WAKE- dont close your eyes

WHERE IT BEGINS

EVENING, DECEMBER 23, 1996
JanienHannagan is right. She wear a a thin, faded red-print dress with too-shirt sleeves, off-white rights that sag between her thighs, gray moon boots, and a brown nappy coat with two missing buttons. Her long, dirty-blond hair stands up with static. She rides on an Amtrak train with her mother from their home in Fieldridge, Michigan, to Chicago to visit her grandmother. Mother reads the Globe across from her. There is a picture on the cover of an enormous man wearing a powder-blue tuxedo. Janie rests her head against the window, watching her breath make a cloud on it.

The cloud blurs Janie's vision so slowly that she doesnt realize what is happening. Sh floats in the fog for a moment, and then she is in a large room, sitting at a conference table with five men and three women. At the front of the room is a talk, balding man with a briefcase. He stands in his underwear, giving a presentation, and he is flustered. He tries to speak but he can't get his mouth around the words. The other adults are all wearing crisp suits. They laugh and point at the bald man in his underwear.

The bald man looks at Janie.
And then he looks at the people who are laughing at him.
His face crumples in defeat.

He holds his breifcase in front of his privates, and that makes the others laugh harder. He runs to the door od the conference room, but the handle is slippery-something slimy drips from it. He can't get it open; it squeaks and rattles loudly in his hand, and people at tge table double over. The man's underwear is grayish_white, sagging. He turns to Janie again, with a look of panic and pleading.

Janie doesnt know what to do.
She freezes.
The train's brakes whine.
And the scene grows cloudy and is lost in fog.

"Janie!" Janie's mother is leaning toward Janie. Her breath smells like gin, and her strangely hair falls over one eye. "Janie, I said maybe grandma will take you to that big fancy fool store. I thougt you would be excited about that, but I guess not." Janie's mother sips from a flaskin her ratty old purse.
Janie focuses on her mother and smiles. "That sounds fun," she says, even though she doesn't like dolls. She would rather have new tights. She wriggle on the seat, trying to adjust them. The crotch stretches right at mid-thigh. She thinks about the bald man and scrunches her eyes. Weird.
When the train stops, they take their bags and step into the aisle. In front of Janie's mother, a disheveled, half businessman emerges from his compartment.

He wipes his face with a handkerchief.
Janie stares at him.
Her jaw drops. "Whoa," she whispers.
The man gave her a bland look when he sees her staring, and turns to exit the train.

SEPTEMBER 6, 1999, 3:05 P.M.
Janie sprints to catch the bus after her first day of sixth grade. Melinda Jeffers, one of the Fieldridge North Side girls, sticks her foot out, sending Janie sprawling across the gravel. Melinda laughs all the way to her mothers shiny red Keep Cherokee. Janie fights back the urge to cry, and dusts herself off. She climbs on the bus, flops intothe front seat, and looks at the dirt and blood on the palms of her hands, and the rip in the knee of her already well-work pants.
Sixth grade makes her throat hurt.
She leans her head against The window.
When she gets home, Janie walks past her mother, who is on the couch watching Guiding Light and drinking from a clear glass bottle. Janie washes her sringing hands carefully, dries them, and sits down next to her mother, hoping she'll notice. Hoping she'll say something.
But Janie's mother is asleep now.
Her mouth is open.
She snores lightly.
The botrle tips in her hand.
Janie sighs, sets the bottle on the beat-up coffee table and starts her homework.
Halfway through her math homework, the room turns black.

Janie is rushed into a bright tunnel, like a multicolored kaleidoscope. There's no floor, and Janie is dloating while the walls spin around her. It makes her feel like throwing up.
Next to Janie in the tunnel is her mother, and a man that lookd like a blond Jesus Christ. The man and Janie's mother as holding hands and flying. They look happy. Janie yells, but no sound comes out. She wants it to stop.
She feels the pencil fall from her fingers.
Feels her body slump to the arm of the couch.
Tries to sit up, but with all the whirling colors around her, she can't tell which way is upright. She overcompensates and falls the other way, onto her mother.
Th colors stop, and everything goes black.
Janie hears her mother grumbling.
Feels her shove.