Flashback by Amanda Carpenter Read Free Book Online Page A

blustery gusts of wind, and then became fair again on Sunday evening; both she and her mother studiously avoided one another, both still feeling a bit tender and self-conscious about their uncharacteristic clash; and Dana had not one single nightmare come to plague her night’s repose.
    She became physically rested again, ate a little more, and was generally able to present a more or less normal aspect for others’ viewing.
    Nevertheless, in spite of the innocuousness, the complete and utter normality of the passing days, the peacefulness of it all, Dana still felt stretched tight, on edge, starting at any undue noise or sudden sound. She would start awake in the middle of the night, looking around her wildly, checking out of her window to make sure everything was still sane and peaceful. She wasn’t sure what she was watching for; all she knew was that she was worried and frightened. It was a perpetual fear, as if she expected to die any time, as if she expected the world to turn into an enemy, as if she expected someone to walk up and put a knife in her back. And as she thought of that, she remembered one of the nightmares that she’d had, of that cool, clean blade sliding so easily into her skin, right into her own stomach. In spite of her intellectual knowledge of her unmarked skin, the feeling was so vivid in her mind and the remembrance of the nightmare so immediate, she would sometimes check her stomach, just to assure herself of the smooth, unblemished skin.
    That didn’t help.
    She started to jog to see if that would help ease some of the perpetual restlessness, the ultra sensitivity to noises and atmospheres in her. She started out lightly, increasing her speed and distance each day very slightly, and she felt her muscles toning up, tightening, sometimes painfully. She’d come back home, panting and blood pounding, but she couldn’t seem to exorcise the devil that was riding her back.
    All her senses were taut, vibrating. She saw things too clearly, she heard things too sensitively, and once when her mother brushed her arm accidentally, the reverberations of that human touch shivered through her. She was living too intensely, by the edge of that pit, constantly desperately concentrating on whatever came her way, because she knew that she would fall into the pit sooner or later. She was living like there was no tomorrow, like her death was to be that night, or that very next day, never stopping, never slowing, and the constant, rapid clicking of her brain as it stored information on every needless sound and incident and feeling was like the inexorable ticking of a timer on a bomb. She was living too high, too hard, as if she’d taken a drug and was flying though she knew the crash would come.
    She wondered what a nervous breakdown felt like.
    Monday morning, she took her new drawing pad and roamed around outside, sketching small wildfire, and anything else that happened to catch her eye. She passed the morning in that fashion and then made her way back to the house at lunchtime, pleased with her morning’s work. She was good and she knew it, but she wasn’t so conceited as to think she held any particular genius. She knew better than that. She did know, however, that she could draw, and she spread out all of her drawings on the kitchen table to show her mother, who seemed impressed.
    “I thought I might try something a little more ambitious,” Dana began, hesitantly, and was rewarded with a surprised and approving smile. Encouraged, she went on, “I rather thought I might get together a collection of my wildlife drawings and do them in ink, perhaps splashing a little colour on a few. It would be hard work, I—I’ve never worked in ink before, but it sounds fun, doesn’t it?”
    “You know how I respect your work, Dana,” her mother replied, leaning against the kitchen counter and letting her eyes roam over the various sketches while she sipped from a coffee cup. “And you know that you’re good.