This Might Hurt(33)

Inside Kit will be sitting on the bed with her legs tucked under her, fuzzy red socks on her feet. Now she’ll be putting her version of a bookmark (an old receipt or scrap of toilet paper) in that cream-colored paperback she’s read a million times. She’ll be wearing boxer shorts and two sweaters but will throw on a third before answering. Whatever awaits her on the other side of the door, she will be up for it. She always is.

But I hear no padding of footsteps. The door doesn’t swing open. No light leaks from the room. I knock again, louder this time. Still nothing. “Shit.”

I walk around the side of the building toward the window at the rear, gripping my hat as the wind rages. Not bothering with discretion, I cup my hands around my eyes and put my nose up to the glass. I can barely see, but what I can make out is tidy, like in every other room. I wait for my eyes to adjust, desperate to identify something as hers, but other than a bath towel laid over the back of the desk chair, the room doesn’t even appear lived in.

I blink several times, exhausted. My eyes are dry from the wind. I’ve spent most of the day unable to feel my fingers and toes. I have no idea where the nearest staff member is and, based on my experience so far, doubt they’d help me anyway. It’s time to call it quits. Tomorrow I will find this Rebecca person and demand to see my sister. I will find Kit no matter what, come clean, let her call me every name in the book and vow never to speak to me again. I will accept whatever punishment she deems appropriate. Maybe then I’ll stop dreaming that my rib cage is caving in, quit picking my cuticles until they bleed.

Behind me, a twig cracks. I whirl around at the same time a dark figure darts behind a cabin. Through the snowfall I can’t make out any attributes other than short and fit, definitely a man. Gordon? Was he the one peeping in my window earlier? I step toward him, acting braver than I feel. When I round the corner, he’s gone.

I spin 360 degrees but don’t see him, circle the nearby cabins but still can’t find him. Where has he gone? Why was he watching me? Is he still out here?

The courage I summoned in my cabin fails me in the darkness. I run back to my room, number sixteen. When I reach the welcome mat, I fish for the key card in my pocket. I pause. Light spills out from under the door. I try to remember whether I left a lamp on. I couldn’t have; the key card switch powers the lights in the room. I put my ear to the door, and the room is silent.

I don’t know the policies in this place. Maybe they have automatic lights that activate after dark or someone is doing turndown service, though I doubt it. Or maybe the person who broke into my room earlier is in there right now.

I put my key to the reader while the wind beats my back, unrelenting. The door unlocks. I take a deep breath, shudder, and push it open. When I step inside, I screech.

Sitting on my bed, eyes glowing, is my sister.





II




As long as I fear, I cannot be free.





WHY I’M APPLYING


    I wake with a headache more often than not. I live for forty-eight hours of every one hundred and sixty-eight. Sometimes I forget how old I am, what year it is. My name appears only in e-mails and tax forms—it will disappear altogether after I die. My Social Security number has summarized my earthly contribution to date: person number X of seven billion.

I want to join to prove my sister wrong. There are more important things in life than a steady paycheck.

I want to join to untether from likes and stories and filters and followers.

I want to join to figure out whether my mom is in a place I can reach with my feet on the ground.

To figure out whether I want to be aboveground or under it.

I’m scared of wanting to be under it.

To get out of my head. I would prefer anyone else’s.

To determine whether I can be more than a receptacle. If I can do more than accept other people’s lunches and bouquets.

I want to join because travel, therapy, religion, acupuncture, new cities, new jobs, new friends, puzzles, journals, candles, thick socks, face masks, long hikes, baths, drugs, sex, sports, stretching, sleeping, drinking, running, and meditating haven’t worked.

Because I like the sound of fearlessness.

Because there has to be more.





14





Kit


SIX MONTHS EARLIER

JULY 2019


I SWUNG THE trailer door open and peered around the dim, stuffy room. The blinds had been drawn over the windows. Motivational posters covered the walls. A burning incense stick filled the space with a heady scent. Seven chairs formed a circle. All but one were occupied. I rushed toward it. April and Georgina, two women I’d met on the ferry ride, waved at me. I beamed at them.

When I’d climbed out of the Hourglass yesterday and planted both feet on Wisewood’s pier, a stillness took hold of my body, a calm I had not known in all my adult life. The chatter of my fellow newcomers faded to the background. I took in a lungful of pine, then tipped my head toward the bright-eyed sky. A bird soared and sang to the sea life below. Lazy clouds gazed at their reflection in the aquamarine glass that stretched miles and miles. Jade, kelly, lime, moss: I had never seen such a rainbow of greens. Yet an odd sense of déjà vu washed over me, like I’d known this place forever, like I’d find my blood and veins inside these tree trunks.