to my locker and start dialling the combination.
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