WAKE ME UP

CHAPTER 9

Day 2 of the rest of my life – the rest of all of our lives. The sun is finally coming up.

I still think I should wait until eight to head over to Ben's house. This might be ridiculous given the circumstances, but it's the way I feel. It's not like anyone will be sleeping in. Or at least I hope they're not.

My mother kept calling all night, but I never picked up. I just texted back, telling her I was fine – I was awake.

I say goodbye to Prue, and we hug. We could make a bigger deal out of this than we do, but neither one of us wants to go there. She knows how I feel about her – and I'm more convinced than ever that she feels the same way about me.

I reach my car and climb in as my phone starts ringing. It's Todd, my mother's boyfriend. He and my mom have been dating for a few months, and Todd is the first guy in a long time who treats my mom the way she deserves to be treated. It's one thing for me to give her a hard time; I'm her daughter, but a man needs to validate her, not challenge her, and Todd does that.

I answer. Todd tells me my mother is freaking out, and he's wondering if I could come home and help. His voice is shaky, and I don't think I can say no. I don't want to say no.

I'm freaking out about my mother freaking out. I don't know what it is about the idea of her losing control that makes me so uncomfortable. There are certainly a lot of other things to be uncomfortable about – that I should be freaking out about right now – but this hits me hard.

I listen to the radio as I drive. It's less than five minutes to my house, but the distraction helps. A group of doctors and scientists are finally offering a theory about what's happening. It seems the brain generates two distinct types of sleep – slow-wave sleep (SWS), which is a deep sleep, and rapid eye movement (REM), or dreaming sleep. With SWS, two groups of cells – the ventrolateral preoptic nucleus in the hypothalamus and the parafacial zone in the brain stem – switch on, triggering a loss of consciousness.

The experts think people may be dying when they fall asleep because these two groups of cells are suddenly switching on at excessively high numbers, not only triggering a loss of consciousness but a loss of crucial brain function as well.

Of course, it's just a theory. And they have no clue as to why it's happening or how to stop it.

The rest of their talk is just platitudes. We're seeing a glitch in the human machine. We've reached an evolutionary cliff. No species is invulnerable to extinction.

My mind keeps flashing on all the cities. Thank God I live in a quiet suburb and not a big city. I can't imagine how grim and smelly a place like New York or Chicago is – and only getting worse.

I find Todd and my mom in the kitchen. I've never seen my mother like this. She's lost her mind. She grabs me and hugs me, and she won't let go. She's wailing now, and Todd has to pry her away from me so I can breathe.

I ask what happened, which seems like a perfectly logical question. Yesterday she was okay. But the answer seems just as logical. Whatever confidence my mom had in the experts is gone. Some problems are unfixable.

"I need another pill," she screams at Todd.

"They're not working anymore, Rachel. I'm sorry," he says with so much love for her.

It seems my mother has taken too much Ritalin for too long, and it's lost its potency. Her system has built up a tolerance. She's taken two dozen pills in the last eight hours and barely felt a thing. The medication, her addiction, is letting her down. She's exhausted, and she's scared.

She pulls me close again for another hug, and I let her – Todd lets her. I grab my breaths where I can.

"You are my life. You are my miracle," she keeps telling me as I hug her back. "You are the best thing and the hardest thing I've ever done. I made this world for you. And now it's failing you. I'm failing you."

It's dawning on me – what she means by all her words and hysteria – it's me she's most upset about. It's my life, my future, that worries her. It's breaking her heart that she can't figure out how to save it all for the daughter she created.

I tell her I'm fine. I'll be fine. I'm not sure I'm really this Zen, but I say it anyway.

I catch Todd's eye. The man is exhausted. The man is ready to close his eyes and sleep, and I feel for him.

"I gotta go," I finally say.

"No, stay here with me," my mom pleads, keeping me in her grip.

"I need to go."

"Where?"

"I need to talk to Ben."

The mention of Ben's name sets my mom off.

"He's not who you think he is," she snarls at me.

I don't know what she's saying. I managed to pull away.

I catch Todd's eye again. I can see he doesn't want me to leave, but he's nodding his encouragement anyway.

I tell my mom I love her and that I'll be back soon. I don't wait for what she'll say next. I'm halfway out the door when she yells something at me that I barely understand. I swing back.

"What?"

My mom is biting her tongue. But it's no use. She needs to say what she wants, and nothing will stop her.

"Ben was killed in the car accident," she repeats.

The sentence still doesn't make sense. It keeps repeating in my head. Ben was killed in the car accident.

"No." It's all my brain will allow me to say.

My mom is talking now, and she doesn't let up. She's telling me everything. I can't move. I can't stop her. Maybe I don't want to. Maybe things are finally making sense.

Ben died in the car accident we were in.

Ben's parents invested in an android of Ben. To deal with their grief. To deal with their guilt.

Ben's parents worried the accident was deliberate.

Ben was struggling. Ben needed help. His parents refused to see it.

The scars on Ben's wrists weren't what I thought, but that doesn't mean he wasn't hurting. I knew that. I saw it.

Ben's parents kept it all a secret. Even from "Ben."

Why didn't my mother tell me all of this before? She doesn't offer an excuse, but it's suddenly obvious. If Ben wasn't good enough for me, then "Ben" was nothing. I've seen the way she treats Prue. The way she is with Prue's kind. It's subtle, but the judgment is there.

I say this to my mom, and she emphatically denies it. "You don't understand – you don't understand anything." But she's the one who doesn't understand.

I'm devastated. I'm angry. Ben is dead. Ben died, and I didn't get to mourn him. All I got was deception.