Chapters 6-10

***

CHAPTER 6

Back at the bar. Back at the back bar in the bar in which I was back. How's that go? As much as things change, they also stay the same?

It was true that the "same" was me in the same drinking establishment that I had found a few nights back when I was looking for a fun time before the whole group joined up here in Florida for the hurricane relief spring break project.

And the "change"? Last time, I was drinking by myself -- well, by myself with strangers. This time -- I was surrounded by everyone with whom I had been working these past few days, and the locals who had assisted, and even Laura, one of the people who had a house that we had started to fix.

It was time to let loose -- and to celebrate -- and to drink. I had pushed from my mind what had happened the last time I was here -- and how it had validated the other experience I had had on the plane ride down. I was able to just enjoy the moments as they passed, unconcerned that I had apparently uncovered a new skill on this trip. I didn't have to worry about being haunted by any of the images and memories I had "taken" from those unhappy strangers. I could just relax and have a good time ... and drink.

Even though that was the task at hand, I was still more comfortable positioning myself on a stool where I could watch everything unfold around me -- where I could see my friends laughing and shooting pool and throwing darts and enjoying each other's company. I had the chance to observe who was having a special moment with whom ... and who looked at someone just a little too long ... and who was the fastest to notice that drinks needed to be refilled and who jumped at the chance to get to the bar first.

I could see Mattie exceedingly happy that his fake ID had gotten him in and gotten him served ... and I could see Joey off to the side, finding somewhere where he could nurse his drink and immerse himself in the screen of his cell phone.

I could see that the whole of our group took up most of the bar -- but that there were some strangers with whom we were sharing the space. Including a stranger who wasn't a stranger at all as I looked more closely -- well, not exactly a stranger -- because, there, on the opposite side of the bar from where I would have expected to find him, drinking as just another customer, was Mario, my bartender from the other night.

***

"Hey kiddo! Back for more, huh?"

Mario, whom I had just spotted in this bar where he was bartending a few nights ago, had worked his way through the crowd and back to where I was sitting.

"You're not working tonight?" I asked.

"Not exactly. I mean -- I'm definitely drinking tonight. This side of the bar."

I pointed to his forearm, where it looked like the cut had healed. "All better?"

"Yeah ... it was just a piece of glass. It bled for a bit, but it's fine now -- don't even need a band-aid any more. Speaking of which ..."

Uh-oh. I had promised myself that tonight was going to be about relaxing and having fun and not thinking about what had come before. I shouldn't have brought up his wound from the disturbance.

Mario continued. "That guy has been in here every night looking for you -- so ... don't be surprised if you see him."

I felt like he was judging my reaction -- trying to read me before he said anything else. I tried not to display any concern, and my attempt to disguise my true feelings must have worked, because he kept on going, this time leaning in, preparing me for the fact that the next comments he was about to make would be a little more secretive.

"I just want you to know -- I get that he drinks a lot, but he's told me some strange things about the night he broke up with his girlfriend. Strange things about you ..."

His voice trailed off. By the way he was staring at me, I knew that he was expecting me to respond. I took a deep breath and decided to carefully play along to see what I could learn.

***

I needed a long pause (it practically felt like the length of this whole vacation., but I know it was just a few seconds) ... and then I replied to Mario. "Why whatever do you mean?"

In retrospect, I have no idea why the words came out like I was a resident of Tara in the deep south during the Civil War. My mind was scrambling trying to anticipate that someone else might know my secret. I expected that two people knew -- the guy from the airplane, Lee's grandfather, and the guy from this very bar just a few nights before, he who was having a baby with his ex-girlfriend's sister -- but I had counted on the fact that they both were strangers whom I'd never see again (except maybe the bar guy on an upcoming episode of a sleazy daytime talk show).

Now here was Mario, standing in front of me and telling me that the bar guy was not only looking for me, but that he might show up at this celebration for the end of our service project, and that he was talking about the "experience" we had had.

Mario continued. "Like I said -- he's almost always drunk, and that's even before he shows up here, so I figure he's just going a little nuts having broken up with his girlfriend."

"Yeah, that must be hard for him." I liked where this conversation was going. I could chalk it up to an excess of alcohol and erase any doubts from Mario's mind that there was truth to the tales.

"Actually -- that's the strange part. He seems to have taken things pretty well -- he's kind of a happy drunk, unlike when he first stopped by. But his eyes have a glaze to them now, and he's focused on one thing --"

I had a feeling by the way he paused that my just-hatched plan might not work after all. I could tell something else was coming. He leaned in even closer now, and lowered his voice even more than he had when he started this part of the story, practically now to a whisper.

"He's focused on you. He says ... he says that you took his memories."

There it was. The moment of truth. What could I possibly say to get out of this predicament? Should I go back to blaming it on the hooch? Just flat out deny it as the rantings of a crazy man? Come clean about my new talent?

I laughed nervously and shook my head.

***

"That doesn't make any sense."

It was the best I could do -- to try to debunk the ramblings of a drunk.

Mario responded. "I agree. It's just that he's so intense. So adamant."

"Has he explained what he means?"

If I couldn't escape this, maybe I could at least learn from it -- well, second hand information, but information all the same.

"It's hard to follow him. At first he was just saying that you took something from him. I thought that maybe he dropped his phone or you grabbed his jacket or something like that. By the end of the night, I finally got him to tell me that it was his ... " Mario's voice returned to a whisper again. " ... his memories that he was talking about."

