Page 99 of Night Songs

That night, I listened breathlessly outside of his room. When I heard his snoring even out to a rhythmic sawing, I quietly picked up the bag I’d pretended to pack for the treatment center, tiptoed down the stairs, and slipped soundlessly out the front door.

I walked for an hour to a Walmart in the next neighborhood and used their half-broken pay phone to call a taxi from a number I’d scrawled on a piece of paper. I’d left my dead phone at the bottom of a box of cereal Micah hated, and I doubted if anyone would ever find it.

While I waited for the taxi, I went inside and browsed the hair aisle, searching for a wig. When I found only hairpieces, I went up and down the aisles until I spotted a small costume section near the sewing supplies. There was one long, voluminous blonde wig and another of the same in brunette. I selected the blonde, picked up a prepaid phone, paid for both with cash, then locked myself in the bathroom.

I put on the wig and stared at myself in the mirror, the blonde strands glowing under the fluorescents like they were radioactive. I’d selected this shade because it was the furthest from my dark copper as I could get, but now I saw the strangeness of the choice.

Even when I tried to disappear, it somehow came back toher.

Outside, I got into the taxi idling by the entrance and gave him the address to the Amtrak station in Maricopa. I looked in the rearview mirror, searching the driver’s eyes to see if he could be trusted.

But in the dark interior, the glass showed only the outline of a blonde woman sitting in the backseat, haloed in desert neon.

35rhea

2010

FOUR DAYS LEFT

For the last sixty hours, I’ve sat on this train streaking east.

For most of it, I was the only one awake in the quiet car; the passengers even slept silently here, their mouths closed and their bodies still as corpses. I haven’t slept so much as sat in a trance for the last three days, reliving the past.

I noticed a soft, fuzzy sound like whispering coming from somewhere nearby, and I imagined a renegade passenger hunched in their seat, murmuring to themselves just so they could hear their own voice.

I put on my special noise-canceling headphones and selected “Let Me Out” fromThe Cursed Womanalbum on my iPod. The opening riff twisted like a snake over the houses passing through the window.

She sat in the room, watchin’ the tree,

Waitin’ for someone to set her free

I had made the same mistake. I had waited for people to free me, but I had since learned that no one could set you free. You had to do it yourself.

By any means necessary.

Let me out, Lord

Let me be free

Let me out, Lord

Who will I be?

The last line lingered in my mind, and I realized I had missed something in the song. This decision to set yourself free made you a new person, perhaps even a stranger.

I reached for my phone, and I saw the date glowing from the screen.

6.09.2010

Four days until I turned 33.

I wasn’t entirely free. Not yet.

But I would be.

My head suddenly went light, and I saw my hands were shaking around the phone. It was time for food. In the dining car, I ordered a cheeseburger, and I watched the attendant microwave it inside a plastic wrapper. When he handed it to me, a cancerous steam filled the bag. I ate the chips instead.

Back at my seat, I saw the sun coming up over the green fields whizzing by. I opened the small vent of the window and inhaled.