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.