Monday

I woke up precisely at 7:55 like I had every morning I could remember. I hadn’t needed it since I turned 13, but I always set an alarm just in case. Reaching for my phone to turn it off, I remembered the dream I was having. A green park in a small town square out of a picture book. Surrounded by an old crimson brick wall that somehow looked as new as if it had been built yesterday. And a polite white bench.

I knew I had never been to the park. I doubted anyone had been to a park like that since the 1950s. But I had recurring dreams of it—first when I started my senior year of high school and now again since Bree started my campaign. But it still felt deeply familiar. Like a park that I might have visited when I was a young boy.

This time, though, something was subtly different. More the impression of the dream than the experience. The trees in the park were still tall, but they were ominous—not lofty. The brick wall was still solid, but it was impenetrable—not sturdy. And remembering the dream after I woke up, I thought it ended differently that time. I couldn’t remember how, but there was something new. A presence that woke me up with a sense of overwhelm instead of peace.

When I picked up my phone, I had already missed several texts from Bree. One a perfunctory good morning, “Hey, little brother! Big day today! Proud of you!” Then a handful laying out my schedule for the day. Work at the office from 9 to 5. Then at the campaign headquarters from 5 to 9. I knew that my days would grow longer as the election approached. For now, working the schedule of a normal lawyer seemed easy.

I put my feet down on my apartment’s cold wooden floor and walked to the television hanging opposite my bed. I turned it on just as the theme song for the local morning news started.

Somehow, Dotty Doyle was still hosting. She didn’t look like a general-store brand Miss America anymore, but she was still holding on. Even if her permed blonde hair seemed to be permanently strangling her gray roots.

“Good morning, Dove Hill!,” she rasped in an effortful echo of her younger voice. “It’s another sunny day! Even if the clouds disagree.” I let some air out of my nose. Dotty’s jokes had not gotten better with age. “Today’s top story: the race for Dove Hill’s seat in the state legislature. Young hometown attorney Mikey Dobson is running to unseat 12-term incumbent Senator Edmund Pruce whose office was recently the subject of an ethics investigation that has since been closed at the governor’s order.”

Bree’s publicist did a good job. I barely recognized myself in the photograph. When I looked in the mirror, I saw a too-tired and too-skinny nerd whose hair was too black to be brown and too brown to be black. On the TV, the glasses I was always anxious about keeping clean actually made me look smart. Especially next to my wrinkly plum of an opponent. I didn’t hate Pruce, but he was certainly made for the world before Instagram.

“The latest polling shows Pruce with a substantial lead thanks largely to the district’s heavy partisan tilt. Dobson’s campaign, led admirably by his sister Bree, is under-resourced but earnest. And his themes of bipartisanship, town-and-gown partnership, and clean government along with the campaign’s mastery of social media seem to be appealing to younger voters.” I couldn’t disagree with the narrative there. With only a fraction of our parents’ promised funds having come through, Bree had done a lot with a little.

Still listening to Dotty’s monologue about the job losses threatened by federal cuts to Mason County Community College’s budget, I showered and shaved. I put on my Monday coat and tie while the frumpled weatherman tried to make a week of clouds sound pleasant.

When I grabbed the remote to turn off the TV, Dotty teased, “Remember to join us this Friday night for the first and only debate between Mr. Dobson and Senator Pruce. The world–or at least our studio–will be watching.” At exactly 8:50 am, I grabbed my coffee and opened the door.

Walking out to find my door being watched impatiently by Rosa the cleaner, I paused for just a moment. I reminded myself that I was happy. I graduated from an Ivy League school. I opened my own law office. I was running for office. And my parents, according to their Facebook posts, were proud of me.

Using the mindfulness techniques that my therapists had taught me, I brought myself back to the present. I turned to Rosa and gave her a pleasant smile. “Buenos días, Rosa!,” I recited in perfect Spanish. “Gracias por limpiar mi lugar y todos tu arduo trabajo.” Every person was a potential voter.

Looking into the mop water on Rosa’s cart, I found myself thrust back into memory of that morning’s dream. I remembered that I was stirred by the strange feeling of drowning in something other than water. Something thin and gauzy. Then I remembered the sight that I saw right before opening my eyes. The material I was drowning in was bright, almost neon pink—somewhere between Pepto-Bismol and that hard bubblegum I used to get at church. I knew the park dream happened when I was stressed, but this hot pink funeral shroud was something new.

I caught myself. It was time to work.

Once I got to the office, I worked on pleasantly mundane tasks: drafting a complaint, reviewing a deposition transcript, checking the mail. I even found something to like about billing hours. I was fortunate. Unlike most of my law school classmates, I actually liked being a lawyer.

Or I had. When Bree started to plan the campaign, she started to advise me on which clients and cases I should take. Of course, none of her suggestions were optional.

With 4:00 pm approaching, I prepared for a meeting with a potential client. Since I was one of the very few attorneys in town—perhaps the only one without a drinking problem—I never knew what kind of client or case these meetings were going to bring. At precisely 4:00 pm, I opened the door to see a round man with a look like he was meeting an old friend.

I welcomed him in and listened to his story. The man explained that he had just been released from the Mason County Correctional Facility. Apparently, this was supposed to be a civil rights case. The man described the conditions in the prison. I wished I could be surprised at the routine violations of basic laws and human rights. I couldn’t be. I grew up hearing the same stories from some of my extended family—third cousins and the like. This was the kind of case I had become a lawyer to take. But I knew I couldn’t take this one. I couldn’t look anti-cop with the election just two weeks away.

“So that’s my story,” the man concluded.

“I understand,” I lied kindly. “Thank you for sharing with me.” I meant that part.

“Do you think you can help me, Mr. Mikey?”

“I’m not sure. Let me step out and call my associate.”

I left the cramped conference room that used to be a kitchen. Pulling up my recents to call Bree, I realized I had been using a creative definition of “associate” over the past few months.

Bree answered efficiently. “Hey! Are you on the way?”

“Not quite. I’m wrapping up a meeting with a potential client.”

“Is this another soft-on-crime case?”

“It’s not soft on crime. It’s…,” I began to protest.

“No. Absolutely not.” The law had spoken. “You know we can’t take those cases this close to the election. You’re running to make the change that will keep those cases from happening in the first place. You can’t let your feelings make you sacrifice your future.” I wondered why Bree said that “we” couldn’t take the case.

“Yeah. You’re right. I’ll see you soon.”

As I opened the door to tell the man the news, the man’s phone rang. I knew I remembered that song. Slow. Sweet. Syrupy. But I couldn’t place it.

If you’re not feeling happy today,

Just put on a smiling face.

It will make the pain go away

Before you forget to say…

Remembering those lyrics, I felt seen. And watched.

“So, what’s the verdict?,” the man hoped out loud.

“I’m sorry, sir. The firm just can’t take on a case like yours at the moment. If you’d like, I can refer you to some other attorneys.”

“No thanks. I’ll take this as my answer.”

I flinched at that then continued the script.

“Well, thank you for coming in. It’s always a pleasure to meet someone from our town.”

Waiting for me to open the door, the man mumbled genuinely, “Sure. Thanks for your time. I’m still going to vote for you.” I went to close the door behind the man but couldn’t stop myself from asking.

“Excuse me. Sir?” The man turned around halfway down the brick walkway. “I love your ringtone. What song is that? I know I heard it when I was a kid, but I can’t remember the name.”

The man looked at me like I had just asked if his prison cell had been on Jupiter. “I think it’s called Marimba or something. It’s just the default.”

I gave the man a kind nod. Closing the door behind him, I tried to shake off the feeling that came over me when I heard that song. It made me feel uncomfortably aware of the man’s eyes on me when I braced to deliver the bad news. It was like the man was suddenly joined by an invisible audience that waited for me to say the lines I had rehearsed so many times. The song reminded me of something always waiting just out of sight—waiting to swallow me whole if I ever failed to act my part.

I walked back to my desk, shut my laptop, and grabbed my blazer on the way out the door. In the past, I might have stayed late to work on cases. Not that month.

* * *

Driving through town, I passed the old bookstore where I spent hours on afternoons when my parents were working and Bree was building her resume with one extracurricular or another. The owner, Mrs. Brown, always made me feel at home. I’m not sure if it was because of her failing memory or because she saw just what I needed, but Mrs. Brown always left me alone. I cherished that time alone with Mrs. Brown where I could breathe without someone’s eyes waiting for me to do something wrong. Something that the kids at school would make fun of and my family would try to fix. In Mrs. Brown’s store, I could just be.

By the time memory took me to junior year when Mrs. Brown’s store was run out of the market by internet sales, I had arrived at my campaign office. That is probably not the right word. It was more the building that my campaign office was in. The building that was the town civic center some decades ago. Now it had been converted into a rarely-used venue for weddings and receptions and overflow offices for some of the mayor’s staff. One of these town employees was the daughter of one of Bree’s favorite professors, and he convinced her to let Bree borrow it after city work hours.

Walking from the car to the double dark-paneled wooden doors, I appreciated that the mayor who had ordered the renovation had at least thought to preserve the building’s frame. It had been there longer than anyone still alive in the aging county.

Bree was waiting just inside the dust-odored lobby when I opened the doors. Before either of us said anything, she gave me a flash of a smile. We always had this moment. Before we started talking about the campaign or our careers or what we could do better, Bree looked at me like a proud big sister happy to see her little brother. I remembered this smile from our childhood, but it became fainter and rarer as Bree aged and took on more responsibilities. Ever since our father informed us that Bree would be running my campaign, the smile only came in those flashes.

“Hey. Good day at work?” Bree asked perfunctorily. I loved her for trying.

“Normal,” I said, following Bree down the side hallway to the cramped office. “So I can’t complain.”

“I’m glad,” Bree answered. I wasn’t sure if she was glad I had a good day or glad I was not complaining. Probably both.

We sat down in the professor’s daughter’s town-issued pleather chairs, and Bree commenced.

“Thank you for coming this evening.” She ran those meetings like she was reading a profit and loss statement in a Fortune 500 conference room. Sometimes I wondered if she rather would be. “The polling is still not optimal. We’re trailing 45 to 50 with 8 percent undecided. The latest social campaign went well. The A-B testing found that the voters prefer you in a red tie so we’ll stick with that going forward.”

Tired of fighting it, Bree pushed her a runaway wisp of black hair out of her face with a red headband. I smiled to myself thinking about Bree doing that as a girl. She was always too serious to bother with her hair.

“Anti-corruption is still your strongest issue. People seem to like that coming from someone young and idealistic. The question is whether it will be enough to get people to the polls when Pruce has the culture war on his side.”

I nodded at the right time. I wanted to pay attention. Bree worked hard to prepare this report, but it was hard to focus when I knew my opinions didn’t matter. Bree made the decisions for the campaign, and the polls made the decisions for Bree. I hated myself for being so cynical, but I was a politician now—just the smiling face on the well-oiled machine.

When Bree started to explain the campaign schedule up through Friday’s debate, I heard something familiar. It sounded like a woman humming in the room next door. Except, in the office at the end of the narrow hallway, there was no room next door. I decided I wasn’t hearing anything.

Bree dictated, “Tomorrow, we have a meeting with Scarnes and Blumph, your publicists.”

If you’re not feeling happy today…

The wordless music continued, now coming from both the room that wasn’t next door and behind the professor’s daughter’s desk.

My decision failed me. I was definitely hearing something. I told myself maybe it was an old toy in one of the cardboard boxes that towered in the corner opposite me. I looked up at Bree to see if she heard anything. She reported on without a moment’s hesitation.

“Then on Wednesday we have the meet and greet at the nature center.”

Moving my head as little as possible, I began to dart my eyes around the room. The music was coming from above me now. I thought there might have been an attic there before the renovation.

Just put on a smiling face…

I tried my best to look focused. I was always trying my best.

“On Thursday, we have your appearance for seniors at the YMCA.”

I fought to keep breathing, but the air was leaving me. The music, now all around me and getting louder, was almost suffocating. I was drowning in it.

It’ll make the pain go away…

My nerves began to demand my body move. First my fingers began to tap the chair’s worn arm. The music grew louder. Then my feet joined in. The music was nearly deafening.

At that, Bree looked up from her papers. For another fleeting moment, she looked at me like a sibling instead of a campaign manager. But this time it was a look of concern instead of affection.

“You good?” Bree’s question was almost drowned out by the song.

“Yeah, yeah. I’m fine. Probably just too much coffee.” I felt like I was shouting, but I knew I was using my inside voice.

Almost as scared of Bree’s disappointment as the music from the void, I asked, “Do you hear something?”

The music stopped except for the faint hum from the woman in the room that wasn’t next door.

Before you forget to say…

“No.” Bree’s face looked just as I feared: worried but not willing to show it.

Silence kindly returned.

With an earnest attempt at earnestness, I pivoted like a professional. “And the debate’s Friday?”

“Right…” Bree said as if she were asking herself for permission to continue. “ I’ll do the walkthrough of the venue on Thursday afternoon. But don’t forget. Dotty’s show is that morning. It’s one of your only friendly audiences.”

