by Jamie Magee
Chapter Two
I felt a splitting headache and heard the annoying whispers long before I opened my eyes. I was still tired, but I was so thirsty I couldn’t lie still anymore. I sat up and blinked a few times, trying to figure out how it was still dark outside. I looked at my clock, only to find it unplugged. I felt around my sheets for my phone, wanting to drown out the whispers around me, but I couldn’t find it anywhere.
As I focused my eyes, I realized my room had been invaded. Someone had cleaned it! Every single carefully made pile of my things was gone. Furiously I shook my head. I knew my mom didn’t decide to chisel out time to organize my creative clutter. She was looking for something, anything, to explain my out-of-character defiance. I wavered as I tried to remember more details, what I was missing, but everything was just as foggy. It almost seemed worse than it was before I went to sleep.
I took a deep breath then tore through my covers looking for my phone, hoping I’d simply pulled my headphones from my ears in my sleep. Anxiety cracked through my soul when I realized my phone was nowhere to be found. I heard the whispers laugh. I furrowed my brows in anger, but it was just an act. I was terrified.
I closed my eyes and started to remember the song I’d fallen asleep to. I could barely hold the memory in my mind, but it was enough to give me the courage I needed to look calm in front of this darkness.
I had to get a drink. My mouth felt like sand paper. Once this 911 was behind me I’d follow the breadcrumbs my mom had left and talk to her. It was the only way my phone was coming back into my life.
The apartment was dim, but I could see the light from the TV in the front room at the end of the hall. I crossed the hall to my mom’s room to see if she was asleep. The clock on her nightstand said twelve AM. I turned on the light, too afraid to cross the dark room without my music. I walked to her bedside table to look at the date on the clock. It was Saturday, or at least it had been for the last minute.
How did I sleep all the way through Friday?
I searched her bedside drawer for my phone, with no luck. I stepped into the hallway and reached for the light, turning it on before I began to walk toward the front room. I watched as the shadows of the hall snaked themselves against the wall, avoiding the lit path I’d given myself.
Before stepping into the living room, I reached my arm around the corner to turn on the light then scurried to the kitchen just ahead on the left.
The main light in the kitchen was on, but I went out of my way to turn on the one above the sink and the stove. I heard the snickering from the shadows as they subsided away from the new light. “Laugh all you want,” I whispered at them.
I could see my mom out of the corner of my eye at her desk in what was suppose to be our dining room. Blankly she stared at me whispering to myself. The TV in the den across from the room she was in was muted. I had no idea why she bothered to turn it on. The woman hated sound, craved silence.
I had almost devoured an entire bottle of water before she finally approached. She walked over to the cabinet and pulled out a bottle of Tylenol and handed me two pills. I took them, thinking I may’ve overestimated the ill mood I was positive she would have.
“If I fixed you something to eat, would you eat it?” she asked.
“Eat, Charlie...” the whispers taunted in an annoying, overlapping sequence.
I shook my head no, determined not to eat simply because they wanted me to.
“You’re not hungry at all? You missed three meals and you’re not hungry?”
Seeing that this was going to lead to a conversation about how I should take better care of myself, I chose the lesser of the two evils and reached for my box of cereal that was on the bar. She opened the refrigerator and pulled the milk out. I ate as slowly as I could, hoping she was getting too tired to discuss anything with me.
“Your gown and dress are hanging in your bathroom,” she said as she pulled a bottle of water out of the fridge.
I continued to eat my cereal in silence.
“Everything else of yours is packed and in your sister’s trunk,” she said just before she casually took a drink of her water.
I almost choked. Once I coughed myself through that, I looked at her like she was crazy. “Kara’s here? What? Why are my bags in her car?”
“Noooo,” the whispers hissed.
Their disapproval brought a smile to the corners of my lips. Sometimes doing the opposite of what they say makes them silent, and not having any idea where my phone was, I needed silence.
“Where did you think you were going to spend the summer?” she asked dejectedly.
I stared blankly at her. Not a clue...
“You knew Kara wasn’t going to miss your graduation.”
“Um, yeah, I guess, but why are my clothes in Kara’s trunk?” I asked, halfway smiling as I heard the whispers begin to quiet themselves. Was she lonely or something? Kara was married but Robert was deployed.
Mom struggled with words for a second then finally said, “This city is not good for you. I don’t understand what Bianca and Britain have done to you, but we have to end this.”
“I’m fine, Mom. I’m not going with Kara. I need to be here.”
I drew up right after I said those words. Why did I say that? Why did I think going home would be a bad idea? Like I had just swam in bad mojo and needed some kind of holistic cleansing to erase attachments before I went to my safe place?
I got nothing. Nothing but a gut feeling that was over me showing up without the script to my life.
“You need to get away from them, Charlie. I thought about skipping your graduation, but I didn’t raise you to be a coward who runs. We’re leaving the moment you walk the line.”
“Mom. Seriously. You don’t understand. I can’t right now. I’m not done.”
“Done with what?” she asked shortly as she crossed her arms.
“I can’t take this back to Salem with me,” I answered finally.
My mom closed her eyes like she was listening to a sacred prayer and holding on to every word like it was her last breath of air. “Charlie...there are battles we’re meant to face alone and there are ones we’re not. No matter which one you’ve invoked—you need time to heal. The city is infectious. At home your real friends will bring you back.”
“Ask Madison to come here for the summer. That’s a compromise.”
Mom’s face flushed, “Madison? No one else?”
“You can ask Kara to stay if you want.”
She took in a shaky breath then turned to put her water back in the fridge. “Home, Charlie. Discussion is closed.”
“Can we open a discussion about my phone?” I asked as she walked away.
Nothing.