of their development. The experience definitely made us appreciate what Chris and Claire struggle with every day. I just hope that one day, the hole in Senia’s heart will close a little bit more. And I hope that Rachel and Jake will get the chance to feel what I feel every day with my Sia. Like a part of my soul that died a long time ago was reanimated, given a second chance.
Rachel and Senia wander off to deal with the kids and to show Sia off to all the other parents. Jake turns to me with a serious expression. “I got what you asked me to get,” he mutters out the side of his mouth. “It’s in the freezer.”
“Thanks, man.”
We set off to find Chris. I need to make sure he and Claire came through with their roles in today’s surprise. On the way to the kids’ play area, I’m stopped by Joel, Jackie’s new husband. He could be Jake’s dad with that lumberjack beard.
He claps me on the arm. “Where’s your wife and baby? We got something for the baby.”
“She’s not my wife, but she’s right over there,” I say, nodding toward the patio area where Claire, Rachel, and Senia are fawning over Sia.
“Well, you should get on that. Girls like her don’t come along but once in a blue moon.”
I sigh at this advice. Joel is a great guy, but he’s become quite comfortable with telling me I need to hurry up and get married. He doesn’t know that Senia is the one who has refused to marry me. I’ve asked her to marry me twice and both times she shot me down. The first time she told me she wanted to finish school before she started worrying about planning a wedding. I asked her again the day she graduated from UNC – I’m nothing if not completely compulsive and eager when it comes to Senia. She still turned me down. She didn’t want me to just ask her because “It was time.” She wanted me to ask her when the time was right. She said I’d know when that time came. And she was right – as she always is.
It seemed logical that I should ask her as soon as we found out she was pregnant last year, but I didn’t. I knew she wouldn’t want to look back on her wedding pictures and remember that she was two months’ or six months’ pregnant. I knew she would want to wait. So I’ve waited patiently for the past ten months, biding my time and making my plans. I don’t know what she’s going to say, but I hope to God that I’ve planned it right this time.
After the birthday cake is cut, I walk inside the house to begin putting the plan in motion. If everything is going as planned out there, Claire should be offering to take Sia while Senia goes to look for me. I can just imagine Senia’s face when Claire tells her that we’re going to play hide-and-seek.
I open the freezer and retrieve the surprise that Jake brought for us, then I reach into my pocket and retrieve the ring that Chris just handed to me behind the bouncer. Now, I just have to get to my hiding place before Senia gets there.
Once I’m settled into the darkness of my hiding spot, I close my eyes, trying to keep calm, as I wait for her. She’s going to say yes. She has to.
She’d better say yes or I’m going to ravage her tonight. She’d like that.
The door handle turns and the sound of Senia’s laughter is like music to my ears. A crack of light appears, just enough for me to see my surroundings and I quickly rise from the bench and turn on the light switch. Senia opens the door all the way and shakes her head when she sees me standing in the steam room, holding a bowl of frozen yogurt, with a ring sitting on top like a three-carat cherry on the life we’ve built.
She presses her lips together as I take her hand and pull her into the steam room. “Yes,” she says with a nod. “Just … yes.”
I scoop the ring out of the yogurt and she smiles as I lick it clean then I slide it onto her finger. I plant a soft kiss on the back of her hand, then I kiss her madly.
“If you didn’t say yes this time,” I whisper in her ear, “I was going to break out the whips tonight.”
“In that case, no.”
I kiss her again and a million thoughts race through my mind, but the one that stands out amongst them all is this: You can’t let your past define your future. Once you get that figured out, you begin to understand the joy of living in the present. And the present is full of tiny gifts that we can only see when we stop looking behind and ahead of us. Sometimes, these gifts land right at our feet. Sometimes, it’s our feet that carry us toward them, running at full-speed until our hearts nearly give out. Either way, never stop noticing them, and never stop wishing.