She haltingly continued to the financial section of her report, and I remembered. The song was called “Put on a Smiling Face,” and it was from Sunnyside Square. I thought it was my favorite show as a kid. But, after I heard the song in my office and then in Bree’s, I texted a few friends.

No one remembered it.

Tuesday

The next day was more of what had become my normal. I woke up at 7:55 to Bree’s compulsory good morning and text-message briefing. I left for the firm at 8:50. I tried to enjoy being a lawyer while I still could. Then I left for the campaign at exactly 5:00.

I turned right off Main and left onto Reading. Coming to a stop sign, I wished I could take the ramp to the interstate and leave town. I could hang another shingle in another small town—maybe Redford or Gaynor. That’s all I had ever wanted to do: practice law and help people. I knew that winning this campaign would mean going into politics as a career and leaving the law behind for good.

Driving down Reading towards Highway 130, I remembered that I had at least been able to take a new client that day. Dr. Wei Tate, the family doctor who had seen Bree and me our whole lives and seen our parents even before then, was finally retiring. I was happy for Dr. Tate. The old man certainly deserved to rest.

I only wished I was doing something to help Dr. Tate instead of representing Quality Care, the regional hospital chain that was buying out the old doctor’s clinic in an offer he couldn’t refuse. I had read about how hospital monopolization hurt small towns like Dove Hill, but their grand opening would bring dozens of new jobs and a guaranteed ribbon-cutting. I told myself it was the greater good. Even if it wasn’t, Quality Care’s offer to start a financial relationship with a rising star politician was one that Bree couldn’t let me refuse.

Lost in dreading work on the Quality Care acquisition, I realized I had arrived at the publicist’s office. Set as close to the town line as it could be, the building looked ashamed to be in a place like Dove Hill. It wouldn’t have been within the municipal limits but for a favor the construction company’s owner owed Mayor Thomas. I wasn’t sorry for the distance. The building’s ostentatiously corporate aesthetic would definitely have disrupted the streets I grew up on.

I arrived in the overwhelmingly white lobby of Scarnes and Blumph and found a kind looking older lady sitting behind the desk. Her name plate read “Mary Ann.” I approached her. “Hi there,” I smiled. She smiled back a bit surprised, like she had not been spoken to in some time. “Excuse me. I’m here for a meeting with Mr. Scarnes.”

“Of course,” she answered. It seemed like she was happy to have something to do. “Right this—”

Before Mary Ann could stand all the way up, Ryan Scarnes entered with the energy of a used car dealer. Without so much as acknowledging Mary Ann, Ryan reached out to shake my hand. It was a demand. “Well hello, Mr. Dobson. Welcome to our humble abode.” I glanced at Mary Ann who was already back in her chair as though she had never moved.

“Hi,” I said, feeling my hand reach to meet Ryan’s. I knew it was the right thing to do, but I thought my hand might leave the shake coated in grime. Despite Ryan’s clearly tailored suit, razor-straight teeth, and stone-set hair, I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something filthy about him. “I’m Mikey Dobson. Nice to meet you. Thank you for meeting with me today.”

Ryan looked down at Mary Ann. “Mary Jane, would you please get Mr. Dobson a sparkling water in a champagne flute?” I didn’t bother to mention that I didn’t drink sparkling water. Turning back to me, Ryan forced a laugh. “It’s a little early for champagne, but we can pretend.”

Ryan walked back down the hallway where he had emerged while continuing his monologue. I assumed I was supposed to follow. When we reached the large conference room stuffed with as many mirrors and gilded paperweights as Ryan’s idea of taste would allow, Bree was poring over a table covered in pictures.

“Hey sis.”

“Hi,” Bree said, partially looking up from the oversized conference table. In the second she turned her eyes to me, I saw that same fleeting flash of warmth.

“Good to see you…again,” I joked while opening my arms for a hug.

Bree responded with a polite laugh and a reach for a more professional welcome. “You too. How long has it been? 21 hours?” Of course she knew the precise time.

Sinking into one of the gold-trimmed leather chairs, I thought that Bree and Ryan looked like the actual politicians. Bree in her dark gray pantsuit and Ryan in his bespoke charcoal coat and glaring red tie. I laughed at myself as I looked down at my department store slacks and wholesale button-down.

“Now where were we, Ms. Dobson?” Ryan asked with a humility that almost broke under the weight of pretense.

Bree seemed not to notice. She seemed not to notice a lot about Ryan Scarnes. In her mind, the campaign was all too fortunate to have signed with a publicist as young, tenacious, and data-loaded as him. She promised me that Ryan’s discounted prices were worth the implicit promises of access she had made on my behalf.

“We were just reviewing the options for the final mailer,” Bree reported.

“Right. Our focus group suggested that they liked seeing Mikey outdoors. They said it made him look approachable, friendly. You’ll see the outdoor shots in the top-left quadrant.”

As Ryan and Bree walked to the other side of the table, Mary Ann gently entered the room. She was like a friendly mouse: eager to help but afraid to be seen.

“Here you go, sweetie,” she cooed.

“Thanks, Ms. Mary Ann. I appreciate it. I’m Mikey by the way. How’s your day—”

“That’ll be all,” Ryan interrupted. He looked at Mary Ann like she had been caught.

“Yes, Mr. Scarnes.” I gave her a smile as she snuck back out the door.

Bree and Ryan continued to talk about me. Or at least about the face in the gallery. Ryan had done his job once again and made me unrecognizable to myself. They examined every picture on the table as if it were a unique masterpiece with hidden details in every inch.

I just saw the man I didn’t know. In one, the man was sitting on a bench. In another, he was standing in front of a tree. In another, he was leaning on a brick wall. The only thing I especially liked about the pictures was that they were all taken around the Mason County Courthouse.

“I’m torn between the ones standing in front of the doors and the ones sitting on the steps,” either Bree or Ryan said. They had both long since forgotten I was in the room.

I felt their conversation grew louder and louder as it went on. It grew from a business transaction into a cable news debate. Looking at all of the photos of the man who was not me, I felt my breath catch in my chest. “Who is this?” I thought. My head began to spin into lightness. “It’s not me.” I wanted to scream. That would have been inappropriate.

Inching my eyes up and down the rows of pictures of the other me, I caught something strange in the corner of my eye. In one of the pictures on the courthouse steps, I saw something in a bright shade of blue. Not the cautious blue of a politician’s tie. The rich, glowing blue of a gemstone.

I stood from my seat and leaned over to the picture with the blue presence. I saw it. Sitting over my shoulder on the white concrete steps was a smiling blue turtle. The turtle sat like a small child with its legs out in front and its eyes looking straight at me. I couldn’t tell if the turtle’s eyes were looking at the me in the conference room or the me on the courthouse steps. But they were looking. Watching. The turtle’s smile was stretched so far that it looked like its felt was going to rip at the seams.

I didn’t know how I knew the turtle was made of felt. I just did. I also knew it’s—his name was Tommy and that he liked trains. I had met Tommy before. But it hadn’t been at the courthouse. No one had been there except for me, Bree, and Ryan. I remembered that because, despite my silent objections, Bree and Ryan had convinced the county judge to end court early that afternoon.

Looking into Tommy’s eyes, I felt two conflicting emotions. My panic continued to build. I knew that turtle had not been at the courthouse that day. Why were my eyes telling me otherwise? But I also felt a sense of peace. Even though Tommy’s eyes were watching both mes like they were afraid I would stop smiling, I somehow felt like Tommy was an old friend. Like we had played together as kids.

Before I could decide what I was supposed to feel, Ryan turned his schmooze away from his conversation with Bree. “You have good tastes, Mr. Dobson. Ms. Dobson and I were just deciding to use one of the courthouse steps pictures on the mailer.”

“Yeah, sounds good,” I said without turning away from Tommy.

Ryan turned back to Bree. “Now just to decide which one.”

While Bree and Ryan carefully discussed which of the nine seemingly identical photos to use, I carefully picked up the one with Tommy. When I looked at it more closely, Tommy was gone. If Bree or Ryan noticed one of their pictures missing, they didn’t show it as they continued their deliberations.

Folding the picture and placing it into my shirt pocket, I noticed a new sensation. Pressing against my skin, the picture felt warm. It was a comforting heat—a log fire at Christmas. But it was also narrow and pointed—an eye staring through my heart.

By the time Bree ended the meeting at Scarnes and Blumph, I had convinced myself to forget the burning in my shirt pocket. My skin felt it, but I decided I didn’t. Following Bree’s car back into town, I could only think about Tommy. How did I know the too-friendly turtle? And how had he seen me?

* * *

I was reassuring myself of my senses when Bree and I pulled up to Delano Plaza: one of the several strip malls that had risen from Mason County’s ground during the early 2000s. We got out of our cars and met each other in front of China Delight. Our town’s sit-down dining options had dwindled to not much more than a handful of nearly identical Chinese buffets.

I appreciated Bree making the time on my schedule for this. Every Tuesday since we had moved back home after school up north, we kept the standing commitment. During these weekly dinners, we tried to avoid talking about work. Or politics. Or anything “real,” as Bree put it. When the campaign started, I made her promise to keep our sibling dinners sacred. I wondered if she could with only weeks to the election.

Bree followed Sue Lee, the restaurant’s newest waitress, through the winding path to the back of the building. Sitting us at a table next to a wall strewn with red and yellow lanterns, Sue Lee asked about our parents. Bree confirmed that they were doing fine. As Sue Lee handed me the menu that no one ever read, I asked her how she liked working at China Delight. She said it was a job. Still, I was happy for her. I knew Sue Lee in her harder times in high school.

After we made our plates of fried chicken, fried rice, and fried donuts, I attempted small talk. That had never been the Dobson family’s gift.

“So have you heard from mom and dad?”

“Yeah,” Bree said with all the care of someone saying they had seen that afternoon’s episode of Judge Judy. “Mom texted—either last week or the week before. She asked how you were.”

Between sips from my oversized red cup, I looked at her with expectation and mild dread.

“Don’t worry. I told her you were fine. She said that dad said to make sure you were keeping up at the firm. Still not sure why I’m always the messenger.”

“You know how they are. Honestly, though, I’m glad they text you and not me.” I wished I meant that. It was one of those technical truths that our father had taught us to use to avoid making anyone uncomfortable. Truthfully, I would have loved to feel my phone vibrate with a text from our mother. But ever since spring of senior year, and everything that had happened, our parents’ words to me had faded from well-meaning smothering to benign silence.

“You’re welcome,” Bree smirked. I knew she was only half joking. Even when we were kids, Bree had taken care of me. When our mother scolded me for using the wrong fork for salad, Bree would change the conversation to her recent science fair win. When our father had had too much wine and soap-boxed about the wrong kind of people coming to Dove Hill, Bree would distract everyone by playing “Clair de Lune” for the twenty-second time. As we blew the powdered sugar off our donuts, I realized I had never told Bree how I felt.

“Really though, thanks.” Bree paused with dough in her mouth and looked at me like I had spoken Welsh.

“For?”

I hesitated as I worked to express something “real.” I laughed when I saw the bit of dough sitting in Bree’s mouth. I hadn’t seen her that unpolished in years.

“Oh, no,” Bree said, laughing and finally swallowing. “I’m not paying again this week. You’re the fancy attorney after all.”

“No,” I stammered. I mentally smacked myself for ruining the fun and tried to find the words I had lost. I needed to say this. “It’s just… You’ve always taken care of me. Especially with mom and dad. I appreciate it.”

I could tell I struck a nerve. Bree Dobson didn’t like to receive gratitude. At least she didn’t think she did. It was unwieldy.

“Well, you can start paying me back by ordering me a beer.” Looking at my sister, I knew that was the best I was going to get. Bree was her mother’s daughter after all.

I turned my eyes towards the ceiling in an attempt to escape the awkwardness that had come to sit with them. I noticed the television sitting in the far corner.

Pointing towards it, I asked, “Do you remember watching TV on Saturday mornings? When mom and dad were on their weekends in the country?” I always loved those weekends. “I can’t believe our eyes didn’t fall out from staring at the screen that long.”

“Those were good days. Not exactly how I remember them though.”

“What do you mean? We would watch TV. And eat our weight in sugary cereal. And—” I stopped. Bree was forcing a smile now. It was the polite thing to do. “Hey…what’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” she lied. “It’s just…I’m glad you were happy. But for me, those days were for cleaning the house for mom.”

I went quiet with a guilt I couldn’t name. I had forgotten about it, but Bree was right. While I was watching cartoons, Bree was doing the chores for the whole family. “You…you could’ve asked me. I would’ve helped you.”

“I know,” Bree said with a proud smile. “I know you would have. But I wanted you to be a kid. To be happy. I was happy to help.”

Seeing the faintest hint of longing in her dimples, I felt the burning on my chest again. Sue Lee brought Bree her two-bit beer. Even on a supposed night off, Bree was minding the money. The heat rising in my pocket, I remembered the picture. And Tommy.

“Do you remember me watching a show called Sunnyside Square?”

“No. But honestly, you watched so much TV that it would be a miracle if I remembered any of it. You would even wake up before I did to start. And that was an achievement even before I started Adderall.”

I kept thinking out loud. “I think it was like a puppet show… Hand puppets maybe?”

