under my arms, hoping to seek some warmth there. I didn’t want to think of Charlie, but I kept picturing his kaleidoscope eyes, wondering what color they might be projecting just then. While it probably would have been significantly easier if he wasn’t so close by, the idea of knowing he was near made it that much worse. My memories were still so fresh, the pain of the lies he told me raw and festering, without anything to distract me. If I was at home I would just go to the library and straight to the reference section. I would probably stay until the librarians politely kicked me out. I had done something similar in those first days after Mom died. But now I had nowhere to escape and I hated him for that.
Instead, I tried to escape the cold through ceaseless memories, living through them one by one as if they had just occurred. I remembered the first time I drank coffee and all the annoying consequences for Mom. I thought of Robbie showing Dad Angry Birds on the phone and his subsequent addiction thereafter. But as much as I hated it, I thought mostly of Charlie and every one of his endearing traits, the smell of his skin after he had just lit a cigarette, the random facts he would share, how his accent thickened when he was angry.
Charlie. Fewer than twelve hours ago he had kissed me and held me like there was nothing else in the world. I slid deeper into the metal floor of the hold and began to sob. Something fragile and beautiful inside me began to wilt away, the cold taking over a willing body.
When my eyes began burning and blurring over to the point that I could no longer see my own self-pity, I shut them with the hope of taking a brief rest. If nothing else, sleeping would kill time and get me out of my head for a little while. I heard the rain continuing to beat on the outside of the ship and it had almost become soothing. I had even begun to count the number of pitter patters from one to one hundred before starting over again. When the dark closed in, I was actually somewhat comfortable on the metal floor; it brought back memories of broken bunk beds at summer camp and camping with Robbie and his friends.
I tried to focus on stuff like that while I drifted off. I thought of a few summers ago when Dad passed out after tree trimming in the hammock, and Robbie and I painted his toe nails. The time when Robbie jumped from the trampoline trying to dive into a snow pile (Mom had practically lived in the E.R. that day). I laughed to myself and wrapped my arms around my body, trying to keep the memories as close as I possibly could.
As I slept, I dreamt of strange and ominous things. On top of everything else, I’ve never really had dreams before and when I did dream, I usually forgot them by the time I finished my breakfast or brushed my teeth; strange now in the last few days that I would have more than one dream that I could actually remember. It wasn’t just the imagery that shook me, it was a feeling. They became etched in my head, a permanent part of me.
The dream gave me venom-producing snakes slithering their way up walls, trying to get to an unknown destination. How I knew they were poisonous but not where they were going is beyond me. Instinctually, I just knew they were dangerous, deadly. There were dozens of them, all sorts of different colors and sizes, though equally terrifying with their proportions. I couldn’t see myself, but I knew I was nearby enough to be in some serious danger. With the loud hissing coming closer and a hundred tongues and attached fangs approaching, I wanted to call out, to scream for someone, for anyone—for Charlie. And yet I couldn’t. I had no voice, no lungs, and no mouth. I watched them gain momentum as they increased their speed up the wall.
When I opened my eyes, my face was wet from fresh tears and my legs shook from the intensity of the dream, so much that it took me several minutes to stand up straight again. I tried to remember the last time I had even had a nightmare, but I couldn’t. Nightmares were for children, or people who