Superimpose

Stranded In Parallel [Chapter 5]

I ended up hiding away in my room the rest of that night before eventually falling asleep early. When I got up the next morning, I could hear my mom fiddling around downstairs with boxes and whatever else. I didn’t want to face her yet, but the bathroom and my hunger called. I eventually crept down the stairs sheepishly. The creaking floorboards announced my arrival.

“Good morning,” she said with a weak smile, on her knees in the front room with moving boxes still about. “You’re up early.”

I glanced at the digital clock on the oven, the only timepiece in the new place. “Hungry,” I murmured.

Mom nodded. “I got some bread yesterday, too. It’s in the cabinet on the right.”

“And peanut butter?” I asked hopefully.

“You remember… they said that might aggravate… your condition,” she said, trailing off. “But… there are more tests we can do to see what might be good or bad for you. But I did buy jelly.”

“Fine.”

Mom shifted herself back to her feet. “I’ve got to head into work again today. Don’t worry about unpacking anything else… unless you want to. Your books are in this one. And the cable installer should be here today for TV. Don’t worry, you won’t have to answer the door for them or anything. They’ll just hook up to the box outside.”

“Thanks,” I said, my back turned and bread already in the toaster. “I mean, yeah, got it.”

I sensed Mom standing behind me in the little threshold there between the dining room and kitchen. “And hey… don’t worry about what we talked about last night. One thing at a time. We don’t have to make our decision right this moment.”

I faced away and nodded in general agreement, trying to avoid committing myself to a response. Mom came up behind me and brushed my hair back behind my ears before leaning over my shoulder and kissing me on the cheek.

“I’m going to get dressed for work and head out, little one. Just take it easy. I’ll be off tomorrow, so we can maybe go out and see the town properly. Go shopping. Visit the park. Whatever. No use being cooped up here all summer.”

I nodded less than before, just enough to make it seem like I was listening. Mom trotted upstairs shortly after, only to descend again in her khakis and polo shirt as I was sitting down with my toast.

“See you later,” she said, blowing a kiss from the entryway before sliding out the door.

After eating, I washed the plate and began to meander around the boxes in the living room. All of them had been opened to reveal the mismatch of contents inside. A decent amount of the contents had been either placed somewhere in the house or piled up in preparation for finding a proper home. My books from my old room were piled up in that manner, waiting to go up to the empty bookshelf in my new room.

Reading had been my escape ever since I started to get really sick. Books take you places you can’t normally go. Places that don’t even exist. They let you experience things that don’t exist in this world, like magic. They let you meet characters that can overcome anything that gets thrown at them. And those characters you admire always win in the end. I guess that’s why I like them so much.

Liked, I should say. I hadn’t picked up a book since the diagnosis. One book in the pile was marked with a makeshift bookmark, a torn piece of notebook paper. It was the last book I had been reading back when my sickness was just a normal sickness and not something so indeterminable. I couldn’t even remember what the book was about.

I fished the nearly forgotten paperback out from the pile and marched with it up the stairs, glancing back and forth between my footing and the cover. By the time I was in my room, I had flipped to the place I had left off, the pages where the paper bookmark had been sandwiched. I ended up on my stomach with the book on my pillow, eyes tracing the words for any familiar names or other proper nouns.

I realized quickly that trying to pick up from where I left off was a lost cause. Flipping the book over, I rolled and fumbled around to try to find the bookmark, which had gotten lost somewhere in the unmade covers of my bed. Instead of the scrap, I found the strange notebook shoved down in the folds of my comforter. I flipped through the used pages to find a blank one to rip out, but quickly noticed something amiss.

The little note I had written— something like a diary entry— was gone. “Did I dream writing that?” I asked myself out loud. Facing the window, I examined that first blank page in the morning light. While my written words were gone, the imprint from my pencil pressing into the paper remained. I ran my finger across the narrow imprints to make sure I wasn’t going crazy and imagining things.

I jumped up and found the same pencil from the night before in its spot on the floor. I set myself down with the notebook, pencil held tight and words rushing through my head. On the line below the old indents, I began writing something new.

“I am still alive. But if these words disappear again, does that mean I am not?”

I almost chuckled at the absurdity of the idea, paper eating up my words. Maybe my mom had found the notebook and simply erased the words out of worry, or just ripped out the page. I thought about what else to write, but a sudden knock downstairs made my whole body tense.

I dropped everything and crept to the hall, then peeked down the stairs. I saw a shadow behind the blinds in the front window, which crept away after a moment. I sighed. The cable guy.

I worked up the courage to head all the way down and check the window. The tall van adorned with the cable company logo was pulling away. I undid the lock and opened the door to find the paper hanging from the outside handle.

“Sorry, we missed you. Reason for our visit:” it read in printed letters, followed by a handwritten message in the open space. “New customer- first time cable hookup.”

I sighed, tucking the paper under my arm before retreating inside. I put it on the dining room table for my mom to see when she got back. With a sigh of relief, I skipped back up the stairs.

I almost dove back down on my bed to stretch out and possibly sleep some more, but the still-open notebook caught my eye. I knelt on the floor and peered at the mostly blank page. My words remained, but a fresh line of text had been scrawled.