“Well, I may not remember what shows you did watch, but I know it wasn’t that. I never saw anything but cartoons. I tried to turn on a science show for you once, and you asked where the talking animals were.”

I paused. Describing Sunnyside Square, I remembered more and more. It still wasn’t much, but I knew I watched a show called Sunnyside Square. I remembered seeing the blue turtle sitting on a brick wall: the brick wall from the dreams. My mind felt like there was someone else there. Someone I loved—but didn’t know.

“Really? I remember puppets I think? And always feeling…happy…”

It was more than that. I couldn’t see Sunnyside Square, but I could feel it. I felt lost so often as a kid—and as an adult. I felt left behind when his parents went to the cabin and Bree went to work. But, when I would watch that show, it felt like home. I always felt seen.

“Must have been some show,” Bree teased, taking a sip from her bottle. “But yeah, I’m sure I don’t remember it. It was cartoons or…well, different cartoons.”

No. Sunnyside Square was something better than cartoons. Something real. Someone real. With that thought, I remembered. Her name was Sunny Sandy. She was perfect.

I wanted to drive straight home. Instead, I tried to finish the sibling dinner as normally as possible. I read my fortune from the freshly stale cookie, paid Sue Lee a 25% tip, gave Bree an awkward hug, and then rushed back to my apartment going as fast as I could without speeding.

I didn’t stop to undress when I got home. I pulled my laptop from my bag and sat at my desk. I couldn’t stand to lose any glimpse of Sandy’s face in my memory.

Then I realized I had no idea what to search. All I knew was the name Sunny Sandy and the title Sunnyside Square.

Searching “Sunny Sandy” led to a handful of beach-focused social media models and a few cloyingly cute children’s books about a yellow cat. I spent what felt like an hour looking through the results only to learn that both the models and the smiling cat in the books looked almost desperately “sunny.”

Searching “Sunnyside Square” at least brought up places, but none were the park that hauntingly graced my dreams. I wondered why a name that was anything but subtle had been used for everything from parking garages to a neighborhood in Cambodia. Still, trying to find anything that would lead me to my Sunnyside Square, I spent an hour—or two—three?—working through every turn on the phrase I could think of.

Pausing for a breath, I looked at the clock in the corner of my screen. 1:52. I had to be back on the campaign trail in a little over six hours for the first of the morning meet-and-greets. I needed to rest. I was going to face a firing line of voters all wanting a piece of me in exchange for their ballot. I could already feel the exhaustion. I felt the dread in my bones. The guilt in my marrow.

Then it came to me. The words that Sunny Sandy used to start every episode of the show. “Welcome to Sunnyside Square—where the sun can never stop shining!” I had always been struck by that phrase. Not “where the sun always shines” or even “where it’s always sunny.” Sandy said the sun could never stop shining. I didn’t know whether that inspired me—or petrified me.

I typed “where the sun can never stop shining” into the search engine. This time there were zero results. If I ever allowed myself to feel anger, I would have felt it then. I had been so sure that that was the one. Standing from the thrifted office chair, I walked to the kitchenette. I wasn’t hungry after all the fried rice, but I wanted to consume.

Reaching towards the dusty counter for the hard candy I took on the way out of China Delight, I found an invitation in the dark. After seeing what my father had become, I never drank alcohol, but a corporate client had recently given me a bottle of what Bree had told me it was bottom-of-the-barrel red wine. I had wanted to throw it away, but it was a polite gesture. Looking at the glass reflecting the moonlight, I decided I had earned a drink. I was working hard—for Dove Hill, for my parents, for Bree, even for Ryan Scarnes. I was happy to do it, I reminded myself. It was my job. This would make it easier.

I took the bottle back to the desk and took a long drink. I almost spit it out, but I was supposed to like it. Lifting my hand to close the laptop, I noticed it. I figured the search results had refreshed while I was picking my poison. There was one result now. “Keep On the Sunny Side.” A PDF file with the URL https://www.dovehilldaily.com/news/1994/alwaysonthesunnyside. I clicked it.

A black-and-white scan of a newspaper clipping appeared, pinched and pulled in strange places. Whoever had scanned it was shaking. The distortion made me think of the screeching scrapes of a dial-up. I started to read.

SANDY MAKES GOOD.

I trembled and told myself it was from excitement. I took another drink.

Right below the title and the byline, surrounded by faded text, was a picture. It was her. She was on a stage receiving a bouquet of flowers and a sash that said “Miss Mason County.” She held a friendly-looking puppet at her hourglass side. A dairy cow. I couldn’t be sure through the grayscale, but her ballgown looked pink—almost electric. Her hair was a lighter gray than the rest of the picture.

My mind flashed with memory. On TV, she always kept her hair in a stone-stiff blonde beehive. Here, it was natural and flat. Her face was the brightest part. She was happy, or at least she was trying to be. In the caption, the journalist nicknamed her “Sunny Sandy.”

I drank more of the cheap wine and kept reading. The article said that the woman was Sandra Alan. When she was in community college, she won Miss Macon County and a scholarship to finish her degree in elementary education at the state school. The cow in the picture was her talent: Maggie the Magenta Moo Cow. On the day the article was published—June 22, 1994—her mother had just told the editor that Sandra and Maggie’s show Sunnyside Square had been picked up by the National Television Network. They wanted 20 episodes. Sandra had been in Los Angeles for 5 years, and she had finally caught her dream.

I remembered it all. Sunnyside Square was about a girl named Sunny Sandy and her multi-colored menagerie of farm animal friends. One was Maggie, the cow from the picture. She always sang a song when the mail came. Another was the turtle from the picture: Tommy the Turquoise Turtle. Every episode, Sandy would help one of the animals learn how to be sunny. Whether they were sad, angry, tired, hungry, or hurt, Sandy fixed them.

I loved the show. I felt like Sandy understood me in a way that no one in the real world did. She knew that all I wanted to do was make people happy.

I looked at her smile again. Even reduced to black and white, it felt like looking directly into the sun. Then I looked at her eyes. They looked at the audience—at me—like an old friend lost in time. Like a ghost who knew my name and saw me too clearly. I finished the bottle and fell asleep.

That night, I dreamed of the park again. This time, I was in the park. The benches were still white, but they weren’t polite any more. They were like still specters surrounding me—their frames carved from bone. The trees were still green, but they had spread beyond ominous. Their branches formed cages in the air. And the wall—the wall that I finally remembered Sandy and Tommy and Maggie playing on—looked like its bricks had been dyed in blood. Even through my sleep, I felt relief when the park faded into pink. Then the drowning started again.

Wednesday

I woke up gasping for air. Finding myself at my desk, I noticed it was too bright outside. Still half asleep, I reached for my phone and saw that it was almost 10:00. Panic. I was two hours late for the meet and greet.

Even then, I couldn’t afford not to take time for appearances. With visions of the twisted park and the pink void lingering in my mind, I showered and shaved while my head reeled from the empty bottle of wine. While I tied my tie in the mirror, I almost thought I saw Sunny Sandy’s smile where mine should have been. I reminded myself to smile correctly for the voters. They wanted me happy, but not too happy.

I drove a little too fast to make up for my tardiness. I didn’t speed, but I was not as careful as I would have normally been driving through Primrose Park. The neighborhood demanded decorum. On the north side of Dove Hill, its residents were either wealthy retirees or people who would inevitably become wealthy retirees. The train depot where Bree was hosting the meet and greet was a relic of the town’s early days as a railroad hub. Some time during the great exodus of union jobs, ambitious housewives decided to build a gated community around the abandoned station—with everything from its own private park to its own private country club.

I knew there would be trouble when I couldn’t find a parking space near the depot. Primrose Park was full of people who would never allow more parking to be built but would always complain about having to walk. Bree didn’t expect much of a turnout when she planned this event. She knew that most of the neighborhood’s residents would vote for Pruce, the Chamber of Commerce’s preferred candidate. This was a stop that had to be made for appearances. Now though, people were lined up out the door.

I tried to enter the building without demanding attention. I circled the long way around to enter through the back door. I was almost there when a grandmother in a sharp white pantsuit gave me an expectant wave. That was when hungry whispers joined the sound of graceful gossip.

I took a deep breath and opened the wooden door. As I entered, the way my breath felt in my body made me think that Tommy would have liked the train depot before it was transfigured by Primrose Park.

Of course, Bree had the depot perfectly set for the scene. I was an actor walking onto the stage two hours after my cue. I worried that Bree would notice something wrong. Maybe it would be my wrinkled shirt or the scent of old wine that had clung through the shower. While I tried to fight the memories of my dreams—now joined by pictures of a large purple pig and a red rabbit—part of me wished that my sister would notice.

“You’re late,” Bree stated bluntly from behind the welcome table. It was surrounded by pictures of the man who wasn’t me. His eyes were full of promise. Bree’s were empty. There was no flash of affection this time.

“I know. I’m sorry. I woke—”

“No time for that.” I wished she would be angry with me. It would be better than the annoyance that boiled like a covered pot. Annoyance was all that Bree would show. Walking to the door, she flashed on her smile like she was biting something hard. I followed her lead just like I have done since we were kids.

I turned to shake hands with Bree’s friend who had gotten us into the depot for the event. She worked as the groundskeeper for the neighborhood and knew the residents would relish an opportunity to meet someone who might matter soon. “Thanks for your help today,” I said with words Bree would have found too simple.

“You’re welcome,” Bree’s friend said. She made an empathetic grimace behind Bree’s back. I didn’t let myself laugh.

The air that entered the historically-preserved building when Bree opened the door tasted of pressed flesh. One by one, the Primrose Park residents brought their pushing pleasantries. Bree walked back to the welcome table and noticed that I was matching their effortful energy. She gave me a stern look that felt like a kick. I did my best to smile better.

During the first onslaught of guests, Bree strategically mingled around the room. She worked her way to the residents her research said would be most likely to influence the others. Mrs. Gingham who worked as the provost at the school. Mrs. Dyess, Mayor Thomas’s deputy chief of staff. Bree’s friend followed her: a tail to a meteor.

I manned my post with force. I greeted each and every resident of Primrose Park with a surgical precision. To one, “Hi there, I’m Mikey. Nice to meet you!” To another, with a phrase turned just so, “Good morning! I’m Mikey. Thanks for coming out today!” Never anything too intimate or too aloof. Though they came in tired and glistening from the summer heat, the residents seemed to approve of my presentation. They at least matched my graceful airs with their own.

I wished I could get to know these people—ask them about their concerns or their hopes for our town. But this was not the time for that. It was certainly not the place. This was the time to be serviceable—just like the trains that used to run through this station. Mechanical and efficient.

Months ago, I would have felt anxious. Now I just felt absent. Every time I shook a hand or gave a respectably distant hug or posed for a picture, I felt myself drift further and further away. By the time the first hour on the conveyor belt ended, I had nearly lost myself in the man on the posters—the man who wasn’t me. That was when I noticed Bree smiling towards me over the shoulder of a grumpy old man with a sharp wooden cane. It was the smile of a satisfied campaign manager, of an A student proud of their final project. The man who wasn’t me was doing well.

When the old married couple at the beginning of the end of the line entered the station, I was nearly gone. “Well, hi there! I’m glad you made it through that line. Thanks for stopping by today!” I had just given the wife a kind squeeze of the hand when I was snatched back to the depot. Reaching for the hand of a handsome young man who smelled like a lobbyist, I saw her in the door frame: Sunny Sandy. She was wearing her signature pink dress.

I correctly exchanged business cards with the lobbyist and gave a cursory look at the VistaPrint creation. When I looked back, Sunny Sandy was gone. She had been replaced with a harried-looking young mother in a couture tracksuit. Only the color was the same. The woman continued down the line.

Another forgotten exchange and she was back: Sunny Sandy with her aura blasting bliss. I knew it was her from her smile. She hadn’t aged in 30 years.

Another disposable photo and she was gone again. The woman in the line looked much too ordinary to be Sunny Sandy. She had struggles and challenges. And feelings. Still, there was something about her. Like Sandy, she was trying to play her part the best she could.

I gave a firm handshake to the grumpy old man Bree had been talking to. I think I made a good impression. The man at least said “Thanks, son.”

Then I was standing before the woman. She wasn’t Sunny Sandy, but she had her smile. Up close, it looked different than it had on TV. It was a smile that strained from the pressure on her teeth. A smile of a woman insisting on her own strength. A smile that blinded with its whiteness. I went to shake the woman’s hand, but I could only see her teeth in that dazzling determined smile. Then I could only see white.

* * *

For a moment after I went away, I felt relief. While I floated in the liminal white space, I did not have to perform for anyone. Not for the people of Primrose Park, not for Bree, not even for myself. I could just be.

Then I started to remember what I had left behind. Bree was certainly staring stakes into me as I stood there blankly. The young mother was surely doubting voting for a candidate who seemed to be somewhere else. I could feel everyone in the depot watching me. It felt like all of Dove Hill. I hoped the man who wasn’t me could take the pressure better than I had.

Before I could start panicking, the floating ended. My feet landed on firm ground. I closed my eyes and braced myself to continue the performance.

When I opened my eyes, I was not at the depot. I wasn’t sure where I was exactly. I could tell I was outside from the air that smelled like an oak-scented candle and the sun that beat down with a heavy glare.

