Little Spark

2 - Secret's Out

Something rough brushes my bare shoulder and I wake with a start. My hands go straight to my face. Not hot. I look at my hands; the only thing gleaming is my white nail polish in the sunlight streaming through mom's gossamer curtains. I peel back her blanket and breathe a slow sigh of relief at the sight of my peanut-butter-colored legs. The murders, the fire skin, the exploding light bulb... it was all just a bad dream. Although, how I ended up in mom's bed....

"Bliss, you alright, girly?" I jump at the sound of the rich Southern drawl, finally noticing Neighbor James standing over me. "All your limbs intact?"

The look of concern he wears in addition to his usual plaid shirt and overly pocketed carpenter jeans makes me edgy. I don't want him to know about the nightmare. He'll worry too much.

I force a smile. "Yes, Neighbor James, I'm alright."

He lifts a silver eyebrow and crosses his arms. "Don't you lie to me, girl. I came over here to check on you at ten hundred hours and found you curled up on the bathroom floor, hugging the base of the commode like it was your teddy bear. I saw you got a little sick in there, so I carried you in here to your mama's bed. What happened to the vase over there?" He points to the broken glass in front of Mom's vanity.

I gulp. It was all a dream. It had to be a dream. "It fell?"

"And the glass on the floor in your room?"

Oh no oh no oh no. "Uhhh... the light bulb broke...."

"And your cell phone?" He holds the phone up and I see that the screen is shattered. Panic pulls my eyelids wide.

"I—umm..."

"You threw it, huh? When it hit you that your mama's gone?"

"Oh. Yes! Yes, that's exactly what happened. I just got so mad, I didn't know what to do so I threw it at the wall." I can't look him in the face. I'm not a very good liar. Mom always seemed to know when I wasn't telling the truth—like she could read my mind or something—so I never really learned to do it well.

Neighbor James sighs. "I get it, Bliss, I get it. Grief is one heck of a process, that's for sure. Well, I guess before the move, we'll just have to get you a new phone—"

"NO!" Even if last night was a dream—and judging by all the broken glass he mentioned and the fried phone he's holding, that part certainly wasn't—I'm officially averse to mobile devices.

Neighbor James' eyebrows draw together.

"I mean, that's real nice of you, Neighbor James, but it'd be better to get a new one in Mississippi so I won't have an out of state area code, don't you think?"

He's not buying it, but he bites. "Yeah, I suppose."

For what feels like an eon, neither of us speaks, and he stares at me like he's trying to catch a glimpse of what I've got going on inside my head.

"Oh no!" I slap my forehead, remembering our noon appointment to pick up mom's remains. "I overslept... The ashes..."

"Already got 'em. You needed the rest."

I smile for real this time. Neighbor James is the closest thing I have to a father figure—my dad died before I was born—and in this moment, I'm grateful for him. He's a little rough around the edges—he was a Lieutenant Commander in the Navy and now spends three hours a day hollering at his television while playing the latest Call of Duty video game—but he's the kindest man I know.

As the story goes, Mom showed up on his doorstep, pregnant and alone, wanting to know about the vacant house next door to him. Turned out, he was the owner; we've been living here ever since, and I'm not looking forward to leaving him to go live with an aunt and grandmother I've never met. "Thank you, Neighbor James."