Page 29 of Devils' Day Party
When yesterday’s date—Devils’ Day—pops up, I start to feel woozy again, like I did at the gas station earlier.
“What the fuck?” I whisper, hands shaking as I try typing in my name, then Calix’s, along with Crescent Prep, just like I did last night.
There are no videos. No sex tapes. Not even a mention of a sex tape. Frantically, I start checking the social media accounts of the Knight Crew. Some of them—like Calix’s—are private, but in typical Raz fashion, he posts every aspect of his life for the world to see.
And yet … he doesn’t mention the video. Neither does Sonja.
I throw my phone down on the bed and step back, like it really has bitten me, infected me, poisoned me.
It’s the weed, I try to tell myself this time, even though I know two drags on a joint does not a high person make. Sliding into the seat at my desk, I open my laptop and perform the same searches, the same social media sweeps, just to see if maybe the Knight Crew really did fuck with my phone.
The results are the same.
“Mom …” I call out, not caring which of them responds to me. Of course, they’re both hovering nearby, so they appear within seconds. I turn to look at them, trying not to give into the fear I’m feeling inside. “I think I need to go to the hospital.”This too shall pass, I murmur, over and over again as I sit in the backseat of my mothers’ Taurus. Yeah, the same Taurus I drove off the edge of Highway 62. After telling my moms the full story, they bypassed our local doctor and drove me straight to the ER.
Everything seems fine, they said. I don’t have a concussion, they said.
“Just because the CT scan doesn’t show anything doesn’t mean you don’t have a brain injury of some kind,” Mama Jane says, frowning hard. Sometimes I forget that she used to be a family medicine doctor. I wasn’t born until after she’d left her career. It’s one of the reasons her family doesn’t speak to her anymore. But just one of the reasons. Mama Cathy, and in turn, me and my sisters, are some of the other reasons. “I want you to go to sleep as soon as we get home.”
“If you really think I have a concussion, isn’t it best if I stay up?” I ask, but even though it’s only early afternoon, I’m fucking exhausted. All I want to do is sleep. Because, according to my parents, to the whole world, today is September 25th, Devils’ Day. Although … it can’t be because it was Devils’ Day yesterday, right?
Goddamn it, I just want to go to bed. When I wake up, I’ll figure this all out.
“That’s a myth,” Jane says as Cathy looks over her shoulder, brows pinched with worry. “As long as you’re awake and you can hold a conversation, sleep is actually best for concussive patients.” We pull into the driveway beside the mural that, apparently, never existed in the first place?
That must’ve been one hell of a dream last night.
I don’t think very hard about this morning, about how I passed out and hit the pavement and then … woke up and started all over again.
Instead, I head inside and change into some pj’s. My moms bring me soup and warm milk, like I’m five years old again, and leave the door cracked with promises to check in on me every hour or so. As soon as they’re gone, I finish my joint, let the munchies help me clean up every last bite of food, and then curl up in bed.
There is no video, I tell myself with a relieved sigh. As weirded out as I am about the intensity of last night’s dream, I feel better. I never fought with Luke or pepper sprayed the Knight Crew or ruined my little sisters’ mural.
I’m still smiling when I finally drift off to sleep.
I am most definitely not smiling when I wake up again.There’s blood all over my steering wheel.
I wake up with a start, my heart pounding, a scream lodged in my throat. No! No, this is a fucking nightmare!
This time, I don’t wait for Calix to tear my car door open. I open it so fast and so hard that I hit him with it. He grunts and grabs onto it, but I’m already climbing out. I’m already running. I make it as far as the grassy patch on the edge of the parking lot before I collapse and throw up.
“Are you fucking insane?!” Calix growls, breathing hard as he catches up to me.
“Stop saying that!” I scream, turning to look at him while my head swims with fear and I choke on a sense of dread and foreboding. This isn’t happening to me, it’s not. This isn’t real. I figure I must’ve taken some psychedelics at the Devils’ Day Party and now I’m tripping hard. How else could I be reliving the same day over and over again?