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BLACK BOX
Chapter One
January 8th
Mikki
The moment you realize you’re going to die is nothing like I imagined it would be. I imagined a deep internal struggle coupled with a visceral physical response—fight or flight. But there’s no fighting this. I’m going to die.
It’s possible that everyone on this plane is going to die. I wonder if they feel this overwhelming sense of peace, or if the squeal of the plane engine has drowned out all their thoughts.
He grabs the oxygen mask as it drops from the compartment and he’s yelling something as he puts the elastic band over my head. He pulls his own mask over his head then he grabs my hand and looks me in the eye. There’s no panic in his eyes. Maybe he feels this same calm I’m feeling. Or maybe he just wants me to know that he loves me.
He loves me.
Or maybe the look in his eyes is his way of telling me he trusts that whatever happens to us in the next few seconds was meant to be.
Fate.
I used to think fate was for religious nuts and people who were too afraid to take their fate into their own hands. Now I know the truth.
Chapter Two
January 3rd
Mikki
Listen
Rina,
Please don’t look for me. You probably won’t find me. This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone, and please don’t blame yourselves. I’m just tired. Trying to cope.... trying to forget.... It’s not enough anymore. I just want to close my eyes and know that it will all be over soon. There’s nothing anyone could have done. You’ve all done more than enough. I hope you all find peace knowing I am no longer suffering. I love you guys. Tell Meaghan I leave her my black box.
Mikki
I tuck the note inside a plastic baggie and seal it tightly, then I lift my bedroom window an inch and lay the bagged note on the window sill. I shut the window tight to trap the note there.
Taking one last look around the bedroom, I smile as I think of how much I won’t miss this house. The pink tulip-shaped knit cap my best friend Rina bought for me in Holland sits on top of my dresser. I’ve only worn it once, the day she brought it back for me from her family vacation last summer. I was in High Point Treatment Center at the time, in the dual diagnosis unit because I’m one of the special cases that needed both treatment for attempted suicide and drug detox.
“You look awfully cheerful for someone who’s traveling alone.” Meaghan’s green eyes follow my suitcase as I drag it down the stairs, then her gaze shifts to my face. My sister is seventeen, but she’s not stupid. She knows the signs, which is why I’m trying my hardest not to exhibit the typical suicidal behavior.
I didn’t give away all my belongings. I’m not traveling light. I have tried not to appear too chipper over the last couple of days. Yes, it feels amazing to have a plan. It feels like a ten-ton slab of cement has been lifted off my chest. I can breathe. I can think about the future without the crippling anxiety and depression that comes with not knowing if the pain will ever end.
But I can’t let Meaghan or my parents see how ridiculously relieved I’m feeling. They’ve seen that behavior too many times. The last time I made plans to die, three months ago, my mom saw the signs and followed me to the hotel room where I was going to hang myself. The time before that, I swallowed a bottle of pills in my uncle’s bathroom. It was my cousin Gertie who noticed I was acting too happy. She told my Uncle Cort, “Mikki is smiling again.” Un
cle Cort broke the door down and that’s when I ended up in High Point. That’s also when I swore I wouldn’t commit suicide anywhere that someone could find me.
“Cheerful?” I repeat Meaghan’s adjective as I pull up the telescoping handle on the suitcase and roll it across the tiled foyer toward the front door. “More like nervous as fuck. I’ve never flown without Mom.”
Meaghan yanks her green parka out of the coat closet and pulls it on over her hoodie. “I’ll take that,” she says as she pulls the hood of the parka over her long, brown hair and grabs my carryon bag.
I open the door and we both suck in a sharp breath when we’re blasted with a flurry of freezing winter air. The snow sticks to my face and I quickly close the front door so it doesn’t get in the house.
“Jesus fucking Christ. It’s colder than a witch’s tit out here. They’re going to cancel the flights if this shit keeps up,” Meaghan says as we carefully descend the front steps. My dad covered the steps in his special mixture of salt and sand, but it’s not foolproof.
