The Deal

The Happiness Tea

The red dice swish side to side as the car jostles along the bumpy winding road and my eyes follow the pattern faithfully.

The dice were a gift from my nana when my dad traded in his minivan for our old mustang convertible just a week after my mom drowned. Nan figured we could use the extra luck mostly because of what happened, but also because my dad bought the car in red.

He hung up the dice to be nice, but my dad, just like my mom, has always laughed in the face of luck. Which might explain why he never had seatbelts installed in the car. We didn't have the money and he didn't think they were necessary.

He's singing along to some disco song on the radio that keeps cutting in and out because of the bad connection up in the mountains.

I'm trying to ignore his off-key voice, but that and our high altitude is making me nauseous.

The tress blur past in blobs of green and brown and the road only becomes more narrow and I feel like I can't breathe.

I hang my hand out the side of the car and let it glide through the cool night breeze, trying to remain aloof, but my stomach has been in knots since my dad suggested this midnight drive and I can smell my mom's perfume in the car even though she never got the chance to sit in it.

And his singing gets louder and the night gets colder and my anxiety grows like a swelling wave waiting to capsize and pull us down to join my mom.

And it's like I know what's going to happen before it does because I yell out for my dad to stop a second before the deer jumps into the road, but it's too late anyway.

Everything that happens after is a whirlwind of screaming, and shattered glass, and blood... lots of blood.

But, one image stands out of the cloud of darkness like a beam of light: the lucky dice flying off the rearview mirror, stained with blood and completely useless.

My body reacts before my brain does, jostling me out of my tangled and sweaty sheets ad trying to breathe the air back into my depraved lungs.

Instinctively, my shaky hands glide across my spine, searching for the shard of glass that should be lodged there, the shard of glass that paralyzed me for nearly a year.

Although, my back aches like I've been snapped in two, there is no shard of glass embedded there.

Not anymore.

The realization calms my heart immensely, but the shakes and the ghost pain and sweat and tears linger. Although the room is nearly pitch black, my hands know where to go instantly.

The dreams don't come often, but when they do, the memories don't leave me for days and the ghost pain is nearly debilitating.

My hand latches around the bottle in my bedside drawer and I quickly pop it open and down two of the little white pills before I can talk myself out of it. Modern medicine has always been seen as a gimmick to Nana, but I know I would not have survived without it.

PTSD, they said.

Ghost pain is not real pain, just imagined, they said.

But, it feels pretty real to me and this medical marvel of anti-depressants are the only way I can dull the ache. Real or not.

I dry my tears and crawl out of bed, trying to clear my head of that horrific night, knowing I won't be able to sleep a wink after that, maybe for a few nights.

The sun has barely risen above the cliff, but I know I can't stay in this house after that dream and listen to quiet emptiness, feel the restless spirits inside.