Slumberland Page 13

  The circle never completes.

  It’s not, nor will it ever be, perfect.

  “A monkey wrench,” he says. “To someone’s eye, it looks flawless. They want to look at the circle and, like everything else, believe it can be perfect. People need to get their heads out of the clouds and…”

  Wake up.

  “These people don’t notice you anymore,” he says, “They choose to avoid you because you know something they don’t…the truth.”

  The mystery guy nods and takes a drink. He has to understand what I’m going through; it’s obvious.

  But the numbers I’ve been seeing, they’re not related to Pi. They mean something else.

  “Sleep on it,” he says. “The brain solves its toughest problems in your sleep.”

  The mystery man, he has to know something. He’s had to have solved his own life’s equation. He has to have an answer. A variable.

  “It doesn’t matter,” he says. “These days I spend writing books in solitude.”

  The woman at the hospital. The police officer. Avery. She edits them.

  The lonely ladybug crawls to my resting hand.

  “Ladybugs,” the man says. “They protect the sunflowers. Just like Mark protected you from running in the street to save your dog.”

  This is when it settles in. This is when it makes sense. This mysterious guy, he and Avery, the two of them are friends. They rode bicycles together when they were in high school. This man and Avery, they were there to witness when Bart died.

  My glass has only a swig left before it’s empty.

  This is when it adds up. This is when it comes together. Given the time, the old lady from Doctor Lane’s office was there too. The woman watering her garden. The gawking construction worker from Dotty’s Tavern, he drove the utility truck. These people, I’ve forgotten about. These people, I’ve ignored. Their presence here now, it must mean something. But what?

  The sounds of the late night city sneak in as the bar door swings open. Mark seems happy to see me, as though he’s been searching all night.

  “Are you okay?” he asks, taking a seat in the stool next to me. “How’s your dad?”

  “He’s fine,” I reply. “Meet my friend. Do you remember him? His name is…”

  Lights surge on and off again but the music keeps playing.

  It seems I’m the only one who notices.

  The bartender wipes the countertops.

  Other patrons pay no attention to the pulsating bulbs throughout the bar.

  Mystery man watches me watching the lights.

  “Sierra,” he says, “who are you talking to?”

  A feeling of sinking weight pushes my stomach.

  It’s almost nauseating.

  The mystery man, his lips matched those words. But his voice…

  His voice sounds like Mark.

  IRRATIONAL

  20

  This is like dreaming, only I’m wide awake. Hallucinations. An old lady’s face in a wall, ladybugs crawling on a floor. What you see isn’t real.

  Illusions. Suggestions made by inanimate objects like my potted sunflower. What you feel isn’t real.

  Like any dream, it’s impossible to differentiate visions and reality. Both come and go and blend seamlessly into one another.

  Like any dream, things happen beyond your control.

  But I can’t wake up because I’m not asleep.

  Lying in the back of Mark’s car… this has to be real.

  His voice coming from the mystery man’s lips makes no sense until I put two and two together.

  Mark looks at me from the rearview mirror.

  It’s his lips matching his voice.

  “Sierra,” he says, “Who are you talking to?”

  The streetlights brighten the backseat, on and off, as each one passes out the window.

  My eyes close and with each streak of light and a number flashes behind my lids.

  0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13…

  With each number, my legs and arms twitch. My head jerks to the side. It’s uncontrollable.

  The song on the jukebox, it’s coming from the radio in Mark’s car.

  But the mystery man, the bar, the conversation; it wasn’t a dream, because I haven’t been to sleep.

  “How did I get here?” I ask.

  Mark takes his eyes from the road to the mirror for a brief second.

  “You called me to pick you up from the hospital.”

  If this is real, then my dad’s heart attack was too.

  Why I’m in the back seat, Mark tells me it’s because he had to help me to the car. Physically exhausted, my whole body was weak. My legs barely work. Hoping I would fall asleep, he walked me to the car and put me in the back.

  My head shakes and then twitches. None of what he says, I remember.

  The skin of my arms burn. Both of them covered with red circles, drawn with a pen still in my hand. On the inside of my forearm, the one not wearing a brace, a thick circle with three sections scribbled bold and a number: 3.14159—Pi.

  It seems this last hallucination might have given me something to work with. It has to mean something.

  Every problem has a solution.

  The song comes to an end as Mark looks again at the rearview mirror.

  But what’s real anymore?

  Only things familiar. Things the way I left them.

  Like when Mark helps me from the car and throws my arm over his shoulder.

  Like when he walks in my condo with me.

  My sunflower on the countertop. Ladybugs gathering on the floor. Shreds of paperwork scattered across the carpet. Equations and solutions left unsolved and decorating the living room walls. What does it all mean, if nothing more than signs I’m losing my mind?

  Billions of people spread across countless coordinates around the planet.

  A million lightning strikes around the globe per day.

  What are the chances I happened to be in the right spot at the right time? Or the wrong spot at the wrong time, for that matter?

  Only one in ten people are killed from lightning.

  But what percentage walk away unscathed? How many with no physical injury? How many like me?

  Rarely, people die from insomnia.

