What If This Storm Ends?

All the stories I’d ever heard began with foreshadowing. The journey outlined in threatening clouds, or a bright, blue sky. The kinds of days that exist at one end of the spectrum or the other: they’re either perfect, or they’re ominous. Journeys exist beyond the realm of platitudes and routine. They’re special, and we’re supposed to know when we’re on one.

So why was mine marked with a balmy, overcast sky? Why was mine indistinguishable from every day that’d come before it, and every day that was likely to follow? Why was this the day the book found me?

Life had been uncontrollable lately, and the fight I’d had with my boyfriend made its mark with a blooming, decorative bruise around my eye. Sunken flowers wilting beneath my skin. People kept asking where I was. He kept asking where I was. So, I made it a point to be nowhere.

My answer, of course, to the inward press for answers had me going on one of those signature, life avoidant benders — now on day eight.. or was it eighteen? Honestly I’d lost the distinction of days after the first few had passed, hopping from party to party and passing out in my car when I got tired.

When I wanted to self-destruct like this, I never kept my phone on for more than I needed it; ignoring the stacked notifications whenever I turned it on — keeping it locked away in the glovebox in-between. My car was a fucking mess — beer cans littering the back seat, and an old soda cup filled with cigarette butts to a point that it’d turned what little of the soda was left black as tar.

There was a plastic bag of dirty clothes in the trunk, and a handful of similar ones scattered throughout the backseat; these benders were one of the only times I bothered to get new clothes, avoiding any reason I had to go back home. Normally, I would’ve baulked at my own mess, showcasing how far I’d fallen from my meticulously crafted veneer in an attempt to avoid my own emotions.

Unfortunately, nothing had pulled my mind away from what waited for me at home for more than moments at a time. Feelings, breaking through in crests and troughs whenever I sobered up, shining in my eyes and blinding me like a spotlight that expected something of me. Something I fought myself over wanting to give into. A warm bed. A safe house. But.. was it?

I heard the glovebox buzz with annoying clarity. Shit. Had I forgotten to turn it off again? Work could wait. He could wait. I needed time to avoid it all.

I reached over to open the glovebox, and --

Thud.

No bells, no whistles of any kind. Just the heavy drop of a black book. My phone toppling down on top of it, dark and lifeless.

As I reached over to pick it up, I didn’t notice any inkling of apprehension or shift in energy.

Opening it, I noticed that nearly every page was blank. It looked as though it’d barely been broken in, only I couldn’t remember buying it and the handwriting on that initial page looked nothing like my own.

In crisp, blue letters it asked: Are you happy?

The reactionary glance at my reflection was an admission. Who was this person? They didn’t know me. Catching me on a bad day, in a bad week didn’t mean I wasn’t happy. So I'd had a bad month. It was a rough stretch - nothing more, nothing less. Just a bad year.

Besides, that’s how I’d ended up here, parked across the street from my friend’s house, hoping for someone to talk me down.

What was the point in giving this any thought?

I might’ve hated myself if I thought about it too much. Instead, I lit up a cigarette and got out of the car, shifting a few fallen cans aside as they tumbled out beside me; exhaling smoke overhead as I kicked the door shut. A disheveled mess, and proud of it.

The red-black floral jacket over an open dress shirt gave the impression I’d come from a party, the bags under my eyes and warm flush of my face a dead giveaway that I hadn’t slept — the messy hair looking about as uncontrolled as usual, but with a tad less finesse. For all the years of trials and tribulations we’d been through, surely a best friend could forgive my less than pristine state just this once.

-

It hounded my thoughts for several days. Through the calm of returning home. Through the tense dinners that inevitably followed, and the passive-aggressive comments that led us to that inevitable spiral staircase I fell down every time.

Are you happy?

It followed me into sleepless nights, lurking in the corners like a familiar shadow - disappearing whenever I looked directly at it. The glimmer of a hollow face behind my shoulder in every mirror I passed. The brush of air that danced like fingers across my arm.

It surrounded me - inside and out. I became convinced I wouldn’t find peace until I wrote back.

Tucked away in the bathroom with the shower running, I bought myself time to stare at that page, contemplating the question while I chewed on the back of a pen I’d stolen from his desk. The answer, in the end, seemed simple enough.

No.

Writing it down triggered a frustration that had been festering like an open wound. I scribbled the addendum: But what is there to do about it? Shutting the book and tossing it onto the floor where it hit the tile with a sharp smack.

“Are you okay?” His voice drifted, taunting me with its lack of suspicion.

“Fine, just slipped.”

His laugh grated my nerves.

-

The next morning, when I woke, I couldn’t say why I felt compelled to look at the book as soon as he’d left for work.

