Free After I Wake by Emma Griffiths Page B

knows how to spell “ugh.” I sigh and look one more time at the poem, full of my despised writing scheme. Then I start to laugh, harder than my mom was. I probably sound like a lunatic, but I’m beyond any semblance of caring. Tears are freely climbing down my face as I try to contain the amusement that is bubbling from my very core.
    I laugh until my sides hurt, and then I laugh some more, before I manage to glance at my mom, who’s been watching me with an expression somewhere between concern and bemusement. “You said that you wanted to remember the exact moment when I got my purpose back, right?” I choke out. “But I’m pretty sure you got the date wrong.”
    My mom rushes to the page-a-day calendar, and sure enough, I’m right. She blushes and joins me in fresh peals of laughter. I manage to cease it shortly after it occurs to me that we might wake up some neighbors. I suspect the neighbors think I’m crazy, but I don’t really care, because I’m not trying to impress them.
    When I sit up from the position on the floor that I slumped to when I started laughing, my mom is staring at the poem, hovering near it with her hand poised in the air, preparing to scribble on it. The first writing utensil she grabbed was a pen. “Just add a plus one to the date,” I cackle, and when my mom looks at me, I can see that she was already doing it. We start to snicker again, now at the fact that we apparently share a brain. I wonder how that happens, sharing a brain. Probably prolonged exposure to another person.
    I yawn suddenly, and my mom does too. The memories of my nightmare flood back, and I feel wide-awake again. I stiffen a little, and my mom notices right away. She gently prods me until I tell her, and then I go write about it in the red journal. She asks me if I’ve ever had nightmares or flashbacks like those before, and I tell her the honest truth, that the nightmare was the first. I’m suddenly terrified to go back to sleep, but my body disagrees, and I stumble back upstairs, my mother’s supportive hand on my shoulder.
    As I try to get comfortable, my mom sits next to me and gently brushes my hair, which has gotten shaggy in the past weeks, away from my forehead before kissing it. I whine at her a little, and she only replies that she is glad to have me back again before she goes to the door and closes it, sealing me in a box of utter darkness. Before I can panic, I fall asleep, exhausted. Thankfully, the next sleep is a dreamless one.

Flashback:
Apparently March.
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    T HREE DAYS after I returned home from the hospital for the first time, with my hand still freshly gone from my life for the rest of my life, I took a shower. It was awful.
    Showers for me had always been peaceful. I’d take my sweet time, washing my hair first. It was long; I’d spent years growing it out. It ended down near where my spine meets my tailbone, and I was immensely proud of it. It was mostly straight, only the tiniest bit curly, not frizzy at all, and easy to manage. It’s the most beautiful red, and I had my hair dyed blonde at the end so it looked like my hair was on fire. It was all a girl could ask for in a head of hair.
    Within minutes it was tangled and matted, awkwardly shampooed, and plastered to my neck and face and I felt like I was suffocating under it and I couldn’t manage to shower with one hand and I was freaking out. I had to have my mom help me clean it off while holding my emotions in as I felt her fingers pulling the knots apart.
    The hair was the second change to my appearance in a short while. I made the appointment minutes after the shower debacle, speaking quietly into the receiver and telling them I needed a haircut.
    My mom dropped me off, and I walked in alone. Ashley, the hairdresser I saw on occasion to trim off dead ends, greeted me and tried not to stare at my hand. Of course she knew, everyone knew. It was a slow news