Chapter 2
Geri Lyon Felicia Lyon Sidney Hammer Guy Winchester Cecilia Barnes Geri Lyon Felicia Lyon Sidney Hammer Guy Winchester Cecilia Barnes Geri Lyon Felicia Lyon Sidney Hammer Guy Winchester Cecilia Barnes Geri Lyon Felicia Lyon Sidney Hammer Guy Winchester Cecilia Barnes Geri Lyon Felicia Lyon Sidney Hammer Guy Winchester Cecilia Barnes
It’s inevitable like, waves crashing on the shore.
It all has to happen. Don’t you understand?
There was a loud beeping in my ear, a house alarm was about ready to let go and explode in a cacophony of sound enough to wake up the entire neighborhood. We didn’t have a house alarm. We didn’t get one because we didn’t need one, according to Mom. She was too trusting.
It took me a minute to figure out, with my eyes still tightly shut, that it was my morning alarm blaring in my ears, but the sound was becoming more drowned out by the thumping of my skull and the incessant thrumming of the names running through my head, louder and louder, like a wave pounding on rocks, beating the boulders of my mind with its ebb and flow. It hurt like the night before, when I was going to pass out, hot on the outside, cold and empty on the inside. The only thing hot on the inside of me was the names in my head building up speed.
Geri Lyon Felicia Lyon Sidney Hammer Guy Winchester Cecilia Barnes Geri Lyon Felicia Lyon Sidney Hammer Guy Winchester Cecilia Barnes
My brain was going to split in two. Tears built in my eyes, threatening to trickle down my face. They blurred my vision. The Star Wars movie posters on the opposite wall were a kaleidoscope of spinning color.
At that moment, I wanted my Dad. I wanted him so much, I wasn’t sure if I was going to make it without him. I loved my Mom, my heart was full of my Mom, but my heart ached for my Dad who had always made things okay, somehow. I was so scared and I knew that my dad could make it okay. He could make it alright.
I could almost hear him saying, don’t cry Richie Rich. It’s all gonna be cool, man.
My head pounded, a brick striking my skull. The names were louder and louder in my brain. I stood up and there was a knock on my door.
“Get up, birthday boy. Made you breakfast.” Mom. Her voice sounded like it was on the other side of a long tunnel, both far away and loud, echoing in my ears. It was soft and happy, but far away. Her voice seemed farther and farther away, though I was pretty sure that she hadn’t left my door.
She was waiting, but I struggled to get my tongue around the words I needed. Anything I could put together would have been fine. I just needed some time to figure out what was happening to me. I was so far from understanding and I needed her to go away. I hadn’t told her about the night before. I just didn’t know what I should do.
I hit my leg hard to clear the clouds in my mind.
I raised my voice and tried to sound like I was up and getting ready for the day.
“Be right out,” but I wasn’t going to be right out at all. My stomach had two tons of lard in the bottom of it and I wanted to spew it all over the carpet. What was happening to me?
I felt Death was holding my hand, in one rough bony hand, skipping through my life.
Mom shuffled away from my door.
I stood up, but I didn’t feel qualified to walk, like I hadn’t passed all of the tests necessary to be a certified walker. I felt new to the world, just fresh and new on the Earth, taking my first careful steps into a freedom I wasn’t sure I wanted to have.
I grabbed the side of the dresser, stood up, and shimmied my way across the carpet to reach my desk to sit down. The carpet was warm under my feet, but it kept trying to trip me up and leave me face down on the floor without anyone to help me. I gripped the side of the dresser with both hands.
The names blared in my head, a trumpet of names.
Geri Lyon Felicia Lyon Sidney Hammer Guy Winchester Cecilia Barnes Geri Lyon Felicia Lyon Sidney Hammer Guy Winchester Cecilia Barnes Geri Lyon Felicia Lyon Sidney Hammer Guy Winchester Cecilia Barnes Geri Lyon Felicia Lyon Sidney Hammer Guy Winchester Cecilia Barnes Geri Lyon Felicia Lyon Sidney Hammer Guy Winchester Cecilia Barnes Geri Lyon Felicia Lyon Sidney Hammer Guy Winchester Cecilia Barnes Geri Lyon Felicia Lyon Sidney Hammer Guy Winchester Cecilia Barnes Geri Lyon Felicia Lyon Sidney Hammer Guy Winchester Cecilia Barnes Geri Lyon Felicia Lyon Sidney Hammer Guy Winchester Cecilia Barnes Geri Lyon Felicia Lyon Sidney Hammer Guy Winchester Cecilia Barnes
I shuffled and shuffled like a madman to get to the desk, running my feet sideways on the carpet, keeping my balance by the dresser.
I hadn’t expected it, but I was right next to the desk.
I pulled out the desk chair and sank into its cushiony goodness.
A pen.
I needed a pen. I couldn’t find one on the top of the desk.
I pulled out the middle drawer of the desk and scrambled for a pen, and before I closed it, I found a receipt from the comic book store. I turned it over and tried to get my eyes to focus on the back of the receipt and the tip of the blue ballpoint pen. It was like a contest of wills. I wanted to slip into unconsciousness, and my will wanted to stay awake and write these names down.
It’s all gonna be cool, man. You got this Richie Rich. You got this.
I scrawled the names down on the paper, one long name
geriLyonfeliciaLyonSidneyhammerguywinchesterceceliabarnes.
I dropped the pen on the desk and covered my eyes with my hands, leaning back into the softness of the office chair, thankful I had this comfortable chair to lean into.
Was I dying?
I was sure I had never felt this way before, even when I had been running, in a game of tag with Sid and Guy and had struck a low fence in my attempt to hop it. That time I had hit it with my hand, hard, breaking my finger and making me flip over the fence. I split my lip open. The guys had helped me home, and my mom flipped out. She was mopping up my lip frantically, pushing my hand away, as I tried to show her the real problem. She’d thought I was going to die.
Today my heart beat the inside of my ribs so hard, I was pretty sure this was the end.
Almost immediately, the pain in my head started subsiding. It was melting away. The names in my head were going quiet too. They weren’t silent, but they were getting quieter and quieter, until they went away, one gradual reduction of decibels at a time, until they weren’t pounding in my brain anymore.
Finally, the phantom sound of the names just disappeared.
Though they were making no real sound, the names were loud and insistent in my brain, and now gone. It was almost as if they had never been there at all.
I pulled my hands from my eyes and touched the screen on my computer.
The coolness of the screen convinced me that everything was real and that I was still here, in my room.
The sunlight coming into my window wasn’t burning my eyes out of their sockets anymore.
What happened?
I stood up on shaky legs, stripped my pajama bottoms off, and pulled on a pair of jeans and an old t-shirt.
I was trembling inside.
I had never awakened like that before and it was terrifying.
But the part making my heart a cold stone in my chest was the why. Why was I going through all of this? Why had my life suddenly become so complicated? My mind spun like a fishing reel, especially because of the one thing causing my skin to break out in goose bumps.
Why those names?
Why were the names of everyone left in my life, that I cared about, waking me up in my sleep, and what did it all mean?
