GONER

12 • The Aunt Of A Stunt Man

I had a dream about Josh that night. I had gone to bed at around midnight because of the torturous exhaustion, and I felt as if it didn't take long for my mind to conjure him up inside of my brain. He was just so beautiful that he kind of felt like a dream, but he hugged me last night and I felt his skin and I knew he wasn't. And I felt like I should have been scared because of that, but I didn't have the power to fear him.

Nothing really happened during the dream itself, though. It was like watching one of the days earlier this week through a camera that had a slightly thicker lens with a few glossy coats over it. We were on the bleachers and talking about the death of decent education programs and smiling and enjoying each other, and he was shimmering. Literally shimmering in front of me. The sight was incredible, and he didn't notice that I could barely keep my eyes from him as he spoke animatedly, hands moving and eyes widening. But it was just a dream, and if I stared like that while we were actually together, he would definitely notice and think I was weird.

In fact, my first words when I woke happened to be, "Wow, I'm a freak," and that's where anything positive ended.

I felt like crap today, and I didn't really know why. And, honestly, that's one of the most frustrating things in the entire universe. Not knowing why you're upset is like not knowing what time you have to be somewhere important or not knowing what you got on a test that could determine your future. You can't go anywhere without the information, and so it just made everything a lot more difficult and exasperating.

Ruffling my hair with my small fingers, I felt my stomach rumble a ridiculous amount while I yawned into the empty air of my room. My eyes were burning from something unknown, and so I rubbed them gently to rid them of the remains of a somewhat decent nights sleep. My jeans from yesterday were still on, and I rubbed my temples, wondering how I happened to take my sweatshirt and shirt off, but kept on the pants. And it didn't help that they were skinny jeans and that I probably had a very small amount of blood flow moving down towards the lower half of my body.

I needed a shower, really.

A nice, warm, long shower that I could cry during.

It was only 6:00 and school started at 7:00, and so I had an hour to conceal all of my negative energy.

With that, I threw on a sweatshirt and walked out into the living room to grab one of the towels from one of the boxes I was hoping I could find (because I have no idea where the one I already had went), only to be met with my mother sitting on the floor with her head in her hands. She was surrounded by photo albums all along the floor, and they were all open. Some individual pictures were out of the book and closer to her, and I wished I could see exactly what they showed. But I would bet money that they had something to do with my father. And if that was the case, I honestly needed to get out of here before this entire situation made me feel even worse. She refused to let it go.

"Mom?" I asked cautiously, moving closer to her slowly. In moments like this, she reminded me of a really rotten wooden boat. She's good for absolutely nothing, other than breaking even further and drowning her passengers and soaking her cargo. And that's her. She has way too many holes to do any good, and that angered me and made me sad all at once.

"Mom," I repeated, "I need a towel."

She wouldn't even look at me. "If you couldn't tell, I'm a bit busy, son."

"If you could just tell me where they are then-" I began, but she cut me off with more venom in her voice than I've heard from her in a while.