I filled my head with white noise.
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I must have fallen asleep at some point because when I opened my eyes there was sunlight flooding the room and the white noise was still blasting in my ears, %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%.
I pulled off the headphones and vaulted off the bed. I ran out my door and just down the hallway to Dad’s.
I banged on it, hard.
No answer.
I hammered again on the door with my fist.
BANG, BANG, BANG.
Oh please oh please oh—
“Cass? What the hell?”
Relief snapped open and expanded inside me, like a parachute. “Dad?”
“Uh, yeah. It’s five thirty ********* a.m., Cass. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong, Dad. Nothing’s wrong.”
I heard him roll over in bed. “Then go back to ******* bed.”
But I didn’t. I bounced down the hall, elastic with happiness. I had challenged the voice and I had won. I had taken on step five for the second time, and I had come out victorious.
“You there?” I asked the voice.
No answer.
“Figures,” I said.
I didn’t know how I was going to wait till one o’clock for the Toy Story matinee with Paris. I was buzzing. I had 220 volts of electricity running through me, fizzing in my veins and nerves. I was wired. I went to my room and tried to read some of the Murakami—the voice said not one thing about it—but I couldn’t concentrate on the words.
A little later I heard Dad go downstairs and have his breakfast; then he left. He didn’t make me anything to eat, or call up, or anything. I went downstairs and tried to watch some TV for an hour or so, but I still couldn’t concentrate. I went back upstairs, still in my pajamas.
I pulled on my swimsuit and then faded jeans and a T-shirt with my old Converses and went outside. My phone went into my back pocket. I was going to walk to the beach, do some drawing, maybe swim in the ocean. If the voice wanted to say anything about it, well, what was it going to do? I grabbed my sketch pad and my pencil.
Thin mist hung over the town. I followed our street to where the asphalt began to break up, sand pushing through the cracks. The road just became the shore at a certain point. Then I stepped from the sidewalk down onto the scrub and dunes of the beach.
I walked the beach until I found something I wanted to draw—an old Coke can, it looked like it might have been seventies even; the font was weird, and it had washed up, faded out, on the sand. Trash. I loved to draw trash—that was my thing, remember? Neglected things. Ugly things.
I took my pencil and pressed it to the paper and—
Nothing. I couldn’t draw it. I couldn’t draw the ugly old squashed Coke can. It held no interest at all for me, its folds, its little holes, its faded lettering. It was just a dead, broken object, and the pencil wouldn’t move.
It was like … like it was something I used to like to do, but now it was just gone. Like a switch had been turned off. It wasn’t even the voice saying no, it was just me. Losing interest.
I shrugged and put the sketch pad and pencil in my back pocket. Then I went to the spot where Dad taught me to swim, south of Pier One. I slid off my jeans and took off my T-shirt. The late morning air was cold on my legs and arms.
For a second I thought, Really?