I was in a grass square enclosed by a brick wall. White benches surrounded me. They looked like they had just been painted. For me. The walled square was surrounded by a larger square made from four rows of buildings. Their facades were stylized down to the individual knots in the wood. A stainless steel staff wrapped by two golden snakes rose from one. Another displayed a tin sign reading “Post Office” in crimson red letters. It was difficult to see through the windows that reflected the harsh shards of light, but most of the buildings looked empty, deeply empty, on the inside.

The harsh sunlight drew my eyes to the sky. I expected to have to strain to see the sun, but it was easy. The piercing light wasn’t coming from the sun at all. The sun was a large paper mache ball the color of a cautionary traffic cone. It was surrounded by sharp yellow triangles of construction paper. I remembered that sun from Saturday mornings. I was in Sunnyside Square.

A piano I couldn’t see started playing the song again. If you’re not feeling happy today… I didn’t know if I was feeling happy or not. I couldn’t understand the feelings that flooded my brain like the light crashing from everywhere but the sun. There were too many of them.

I was relieved to have landed somewhere after the white abyss. When I found myself in the park from my dream, my legs felt strong beneath me, and my mind stopped racing. That stillness was something I had not felt in years.

I was glad to be in a place I remembered happily. In the Square, I knew how the day would end: with a nap and a snack. When I watched it as a child, everything in Sunnyside Square made sense. It made the world make sense. It made me make sense.

But none of this made sense. I was in a place that didn’t exist. It had never existed in reality; it hadn’t existed in a studio since the 1990s. I felt my stomach wretch as my mind tried to locate my body. While the scene around me was familiar, it was also wrong. It was like a song from music class had been transposed into an atonal scream. On my television, Sunnyside Square was full of life. Sunny Sandy and her friends loved playing together in the Square. This place, whatever it was, felt dead. If my Sunnyside Square had been an old friend, this place was that same old friend smiling up from their casket.

As my heart slowed in my chest—I couldn’t tell whether it was from calm or dread, both maybe—I felt something standing behind me. I turned and saw a large wooden door towering above me. A door hadn’t looked so tall since I was a kid. I recognized this one. It was the door to Sunny Sandy’s house that sat right in the middle of the park that sat right in the middle of the square.

Through all the feelings I couldn’t ignore—the comfort and the confusion, the peace and the panic—I felt my hand reach up to the gold knocker: a sunflower with a stem for the handle. Part of me wanted to be welcomed into my friend’s house. Part of me wanted to run and never look back. The music died, and my hand knocked without my permission.

One. Two. Three.

On what would have been the fourth knock in common time, the door opened to a large hallway in the same dark wood as the door. Like the door, the hallway loomed over me. Its roof was so far above me that it faded into black. All I could see was a dark space swirling with dust.

In front of me, a grand staircase followed the roof into the void. Beyond each bannister, the hallway was lined with two rooms forming yet another square. I felt like the walls were closing in to suffocate me in a hug.

I could hear voices from the other rooms. The voices of animals. Two quiet clucks from the kitchen. A scurrying from the library. I stepped into the threshold to follow a hoot coming from the music room.

The staircase cleared its throat, and the voices ended in a frightened silence. I turned to look. Out of the black, a bubblegum ghost descended the carpeted steps.

Sunny Sandy. For a moment.

When the ghost was near the end of its walk, I felt my feeling. Fear. It was something that might have been Sunny Sandy…before.

Now the figure looked like Sunny Sandy made into a living mannequin. Its thigh-high hot pink dress was frozen into a hard A-frame. It wore electric blue high heels that fixed its legs in a pounce and a large yellow belt that made its waist want to snap. Its hair was formed into a cyclone of a jaundiced beehive that did not move with the air. The only part of the friend I had known that remained was the shape of its smile. Even that was hard; its teeth razor-sharp.

The figure was now facing me. Though its frame was petite, it shadowed me by at least a foot. I felt my limbs stick like plastic.

“Hi friend!” the figure chirped. “Welcome to Sunnyside Square!”

My eyes were painted open. “I’m Sunny Sandy!” said the figure that was not Sunny Sandy. “What’s your name?”

I did not want to tell the figure my name. I did not want to invite it inside me. Still, even in this place, wherever it was, I had to be polite. I started to ask, “Excuse me. Can you please tell me where I am?”

I couldn’t. When I tried to open my lips, they formed a rictus smile. The feeling reminded me of the meet and greet. I tried again. And again. The whole time, the figure simply stared at me in pedantic expectation. My lips trembled in their unwanted expression.

Animals in the wrong colors peeked out from the rooms around me. A red rabbit. An orange owl. A blue turtle: Tommy. These were the friends I remembered. They were still there. With this creature. They watched nervously while hiding from the figure’s gaze.

What had become of Sunny Sandy giggled. She was laughing at me. “Silly, Mikey.” She knew my name. “If you can’t say anything nice, you won’t say anything at all.”

From the doorway to the kitchen, Maggie the Magenta Moo Cow waved a hoof nervously. She pointed to herself and mouthed, “Hello, Sandy! My name is…” Her eyes worried for me. I should have remembered. It was how every episode started.

“Hello, Sandy! My name is Mikey. It is nice to meet you.” I did my best to mean it. Somehow I knew that Sandy would accept nothing less.

Sandy smiled on cue. Through her glassy eyes, I could tell I had tested her patience. “Nice to meet you, Mikey! We’re going to have a super sunny day today! Because, in Sunnyside Square, the sun can never stop smiling!”

* * *

Before I could try to speak again, I was back in the campaign. I was with Bree in our makeshift office in the civic center. The dust from the boxes of unused festival trinkets formed in the same lines as it had in the black above Sandy’s house.

Bree was pacing in the few square feet of space around the ill-fitting desk. She was in the middle of a critique.

“...believe that Stephanie let us into that depot without warning us. Even if the polling had been right, that shack would have been too small.”

I waited for my review. I recognized Bree’s tone. It wouldn’t be good.

“We had to leave those old people outside in the heat. At least Stephanie could have told me to bring fans and extension cords.”

Bree continued to berate the air for what felt like half an hour before she noticed me. Wherever I had gone, she apparently hadn’t noticed.

When she looked at me, I began my apology. “I know… I was awkward. I didn’t ask the right questions. I looked uncomfortable. I—”

“Huh?” Bree asked. “No. You were, you were fine. Good even.”

“Thanks,” I wondered aloud. I had expected to feel the fire that was my sister aiming for an achievement.

“Yeah. It seems like you’ve really gotten the hang of this politician shtick.” She smiled at me like she was impressed I had learned to tie my shoes. I appreciated my big sister for trying to compliment me in the only way she knew how. It was all I was going to get.

“I guess.” I didn’t feel like I had gotten used to anything. Making small talk still felt like speaking a foreign language. Asking for votes was opening a vein. I wouldn’t even try soliciting donations.

The longer Bree paced, the more I allowed myself to forget what had happened in the Square. I told myself that it had just been a daydream—even if it had felt more like a nightmare. I hadn’t dissociated. I had just gone away for a while. That was healthy.

“How did you feel about it?” Bree asked. I had not expected that. I didn’t have time to calculate the correct answer.

“I…I made it,” I said with a forced laugh. “It’s still scary, but I think I’m—”

Like giving directions to the interstate, Bree answered, “You’re doing fine. There’s nothing to be scared of. Just think of all the people in their underwear.”

I had never understood that lesson. I knew Bree had learned it at the community theatre and then passed it onto me, but it never helped. I wish not being scared was as easy as that.

“Yeah. That’s good advice.” I really did love her for trying. It was what she did best.

We sat in silence for a moment. Bree started to take notes on the rest of the week, strategizing how to make up for the meet and greet. I stared out the window streaked with grime on the inside. A rabbit hopped past the window. I couldn’t be sure because of the grime, but the rabbit’s hide looked cherry red.

Bree looked up for a moment. “Can you stop that?”

“Sorry. Stop what?”

“You’re humming.”

I didn’t know I was, but I stopped as she requested. I wasn’t sure I could stop anything else that was happening. I didn’t need to ask her what song I was humming.

“Honestly…” Bree stared at me. Her eyes tried to hide her concern. In our lives, the word “honestly” never meant anything good.

I interrupted. “I think the stress may be getting to me. Just a little. I’m fine. I probably just need to walk more and eat better.” I thought I should probably stop drinking too.

Bree’s fear broke through. She didn’t scream, but her perpetual momentum paused. “Mikey,” she soothed. “Are you okay?”

I knew what that meant. That’s what she had asked when our parents stopped calling. After the hospital.

One minute, I had been giving a speech for my campaign for student body president. The next I felt like I was going to die at the podium. Then I was in a bed under fluorescent lights. The doctors called it “extreme exhaustion” and gave me a prescription for Prozac. I spent the spring semester of my junior year taking classes from Bree’s apartment.

“I’m good.” I had learned the words that would stop this conversation. “I promise.”

This time, it didn’t work. “If you need to take a break, we can spare a day.” Bree’s offer was genuine, but I could tell it pained her to make it.

When I lost the student election, Bree told me not to blame myself. My parents didn’t say anything. I wondered if they even remembered—or cared. Looking in my sister’s scared eyes, I scolded myself. My mind cost me my last election. I couldn’t let it cost me this one. I couldn’t be weak again.

“I think you might combust if we did that,” I deflected. “No. I’ll just rest tonight. I can make it to the debate.”

Bree’s eyes were still scared, but she persisted. We really needed to continue the campaign. Everyone was watching us. “Okay. Well then, tomorrow is senior day at the gym…”

I tried to keep my promise to rest. I put down my phone at 9:00. I took melatonin. I lit a vanilla candle. I even had a large glass of a new bottle of cheap red wine. My mother always used alcohol to help my father rest when he was particularly…frustrated.

 It was no use. Even in the deep black of my apartment, my mind wouldn’t stop showing me pictures. The darkness was the same as the void behind the streets’ manicured storefronts. The burning candle’s soft glow looked like the sourceless light of the handmade sun in the Square. It was like I never fully left it. I did my best to rest, but my eyes were afraid to close.

Thursday

My alarm rang at 6:00. Senior day started early. Sleep had claimed me, but I was more tired than the day before.

I pitched myself out of bed and lumbered to the kitchenette. I almost fell asleep waiting on the coffee machine. I almost collapsed when I fell asleep in the shower. As I wrestled the morning, I admitted it was a fight I was going to lose. I won perfect attendance awards every year in grade school. My father never believed in sick days. That morning, I knew he was wrong.

I picked up my phone from where I threw it into the sheets. Bree had sent her morning briefing at 4:45. She survived on coffee and high-functioning anxiety. I texted back.

“Hey. Feeling sick. Can’t make it. Sorry.” Bree read the message immediately. I thought of calling her. It would have been the nice thing to do. The right thing. But I couldn’t bear to hear her voice. This time, there wouldn’t even be any anger to hide in. She would know something was wrong. I turned my phone on vibrate and tossed it on the couch.

I sat down and noticed that my head had stopped spinning. I hadn’t realized it had been reeling like what I had heard of hangovers. I didn’t remember drinking that much the night before, but the empty bottle judged me from bed.

Still, this wasn’t a hangover. It was less than that. And more. I didn’t just feel loopy. I felt like he was in the wrong place.

When I turned on the TV, the sound split my head with an axe. I turned down the volume, but the noise barely obeyed. Still, I needed the distraction. I clicked through the infomercials and syndicated sitcoms. Most people my age never even had a cord to cut, but Dove Hill local news and C-SPAN were free on cable. I hadn’t watched anything else since those Saturday mornings with Bree.

During the hour’s changeover, local channel 3 aired low-budget ads for the dentist and the school and national spots for fast food and a new diabetes medication. The fifth ad was different though.

In it, a large man whose stomach was too big for his suit stood in front of a lot full of clearly used cars. The oversaturated light and amateur production value proved it was local, but there wasn’t a used car dealership in 100 miles of Dove Hill. The man’s hair piece shook as he shouted his pitch. I felt nauseous watching it shiver.

“Hey, hey, hey! Come on down to Papa’s Playhouse where the low prices aren’t pretend!” My head cracked again as Papa’s shout made the TV impossibly louder. Under a slithering saxophone solo, the screen showed a line of cars that looked like they were manufactured well before the turn of the millennium. “Hurry quick because we aren’t hiding these deals! Seek them now before they’re gone!”

I breathed a sigh of relief when Papa left the screen. It was 7:00: time for the news. The music should have been the Muzak jingle that the station used since the 1970s. Instead, it was Sunny Sandy singing her theme song. The piano that played along came from somewhere in my apartment.

* * *

By the time the ghostly piano played its last phrase, I was back in the center of the Square. No time had passed in the last day of my life. When I opened my eyes, Sandy’s were staring at me like I was a statue she was carving from stone.

“Now!” she said in a mechanical squee. “Where are my other friends?” It was time for another call-and-response. “Say it with me.”

After the compelled introduction, I didn’t even try to fight. I remembered my part. Together, we shouted, “Howdy dee! Howdy day! Where is everyone today?” When Sandy’s voice rose, it sounded like she was projecting to the last aisle of a crowded theatre.