I wasn’t sure what to feel. Sitting, underneath my frustrated scrawl, was another sentence.

1340 Elm Street.

The ink was fresh; same, unfamiliar handwriting. It wasn’t his, and it wasn’t mine, so whose was it? And why wasn’t I worried some stranger was sneaking into my house to write it? Overtaken by a calm,

unsettling numbness I couldn’t fight; washing over every other feeling, like water trickling down my spine.

I knew the address. But knowing wasn’t enough, and it didn’t take long for me to gather my wits, the book and my keys as I rushed out the door.

When I arrived, I sat across the street from the building, and nothing clicked. Should it? A bank with a bakery inside? Was it meant to imply the bank or the bakery? I recognized the small bakery had been a favorite of mine back in college, before I met him. I’d studied there, met friends I hadn’t seen in years, now. It was like a haven for lost years of my life.

Years I desperately wanted back.

Holding the book in my lap, I felt my hands tremble as I opened it up, waiting for a new directive to be staring up at me. It was the same, three lines returning my blank look of confusion.

I wrote: Why am I here?

Caving in to my craziest thoughts in the hopes that some direction might actually materialize. And it didn’t. Not on the page, anyway..

“I’m surprised you came.”

Jerking upright from the shock of hearing someone else’s voice, I noted the red-headed girl in the rearview mirror.

As she said, “I didn’t think you were ready,” I noticed the backseat was empty.

“Who are you?”

“You don’t remember me, do you?”

“Should I?”

She sighed, crossing her arms and gazing out the window. “I’d hope so. We’ve only known each other our whole lives.”

“I don’t.. I don’t know you.”

Her eyes returned, patient and kind, “Don’t you?”

As she leaned forward, I felt breath fall against my face; the ghostly weight of a head resting on my shoulder as I watched her set it down.

“We used to be so close. When we were kids, we went through everything together, don’t you remember?”

And then, without reason or warning, abstract memories started to slip beneath the walls I’d erected living in the midst of an emotional battlefield. I remembered running away into the woods. Carving markings into trees as the world around us stretched wide with magic as far as we could see.

Where every puddle was a river we could cross to be in another world. Safe from this one. Together.

“Anya.”

Like the movie. The one I watched as a kid until it died. The one I’d sing along with as loud as I could when my parents yelled and threw things. The one I took with me on visitations; that I kept stashed away beneath my pillow when I went to college. The safety blanket I never gave up.

She was here, sitting in my backseat. Talking to me.

“Am I losing it?” A nervous twitter, as the book’s leather cover crinkled beneath the tight strain of my fingers.

Her laugh was warm and soothing. “You’re clear for the first time in years. Does it scare you?”

I didn’t want to answer that, so I parried. “Why am I here?”

We both glanced toward the bakery across the street, and she leaned back, taking the warmth and comfort with her. Still buzzing at a distance, like a thin fog that clouded my head.

“Because you’re ready.”

“Ready for what?”

She just smiled. “There’s a key in your left pocket. It belongs to box 1997.”

I felt a small, taut line in the front pocket of my jeans I hadn’t noticed before.

“What’s in it?”

She reached out to touch my face, and I felt the soft wash of fingertips slide across my cheek, shivering, “You’ll find out when you look.”

“Is there really a need for this much ambiguity?”

“No,” She admitted, “I’m just trying to keep the magic going a little longer. Isn’t that what you’ve been missing?”

As I placed my hand on the door handle, I hesitated; looking back into the mirror at her welcoming face, “Are you going to be here when I get back?” I couldn’t explain why the thought of her absence bothered me.

“I’m always here. You just haven’t known it.” Shooing me with her hand, she laughed, “Now, go. The bank’s closing, and it’s important you do this while you’re ready. That window only lasts so long.”

I heard the slightest hint of worry, before she vanished. Without further reason to stay, I scribbled one last note - leaving the book open on the passenger seat.

I’ll be right back.

-

“Come out whenever you’re done. I’ll be right outside.” The teller left, and I was alone.

The room was lined with safety deposit boxes, with a small table in the middle. I scanned the rows of numbers for the one marked #1997 and pulled it from its sheath to rest on the table before me. Taking the key from my pocket, I let the top fall open. Shock struck me with all the finesse of a brick to the face. The metal tin was filled to the brim with cash. Stacks of it. Neatly lined, bank-packaged hundred dollar bills.

There was a note lying on top with a receipt tucked inside it. A steady record of deposits. Starting over a year and a half ago - following the first night he’d hit me. The total standing tall at the bottom - $20,000.00.

I swallowed the lump in my throat, palms clammy as I opened the note. And there, in Anya’s same crisp blue handwriting, was one last note:

For your next life. The one I’m in. And he’s not.