The Potential of a Day

Chapter 2: Or Not

Or Not

            Surprised, would be a vast understatement. I wake up to bird songs. Perfectly normal. In fact, far, far too normal. In fact, vast does not even begin to describe this sort of understatement. My body snaps up, I sit up in an instant, covers thrown off. I clutch at my wrist; my clean, unmarked wrist, my fingers desperate and griping. Not only would surprise be an understatement, but a vast miscommunication of sentiment, as well.

          Blood. My searching eyes are frantic to find blood. I find nothing. My clothes, my sheets, my floor, perfectly blank. My breathing is quick and frantic in my chest as I try to find something. Anything. I remember the feeling. It is perfectly clear in my mind.

          There is no blood. No indicator of what happened last night.

          That’s not right.

          I throw myself out of bed. In seconds I am out of my room, and hurtling down the hall, taking the stairs in bounds. “Mom!” I yell, rushing around a corner.

          “Yes?” She sounds confused at my hysterical tone.

          I take a painful breath, trying to compose myself. How could she have confusion in her voice? “Mom, what happened last night?”

          “What do you mean…?” she drifts off, honestly muddled.

          “Just give me a rundown of what happened last night,” I insist.

          “Uh…well you came back from the coffee shop, we had dinner, and you went to your room, as per-usual.”

          “What was dinner?”

          My mother sighs, “salmon, Lily.”

          That’s not right either.

          I thank my mother, and turn away, moving towards the stairs. My lips don’t utter any sort of explanation for her, I just make for the stairs, my back to her. As I am about to start up the stairs, the phone rings. Rings twice. “Lily, it’s Abby.”

          I go back on my progress up the stairs, sauntering. I pick up the telephone on the very last ring. “Hey, Abby,” I say, trying to keep my voice even. Despite my efforts I can’t keep the anxiousness out of my words.

          “Hey, Lil,” I can hear the easy smile in her voice. My mind simply cannot wrap itself around the concept that I am somehow alive, and that somehow, no one is freaking out at the fact that I slit my wrist last night.

          “What’s up?” what a strange, pathetically normal conversation. I’m supposed to be dead, or at very least hospitalized. Not, I repeat, not alive.

          “Well, um, I was thinking…” she sounds as if she’s honestly been thinking quite deeply in deed about what it is that she’s about to mention to me, “there’s the summer street fair going on this afternoon. We haven’t really been talking that much lately, so I thought that maybe…”

          I don’t let her finish, “sorry, me and street fairs don’t really mix. I don’t go to them ever since…”

          “Ever since what?” Abby demands, totally clueless.

          “You remember Sephie, right?”

          “Of course!” she exclaims on the other end.