The Way This Feels

Chapter 10: Adrenaline

I wake up from a dream, my room deathly quiet. It takes me a while to find out why. It's not so much silence, but a stillness. A stillness within me, rather than in the room itself. Normally, I jolt awake as though in contact with an electric current, nightmares sending me out of bed and on my feet without a second thought. But this morning, my entry into reality is peaceful. My eyes flutter steadily open, my meaningless dreams melting away as my room comes into focus.

Maybe it was Edna that instilled this calm. Maybe she stirred up all my insides, freeing me of all that shame and grief I'd been suffering from. Or possibly I'm just at my limit for feeling huge things. In the end I don't have a desire to over think and ruin the feeling, and I make an effort to live in the moment. Even still, it's 6 o'clock in the morning, the dreams may have been easy-going but they didn't allow me to sleep in, proving I still have anxiety, something I didn't expect to go away anytime soon anyway. You win some you lose some, I guess. There's not really any point in going back to sleep, so I stagger out of bed and head off to do my rounds. Just one this morning: a fluffy white dog, and a calico cat. Their presences do even more for the newfound calmness, I love that about animals. I sit on the floor, my back against the couch feeling stillness radiating from me, my face relaxed in a slight smile, while both pets wander the neat living room in front of me. The cat sniffs my hand, and then darts beneath the couch. The sight of the cat brings my train of thought, oddly, to Micah, and with him comes my dream from the night before, as clear as though it were being projected straight into my brain. I can't believe I'd previously thought my dreams meaningless. It wasn't anything overly interesting other than he was holding my hand. Thinking back on it now horrifies me. I distinctly remember the vivid sensation of pressure in my palm, and the subsequent feeling that I couldn't go anywhere because he was attached to me in a oppressive sort of way. I flex my hand now as the feeling returns with a curious strength. Shivering, I get up to go.

As I'm locking the door and still occasionally shaking my hand out, I remember Micah's offer to meet him at McDonald's. I check the time. It's barely 7 now, he doesn't get off until 11. I run a hand thoughtfully through my hair. In all honesty it would probably be most logical to just go back to bed, but I feel wide awake, and, with this strange calmness, I actually feel hungry. Maybe I want to prove to myself that I don't really want him to hold my hand. Possibly it wasn't about the hand holding at all, maybe it had some deeper meaning. Feeling connected? No, that's even worse. Feeling tied down by the concept of relationships with other human beings? Wouldn't be surprising. It was probably just my imagination being overactive after a surreal day of having my psyche probed by an old psychic woman.

I walk to McDonald's. I'm used to long early morning walks. It's how I usually get to school during the year. A fine mist settles over the cornfields which are looking a little short from the lack of rain. Already I can feel the day's heat burning against my skin.

I barely feel a trace of anxiety until I reach the McDonald's. It sits against a country road heading out of town, directly across from a grove of trees. It's situated in the parking lot of a dead strip mall. I only start worrying as I cross the road, leap over the ditch, and start hiking up the slope toward the building. What will Micah say as I arrive nearly 4 hours early? He'll probably think me overeager to see him, the idea makes me cringe. In fact, I hesitate by the glass door, my hand frozen in the act of reaching for the handle. Maybe this is a mistake. But I open it, and see him right away. My stomach does a nervous sort of lurch. He stands there with his hip against the long counter, an ugly brown visor with the McDonald's logo embroidered on it strapped on his head. He's grinning and laughing with someone out of sight, whoever's working the drive thru I assume. He doesn't notice me. I shuffle up to the cash register, and he turns, the ghost of the grin still on his face as he prepares to automatically repeat whatever garble the McDonalds greeting is,