Free Blessed by David Michael Page B

to bed so easily.
    She couldn’t shake the feeling that she wouldn’t be so lucky.
    As she sank down to the floor in front of her dresser, she steeled herself as best she could. Her hand was shaking when she reached out to pull the bottom drawer open.
    In the back of the drawer, right where she had left it, was the little black box. She mustered all of her resolve and forced her hand to stop shaking as she reached for the box.
    When she picked it up, she heard the necklace shift inside of it and heaved a sigh of relief. At least she knew that part was real. Now to settle the rest of her worries. She flipped the lid open and, right where she had left it neatly bundled in one of her elastics, was the clump of hair she had separated from her imaginary model’s head.
    She flipped the lid shut before she could talk herself into wearing the necklace again. With all the weirdness that had gone on since laying down for bed, she really didn’t need another trip down crazy lane. She tossed the box back in the drawer and slid it shut. Out of sight, out of mind.
    She hit the power button on her remote control and picked her bedding up off the floor before settling in for some late night TV. It was times like this that she wished she had homework to do so that she could have a good reason for not sleeping all night long. She knew she was going to regret the decision in the morning, but going to school a zombie was a lot more appealing than falling asleep again at that moment.
    Six hours of reruns, two potty breaks, four glasses of water and two apples later; the sky outside of her window had begun to lighten. She could tell that it would be a clear day by how light the eastern sky was so early in the morning.
    Thanks to the unique climate and location of the Salt Lake Valley, clear skies could mean one of two things: Either you were one of the poor saps who had to walk or rely on public transit and the white-blue sky was a curse, or you owned a car and the roads were bound to be covered in sheets of black ice.
    While the winter months in Utah were extremely beautiful, they were also extremely dangerous—especially for someone as prone to accidents as she tended to be.
    She peeked through her window to see if it had snowed at some point during the night to get some kind of indication of how terrifying her commute to school was going to be. When she saw the footprints in the yard still imprinted in the last storm’s deposit, she threw a silent thank you out into the Universe, happy that her chances of making it to her first class in one piece had just risen exponentially.
    She heard her dad’s alarm go off and his bed groan as he rolled over to smash the snooze button on top of it.
    She gave it another five minutes before she stretched and rose from her bed to go make some breakfast and fill the carafe with orange juice. She knew from years of experience that the snooze shut his alarm up for exactly nine minutes and he only ever hit it once.
    Sure enough, three minutes after setting the orange juice on the table and sitting down with her banana and frosted flakes, his alarm started screaming again. She heard him walk across his bedroom into the master bath, heard the toilet flush, and a few moments later he appeared at the bottom of the stairs in his bathrobe.
    It was moments like this that she understood the mental process of a girl marrying a man exactly like her father. As he paused at the bottom of the stairs to wipe the sleep from his eyes, she smiled and thought she could see herself marrying a man like him someday. His blond hair was all askew, his deep blue eyes were bleary from a full night’s sleep, and he had a day’s growth of facial hair. Her mother must find herself staring and thinking about just how lucky she really was to have such an amazing husband.
    “Morning daddy.” She mumbled around a mouthful of cereal.
    “Morning.” He managed to get out through a yawn.
    Not being the type to eat one bowl of cereal, he