THE VISION IS A PLACE | ✓ {complete}

Chapter 53 : dragonfly wing

    The next days are hard. There hasn't been a single night since Addison and I met a year and a half ago that we've spent apart. I've hardly been seeing him at all. At circle we hold hands, and everyone pretends like there's nothing going on. During the day he works with the boys, and Anna and I work in the garden. Dinners are quiet. We sit around the table, touching elbows, passing around plates, writing the silence off as hunger. But I suppose this is how it used to be. Dinners only really became fun when Van and Evie were here.

After dinner, we clean up, do chores and go to bed, only to wake up early the next morning to do the same thing over, working through the same endless list of jobs.

We talk less about the experiment less now than we did when the Barrens were here. It was supposed to be the other way around.


Anna talks to me sometimes now about her pregnancy, what she's feeling and everything. Do I think it was wrong to get pregnant? Yeah, of course. Am I mad at her for it? No. I know it wasn't her idea. I know it was Heath. She told me so herself, but in not so many words.

I don't know what to say when she talks to me about it. She keeps telling me she has a good feeling about it this time, but the more she tells me that, the less I believe her.

Besides that, my days have become about trying to forget what I know. I try to forget about Evie and Heath. I try to forget about Kyle. I try to forget about his parents. I try to forget about what Heath said to Noah. I try to forget what's going to happen on Saturday. I try to forget the way Van made me feel when he talked about his life and New York. I try to forget my dreams about playing music. I try to forget the outside, because trying to remember why I wanted to leave it is only getting harder.

Noah has been successfully sneaking downstairs every so often to use Heath's laptop. Everything has been going as planned; Cult Monitor will be coming to the market this Saturday to take him away. I feel less confident about it now than I did before, only because it's not my plan anymore; it's Noah's. I gave it to him, but now that I'm not in control of it, it's harder for me to trust that it's going to be okay. It's the difference between you, yourself, walking close to a steep drop, versus watching someone you love.

I just keep sealing my thoughts and fears in drops of water, one at a time, as soon as they come. Then, I let them free fall from my brain, down my spine, as if it were a hollow shaft, and into my body where I imagine there is a lake within the dark cave of my skin and bones. When the thoughts drop, they make ripples. I let those ripples be as big as they want to be, and I let myself feel them completely. That way, I never actually have to look inside and deal with the contents of those thoughts, and for now, they think they're being heard. All that chaos in my head diminishes to a leaking tap. Those thoughts that were once violent screams for attention turn to background noise.

It's not a cure, but it helps. The only side effect is that it gets hard to breathe. I know I'm getting enough air because my lungs are expanding, but it feels like there's nothing inside of them. Like my lungs are moving on their own, without sucking anything in. I've become even more claustrophobic. The feeling that was once reserved only for the night, has somehow followed me out into the light.

I'm sitting on the back hill with my guitar, when Heath finds me.

"What are you doing?" he asks, interrupting my empty daydream. I didn't realize I had stopped playing.

"Just looking."

"At what?"

"The Grand Canyon."

He takes a seat next to me. "...What?"

"That's the secret" I tell him, still looking out. "The colours of that sunset, how the yellow shines through the grey—how bright it is between the gaps... You have to let yourself be as amazed by that as you would a fiery sunset over the ocean. And our little valley, the way everything folds down to meet the stream...give yourself permission to feel as moved by it as you would The Grand Canyon."