The piano started up again. Its sound was distant. Was it still playing from my apartment? Or from the black above us? As its invisible mallets struck its hidden strings, the animals emerged from their rooms. One by one, they bounced towards Sandy and encircled her. I could tell that they had also learned to not struggle against their matriarch.

Maggie stood to my right; Tommy was to my left. The others—now including a purple pig and a silver spider—completed the embrace. I realized I had never seen them in full. They weren’t humanoid. They each kept their characteristic shapes. Maggie, Tommy, and the pig on all fours; the owl and the chickens on their talons; and the rabbit on its haunches. They weren’t humans, but they were people. With hearts and minds they were clinging to under Sandy’s uncompromising benevolence. Even before I was brought to the Square, I knew that pain. These were my allies.

“Thank you for joining us, friends!” Sandy believed it was a kindness to pretend like they had a choice. In the past, one of them might have corrected her. Now they didn’t dare. “I’d like you to meet our new friend: Mikey!” The animals smiled at me with a commiserating kindness. “He’s a very good boy.” I didn’t want to know what Sandy would become if I wasn’t.

“Now what are we going to do today?” I remembered that this is where every episode really started. Every day in Sunnyside Square started with a game, and each had very specific rules. I always liked that part of the show. I looked around the circle expecting one of my friends to answer Sandy’s question. When their lips pinched in silent fear, I remembered that this wasn’t the Square I had known.

“Oh! I know!” Her voice was that of a fairytale princess who had become an authoritarian monarch. “We’ll play Hide and Seek!” The animals stood quiet for a fleeting moment before the light coming from Sandy’s eyes turned harsh with confident expectation. My friends cheered as demanded. I followed their lead.

The red rabbit raised his paw and asked eagerly, “Sandy! Sandy! Can I please help teach our new friend the rules?” I noticed his foot thumping anxiously.

“Oh! That is such a sunny idea!” Sunny said. “Thank you, Rupert! That will be a very nice thing to do!” Rupert concealed a flinch when she gave his head a firm tap.

“Now, do we all remember the rules? I’m going to close my eyes and count to 100. Then you’ll all hide somewhere you feel safe. Then I’ll come find you.” There was a threatening fist in the velvet glove of that promise. “Mikey, Rupert will teach you the rest.” She giggled eagerly.

The animals nodded politely, and I played along. Sandy placed her hands over her eyes like the young playmate she still should have been. “One, two—”

This was my chance. I broke through the circle and towards the imposing front door. I took a short sigh of relief when I found it unlocked. As I ran out, I looked on with confusion at my animal friends walking grudgingly to their hiding spots. Didn’t they want to leave too?

Rupert was the only one to match my speed. He called out to me as we ran out of the park. “Wait! Stop! That’s not how the game works. Not anymore…” I didn’t stop to listen.

I first tried to hide in the post office right across the street from Sandy’s house. I flung open the door and started to enter. I forgot about the black behind the buildings. I caught my foot just as it was about to fall into an abyss swirling with trails of dust. Catching my breath for only a moment, I slammed the door as I ran around the Square.

Rupert did his best to follow along. “Mikey, let me help you. You know I’m your friend.” I wanted to trust Rupert, but I couldn’t trust anyone—especially in the Square.

Sandy was coming. Her voice blared from her house like a tornado siren. “Twenty-two, twenty-three…”

I passed more doors into the void. One for a bakery that didn’t exist. Another for what looked like a school. Then a church with a golden plaque reading “St. Beatrice’s.” All the while, Rupert hopped frantically behind me. “Please…”

I only stopped when I came to a long window with a real room behind it. It looked like a library—like Mrs. Brown’s bookstore. I threw myself through the door as its bell tingled above me. Rupert finally caught up when I was hiding between two bookshelves that must not have been touched for an eternity. From my hiding spot, I could see the back of Sandy’s house through the window. Her garden was filled with statues of kind-looking creatures that I chose to believe were animals.

Sandy’s voice shined on. “Sixty-six, sixty-seven…”

Rupert hopped up. With me crouching, we were almost nose to nose. “Thank you. I was trying to follow you.”

“You’re welcome?” Something old inside me knew I shouldn’t be afraid of Rupert, but it wasn’t safe to trust him. It had been years since I truly trusted anyone but Bree.

“Now listen,” Rupert continued. “Hiding like this is not going to work. That’s not how Hide and Seek works. Not now.” I eyed him suspiciously. “The Square is too small for that. It’s not just about hiding your body. It’s about hiding your feelings. You have to be sunny. If she sees you looking scared or upset or angry or anything else…” Rupert’s muzzle quivered.

“Then…what happens?”

“You’re Out.”

“Out? What does that mean?”

“Seventy-nine, eighty…”

Rupert huffed with frightened impatience. “We’re running out of time.” My survival instincts held me in place. My bones told me I should take up less space.

“Out,” Rupert explained desperately. “Into the black behind the buildings. It’s dark and dusty and—”

“Ninety-nine, one hundred. Ready or not, here I come!”

I couldn’t move. Rupert matched his voice to the speed of his pounding feet. “Time and space don’t exist. It’s just you and the light beams too far above to see. You forget who you are: your thoughts, your feelings…even your name. Before long, you’re just…fine. Fine…but empty.”

Rupert’s ears twitched when he heard Sandy’s heels clacking on the bricks outside. I saw the front of her pink skirt intrude into the window.

“Mikey,” Rupert begged. “You have to feel better. Now.”

Sandy heard Rupert’s whisper shake. I saw her turn her rosy cheeks to stare through us. “Silly, Mikey! Silly, Rupert! There’s nothing to be afraid of. It’s just Sunny Sandy!” She continued her cheerful walk down the sidewalk.

I lunged from my hiding spot between the shelves and shouldered past Rupert. “I’m sorry. For everything.” I bolted out the door so narrowly that I could smell Sandy as she reached for me. She smelled like a candy-scented permanent marker.

I ran down the brick sidewalks and past more doors to Out. I didn’t know where I was going. I just had to get away from Sandy. As I turned the corner, my foot caught on the bend in the path. I tried to catch myself, but my elbow struck the ground. My arm vibrated down to the bone.

I heard Sandy’s heels walking up behind me. I couldn’t bear to look. “Oops! Did Mikey hurt himself? That’s what happens when you make mistakes. I’ll fix it.” Her sweetness made me want to vomit.

* * *

When I opened my eyes, I was back in my apartment. My heart was making my entire chest shake. I felt my phone vibrating from the other side of the couch. I didn’t have to look to know it was Bree. When it stopped, I saw that she had called twenty times in the last two hours. Had it only been that long?

I pressed the screen to call her back. Apparently she was not going to let me be sick alone. She answered halfway through the first ring.

“Hey, brother.” There was the worry I had been dreading. It only lasted a minute before the fixing started. “We need to get you feeling better now. What do you need?”

“Hey Bree. Sorry I missed your calls. I was resting.”

“It’s fine. What can I do? What do you need to feel better?” I could hear her biting the impatience in her tongue. Bree always wanted to fix the problem. Understanding it wasn’t important. This wasn’t the kind of problem Bree could fix. She couldn’t so much as understand it even if I could explain it somehow.

“I’m okay. I slept in, and it helped. What happened with the seniors?”

“Don’t worry about it. I made it work. What matters is tomorrow night. Are you going to be able to debate?” It was more a demand than a question, but it was a demand from desperation. I couldn’t let my sister—or myself—down. Not again.

“Yeah. Of course. I’ll be fine. I’m going to go into the office to catch up on some work.” I tried to convince us both with false confidence. Part of me hoped Bree would hear the dishonesty.

“Okay. That sounds smart.” She paused. “Mikey…” I could hear the uncertainty in her breath. I wished she would ask again, demand I tell her the truth. It was the only way I could.

“What’s up?”

“Remember, you’re on channel 3 with Dotty in the morning. Don’t be late.”

I knew better. “See you then.”

I didn’t bother to shave or change before I went to the office. I knew Dove Hill well enough to know I wouldn’t see anyone on my route on a weekday morning. Still, I put on some deodorant and a baseball cap just in case.

When I arrived, I was still reeling. By then, I knew it couldn’t be from the wine more than twelve before. I thought I might be even less stable without it lingering in my blood. The dizziness was from hide and seek with Sandy. As I climbed the weathered stone stairs, my shoelace caught in one of the cracks. I tried to catch myself but landed on my elbow—exactly where I struck it running out of the bookstore. My eyes squeezed shut in fresh pain.

* * *

I was still feeling the crash when I opened my eyes to see the inside of a doctor’s office. Or at least a caricature of one. The walls were a sickly sky blue painted with large clouds. The clouds would have been a comfort if they were not lined like sheet metal. Between the sharp clouds were anatomical diagrams of what I thought were supposed to be humans. The artist had seen a human but never been one. Instead of ligaments and skin, the people in the diagrams were made of large colorful shapes arranged in the frames of men and women.

Someone was holding a sign in front of me. It showed six cartoons of my face ranging from a crying me on the left to a smiling me on the right. The crying me was the picture of pure pain. The smiling me’s lips were stretched so tightly that the skin was splitting around them. It was Sandy’s smile. From left to right, the mes were labeled “Bad,” “At Least You’re Trying,” “Not There Yet,” “Good Effort,” “Almost Enough,” and “Good.” Sandy’s pink-pointed finger was hovering between “At Least You’re Trying” and “Not There Yet.”

“Dr. Percy,” Sandy chimed. She sounded like the pleading ingenue she had been once. “You can make Mikey better, can’t you?” I looked up from the sign and saw Sandy talking to a purple pig in a doctor’s coat standing on his hind hooves. My other animal friends were standing along the walls waiting on their turn to speak. I wasn’t sure if they had chosen their silence.

“Of course, I can,” Dr. Percy answered with over-rehearsed confidence. Sandy’s tone had told him the answer. She coughed politely to tell him to finish his line. Dr. Percy looked my way and smiled through, “I’m a doctor. I can always make you feel better.” His voice carried a sad knowledge.

“Oh good! I know we can always count on you, Dr. Percy!” Sandy cheered. The other animals joined in her ritual joy. I knew I had to play along.

“Thank you, Dr. Percy. I am so thankful for your work.” As I reached my other hand to shake Dr. Percy’s hoof, my broken elbow throbbed in improper pain. Sandy discreetly pursed her lips when I recoiled before completing the gesture.

“You’re welcome, Mikey,” Dr. Percy sighed. “It’s what I’m here for.”

“Shouldn’t we call for Nurse Silvia?” Sandy dictated.

“I suppose so.”

On cue, Dr. Percy and the rest of my friends joined Sandy in calling, “Oh, Nurse Silvia!” Immediately, a silver spider with the calm air of a veteran nurse entered the room through the white wooden door.

“Yes?” she said hopefully. I could tell she wanted to help. She hoped she would be allowed to.

“We need your help to fix our friend Mikey,” Sandy explained. “You always know just what to do.”

With Sandy’s last sentence, the hope left Silvia’s eyes. She knew that she was not going to be allowed to do what needed to be done. Only what Sandy demanded ever so sweetly.

“Okay, everyone.” Silvia recited. She looked at the rest of the animals as though she were teaching teenagers about the letter S. She knew how unreal this was. “We know how we heal our friends in the Square. Count with me now!”

The animals started counting in unison. “One.” I saw Sandy pucker her lips. “Two.” She reached down to my elbow. My nerves screamed for me to move it, but I knew I couldn’t. It wouldn’t have been nice. “Three.” On three, Sandy kissed the part of my bone that had broken through my skin. Somewhere, the piano played a triumphant melody.

“There,” Sandy said with pride. “All better.” I felt nothing. The bone was still.

I looked into Sandy’s eyes. I expected to see malice or spite. The look of someone gloating in their punishment of my transgressions. What I saw made my blood stop cold. Sandy truly thought she had cured me. She thought she had helped.

Before my blood could continue pumping, Sandy and the animals erupted in cheer. They all thanked Sandy and told her how special she was. Sandy grandly turned to Dr. Percy and Silvia. “No, no, friends. I didn’t do anything. It was all Dr. Percy and Nurse Silvia. Let’s thank them together.”

“Thank you, Dr. Percy and Nurse Silvia!” the whole room chorused. The two helpers beamed painfully through the applause.

Dr. Percy knew his next line. “Of course, it’s our job.”

Nurse Silvia didn’t want to speak. She had to. “You’ll always feel better when you go to the doctor.” The hairs on my neck raised with the sense of watching eyes.

* * *

When the stone surface rematerialized under my palms, I sensed that I was still being watched. I turned my head to see a sweaty young man in a tight tank top staring at me like the animals had stared at me in Dr. Percy’s office. “I’m good. Just checking the foundation,” I shouted with attempted ease. The man waved and jogged away. I went to wave back and felt my arm tighten. It was still sore, but it wasn’t broken. When I looked down, there was no sign it ever was.

My blood rushed to my head as I stood up. If I had been dizzy when I fell, I had become a spinning top. My stomach convulsed either from motion sickness or from the afterimage of what I had last seen in the Square.

