Headlights(46)

She feels …

Hannah Lawrence.

She tilts her face up to me, those light green eyes on mine. “Do you get it yet? Can you see?”

I shake my head. Her eyes, her mouth, the tilt up at the corner of her lips. The feel of her in my arms. The wind ruffling our clothes, chilling our skin. I can’t think, looking at her. Feeling her.

Her body pressed to mine. We stop turning.

Hannah Lawrence and me on a mountaintop.

She leans forward, stretches up on her toes. Her cheek brushing against mine.

Her lips so close to my ear I can nearly feel them, her breath on my skin.

“It’s so simple,” she whispers. Her hand presses to my chest, slides up my neck, to the side of my face. She leans in closer, her lips brushing my ear. “It’s right in front of your—”

I don’t hear her. As I notice the fabric of her dress.

The wind whips hard against us, threatening my balance. My stomach turns over.

It’s not flowers on her dress.

It’s tiny clown faces.

Free Smile with Every Stay at the Happy Inn.

Hannah, whispering in my ear.

Dizzy, nausea, confusion, cold, want—

Hannah, holding me tighter. Hannah, who won’t let me go.

A wolf howls in the distance.

Do you get it yet?

Do you get it?



* * *



Three forty-five AM. I’m in the car, headed out toward Morrison. It’s dark. Headlights, in front of me on the road, nothing else.

Mom, Dad, motel, Whileago Manor, Bagram, motel, blood, shadows, motel, Hannah Lawrence.

Her body in my arms. Her breath against my ear.

Do you get it yet?

Waking up in a sweat. Dizzy. The dream, all the files.

Hypnagogia—hypnagogic and hypnopompic hallucinations.

Images, movements, sounds, shapes, upon waking, falling asleep. They come with sleep disorders, which come with PTS. Shadows might stalk you, do anything they want because they move freely and you are a mortal human, and you’re paralyzed in your sleep.

But if the shadows come when you’re fully awake, the hallucinations, then they don’t call it hypnagogia. They call it psychosis because you’ve lost your fucking mind.

You’ve lost your mind, and you’re just like him, just like him, up in his jail cell, your mom’s blood on his hands, his eyes in the mirror, his eyes, your eyes, you’re just like— The old paperback on the bed. My mom annotating as she read.

“All work and no play makes—”

A figure stands in the middle of the road, in my headlights.

I slam on the brakes and swerve.



* * *



The sun rises, orange-red fingers crawling over the grass, the concrete and road, the wooden stands of Red Rocks. I run the stadium. The giant rocks on either side of it and down below, the stadium built right into them so that you feel simultaneously high up and sunken into somewhere safe.

Broad steps, legs pushing, arms pumping, thinking about Everett Brown and Wizdumteller and Hannah Lawrence and every victim. My breath puffing out in front of my face, as freezing day comes to claim Colorado. The temperature plummeted in the night, but no snow yet. My lungs burn, muscles ache, and I push because I am losing it here, and I need to hold it together. I push because I have to do something.

Making myself drive the road my parents died on.

That shadow in the headlights.

I trip over my feet, just catch myself before my face hits the wood and concrete in front of me. I turn, take a seat and catch my breath, look out over the amphitheater, the early morning sun, rising over the rocks.

“Hey.”

I jump, reach for my gun that isn’t there.

“Whoa there, soldier, didn’t mean to scare you.”

The sun is here now, and Josie stands before me in the light. “Thought I might find you here,” she says. “Been lookin’ for ya.”

I lean back on my elbows, then lie all the way down, look up into the indifferent blue, catching my breath.

“Daniel, it’s okay. It’s okay, you’re here.”

Cold air, wood under my thighs, behind my knees, sweat on the side of my face, Josie’s hand on my arm. She breathes with me, sits and stays and breathes. I don’t know for how long, but my heart slows. I get it to slow. Josie exhales and says, “Shit, Stansfield.”

I sit up and clear my throat, run my hands over my face.

“How bad is it?” she asks.

“Me missing you?” I say, trying to bring some lightness in. Trying to joke.

“You don’t miss me.”

She’s wearing my old sweatshirt, a green USMC hoodie, beneath her outer jacket. “Tillman like you wearing that?” I ask.

She looks down at it and then back up at me. “Tillman’s very open-minded,” she says. A deer feeds in the grass to the side of the risers. A hawk soars overhead. “But … you know, I might have told him I thrifted it.”

“I do,” I say. “Miss you. And you haven’t been lookin’. I’ve been at Whileago.”

“I went there, last night. You weren’t there.”

“Oh. Jack’s house,” I say.

She nods. “They hate me?”

“’Course not.”

She looks at me sidelong.