Only Saints

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"Morning, Polly."

Warm sunlight spills over my face. I shield my eyes from the light—how late is it? I haven't slept in since I was a kid. Still, I don't want to get up just yet. I want to imagine that none of this is happening. That I'm not really here, and that when I open my eyes, I'll be back in my bed at home with comforting beige walls around me. I roll over on the couch, springs creaking hard under me, and press a cushion to my face to block out any other sensory input. The rough fabric rubs against my cheeks and makes me uncomfortably aware of my presence in my own body.

My cousin catches me by the shoulder and shakes me just a bit. "Come on," she says, "I know you're awake."

There's a whine in Florie's voice that sounds exactly how I remember, even though it's been almost ten years since I've heard it. It sounds like summers spent sitting next to each other in the tiny local church while Old Mère chatted with the preacher's wife, while my mother and Aunt Etta sat outside in the car and smoked their way through a pack of cigarettes. It sounds like the slant of sunshine through stained glass windows and the smell of freshly-cut grass and an afternoon rain moving in.

I shrug her off and mumble, "I don't wanna."

There's something wrong about being back here. I can barely remember driving back into Frostproof last night, and by the time I slumped into Aunt Etta's home I was so tired that I collapsed on her couch and didn't even plug my phone in to charge. It's dead now, the screen not even flickering when I try to turn it on. Fuck. What if Drew's trying to reach me? Or Dad?

I'm wrapped up in a thin blue sheet that was torn off of someone else's bed and thrown over me in the middle of the night. I definitely fell asleep on the couch with nothing else. Still dressed in my funeral clothes, only my shoes kicked off to the side, I turn over and reach a fumbling hand out for Florie's shoulder. "Do you guys have a, uh..."

The words sink away from me.

She waits a second before laughing. "We have a lot of, 'uh.' What do you need?"

"Phone charger." Way to sound like an asshole, Paul. I sit up on the couch and hold my phone out to her, pressing a couple of the screen protector bubbles smooth as I do. Those things never go on right. I'm about to just say fuck it and take the damn thing off. "It's a type C."

"Gotcha." Florie takes my phone and disappears behind the waist-high counter that acts like a half-wall between the kitchen and the living room.

You can see three-quarters of the house from the couch. Every wall has a different color and pattern of wallpaper, and most of them are covered by decorative plates, hanging tapestries, shelves full of crafted knickknacks. A mother-of-pearl ashtray sits on the end table next to the couch, the remnants of one of Aunt Etta's menthol cigarettes smoldering next to a half-burned cone of incense. The air presses down on me, warm and thick with late-summer humidity. At the other end of the couch, the old CRT TV hums, noise flickering across a screen thick with static cling and dust. The volume is down ridiculously low, so that the voices of the newscasters on screen are barely even background noise, drowned out by the sound of electricity in the walls and the air conditioning kicking on overhead.

"Do you want a soda or anything?" Florie's voice cuts through the static.

"No—thanks. Do you have water?" And where is my suitcase? When I stand from the couch, it catches my eye, propped up against the other side of Aunt Etta's worn-out recliner. I feel grimy, still groggy after a bad night's sleep spent tossing and turning on uncomfortable fabric. I didn't have the energy then to get up and walk the two hundred feet down the dirt road to Old Mère's trailer where my old room is—I'm not sure I can handle seeing it even now, with a night's rest behind me.