Imaginary Money

This can’t be real. The money is in front of me. I can feel it. I can’t smell it in front of this bank guy, but I know it must have a faint smell of power. I don’t know what to do. I run the tip of my finger against the stack of bills hoping for a paper cut, a sign that this is real. But I hate paper cuts and I can’t commit to actual pain. I can’t do anything right now other than stare at this $20,000 that my imaginary friend left me in their will.

We were friends for years. His name was Bob So and So. Therapists would tell me I created him to cope with some childhood trauma but I’m pretty sure he showed up because I needed help getting a pickle jar when I was 5. I remember trying to reach for this damn jar that was two shelves higher than it needed to be, probably placed there by a family member trying to care for my safety mind you. But I wanted pickles and I was determined. So determined in fact that Bob showed up.

In that moment of raw childhood determination Bob So and So appeared beside me. His brown hair spiked up to the heavens, his old leather jacket too big for his body. He was a rock star and yet the roadie. Bob was simply there in that moment and grabbed the pickle jar. We sat on the floor eating them till an adult wandered in and asked me how I had consumed a whole zesty dill jar by myself. Yet clearly there was someone beside me.

I know in the coping mechanism world I’m not allowed to blame pickles, but I sort of do. I blame my determination for a tasty snack that somehow created, conjured, called upon this person to show up. No one else could see him. He wasn’t old but he also wasn’t young. He was odd yet cool. He was wacky but suave. I don’t really know how to describe him other than my best friend. We did everything together. We raised hell together. We did it all till my mother demanded I go to a doctor so I wouldn’t walk into middle school having an imaginary friend and be the girl who sits alone at lunch.

A few sessions and some medication later, he was gone. Bob was gone. His maximalist existence in my minimalist world had been erased thanks to some drugs that looked like a word document where your cat just walked over the keyboard. I was alone in life and even at lunch regardless of what my mother had thought.

I was back to the adult world where I was supposed to be saving money, supposed to be finding myself. And guess what, I never really found anything in the end.

Yet here I am, finding myself on a precipice of the realization that this money in front of me has come from something unreal.

“Ma’am” the bank guy asks me. I must have been zoning out. I look up. Human things.

“Yes?”

“He left this for you too.” The bank guy slides a black leather-bound, small notebook towards me. I grip it in my hands. I rub it like a genie’s lamp, because in this new world I’m in, magic has to be real…right?

I stare at it. I stare at this gentleman who’s unknowingly giving me things from some other realm. Everything has changed. Not because of the money or the things in this notebook. No. Because what once wasn’t existing is suddenly existing. I mourn the loss of my past. I am born again into this future. I wish I would have worn something more flattering.

Somehow I end up in my car in the parking lot. It’s always so cold in these cement underground lairs, goosebumps traveling from my spine to my fingers. The money is in the trunk because for some reason that sounds like a good place to put it, or at least all the true crime videos I watched have made me feel that way.

The notebook is in my hands. I haven’t opened it. I am terrified of this moment. There’s always going to be a “before I opened the book” and an “after I opened the book”. Is this what pandora’s box creator felt like? Did Bob create the box? Anything is possible.

I don’t know if anyone has written in the notebook. The pages aren’t crispy with ink stains. There’s no fingertip licked marks dabbing the corners. No. No, this is new. I have to stop my initial view and get to the internal autopsy.

With one swift wrist twist the front cover falls to the side. It feels like that iconic moment of a chic heroine tossing her hair to one side, as everyone falls in love with her instantly, the lighting perfect.

I lose my breath. My eyes adjust to the ball point pen message scrawled out on the paper.

There, in black ink, is the message, “Put the car in drive”.

Uh oh. Oh no.

I put the car in drive. Deep breath.

Turn the page. Why not?

Another message, still fresh, the ends of the words still have that bubble of ink that has yet to dry.

“Drive out of the parking lot and go to the airport”.

I’m on the 101. I’m on the 405. Here we go.

I turn the page.