  What are the odds?

  If sleep won’t find me, I’ll stay awake the rest of my life. Forever stuck in a waken nightmare. No comprehension of reality. Far away from any hope of not only a perfect future, but a normal one.

  It doesn’t matter if you’re an optimist or a pessimist.

  After enough time, all hope evaporates.

  All hope gets swallowed.

  Mark’s silence tells me there’s no point in arguing. Guiding me to my room, it’s clear he’s giving me only two options: sleep or the asylum.

  Ninety minutes minimum, enough time to complete one sleep cycle should be enough to reset everything. Enough to clear my head.

  Ninety minutes.

  Who knew Mark, someone who’s burdened themselves with pain, could be so caring to the one who hurt him? He’s careful to set me in bed. He’s gentle removing my shoes and tucking my feet under the blanket. I can’t stand being babied, being pampered; but the way Mark does it, it’s comforting.

  He’s not leaving me, nor is he trying to take advantage. Mark will watch me sleep for ninety minutes, if not longer, from the chair in the corner of my bedroom.

  Clicking off the lamp, he says it doesn’t matter how long it takes for me to get there, sleep is the only thing he’s allowing me to do.

  He pulls open the curtains enough to light the room with the night sky, a subtle blue. The low frequency red numbers from my sleep machine: 1:44 A.M.

  Not a sound.

  Not a peep.

  Mark sits, his only move is to pull a corner of the curtain to glance out the window.

  “What is it?”

  “Nothing,” he says. “Someone smoking a cigarette on their patio. Go to sleep.”

  Resting my head to my pill
ow, my eyes close.

  My body is restless.

  My legs can’t get comfortable.

  Mark tells me to slowly rub my bare feet together. The sensation has to travel across nerves from my toes to my head, soothing everything in between.

  A neat trick.

  It’s not long before my feet stop rubbing together. My weight seems to double and my bed lets me sink farther into the mattress.

  Finally, this is it.

  Knowing any second I’ll be asleep, it’s euphoric.

  Any moment could be my last before I drift away into dreamland.

  Every vision in my head turns to blackness.

  Every thought in my mind goes blank, except for one…

  How does Pi fit into the equation?

  My eyelids spring open to the red numbers of the sleep machine. 2:33 A.M.

  If I have been sleeping, I’m not aware of it.

  No feeling of refreshment.

  No morning taste in my mouth.

  No new surge of energy.

  Still in the same spot where I lay before, I look over my shoulder to the corner of the room.

  Mark’s head bent over the back of the chair. His mouth wide open and his eyes closed. He doesn’t snore but he breathes as deep as the state of sleep he’s in.

  Careful not to make a sound, I tiptoe to the window and peek outside. The faint orange glow of the tip of someone’s cigarette glows bright then fades from the patio of the building across the way. Still, it’s too dark and far for me to see a figure.

  Making my way to the living room, I’m careful not to step on the family of ladybugs in the hallway. The ones I know don’t exist. A feeling, like someone is watching me, comes from the sunflower in the kitchen.

  I whisper for it to shut up.

  “I know. I’m working on it. Stop telling me what to do.”

  There’s no woman’s face on the wall. Either that vision died with her or she’s been covered with too much makeup.

  As I crouch over the living room carpet, my fingers fumble through a pile of used up lipsticks and eyeliner pencils worn down to the nubs. Only one pencil has any use left.

  My right arm brushes against the wall, using my arm brace as an eraser to give me some space to work.

  Red circle equals 3.14159— Pi.

  The calendar has been marked in red makeup. The weather predicted for the next seven days is perfect. Those days lined with question marks.

  Chaos theory— a small change in initial conditions of the state of a nonlinear system can result in large differences of a later state.

  A small change at the beginning.

  This has to be something simple, represented by the circle.

  But Pi is irrational.

  It’s endless. It goes on and on into infinity.

  Scratch that. Round down.

  Red circle equals 3.14.

  Halfway through my calculation, the pencil runs low like any hope. Barely enough to finish the equation but it doesn’t matter; 3.14 doesn’t work either.

  It makes no sense to go any lower.

  A three, by itself, isn’t representative of Pi.

  There’s nothing else I can think of.

  No other suggestions.

  No other answers.

  No other values to solve for X, a circle, or any other variable.

  Nothing I can prove.

  My glass has gone from half full, to half empty, to swallowed.

  Tears flood my eyes.

  My legs are too weak to stand.

  The last bit of energy is powered by my frustration and it goes to throwing the eyeliner pencil across the room before I fall to my knees and sob.

  In such a large space, what are the chances an uncontrolled force of motion can send such a small object through the air and that object strikes another?

  What are the odds the pill bottle happens to be sitting in the wrong place at the wrong time?

  My palms wipe my face and I slowly crawl to a table.

  What are the statistics, the percentages the bottle remains on the edge without a dent on it?

  Seated on the floor, resting my back against the couch, I read the label.

  ‘Take one tablet as needed for sleep.’

  Popping the lid, I rattle around the pastel blue pills inside.

  Half full or half empty? Eventually they all get swallowed.

