I am a mess.
I’m screaming but no one can hear me.
I’m screaming so loud, but no one can help me.
For a year, my subconscious has tormented me with a traumatic night that wasn’t real. I haven’t been able to sleep properly, and none of it was real. People I knew, people I trusted, made me believe I was losing my mind. I feel angry and lost. How do you undo a fake memory?
My brain still can’t let go, see it as anything but real.
At night when the world goes black, despite everything I’ve learned, the hazy dream/memory sequence of that night at Jamie’s house, the party he threw in junior year, begins again.
33
DEVON
Tuesday
My first time in a prison was when I was ten.
I remember the exact date too: September 9.
Even though the place was bleak, dark, and gray, I was excited to be there. I don’t think anyone in the history of life has been excited by a prison. But I was. I missed my pa, and after two years, he finally wanted to speak to me. Before then, he’d denied Ma’s requests to let us see him. Then this time it was Ma, denying his request for her to visit him. She’d followed me all the way to the prison but refused to come inside and see him.
He looked different from when I last saw him. For one, he was wearing a uniform. It was bright white against his dark skin. He had grown out his beard and hair. His chin was resting on his crossed-over hands, and behind the glass screen, he seemed so distant. I remember staring at him for a while, frozen, not sure why, but scared.
I eventually gathered the strength to shuffle forward, sneakers way too big for me—Ma always bought them a few sizes up so they’d fit in the years to come. I took a seat in front of him and he finallylooked up, like he hadn’t sensed that I had arrived until that moment. His head jolted to the side, and I followed the direction to the gray pay phone, noticing that there was one on my side too.
He picks his up.
I pick mine up too.
“Hello, son.” His raspy voice sends a shiver down my spine. I haven’t heard him speak in two years.
“Hi, Dad,” I say.
He smiles, eyes crinkling in the corners the way old people’s do. Dad isn’t even that old, only thirty-two, and he looked his age before. He sure does look old now, though, gray hairs in his cornrows and lines on his forehead.
“How’s your ma?”
“She’s good. Working as a lunch woman at school, so I get to see her all the time and she gives me extra servings,” I tell him. When the men took Dad away, I couldn’t eat for days without feeling sick, but my appetite is back, and I’m so happy Ma gives me more pasta than anyone else.
He rubs his hand across his face and yawns a little.
“You tired, Dad?” I ask. His eyes are a little red, like Ma’s get when she’s tired too.
“Yeah, but I’m gonna get some good sleep tonight,” he tells me. He stares at me through the glass. “How are you?”
I shrug; he’s never asked me that before in my life. “I dunno.”
Dad smiles. “Yes you do. Tell me what you want to tell me.”
I’m not sure how to tell him exactly. It’s not something I understand fully.
“Guys in my class keep talking about all the girls they like. Keep asking them out, keep talking about it,” I start, pausing to see if he’s still with me. Dad nods, and so I continue. “But I don’t think about girls like that. I don’t want to ask them out, or kiss them.”
Dad nods again, then looks up at the ceiling a little, before returning his gaze to me.
“I was eleven when I started asking girls out. Takes time, don’t worry; you’ll be a heartbreaker like I was in no time. Did I tell you how your ma and I got together?”
