Until the Day I Die(12)

The air conditioner kicks in, and I straighten, letting the lukewarm stream of air wash over me. My grandmother slipped me ten one-hundred-dollar bills the other night at my going-away dinner. She asked if I wanted more, and I told her I’d let her know if anything came up. Mom would be pissed, but whatever. Gigi thinks Mom doesn’t spend enough on stuff like nice clothes and fancy meals.

I jump off the bed and pluck the huge gangster roll of graduation money from the back of the closet shelf. I peel off a hundred-dollar bill and drop it into my purse, just in case there’s something I want to buy that I don’t want Mom to know about. Which reminds me. I haven’t checked Jax’s daily server report. Which should cheer me up. Definitely get my mind off being stuck here at school.

I settle back on the bed and move my laptop closer, already feeling a little bump in my mood. The daily server report is essentially a health check, a dashboard with data on the system processes, the drives, the memory, and any errors that might’ve cropped up over the last twenty-four hours. There are also log files attached to the email, in case you need to access more info.

The dashboard itself is really cool, a typical Dad design. It’s an elegantly constructed, colorful one-sheet with columns and pie charts and graphs. Just looking at it makes me think of Dad and feel happy. Not many things make me do that these days.

I scan the report, and an error message catches my eye.

A database error occurred.

Source: Microsoft SQL Server 2016

Code: 0984 occurred 1 time(s)

Description: Transaction (Process ID 3168) deadlocked on lock resources with another process and has been chosen as the deadlock victim. Rerun the transaction.

Context: Application ‘serve..search..queries..over..help..content’

Huh. Interesting.

I look over it again, nibbling at my thumbnail. The truth is, I could dig into this, but I’m not supposed to be messing with the servers. In fact, if Mom got wind of me poking around in Jax, she’d be pissed. Also, the server admin, Scotty, gets these reports, and he could already be on the case. But still . . .

I open one of the logs. Nothing looks out of the ordinary in the long columns. Not that I know what I’m looking for exactly, but sometimes things jump out at you. Time stamps, frequency, etc. I just can’t get over the fact that, since I’ve been checking these reports, I’ve never seen an error message like this.

It could just be a glitch, some weird anomaly that will never happen again. There’s also a chance it’s a bug. Which is not that big of a deal; it just means somebody has to fix it.

But there is a third option. A remote one, but an option nonetheless. The glitch could indicate that there’s a process running in Jax that wasn’t set up by Dad and is conflicting somehow with the basic software. Which is concerning.

I know it’s none of my business, but I can’t help myself. The thought of somebody screwing around inside Jax’s processes bothers me, but it excites me too. And the thrill of solving a problem could definitely take my mind off all the things that suck. So, before I can reason myself out of it, I shoot off a quick email to Scotty, asking him if he saw the error report and what he thinks it might mean.

Please don’t mention I said anything to Mom or Ben, I write at the end, then hit “Send.”

Dad would want me to do this, I tell myself.





10

ERIN

Something is happening. Whether it’s happening for real or in a dream is hard to say.

Outside the car window yellow and red and green streak past in smeary underwater slow motion. Sound is low and garbled too. That Dolly Parton song “Here You Come Again” is a tinny earworm playing somewhere just above the water’s surface. Soundtrack to my quest.

It’s night now, but I’ve forgotten what came before this point. A lot of things seem tangled right now. Too difficult to tease out. I know I can’t possibly be underwater because I’m driving a car. No, not a car, a truck. Ben’s truck. I can smell him on the seats and in the air conditioning streaming over me.

Someone called me earlier. It was a woman, a girl, I think. She said Shorie needed me. That’s all I needed to hear. I am going to my daughter.

All of a sudden, there’s a loud chunk. I’m thrown against the wheel, then back onto the seat, and everything is still. I close my eyes, just for a second, just to rest a minute. My breath sounds like a roar. This is how Perry died, in a car accident. But I’m not dead. I’m not even hurt.

I stagger out of the truck and see that I’ve only just barely tapped one of those low poles. But also that I’ve arrived at my intended destination. Or close to it. I’m in a parking lot next to a brick-and-columned house with elegant landscaping lights and Greek letters over the door. Where Shorie is.

Next step: Find my girl. Tell her how sorry I am. Tell her I love her. Make everything right again. Somehow.



It’s not Dolly anymore. Now it’s relentless reggae that’s so excruciatingly loud, I feel like my brain is melting.

There are so many kids in this place too. They’re jammed in the hallway and up the stairs, spilling out of rooms and windows. It’s insane that they choose to gather in these tiny spaces. Can’t they just find someplace to spread out? Don’t they believe in personal space?

I squeeze between the kids, but they take up so much space with their yelling and dancing and drinking, it takes every ounce of strength I have. I feel like I’m swimming again, doing those water aerobics Perry and I got roped into once on that budget vacation we took when we were first married. My tongue is thick, and I can feel myself wanting to find a horizontal surface to lie down on, but I don’t. I’ve become one of those cadaver dogs, nose to the ground, hard on the scent. Shorie, Shorie, Shorie.