When I walked under the ringing entry bell and lumbered my way to my desk, I felt like I needed something to steady my nerves. I remembered a bottle of champagne I had opened months ago to celebrate a win in an employment discrimination lawsuit. I opened the bottom drawer of my desk. It was still there. Looking in the dusty bottle, I could tell it had gone bad. None of the bubbles had survived. The bottle’s lip tasted like mothballs, and the liquid felt like stale water on my tongue. I drank it anyway.

I settled in to work before realizing I left my laptop in the car. Still determined to play my part, I opened an unmarked file I had tossed to the side of my desk. My eyes grew heavy as I pored over the bulletproof boilerplate I had written for the Quality Care buyout.

* * *

Before I could turn to the second page, I was back in Sandy’s house. Someone had taken me from Dr. Percy’s clinic and tucked me into a bed that was too big for my body. My feet only reached halfway down, and my limbs drowned in the sharply starched white sheets. The bed set in the dead center of a room lined in the same silent sky and cutting clouds as the clinic. Above my head loomed a large letter M carved into the ceiling’s dark wood. This was my room. I wondered how many other people had their own rooms in Sandy’s house.

I could feel the artificial sunlight coming in from a large heart-shaped window to my left. In my periphery, I could see that the window opened onto the spherical cage formed by the park’s tree limbs. I remembered that the stairs from the entranceway rose into black. From there, I hadn’t been able to see a second story. How was I on one? Was my room the only one with a roof?

As my heart raced to a higher tempo, I tried to soothe my rising fear by looking out the window. I pushed up with my arms only to feel the unhinged bone shift. No one had closed my wound since Sandy’s failed kiss. I opened my mouth to scream, but I remembered the rule. “If you can’t say anything nice, you won’t say anything at all.” After the last time, I didn’t bother to try.

I laid my head back on the pillow. It felt like it was filled with fiberglass insulation. I winced before remembering this was probably the safest place in the Square. At least I was alone. At least Sandy didn’t light up the dark room with her blinding effervescence.

I heard scuttling coming from the window sill I couldn’t see. I held my breath and felt six points of pressure on my foot. They were soft and pliable like fingers made of the fuzzy pipes I used in arts and crafts as a kid. The fingers crawled up my leg, then onto my stomach, then through the valleys of skin over my rib cage.

My nerves began to form a scream in my throat. There was a spider crawling near my mouth. “Shh…” it said calmly. I noticed that, in the barely sunlit room, her silver felt made her look like an old woman. Like the kind of nurse you only see in picture books. “It’s okay, honey,” she whispered. “You’re safe here.” Nurse Silvia was sitting on my chest. 

My eyes flashed with remembered fear. Sandy couldn’t see me in the dark, and she couldn’t hear me in the quiet. But could she still feel me? Silvia recognized the terror in my eyes. “It’s alright, Mikey. I know you’re scared. You’d be a fool not to be. But Sandy can only feel what she can see. That’s all that’s left of her.” There was a sadness in this last assurance. “Now let me fix you up for real.”

My nerves started to relax. There was a spider in my bed, but she was a friend. I remembered that she wanted to help me in the clinic. She just wasn’t been allowed. “Thank you, Silvia.” It was the first genuine thing I said in the Square.

“It’s what I do,” Silvia answered. “Come on now. I can’t move the sheet myself.”

I lifted the sheet to expose my bare bone to Silvia. “Is that okay?”

“That’ll do, dearie,” she said as she climbed onto the end of my bone. “This will sting a bit.” I nodded. I chose to trust Silvia.

My spider friend then began to weave a cast around my elbow. As she spun it tighter and tighter, the bones began to line up again. I couldn’t tell where her silk came from, but it shone like faint moonlight in the dimness of my room. When she was finished, I realized I had not been breathing. This time, it wasn’t from fear. It was from awe. And gratitude. My arm still hurt, but I could already feel it healing.

“There now,” she cooed. “That should be a start.” She scurried back onto my chest.

After a silent moment, I began to find my words again. “How—how did you do that? It was incredible.” I had been terrified to let her so close to me even though I knew she was a friend. It didn’t make sense. She was a spider nurse crawling on my chest in a giant’s bed sitting in a dark room in a place that didn’t exist. But letting her touch my wound had let her help it start healing.

“My kind have been doing this for a long time, Mikey,” Silvia said with pride. “Sandy doesn’t like my methods, so she takes care of the healing herself.”

“Or she tries to.”

“She tries her best. She just doesn’t understand that healing isn’t pretty. It’s messy, even ugly. But it’s real. And it helps. Never perfectly and certainly never easily. But it helps if you let it.

I hoped what Silvia said was true. I needed to heal a lot more than my elbow.

Silvia continued to smile at me with a grandmother’s warmth. “Now, try to get some rest. It’s nap time now. Sandy will call us for snack time soon.” Silvia climbed out the window, and, for just a fleeting moment, I felt calm—even in the Square.

Friday

I found myself back at my desk as faint rays of light peeked into my office’s cracked window. As I reoriented myself from my deep sleep, I was at peace.

Then it all came back to me. It was the next morning. I looked at the grandfather clock my landlord had left me. 10:30. I had missed my debate day spot on Dotty’s morning show. My nerves all firing at once, I jolted upright in my sagging chair. On my desk, I saw the open file and the bottle of turned champagne. It was empty. I had drunk it all. I didn’t remember anything after starting to read the file.

Pushing myself to stand, I felt a tickle in the cuff of my sleeve. A large, skeletal spider walked out. A soft smile crossed my face. Then I saw my phone on the desk. Champagne had dripped onto it. I wiped it off on my pants and braced myself.

33 missed calls and 109 missed texts. Some were from Bree, but the rest were from people I hadn’t talked to in months—years even. One friend from high school. A law school study partner. My parents. Something must have gone horribly wrong. I opened the text from my mother.

“You are going to win this election!” Cartoon balloons flooded the screen. “I’M SO PROUD OF YOU!” I didn’t know how to feel. She hadn’t said anything like that since the hospital. After the screaming encouragement, she had sent a link to an article from the county’s online-only newspaper, The Laurel. Even in the website’s muted millennial color palette, the headline blared.

MIKEY MAKES GOOD.

Scrolling past the headline, I saw a picture of a young boy in what were surely his best over-ironed church clothes. The boy was dressed in pastels and sat before a plastic screen printed with an unending grass field and a smiling rainbow overhead. He was posed perfectly, smiling from ear to ear. The smile looked like it hurt. I didn’t recognize the boy, but I knew it was me from a lifetime ago.

“A bombshell detonated in local politics today. On channel 3’s morning show, hometown girl Bree Dobson, currently managing her brother Mikey’s campaign for the state legislature, shared her candidate’s mental health history.”

My heart stopped. Then it raged.

“Bree explained that Mikey’s diagnoses of insomnia and generalized anxiety disorder have kept him from attending several recent campaign events. She apologized for any inconvenience but thanked the good people of Dove Hill for their love and support. In her conversation with host Dotty, Bree said, ‘I’m proud of my brother. Here in the heartland, we don’t talk about mental health enough. He’s man enough to take responsibility for himself and fight on to represent the people of our hometown. This is only a hiccup. Mikey is happy and healthy, and, tonight, he is going to show everyone what he’s made of.’”

How could Bree do this? My mind wasn’t anyone’s business but mine. Not Bree’s. Not my parents’. Certainly not Dove Hill’s.

“After Bree ended her morning appearance, the campaign shared a statement from the candidate himself. ‘I want to thank all of my friends, family, and supporters for their encouragement during this time. Like everyone else, I get sick. Sometimes it’s a head cold. Sometimes it's just my head. But, no matter what, I always fight through. My struggles have made me stronger and made me want to fight for our beautiful town. I’ve fought for myself and come through better. Now I want to do the same for Dove Hill.’”

I never wrote those words.

The picture under the quote was the man from all the social media ads and flyers that had gone up around town. The man who had my name. The man I didn’t know. In the picture, the man beamed as though he had never seen a cloudy day. My blood was magma erupting through my veins.

I fought to steady myself as I returned to the unwanted congratulations. In my email, I found endorsement announcements from everyone from incumbent legislators to the state’s leading mental health advocacy group. Endorsements like these didn’t come quickly. If they were all rolling out on the same day, Bree had been working on this for weeks. It had been her failsafe. At the end of the day, it was her campaign.

As I was rereading the words that she had excised through my throat, Bree called again. “What the hell, Bree!” I didn’t remember the last time I had shouted. It sounded wrong.

“Well hello to you too,” she snarked back. “Thank you for finally answering my call.”

“What have you done?” My voice thundered with furious betrayal.

“What had to be done. And you’re welcome.”

“Welcome for what?!? That was my story to tell. You have no idea how it feels to live with that.”

“Oh? May I remind you that I’ve been living with it just as long as you have. I lived with it when you couldn’t.”

I paused. She was right. After everything she’d done, I owed this to her.

“I…I’m sorry. You’re right. You’ve been there with me from the beginning. You’ve always fixed things for me.” Still, it was my story to tell. Wasn’t it?

“It’s okay. I’m sorry that it surprised you. I had to do something when you missed the spot with Dotty. I would’ve told you if you had answered.”

“I know.” I wanted to believe her.

“But, hey…” Bree was done with this part of the conversation. “Good news! Everyone loved it. Especially my—well, your statement. It’s been shared over 1000 times on socials. It’s even trending in other states. People are inspired. You’re helping people. Isn’t that what you’ve always wanted?”

It was. I just never thought it would be like this. That it would feel like I was the medicine instead of the doctor. Like I was a tool in someone else’s hands.

“It is. I…I’m happy with how it turned out.”

“Me too,” she said. “People love healing narratives. The authentic. They just want it be pretty. That’s where I come in.”

She was right. It was my story, but Bree told it better. That’s what people wanted, and I wanted to be whatever people wanted.

“Again, I’m sorry for blowing up at you. And for not answering your calls. Or your texts.” The world was still confusing, but I could never forget how to apologize.

“It’s okay, Mikey. I’m proud of you. Mom and Dad even called to say they saw the article in The Laurel. Mom sounded…as happy as she ever does.” In the short silence that followed, we were siblings again. Just a brother and a sister mourning the parental warmth we never knew. “Now are you okay? We can’t have you missing any more events. Especially not the debate.”

“I’m fine. I just fell asleep at my desk. Hard I guess. You know how tough this campaign is better than anyone.”

“Well, that’s okay. Just rest up for tonight. You’re going to be good.”

* * *

“You’re going to be good.” As I drove down Main Street, I turned the words over and around in my head. It was the campaign promise of my life. I was going to be good. Even if it hurt. Even if it scarred. Even if it left me not recognizing myself. I was going to be good. I didn’t have a choice.

On the way to my apartment, I stopped at the liquor store. When I made it home, I paced my bedroom while I should have been practicing my talking points. In a way, I was practicing them.

Point one: I was thankful that I could count on Bree to fix things for me.

Point two: I was eager to serve Dove Hill—whatever it cost.

Point three: I was exactly where I was supposed to be.

Closing: that night, I was going to be good.

Every time my mind wound its way back to that last existential truth, I took a drink. By the time I was tying my best ragged black shoes, the bottle was empty.

I knew that driving after emptying a bottle wasn’t safe, but I had made up my mind. I had to show everyone how strong I was. I wouldn’t be weak again.

Bree welcomed me when I arrived at Dove Hill High’s auditorium. “Good news!” she cheered, pulling me in for a hug. “You’re leading in the polls for the first time. If you do well tonight, you can win this race.” Just days ago, I thought I still had a chance, maybe a choice.

“I’m going to be good. I promise.” I wasn’t going to let her down this time. For a second, she looked at me like she didn’t fully recognize me. Like something had changed. I was more certain than she had ever seen me.

“Alright, then. I’m glad to see you sharp and ready to go!” She couldn’t tell it was certitude in surrender.

Trying to convince myself I wanted this, I took my place on the stage. My opponent, Senator Pruce, had the easy bearing of someone who hadn’t faced a challenge anytime in his career—or his life. Looking out into the audience, I noticed it was only a third full. Still, it felt like the whole world was watching me. Like a billion eyes were burning my skin.

At 7:00 pm sharp, Dotty began talking to the camera, her oldest friend. “Hello, I’m Dotty! And welcome to debate night in Mason County. Tonight, our town’s two candidates for Mason County’s seat in the state senate are squaring off. In one corner, we have 12-time incumbent Senator Pruce.” Senator Pruce waved as the student running the spotlight turned it onto him. He glowed as though the entire town was his birthright. Behind him, his official portrait frowned on the projector screen.

“And in this corner, riding a wave following a courageous personal revelation, we have Dove Hill’s own Mikey Dobson!” I looked behind me. The screen broadcasted a large picture of the man I had come to accept was me. I recognized the desperate, toothy smile. As I looked on, resigning to my fate, the smile on the screen grew wider and wider. Its skin started to tear. Blood pooled at the corners. I came back to myself.

I didn’t want to be there. I didn’t want to be me. Somewhere above me, music started. The ghostly piano. If you’re not feeling happy today, just put on a smiling face… The spotlight turned its blinding beam onto me. All I could see was white.