  What’s the point?

  Staring at the clock, I sit on the floor, completely drained, completely spent.

  Dazing off beyond the hour and minute hands pointing to four-thirty, I’m too exhausted to think up any more answers, much less new questions.

  This is the end of the rope.

  My mind will finally snap.

  Anything to experience for the rest of my days, I won’t be able to tell is real or imaginary.

  No career. No friends.

  My parents will never let me live this way, locked in some padded room. They’ll keep me at home with them to take care of me, to baby me. I’ll be a burden for the rest their lives.

  The only wonder is whether or not I’ll even realize it.

  But, whatever.

  The only thing left to do is try. Try to make everything as perfect as I can before my brain turns to mush. At least, if I’m able to remember the life I had before, I won’t recall it to being so messy.

  The sound of footsteps echo from my hallway. Whether they’re real or not, I don’t care.

  “Sierra,” says Mark. “What are you doing?”

  “Mopping the walls,” I reply.

  Wet streaks of red and black pour over numbers and letters. The head of the mop, once clean and white, now soaked with mathematical operators, and empty variables. Colors drip onto the carpet with each stroke I make.

  My efforts of cleaning up this mess are as good as trying to solve it. The makeup smears together, painting thick abstract smudges of dark gray.

  But the thing is; I’m doing nothing of the sort.

  In reality, I’m slouched against the wall. My eyes gaze into the distance, into nothing. The red smearing the side of my face isn’t from the lipstick, it’s blood from a small cut on the side of my head, underneath my hair. With each twitch of my head, each time it pounds the door frame, the soreness becomes more numb.

  Thud…thud…thud… and then…

  “Stop this,” Mark says, putting his hand between my head and the wall.

  “Let me clean it up!” I reply. “That’s all I want to do!"

  My hands they lay to my sides with their palms up. They’re too weak to move, but in my mind, I’m scrubbing to clean up.

  “Stop.”

  The top of my shirt is soaked, either from the cleaning water or my own tears.

  Mark watches as I hang my head, but his attention is soon drawn to the carpet behind me.

  He leans down and picks up an empty pill bottle.

  “Did you take all of these at once?” he asks.

  “Over an hour ago,” I reply.

  Grabbing my arm, Mark pulls me to walk with him.

  “That’s it,” he says, “You’re going to the hospital.”

  “No.”

  “Yes,” he says.

  “NO!”

  Snapping my arm free from his grip, I stand my ground.

  Marks mouth falls open. I can’t think of a time he would have ever seen me this angry, this desperate, this… hopeless.

  “What makes you think the doctors can do anything a bottle of sleeping pills can’t?,” I ask. “It’s been over an hour. The pills would have kicked in by now.”

  He sighs and takes a step toward me.

  “There has to be an answer,” he says.

  There’s nothing I can do but scoff.

  “In a perfect world, Mark.”

  With his arms wrapped tight around me, it’s hard not to cry. It’s hard not to sob when you realize the only one you trust to have any hope, is hopeless himself.

  Any other time I’d fall, but Mark eases me down to the floor,
where he holds me close.

  His hand on the side of my head and his chin resting on top, just like my father would hold me.

  His heart beats against my ear. I can hear the air move in and out of his lungs.

  “I was never any good at math,” he says.

  My eyes close. The first smile after crying is always the best.

  “Putting numbers together was one thing,” he adds, “but I can’t wrap my head around using letters. The alphabet stops at twenty-six but the numbers keep going.”

  Pulling away, wiping my cheeks, I chuckle.

  “That’s not how it really works,” I say. “Each letter represents a value.”

  “Oh,” he says, reading the puzzle that is my wall. “Or is that a zero?”

  It takes a few blinks for me to clear the blurriness left by my tears but the red pattern in lipstick is too thick to be mistaken. Granted, it’s not a perfect circle, but given the circumstances, it was the best I could do.

  "It’s a circle,” I say.

  “Are you sure?” asks Mark.

  A bright flashing light with numbers and I flinch.

  1.618034— The Golden Ratio

  The second it fades, I gasp as everything comes back into focus.

  My eyes lock to the potted sunflower, still on the counter. Rushing to it, I pull it down with me to the floor. My fingers flip through the petals, careful not to break them off.

  It’s something. It has to be.

  Mark steps in and that’s when I see it.

  In the head of the sunflower, its center, thirty-four spirals spinning clockwise and fifty-five spirals spinning counterclockwise. Thirty-four and fifty-five are consecutive numbers in a sequence.

  Perfection.

  It’s hard to believe I’ve found one piece to the puzzle. My mouth hangs open. My weary eyes look to the living room wall. More specifically, to the center of a red circle. Then another flash.

  3.14159— Pi.

  Irrational. Imperfect.

  Days of exhaust transforms to energy. Everything is clear.

  “What time is it,” I ask.

  “Five in the morning,” says Mark.

  “We need to get to the station.”

  ON THE AIR

  21

  Storming in to the station, I pass the camera men and the news desk. Crashing into the control room, I shout for Randi to meet me in her office right away. It’s almost five o’clock. Almost time for the news.