Page 20 of Severance

I hear my mother following me up the stairs. “Alana!” I can tell by her voice that she’s on the verge of panic, and I wonder if she’s going to unplug the router to stop me from checking the news. She’s done it once before. Right after the funeral. I’m expecting the internet to go out at any second as I draw my laptop from my bag and set it on the bed. There’s a knock on my door, and my mother’s still talking. Only, her words don’t reach me.

My eyes are trained on the screen, my chest caving. I feel all the air leaving my room at the sight of the headlines.

“New Details Emerge During Hearing Regarding Portland Nightclub Shooting Suspect”

“Miller’s Attorney Insists on Psychiatric Evaluation”

“Judge Considers Trial Delay”

7. After

I wake up in the middle of the night, trembling and wheezing. My sheets are wet from the cold sweat and my heart’s plummeting into my gut.

I lie there, stupefied, eyes wide open, hands clutched to my chest, staring at the white ceiling and listening to the desolate howls of wind. The hemlocks right outside my window are thrashing wildly against each other and I can almost hear the branches crying. It’s a sad, chilled- to-the-bone sound of hysteria. Like the sound of something unsuspecting being torn apart by something mighty and neither having any control over it. They’re two forces, one doomed and one destined to demolish the other.

I’m trying to tell if it was the noise from the trees scraping against the glass or the dream I was having that woke me up. In my dream, Dakota was holding my hand and his palm was stone cold, just like at the funeral. His smile was wide and playful, but his eyes were empty and colorless.

I inhale through my nose and exhale slowly through my teeth in an attempt to calm myself down. My breaths are shallow and weak, and my t-shirt is uncomfortable and itchy against my skin.

After sitting in my own sweat for a good hour, I crawl out of bed and search for my phone.

This is a very bad idea, Alana, my common sense reminds me as I hide under the blanket and flip through my contact list, my heart racing as my thumb hovers above the screen.Normal people sleep at this hour.

It rings a few times, and then a tired voice answers, “Yeah?”

“Can’t sleep,” I blurt out, rocking back and forth on my bed with my knees tucked under my chin.

“Sorry.” Mikah’s whisper is barely there, and I can’t tell whether he’s been sleeping or he simply doesn’t want to talk to me. The truth is, I didn’t know who else to call. Jess has been taking sleeping pills to help her get through the nightmares, and trying to get her between ten at night and six in the morning is like trying to call the Bermuda Triangle.

“Did I wake you up?”

“No…not really.” He pauses, his breathing on the line abnormally loud.

“Do you…” My tongue feels thick and useless in my mouth. Everything I was going to say has turned into a tangled ball of incoherent thoughts and I’m not sure how to untangle them to build a proper sentence.

“Do I what?” Mikah says.

The air around me becomes hot and heavy, and I push the blanket aside before I suffocate from lack of oxygen inside my makeshift hiding place. It’s not like my parents are going to hear me, anyway. “Did you know”—I feel sick from the mere fact that I have to say his name—“Miller’s attorney is going to insist on insanity?”

“I heard.”

“You know what that means, right? They’ll send him to some fucking hospital.” This is probably the first time in my life that the F-word has left my mouth, but I’m so angry that I can’t control the words pouring out of me.

“I know.”

“It’s not fair.” I sound small and defeated.

“Life’s not fucking fair, Alana.”

I don’t ever remember him calling me by my name and, in a way, it feels nice. It’s nice to know I’m not just some girl his brother dated.

The mere idea that a person who shot twenty-four people in cold blood is going to get off on some stupid technicality makes me shake. I choke back my anxiety and change the subject before panic consumes me entirely. “Do you sleep at all?”

“Not much. You?”

“I can’t. I keep having these dreams. Like I’m still there…” My voice cracks and I stop mid-sentence, wondering whether talking about Dakota right now is wise.Whether talking about Dakota with Mikah is wise.

“Smoke some weed,” he offers, as if it’s Tylenol we’re talking about.

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