“If they cancel the flights, I’ll come back, but they’ll have to reschedule the flight. I can’t just not show up. I saved up three months paychecks for this fucking ticket.”
Meaghan opens the wooden front gate and the cabbie scurries out of the car to help us with the bags. As he stuffs the bags in the trunk, I turn to Meaghan and she’s crying. Something tells me she knows, but she would stop me if she knew—wouldn’t she?
“Why are you crying? It’s just a job interview. I’m coming back in four days.”
“I know,” she whispers before she wraps her arms around my waist. “But I’ll miss you. Bring me back a hot actor.”
“I will.”
We hug like this for far longer than normal. It takes every bit of self-control in me not to tell her that everything will finally be okay when I’m gone.
She finally pulls away and punches my arm. “Get the hell out of here.”
“I love you, too,” I say as I slide into the backseat of the cab and my heart stutters as I look at the house I grew up in for the last time.
The driver slams my door shut and gets into the driver’s seat. “Logan?” he asks as he turns up the heater.
“Yeah, Terminal B,” I reply as I watch Meaghan scurry into the house to escape the cold.
I reach into my handbag and pull out my gloves, then I see the bottle of pills. I lay the pink gloves on my lap and reach into my purse for the bottle. On the outside, this is just a normal bottle of anti-psychotic meds. On the inside, this is my self-prescribed emergency meth stash. Each capsule is carefully filled with one dose.
I quit meth last week. Something about booking a plane ticket to Los Angeles to end my life gave me the fortitude to face the world without drugs. Besides, I was never really addicted. I just didn’t want to quit because it made me feel as if I was in control. But, even though I’m technically no longer a meth-head, I brought my emergency stash in case I lose my nerve.
I’m going to Los Angeles, specifically to the Pacific Ocean, to swim out into the open ocean until I can’t swim anymore. The water is so cold this time of year, my body will be numb and exhausted by the time I reach the point of no return. I won’t be able to fight it when the water enters my lungs. Plus, I’ll be so far out in the ocean, the odds of my body being found will be slim. My parents won’t have to identify me.
The cabbie turns the volume up on the radio and Take You Higher is playing on the radio. The dance beat buoys my mood and I allow myself to smile for the first time in days. I set the bottle of pills back inside my purse and pull my gloves on as I sit back.
Fifty minutes later, the cab pulls up in front of Terminal B and one of the two guys working at curbside check-in rushes over to help me with my suitcase once the cab driver places it on the curb. I pay the driver and he mutters a quick thank you before he hurries back inside the warm cab.
“Holy shit,” I whisper as I pull my faux fur-lined hood over my head.
“I ain’t seen it like this in years. I bet they already cancelling flights,” the guy says as he takes my carryon bag and we race toward the automatic sliding doors. He leaves me and my bags just inside the doors then he jogs back to his station outside in the freezing cold. What a terrible day to have that job.
I push my hood back and begin peeling off my pink knit gloves. The line at the check-in counter snakes across the floor as everyone watches the TV monitors above the counter.
“Cancelled,” a voice says behind me.
I whip my head around and find a guy with messy brown hair sticking out the front of his knit cap. He’s sitting on a gray suitcase with his phone in his hand and a guitar case propped up against the wall behind him. Something about him looks familiar, though I’m pretty certain he’s the kind of guy I would not forget if we’d met before.
“You can probably still catch a cab if you leave now,” he continues as he types on his phone.
“Then why aren’t you running outside to catch a cab?”
“I’m in no hurry to go back.”
I stare at the curb outside just as another cab pulls up to drop off some unknowing passenger. I told Meaghan I’d go home if they cancelled the flight, but that’s the last place I want to go right now.
“Yeah, me either.”
The guy looks up from his phone and smiles. “Yeah, you also have to check in to get your flight rescheduled.”
“Yeah, that too.” I try not to blush. Something about his smile makes me feel naked.
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