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This was her third sleepless night in a row. She had moved in with Dan earlier this month and could easily draw from memory the shape of every water stain on the ceiling. The branching lines of every crack.
And hanging on the wall above it, the one decorative item she’d brought with her, the only art she’d held on to for the past seven years. A Mayan weaving about the size of a bath towel.
He was blue-eyed and fair with a short chestnut beard and glasses, while she was olive-skinned and ethnically ambiguous. People had always guessed that she was Indian, Turkish, Mexican, or Armenian. She was, in fact, half Guatemalan, a quarter Irish, and a quarter Italian. Thick black hair and high Mayan cheekbones met the round chin and upturned nose of the Irish on her face.
What scared her was the possibility of hallucinations.
GREAT. I know where thiz is going already
It wasn’t that she thought the job was beneath her, but sometimes she worried that Dan did, or that he looked down on her apparent lack of drive.
The dream began right away.
Ahhh another thriller based on dreams and hallucinations . Boring! Lazy!
Some part of her—the part of her that dreamed—insisted on returning here night after night, as if there were something she was supposed to do here.
The man was Frank Bellamy.
Her?
Aubrey, though her grades never reflected it, was smart in her own way. She understood people, saw through their acts. Her family had moved around a lot when she was little, so she had a lot of practice when it came to making friends, but one thing she hadn’t learned was how to keep them.
she found a certain comfort in Dan’s tenderness toward Cassandra, the woman cursed to utter a truth no one would believe.
Tayor!
The dark glitter of Frank’s eyes.
?
But how could two women drop dead for no apparent reason while talking to the same man?
“Frank Bellamy,” she said as, on her screen, the couple entered the diner. “Who?”
Egg?
“Do you remember when I told you about my friend Aubrey?” “Of course. The one who died.”
Nice
“There’s this term for when they can’t figure out what killed a person. Sudden unexplained death. It’s extremely rare and almost always happens when the person is asleep. They just never wake up.” “Wow. That’s . . . terrible.” “But here’s the thing. Aubrey was awake when it happened. And she was talking to Frank.”
Hypnotized!
The unwell mind, Dr. Barry had said, is rarely capable of recognizing its own illness.
Maya hadn’t realized how drunk she was until she was in motion, and now the full force of two glasses of pinot noir, the rum daiquiri, and a teacup and two shots of gin hit her like a tsunami.
Maya couldn’t look up. Nausea surged from her stomach through her chest to her throat. “Can I get you a glass of water?” Greta asked without warmth. Maya shook her head. She needed to get to the bathroom. “I’ll be right back,”
The mirror confirmed that there would be no more pretending she was okay.
What happened after??
Usually their silences are of the kind shared by good friends after many years—as easy as being alone. But today’s silence feels different. Chilly. Maya gets the sense that Aubrey is upset about something and has been for the past few weeks. She’s noticed a snippiness to Aubrey’s tone, an occasional meanness to her laughter.
She can’t do it, but then she does.
K
“If I don’t stop him,” she said, “he’s just going to keep doing it.”
Literally who is he
This would have been a good time for Maya to confess there was no stomach bug, that she had drunk too much to cope with running out of pills he hadn’t known she was on.
She held back tears just long enough to kiss him goodbye.
She has no feelings or emotions but shes crying?
For her, he existed as the object of her daughter’s delusional obsession, the human version of Silver Lake. But for Maya, he was real.
??
Her stomach clenched every time she saw someone who looked like him, which was often. Frank was average-looking, slight of build with a small chin, dark hair, and pale skin. It seemed half the men in Boston could pass for Frank.
LOL
MASS MoCA.
?
Aubrey had a yen to be in nature,
??? Yen?
“You know there’s more to it than that. You could end up like—” “Let me guess. Aunt Lisa?” “It’s in your genes. You’re susceptible—why can’t you see that? A drug like LSD could trigger something—an episode.”
Now her mom was looking at her with the vigilance of a retired paramedic who had never really made it off the ambulance.
So far absolitely nothing has happened
Brenda was making herself a cup of instant coffee—one spoonful of Nescafé, one of sugar, and two of powdered milk. She’d been in Guatemala just over a month, was pregnant but didn’t know it yet, and this was part of her routine: she liked to take her coffee outside and up the rickety metal stairs to the roof on sunny mornings such as this one. (But that was another story too.)
??
Maya’s dread turned to skepticism. “What—like a ghost?” The waitress nodded.
Noooooo
Dr. Barry had said about the link between sudden unexplained death and what he called magical thinking. Some cultures blame evil spirits.
Maya felt herself slipping back in time, her voice taking on the drama of a teenager’s. This happened every time she came home.
“I’m telling you,” her mom said. “Benzo withdrawal makes people paranoid. Confused. A lot of the benzo clients at work end up on antipsychotics.”
tend not to stay anywhere too long.”
Frank exits the library a few minutes past seven, smiling warmly, but his hug feels platonic. A quick, one-armed clasp.
“I’m building a cabin,” he says. “A cabin? Where?” “In the woods behind my dad’s house. Out by the state park.”
It doesn’t make sense. She met Frank at seven. Did she really just spend five hours with Frank at Balance Rock?
her mom’s suggestion that she’d imagined last night’s ringing only deepened Maya’s certainty that someone—Frank—had called.
Maya braced herself as Elaine looked up and met her eyes, and for a moment, it seemed they would greet each other. But they didn’t. Each looked down at her feet as they passed each other on the sidewalk, and neither said anything. What was there to say?
She was here to see Steven Lang, who had yet to write back.
I think i went to HS with him
She was here to see Steven Lang, who had yet to write back.
Who
She closes her eyes, but instead of kissing her, he lifts her hand and places it back on the throttle.
Awk
She doesn’t taste the basil from the garden she helped her mom plant when she was little,
?? It dies esp in MA
“It’ll have to be another day, though,” he says. “I actually need to get back to my dad. He had a rough morning. That’s what I came here to tell you, Maya. Today doesn’t work anymore, I’m sorry.” She doesn’t believe him. He was going to take her to his cabin, she was going to tell him her thoughts about deferring, but Aubrey ruined everything. “I’m sorry,” she says.
“Want a ride?” Aubrey glances at Maya, then at Frank. She thinks about it. “Sure,” she says. Maya doesn’t breathe as she watches him open the car door for her. Aubrey gets in. She avoids eye contact with Maya through the windshield.
Not a girls girl
The smell of chili seeped through the walls.
Lololol ew
Brenda’s
vs barb? Cannot decipher
And in the meantime, Dan hadn’t texted back. He had been tagged on Instagram by someone with the handle nina_borealis. He was sitting in a booth at Silhouette Lounge, drinking what was probably a rum and Coke across from his law school friend Sean and Sean’s girlfriend, Ellie.
Lol wow
