My mother was bitching at me about something or other the second I walked through the door, but I just ignored her and went straight to my room and fell asleep.
I had this really vivid dream that I was being chased by a pair of sneakers. There wasn’t anyone in them, just a pair of sneakers. I don’t know why I was so terrified of them, but I was. That had to be the most restless sleep I’ve ever had.
HARBINGER JONES
I watched Chey get safely inside, and then I just started driving. I wasn’t at all conscious of my surroundings.
It was a lot like this one night in Athens when everything felt like it was spinning out of control and I just walked aimlessly. I wound up at a phone booth downtown and called Dr. Kenny. That night, everything in the world was hyperreal. On this day, it all sort of disappeared.
By the time I’d zoned back in, I’d made it all the way to the Kensico Dam, like fifteen miles away. It was kind of scary that I’d driven that far without any real understanding of how I’d gone from point A to point B. I parked the car, got out, wandered into the dam’s main plaza, and sat down on a low stone wall.
It was early November, it was gray, and it was getting cold. I wasn’t dressed for the weather, but I was feeling numb and didn’t really notice. I started listing all the things I couldn’t control:
Thing I Couldn’t Control #1:
I was never going to stop wanting Chey,
needing Chey, and loving Chey.
(Three out of three ain’t bad,
either, Meat Loaf.)
Thing I Couldn’t Control #2:
Cheyenne was never
going to love me back.
Thing I Couldn’t Control #3:
Chey and Johnny were going
to be together forever.
I could feel the world disappearing even more, so I started on one of my lists to help me calm down. It was the periodic table, rearranged to put the elements in alphabetical order.
Actinium
Aluminum
Americium
It was starting to work; my heart was retreating from the redline. But something inside me made me stop. That kind of freaked me out, because once I got going on a list, I never stopped. Ever. But this time I just couldn’t go any further.
Strike that. Not that I couldn’t go any further; I didn’t want to.
I was tired of the lists. Tired of preventing myself from feeling whatever it was the world wanted me to feel. Tired of walking through life anesthetized.
It’s not an exaggeration to say that those lists saved my life. Without them, I would’ve spun out of control and broken down more than once. But now, sitting there on that wall, the massive stone dam looming over me like the personification of my fate, enough was enough.
No more lists. Something in my life needed to change.
PART FOUR,
NOVEMBER TO DECEMBER 1986
Being in Fleetwood Mac is more like being in group therapy.
—Mick Fleetwood
Who do you really admire and/or want to emulate?
HARBINGER JONES
The answer for me has always been Lucky Strike the Lightning Man. He’s this guy who was struck by lightning—unlike me, he was actually struck by lightning instead of almost struck by lightning—but rather than letting it ruin his life, he turned it into something positive. He became an expert in meteorology, and he helped other lightning-strike victims. He really helped me when I was a little kid, and I’m forever in his debt.
CHEYENNE BELLE
Johnny McKenna.
RICHIE MCGILL
The Bay City Rollers.
Just kidding.
My dad.
CHEYENNE BELLE
I woke up the next morning with a sharp pain in my gut and I was clammy and sweating. Throwing the covers off my body made the pain even more intense, and I moaned.
It was Saturday morning, and Theresa and Agnes were both still in bed.
Right away, Theresa could see something was wrong.
“Chey?” she asked, propping herself up.
“I don’t feel good.” I clutched my stomach and moaned again. I stayed on my bed, curled up on my side like a fetus. And, yeah, I get the irony. I guess it’s what all people do when the world—because of pain or sadness or something else—becomes too much to bear; we try our hardest to find a way to crawl back into the womb.
“Cheyenne, I think you need a tampon.” Agnes was very matter-of-fact.
“Huh?”
“You’re bleeding.”
“Shit,” Theresa said, rushing over to me.
I think I yelped or cried out, I’m not sure.
“What’s going on?” Agnes had only just turned sixteen, but somehow she seemed older than Theresa and me. She was a straight-A student, treasurer of the sophomore class at Our Lady of the Perpetual Adoration Academy—the same high school I’d barely graduated from a few months before—and she played, well, I don’t know how many sports. I lost count. Agnes even had a job as a cashier at Wanamaker’s.
She was confident, tender, and funny, and she was my favorite Belle girl. I was the bigger sister, but, really, I looked up to Agnes.