Inside me.
I’m crying and Jack’s asleep but he won’t be for long if I keep this up. “July, honey, it’s okay,” my mom says. “Please stop crying. Sweetie. You’re going to wake up your brother.”
She tries to tell me the story of my birth, which I’ve always liked. How I was due on the Fourth of July but I came so early, in May instead. How they were worried about me but I was a fighter. How they decided to keep the name they’d picked for me—July—even though I came in May. Because I was a firecracker from the start. I lit up the sky.
But I can’t stop crying.
I’m too scared.
Mom has Dad pull the car over. She climbs in the back, in between our two booster seats.
“It’s okay,” she says. “It’s okay.”
She picks up my sippy cup and says my name into it. “JULY.” She’s trying to get through to me, to have me hear her in a different way, and it almost works. I stop for a second. But the fear is still there, and I start to cry again.
My mom keeps saying my name, very gently. She doesn’t lose her temper, she doesn’t put the cup down. She starts singing my name into it. Then she turns my name into a song.
I listen.
Ju-ly, Ju-ly Fielding.
Ju-ly, Ju-ly Fielding.
Ju-ly, Ju-ly Fielding, Ju-ly, Fielding,
is a pretty name.
Ju-ly, Ju-ly Fielding.
Ju-ly, Ju-ly Fielding.
Ju-ly, Ju-ly Fielding, Ju-ly, Fielding,
you will be okay.
19.
now
I wake, sitting bolt upright, and slam my head against the bottom of the vanity.
What am I doing under my parents’ vanity?
Crap. Right.
I’m the last person left in town, and I’m sleeping under a vanity because I got scared by a date on a marquee and a message in my old journal. I’ve gone to ground like an animal.
A thought nudges at my mind.Whereareall the animals?I didn’t hear the buzz of insects last night. There are no birds chirping the way they always do in the morning.
Have they gone, too?
Is anyone back yet?
I grab my phone and lie down again.
Nothing. No texts. But the date on the display has changed. One day forward.
So, time is moving. We’re going to get closer to the8/31date. It’s going to be8/31again.
