River: A Novel by Erin Lewis

numb.
     Heavy. Weights seemed to be on me, holding
me down into darkness. I was close to waking but couldn’t quite figure out how
to get there. My mind
wouldn’t let me remember what it was to be awake. 
     Blind . I flexed my tightly closed eyelids,
wondering how this could be—needing to wake up, wanting nothing but sleep. 
     The right
side of my head was cradled in a pillow of water. How had I fallen asleep in a
puddle? I searched my memory, though all I came up with was running next to a fence.
Birds were chirping—
     It was an
annoying alarm clock. I couldn’t wake up to turn it off. If I fell back to sleep,
maybe I could block it out.
     Music. My left ear was hearing something
else. Someone was singing—Danny? How could he be awake and I asleep… were we in
Hawaii?   
      A familiar
tune found its way to me with the twinkling of strings. He was singing and playing music. If I could just
wake up, I could tell him how beautiful it was.
     The room
shook. My body was moving, falling.
     With a
heavy breath, I opened my eyes, gasping, and unable to focus my thoughts. Arms were
around me. Tapping on my arm—
     “What? Danny?”
I didn’t recognize my shallow voice. I couldn’t move.
     “Where am I?”
When I finally saw him, he was frantically trying to pick me up. I had to let him; my body was dead
weight.
        A-R-E 
Y-O-U  O-K-A-Y?
     “Yeah,” I muttered
after a long moment of translating. My head lolled a little to the side, and my
arm flopped when I tried to use it. “Well, I don’t know,” I whispered,
realizing my eyes wouldn’t stay open. Danny tunneled away from me. No, don’t
go—  
     I couldn’t
open my mouth as my eyelids clamped shut.
     “Elodie, I
heard you. Wake up, now. Rise and shine. C’mon girl, you’ve been gone too long.”
     Danny
sounded unusually hyper for the morning hours. Plus, he was waking me up? Maybe my alarm hadn’t gone off. Something was beeping, though not the usual
sound, why wasn’t he shutting it off? I tried to roll over to click off the alarm…
ah, but I hated it when one of my arms fell asleep. Sleep, I just needed a few
more minutes, and then I’d get up—
     I started at
wetness on my forehead. A washcloth was over one of my eyes. Disgruntled, I
opened the other eye, glaring. “Danny, I told you ten more minutes.” I turned
over and looked for a blanket, finding an arm instead. That woke me up. We
were on the sofa, my head resting in his lap while he stared at me, concerned,
but not altogether unhappy.
     “How did I
get out here?” My question was a croak before I cleared my throat, sat up, and
looked around. I remembered going into Dan’s bedroom, then… just a sad blur. “Were
you… I don’t know how to ask you this. You weren’t talking to me just now, were
you?” Cringing, I felt terrible asking him , but his voice had been so clear that it didn’t seem part of a
dream, though it had to have been. There was no other explanation—Danny
couldn’t speak. Feeling horribly callous, I shook my head dramatically to
emphasize sleepiness while recanting, “Sorry, I was dreaming.” 
     He just
shrugged and pointed to the kitchen. I followed, still kicking myself. Danny
flicked on another light. It was early evening, though already dark. The days
were getting shorter, and I shivered, pulling the sleeves of my hooded sweater
over my hands. He started making coffee while I sat down and examined the now-clean sheet of paper,
looking for remnants of the earlier revelation that my possible father took
human voices away. There was nothing left, to my relief. I didn’t want to see
any evidence of that knowledge, so I pretended that I still didn’t know. It was
harder now that I was awake, though. The one good thing about sleep was that I
didn’t have to live in the now; I could forget, go somewhere else with
different horrors and joys. Honestly, I was never really afraid when paralyzed
in my dreams. The fenced-in parking lot