* * *

The first thing that told me I left the auditorium was the smell. Instead of the scent of sweat soaked into old chairs, I was surrounded by the saccharine smell of artificial vanilla. I knew I was back in Sandy’s house before I opened my eyes.

When I did, I saw a large white wooden rectangle the size of an ancient altar. Looking down, I saw that I was sitting in a matching chair that was too big for my body. I felt like a child someone had sat down for a snack. My animal friends sat around me: Maggie, Rupert, Silvia, Percy. Tommy sat right beside me. If I was too small for my chair, my friends were dwarfed by theirs. Further down the table, I saw an orange owl and a green horse I didn’t recognize. I felt more at home with these friends than I had on the stage. At least they knew I needed help. I didn’t have to hide from them. They knew I was imperfect, and they had accepted me anyway. They had helped me.

I noticed they were all looking patiently at the head of the table. I followed their eyes and remembered why I had been afraid of coming back here. At the other end of the table, Sandy was sitting proudly with perfect posture. Her chair was painted pink and fit her like a throne. Her eyes wandered around the table. A judge examining livestock at a county fair—scouring each of my friends for any imperfect feeling, any emotion that didn’t belong in her pastel playland. She turned her face to me. I fought the fear that flooded over me at the sight of her manic eyes and slicing smile. Around her table, joy was a demand. I did my best to obey.

Apparently I did well enough because Sandy kindly moved along. She then raised a large crystal glass of milk and struck it ceremoniously with her knifepoint pink nails. The ruffles of her dress shook with the motion. After a polite cough, she proclaimed, “Alrighty, friends! We’ve had a lot of fun today. Now it’s snack time! We all know what to do.” She gave me a knowing look. “Let’s all call Maple and Mabel together.”

 We joined her. “Oh, Maple and Mabel!” Two plump chickens walked into the room then. They both looked painted: one the color of corn syrup and one the color of coal. Other than their colors, they looked like ordinary chickens who should have been flapping their wings and clucking to each other. Instead, they were as silent and as lifelike as marionettes. They walked around the table and gave each animal a large tan cookie. In turn, the animals said, “Thank you, Mable!” to the black chicken or “Thank you, Maple!” to the brown one. Sandy’s work had been fruitful. I couldn’t tell if my friends were genuinely grateful for their cookies or not.

After Maple gave Sandy her cookie, the chickens walked noiselessly back into what I hoped was the kitchen. “Okie dokie!” Sandy cheered. “Everybody eat up!” My friends bit into their cookies in unison. Their expressions were blank. Sandy savored her snack. I followed a moment behind and sunk my teeth into mine, expecting the flavor to match the overwhelming aroma of peanut butter.

It felt like coarse sand in my mouth. I almost choked on it. When I picked up my napkin to spit it out, Tommy poked his flipper into my side. His eyes were a warning. Realizing my mistake, I darted my eyes towards Sandy. She was lost in the flavor of her cookie, somehow enjoying it in a way that nothing purely human could. I braced myself and swallowed the bark-flavored paste that had coagulated on my tongue. I leaned down to whisper where Tommy’s ear should have been.

“What is this? How are you eating it?”

Tommy looked at me like I was a child asking why they needed to shelter from a tornado. “It’s sawdust. Sandy only allows food that won’t make you grow. She wants us all to be small forever so she can take care of us. Eventually, you get used to it. It’s all you have.”

My fear broke into sadness. Sadness for my friends who were left with no other choices. Even sadness for Sandy who thought she was helping. I was still afraid of her, but it was a fear mixed with heartbroken compassion. She was doing what she was made to do.

I looked across the table to the glinting glass window that overlooked Sandy’s garden. I had seen it from Rupert’s bookstore, but I could truly see it now. The statues had looked like animals from a distance—like memorials to my friends. Looking more closely, I could see that they were humans: people of all kinds, from every gender, age, race. Anyone could see themselves in Sandy’s garden. They had looked like animals from across the street because their postures were not natural. They were contorted into shapes of uncanny joy, shapes that humans were not supposed to make. One statue faced the window like he was eagerly waiting for his snack. His eyes were wet.

Sandy chirped again just as I began to see something moving in the statue’s eyes. “Friends, we’ve had another sunny day in Sunnyside Square, haven’t we?”

We all nodded enthusiastically and muttered our gratitude. We knew our cues.

“Now it’s time to share our sunniness with each other. Just like we do every day, we’re going to go around the table and everyone’s going to share something they’re thankful for.” Something I was thankful for? Like being silenced? Like my broken arm? Like sawdust? “And, remember,” Sandy continued. “No repeating. Everyone has their own sunshine to share.” My heart beat between anger and panic. What was I going to say? What could I say?

Sitting next to Sandy, the orange owl whose name was Orville said that he was thankful for Sandy. Sandy liked that and gave Orville a kiss on the cheek. Orville squeezed his eyes shut as she bent towards him. The green horse was next. Her name was Gertie, and she was thankful for the cookies. Every one of my friends made their offering. They had had practice. By the time it was my turn, I sat in silent terror. I had to be grateful, or Sandy would help me.

Then I realized that I did have something to be thankful for. Something that none of my friends could have ever known. “I’m thankful for my friends,” I said with plain honesty. “I’m so thankful that you all taught me how to be sunny in the Square.” I really was grateful. I was feeling just as Sandy demanded.

“Oh!” Sandy giggled happily. “That’s so sweet! That’s what Sunnyside Square is all about. Learning how to be sunny.” Sandy almost moved along to Rupert before something in her shifted. “But, Mikey…what do you mean that our friends taught you to be sunny? Being sunny happens inside of you.”

My friends looked at me with petrified eyes. Their felt bodies twitched with fear. They wanted to say something, even to make a gesture. They couldn’t. Sandy was watching them all. I didn’t understand. For once, I knew I was doing exactly what was expected of me.

“Y-yeah,” I stuttered. “Everyone here helped me today. Maggie, Rupert, Tommy, they all showed me how to play in Sunnyside Square. They’re my friends.” They looked at me like I had stabbed them all in their backs with one fell swoop. They didn’t even try to hide their terror any longer. It was too late.

“But…” Sandy stammered, her voice unsure for the first time. “If…if…if,” she was like a malfunctioning computer. Then her voice fell with the gravity of a crashing star. “Everyone in the Square is supposed to learn the rules themselves. That’s the reason I cr—the reason the Square exists. To help people learn to be sunny.” She rose from her pink throne. Her petite frame and pillar of blonde hair loomed over us. She was mutating. I looked at her wide-eyed. My friends looked like they were saying their last rites.

“If they,” she said with derision, “helped you, that would be cheating. And cheating is lying.” With every pinched sentence, the volume and pitch of her voice rose until they composed a howling siren. “And friends don’t lie to each other. And if you’re not my friends…” She turned to the animals with a quiet sentence. “Then you can’t be here.”

I looked for reassurance from my friends around the table. They were as frightened as I was. No one knew what Sandy would do. Her smile had shattered.

She stomped her foot. An otherworldly whoosh thundered through the room, and one by one, my friends…changed. A moment before they had been alive. Animals, yes. Frightened, yes. But alive. Now, they were…empty. They each lay flatly in their chairs like scavenged carcasses. They had been my friends. Under Sandy’s fury, they had become nothing more than puppets. Lifeless piles of felt. I looked down at Tommy. I could see the hole where a puppeteer’s hand should have been.

I stood up and tried to shout. “What have you done?!? Put them back! Put them back now!” I couldn’t open my mouth. Sandy didn’t want to hear angry words. I could only smile from ear to ear while he saw red.

“I’m sorry, Mikey,” Sandy said. It made me angrier that she meant it. She had turned back into the figure I met on his first day in the Square. Deathly sweet. “They weren’t good for you. They had to go.”

I began to cry through my smile. I had done the right thing. I had done exactly what Sandy wanted. And I still lost my friends. I killed my friends. I had been strong and still broken.

“It’s okay, though,” Sandy said as she walked across the dining room towards me. “You tried so hard to be sunny, and that makes you very special. Since I built the Square, I’ve had lots and lots of friends who did their best to be sunny. It’s just so hard when you have all those ugly feelings inside.” I didn’t know what to say. Or think. Or feel. She was comforting me like a mother, but there was a fatal certainty in her words. “So, when one of my friends has a day like yours, I help them become something better.” She hugged me. I stood like a stone, but her limbs were as heavy as lead. When she released me, she gestured towards the garden. “After a few more days, you’ll get to join them!” I knew why the statues looked so alive. “I’m so happy for you!” she cheered and clapped her hands together in pride.

My instincts took control. I pushed past Sandy whose small cloud of a skirt poofed when she hit the floor. I ran out of the dining room, through the entranceway, and out of Sandy’s house. I sped through the park and onto the sidewalks of the Square. I didn’t know where I was going. I just had to get away from her. I couldn’t let her help me.

* * *

“Mr. Dobson…” Dotty Doyle prompted. “Mr. Dob…Mikey…” The show had to go on. I couldn’t respond. I was in the Square.

If I had known the audience was staring at me, I would have thought they were judging me, rejecting me. I would not have been able to see the fear and concern in their faces—not through the shame. Senator Pruce stood awkwardly and waited for someone to tell him what to do. He had made a career out of that after all. I smiled into the spotlight.

When she could tell that something had gone wrong, Bree rushed onto the stage. The audience could see that she was no longer playing the part of campaign manager. Now, she was only a big sister scared for her brother. Before Bree could get to me, I collapsed behind the podium almost striking my chin on the way down. Even Senator Pruce gasped and reached to help me. With all her might, Bree lifted me into her arms. She must have looked like a girl under my lanky frame. As Bree carried me off, I vomited through my painted smile.

“May I help you, Ms. Dobson?” Senator Pruce asked, eager to prove himself a responsive and caring leader.

“No comment.”

“Is Mikey alright?” Dotty Doyle echoed. She didn’t want to seem cold. The whole town had been watching me. Now it feared for me.

“No comment.”

* * *

“It’s okay, Mikey!” Sandy’s voice clapped like thunder through the air. I was panting as I ran past the clinic, but I could still hear Sandy as though she were right behind me. “You were so close today. We’ll just try again tomorrow!”

I had decided there would not be a tomorrow. I was going to leave now. Sandy’s giggle echoed so loudly that the earth shook under me. Above me, the paper mache sun began moving backwards. Back to where it was when I had first been brought to the Square.

As I turned the corner by Rupert’s bookstore, I heard the theme song. The piano started to play. Sandy started to sing.

“If you’re not feeling happy today, just put on a smiling face…” Running past doors to nowhere, I knew that I would never leave the Square if the show started again. At the end of the sidewalk, I saw a dark shadow. I didn’t know what it was, but it wasn’t the Square. I bolted towards it.

“It’ll make the pain go away before you forget to say…” Just as Sandy finished her last phrase and the sun that didn’t shine assumed its position, I threw myself into the shadow.

I found myself in an impossibly dark alley. Overhead, I could see faint beams of focused, yellow light. I walked through the dust that tried to enter my lungs. Then I remembered what Rupert said. This was Out.

I didn’t want to be Out, but I couldn’t be in the Square anymore. I reached my arms out to see if there were any other paths to safety. My fingers brushed against dusty brick. The only way was forward. I walked on.

Just as Rupert had warned, I started to forget myself. I forgot about the campaign. I even forgot about Dove Hill. But I knew I had to walk on.

I reminded myself to place one foot in front of the other. I had to keep walking on even if I was forgetting how. By the time I forgot what time was, I felt empty. Happy but empty. I could’ve stayed Out forever, but something inside of me told me there was something better, something more real waiting for me. I walked on.

Just as I was about to forget my name, I saw light coming from the end of the alley. It was a faint light barely breaking through the dark, but it was there. It was real.

* * *

When I stepped out of the alley, I found myself in a clearing surrounded by a rough ring of pine trees. The sun shone through clouds overhead. Its light fell softly but warmed my body.

I looked behind me to see what I had survived. From the other side, Out was just a brick-lined walkway, a path through the dark. It almost felt welcoming, but I knew I didn’t belong there. Not anymore.

I turned back to look at the clearing surrounding me. It was full of wildflowers and unkempt flower beds with early signs of life. In the middle of the garden stood a small, plain house. Its wood was roughly weathered and unevenly painted. It had been lived in. It had survived. A large flutter of butterflies flew around the house in all directions. They weren’t trying to be beautiful. They simply were.

I felt at home in the garden. I had thought I felt at home in Dove Hill and then, for that first moment, in the Square. But this was different. In those places, home was being loved for being exactly what everyone told you to be. It was belonging through obedience. Here, wherever it was, home was being free. Free to do nothing more than breathe. And to be loved anyway.

I felt the screened door to the simple house calling to me. I walked up the stairs kept together with rusty nails. I knocked three times on the door.

One. Two. Three.

Nothing happened. I sighed. I was foolish to expect anything more. No one could live in a place this peaceful.

Then a voice from inside. “One second, hun!” It was the voice of an old, tired woman, but it sounded bright. When the woman opened the door, I understood her instantly. I didn’t yet know her name, but I knew she was a woman who had lived a hard life and yet, somehow, held on to joy. Her long blonde hair was tied in a messy ponytail, and she wore a thin white button-down shirt and torn blue jeans. She wasn’t glamorous. She wasn’t even especially pretty. And her nails and her home were unmanicured. But she was happy.

“Hey there, baby!” she said warmly. She was a person who had never met a stranger. “How do you do?” she reached out her wrinkled hand to shake mine. “I’m Sandra.”

I put my hand in hers and shook unsteadily. I thought I had escaped the Square. I had just entered a new one. Sandra could feel the fear in my pulse. “It’s okay, sweetie.” She patted my hand gently. “If you don’t want to shake, you don’t have to. Hell, you can turn around and leave if you want.” She smiled playfully. She meant those words.

Before I knew what I was doing, I threw myself onto Sandra and hugged her. She had felt my fear but not judged me. She had given me a choice. Sandra put her small arms around me. I was much taller than her four-foot frame.

“Now, now, it’s alright.” Sandra took a step back and placed her hands on my shoulders. “You’re not there anymore. You’re safe.” I stared at her and wiped the tears that had begun to form in my eyes. “I’m sure you have a lot of questions. You wait on the porch and I’ll bring us some coffee.”

Nodding tiredly, I stepped back onto Sandra’s porch and found two weather-eaten rocking chairs. I sat in one and listened to the faint sound of Sandra pouring our coffee. A few minutes later, Sandra walked through the screen door holding a silver coffee service with chipped mugs and a spotted coffee pot. She poured me a cup and sat down in the other rocking chair. She patted my leg with calm firmness.

“Alright,” she said. “Whatcha got?”

I had so many questions. I thought I ought to understand who this was first. “Are you her…?”

“Starting with the hard one, huh?” Sandra laughed kindly. “Well, yes. And no.” I held my breath for her next words. “My name is Sandra. The local papers called me Sunny Sandy during my pageant days. That was a long time ago.” I thought she was trying to be self-deprecating. I gave her a polite laugh.

“It’s okay, Mikey. I know I’m not that funny.” That made me laugh from my belly. “They called me that because I was always grinning, even when my heels were hurting or the spotlight was in my eyes. My parents were old-fashioned, so they made sure I knew how a good girl was supposed to smile.”

I started to relax. Even if this woman was some strange relative of the Sandy I had just escaped, she knew what my life had been like. It had been her life too.

Sandra continued telling her story. “Well, before you knew it, a talent scout from the big city saw me at one of my pageants. He was real impressed by my talent: my cow friend Maggie.” My heart hurt as I started to tell Sandra what had happened to her friend. “It’s okay, Mikey,” she said like she had been expecting it. “Sandy and I have been through this day more than a few times by now.”

“So…” I said after listening so far into Sandra’s story. “If you’re Sandra Alan, the TV host, what’s…she?”

Sandra sighed sadly. “That’s what’s hard to explain, Mikey. She’s…me. Or, part of me.” She could see the confusion in my eyes. “I know that doesn’t make very much sense, but it’s the best I can say. I gave every piece of myself to make Sunnyside Square. I didn’t even stay with my Papa after my Mama’s funeral so I could get back to the city for the finale shoot. Me and Papa didn’t talk much after that. Looking back, every time I told myself I wasn’t sad or angry or hurt, I sacrificed more of my life to the show. To the Square.”

“I know the feeling.” I had been doing the same with the campaign.

“One day, I couldn’t do it anymore. My heart just couldn’t take it. I ran away and wound up here. After I rested a spell, I tried to go back, but the studio was gone. There was only the Square. When I saw Sandy, I knew what she was. She was what I had become making the show. She was the part of me that wouldn’t let myself be anything but sunny. She told me she could help me be like her. I ended up running back here.”

I could see the resignation in Sandra’s eyes. A sadness that said she deserved that day. “Well, you can come back now, can’t you?” I said hopefully. “I know Mason County would love to see you again. No one’s heard from you in decades.”

“That’s very kind, Mikey,” Sandra said as she gently blew a butterfly off the rim of her coffee cup. “But I can’t. After the Square brought me here…” She couldn’t continue. I didn’t need her to. I knew Sandy had stolen her world.

“Well, can I stay with you?” I thought she needed a friend, but I also didn’t want to face what I had to go back to.

“You can…” Sandra explained. “But I don’t think you really want to. You still have a life to live. Your firm, your parents, Bree.”

“I don’t know. I think all they love is who they want me to be.”

“That’s because that’s the only person you’ve let them know. You’ve never been yourself with them. Or with anyone. And I’m afraid that’s partially my fault. You should be allowed to feel however you feel. Sunny or not.” Sandra set down her coffee cup and took my hands in hers. “I’m sorry she—I didn’t teach you that.”

“You did the best you knew how.”

“I did, but now you can do something different. Live your life honestly. Let the people you love know how you feel even if it’s hard. Be wild and messy and real. That’s the only way to really be good. For yourself or anyone else.”

Her words crashed into me like water breaking over a dam. She was right. I had never trusted myself to let anyone know me. I wondered if I could do anything more.

“Mikey, I’m never leaving here.” Her hands held mine like she was pleading for me to save my own life. “You still can.”

After

I opened my eyes to see that dim fluorescent lights had replaced the gentle sunlight on Sandy’s porch. I noticed the taste of coffee on my tongue. The only coffee I had had in days came from Sandra.

“Hey there, look who’s awake.” Someone else was holding my hands instead of my new friend. It was a plump older nurse who had a look like she had not expected to be seen. “Sorry to bother you, sweetie. I was just adjusting your bedding. But looks like you’ll be going home soon.” I smiled confusedly at her. She scurried away to call the doctor.

I looked around, and my heart sank in my chest. I was back in the hospital. I had promised myself that I would never come back, and there I was. My memory flashed with the last sights I could recall before the Square: the heat of a blinding spotlight from the floor of the stage, Dotty and Senator Pruce’s faces hiding irritation, someone lifting me.

Searching my memory, I saw Bree’s frightened face above mine. She had carried me off the stage. She had had to carry me again—like she always did. I had let her down. She gave her life for the campaign, and I had killed it with my weakness. My failure. If anyone could save the campaign now, it was Bree. But I knew too much damage had been done. I laughed at myself with wry derision. I had wanted the campaign to end.

Before long, the nurse returned with a doctor who must have been near the end of his long career. His chipped nameplate read “P. Shelley.” While the nurse checked my vitals and helped me dress, Dr. Shelley told me what everyone in town already knew. Generalized anxiety disorder. Insomnia. And what only I had known. The struggle that hadn’t been presentable: extreme exhaustion, severe dehydration, dissociative symptoms, high blood alcohol levels. Dr. Shelley had me sign some forms I didn’t care to read and then continued on to his next patient. Watching him walk away, I noticed that the linoleum floors were just the same as they were five years earlier. So was I.

The old nurse explained prescriptions to me and advised me against alcohol consumption with the patient exasperation of a high school guidance counselor. I nodded and waited for her to finish. Her warning was unnecessary. The taste of coffee had cleared the way for the taste of bile in my throat. After remembering the feeling of vomit pouring through my locked lips with the entire county watching, I wasn’t going to drink again anytime soon.

The nurse walked me out to the lobby to retrieve my personal effects. I could hear a caller shouting at the receptionist through the landline. He gave me a friendly smile and handed over a large plastic bag with my watch, phone, and wallet. Taking out my things, I saw the visitor log through the bag’s clear plastic. A hospital this size normally didn’t have many visitors, but the same name was written for every day that week: Bree.My stomach twisted into a knot of guilt.

I turned on my phone out of habit. No one had called. Not even my parents. Relieved, I turned my phone back off. I wasn’t talking to anyone. The nurse helped me close the clasp of my watch. I didn’t need her to, but I appreciated her trying to help. “Thank you, Ms… I’m sorry I didn’t get your name.”

“Silvia,” she said. I gave her a familiar smile. “Thank you, Silvia. For everything.”

When I was almost out the waiting room door, Silvia called to me. “Hey sweetie…” She beckoned me back and lowered her voice to a whisper. Standing closer to her, I could smell cigarette smoke on her scrubs. “If you don’t mind me asking, what was that song you kept singing?”

“Um…I don’t remember. Was I singing? Sorry about that.”

“No, no. It’s okay. I was just curious. You kept singing to yourself while you were out. I thought I almost recognized the song. It was something like, ‘If you’re not feeling happy today, just put on a smiling face…’” Silvia didn’t have any idea what that song meant.

I intended to keep it that way. “I have no clue. Sorry.”

“Oh, it’s okay, hun. Now you go home and get some rest.” She gave me a kind squeeze on the arm.

I left the hospital with the sinking feeling that I would be back soon. I had thought I had handled my mental health—closed the file and checked the box for that part of my life. Apparently, it was a problem I would never solve. Walking to my car, I fought to keep the refrain of Sandy’s song from circling my mind.

I forgot it for a moment when I opened my car door and the heat almost knocked me out again. I should have remembered what a warm Mason County fall did to a locked car. When the song started up again, I turned on the radio. The station had been on public radio for years, but I turned it to the classic country station my mother played when I was a boy. One of her favorite songs was playing.

“Keep on the sunny side, always on the sunny side…”

* * *

Once I got to my apartment, I lost all sense of time. It didn’t matter anymore. I had left my laptop in my car and didn’t want to see all the emails from concerned clients asking about finding new representation. The campaign was over. My parents hadn’t called even after what they surely saw on the TV. And I certainly couldn’t talk to Bree—or even face her. Her disappointment would be unbearable. I badly wanted to drink. I was thankful that I couldn’t bring myself to go to the liquor store.

I couldn’t see the sun rise or fall through my curtains, but it felt like days passed. I just sat. Sometimes my mind showed me images of the local press reporting on my collapse and the campaign’s implosion. Sometimes I saw pictures of my parents going about their social lives as their associates conspicuously avoided my name in conversation. Most often, I saw Bree desperately holding the campaign together with prayers and press releases. I wished her the best. I couldn’t do it any more.

I heard a knock at the door. I ignored it. It was probably a canvasser for Pruce. They would go away eventually.

The knock came again. I couldn’t move. I was sure whoever was out there had already judged me. I couldn’t do anything to impress them.

“Mikey,” the person at the door shouted. “I know you’re in there. You know I have a key…” It was Bree. She was angry. I thought about trying to hide before realizing how childish that would have been. I heard her key in the lock.

“Have you just been sitting here in the dark?” she scolded as she let herself in. “I’ve been trying to call you for the last thirty minutes. I went to the hospital, and they told me you had checked yourself out. What do you think—” She saw me sitting silently. She sat down her purse and sat beside me.

“I’m sorry,” I muttered.

“Hey, don’t worry about it.” She put her arm around my shoulders in an awkward attempt at warmth. “I was just scared when I couldn’t find you.”

“Thanks.”

“I’m just glad you’re alright.”

We sat in silence for a long moment. Neither of us had ever been taught how to handle this. We had been taught how to fight fear, how to power through pain. Never how to feel it.

“Mikey…” Bree said quietly. She was using all of her effort to form her emotions into words. “Um…”

With nothing left to prove, I hugged my sister. She hugged me back. In that instant, we didn’t need words.

“I’m sorry…” Bree continued as she instinctively held back her tears.

“It’s okay—”

“No, it’s not okay. Thank you, but no. I’m sorry for overworking you. I’m sorry for ignoring you when you tried to talk to me. I heard your words, but I didn’t listen for your feelings. I was scared to. I just tried to fix it. I thought that—all of this was what we were supposed to do.”

“I know. I did too.” We were sharing the same secret. “So, what happens to the campaign now? I’m sure you’ve been working overtime since I imploded.”

Bree caught the self-deprecation in my words. “Hey,” she said with protective anger. “Don’t say that. You didn’t implode. You let go. And I’m proud of you. The campaign doesn’t matter right now. You can decide what to do about it later.”

It felt like a weight was lifted from my lungs. I breathed freely for the first time I could remember.

“Michael, are you okay?” My name. The one my parents had given me when I was born. It had been years since I had heard it. Years since they decided “Mikey” would be more likable.

It was the question again. But it sounded different this time. Bree wasn’t asking it like she was expecting me to say my next line. She was asking to understand—to listen.

“I…” I wanted to meet my sister in her honesty. It took all of the little strength I had left to say the words I had to say. “I don’t know.”

In this unfamiliar vulnerability, I was afraid of what Bree would say. Saying I didn’t know was saying nothing. It didn’t give her anything to fix. It was only a confession.

“That’s okay.” Her voice told me I did not need forgiveness. “When you figure it out, I’ll be here for you.”

Looking at her in the darkness, I saw someone I had never seen before. It was still Bree, but it was like we were meeting each other for the first time. Not a fragile fallen angel and a wonder woman of steel. Just two people who saw each other’s broken hearts and loved each other anyway. Just a brother and a sister.

We sat in silence for another long moment before Bree stood up and walked to the curtains. “Mind if I open these? We need some light.”

“Sure. Thanks.”

When she opened the curtains, the amber sunlight of late afternoon peeked through the window. Behind her head, I saw a butterfly fly through the light. The soft warmth that fell on my skin felt like Sandra’s smile.