There was that quizzical look. I couldn't tell if he was just amused at the absurdity of the claim or if he was actually pushing the issue because he believed something had happened. I shifted in my seat, took a swig of my drink and used the napkin to wipe the sweat off of my brow.

"Well --"

I had no chance to finish. A door to a back room opened up suddenly and a woman stepped out. "Mario!" she yelled. "Why are you in here again? Come to the back ..."

Mario looked like he had been caught doing something. "Gotta go -- I'll be back."

I didn't know who this woman was, but I owed her a drink for giving me more time to think this through.

***

"SHOTS! -- You in?"

It was Mattie ... and those were small doses of powerful alcohol about which he was speaking -- as opposed to random gunfire (which would also explain why none of us hit the ground when he yelled it out).

"Are you buying?" I asked a bit incredulously. I mean I realized that he had gotten into this bar with his fake ID, but it seemed like he would be tempting fate if he were to suddenly become chief shot purchaser.

"No, no. Not me. I'm just ... coordinatin'." he answered with a wink. "Play to your strengths, right?"

"Right -- and stay out of trouble, mostly ..." I decided to add to his party philosophy for the evening. "Anyway -- sure -- count me in for the round!"

It looked like the theme of the night was going to be about trying to not have to ask or answer questions if at all possible. I don't know who bought them, or how many of us were participating in the round -- and I didn't ask. I just know that Mattie returned with some kind of concoction and I clinked my glass to his, threw it back before I could dissect its components and slammed my empty shot on the bar counter twice. Whatever it was wasn't exactly smooth, as I recall shaking my head afterwards and raising my eyebrows and letting out a little "woo" sound.

"What *was* that?" I queried.

"No. Idea. But I liked it." Mattie broke into a big grin -- and then just as quickly, he got serious. "But hey -- I just wanted to make sure that I mentioned that I really appreciated how you accepted me into the group."

I nodded my head and smiled. I didn't have the heart to tell him that we were really just thrown together into one work group because we didn't have skills like everyone else in our cadre did.

"I was worried, since I was younger than everyone else, that I wouldn't fit in and that it would be awkward. But you and Joey never made me feel that way."

"Ah -- it was nothing." I gave my best golly-gee-whiz-awww-shucks facial expression, but the reality was that I couldn't have been stating things more literally if I had tried.

Then he leaned in and lowered his voice -- the second person to do that while talking to me in the last ten minutes. I began to think that I was putting off some kind of conspiratorial vibe. "Did you hear about what happened with Joey?"

***

"Well -- that depends. I guess he's been through a lot." I wasn't sure how much Mattie knew of the morning that I was late to the project because I was dealing with Joey and his whole family situation, so I decided to respond to his question a little more guardedly.

Mattie went on, still leaned in and still in a voice just above a whisper. "I guess someone overheard him yelling at someone on the phone."

I couldn't help it. Before I could stop myself, I chuckled a little.

"What's so funny?" asked Mattie.

"I didn't mean to laugh. It's just that, if I hadn't been assigned to his work group, I'd have assumed that's all he does. Let's face it -- he's been angry and on the phone for a good part of this trip." I paused. "So what did someone hear -- or what did someone tell you someone overheard."

"Apparently, he doesn't have a way home."

"What?" That was a surprise. Especially this late in the project.

"There was some kind of confusion over this being his punishment and the arrangement with the dean. The school was paying for him to come down to Florida, but he was supposed to pay for the other half of the trip -- seeing as how it was forced on him after he caused the damage to the school property and all -- I guess they were 'splitting the cost' and he didn't realize it."

Now it all made sense. When I had told him earlier in the restaurant parking lot that I was driving back to campus now that I had been given one of Laura's daughter's dog's puppies, I thought he seemed interested. But, of course, he was too stubborn to say anything. And *that* must have been the phone call I had seen him on when he was acting all agitated -- he must have been talking to the dean.

"So I guess you knew?"

Mattie must have interpreted my silence as I connected the dots in my head as a sign that I was already in the know. "No. Not really. I knew bits and pieces I think without really knowing the whole picture. So -- what's he going to do?"

Mattie shook his head and shrugged his shoulders. "I don't know. I don't know if he knows. I would think he has to ask his parents for the cash."

"Oh no -- not his moms." I'm not sure why I said that out loud -- but I was already back to the poolside conversation we had had and that was what he had called her.

"His moms -- do you know her?" Mattie turned his face to the side like a puppy dog who had just heard an unfamiliar sound coming from his owner.

It was my turn to shake my head. "No -- long story. Where is he now?"

Mattie grinned again, like he was doing before he started this part of the tale. "You know where he is. Outside in the parking lot on his cell phone, I'm sure."

***

"What to do, what to do ..."

I didn't say that out loud, but I was definitely mapping out my options in my head. And I was probably tapping my fingers on the bar in rhythm with the repeated phrasings as they played out internally.

I could wait here for bartender Mario to return from wherever he went in the back of the bar to see if he would tell me more about the stranger that had become a recurring customer trying to track me down.

OR ... I could devise a plan to hide from said stranger should he interrupt our group's get-together.

OR ... I could continue my conspiratorial conversation with Mattie, and embrace my gossip-king image.

OR ... I could seek out other members of our party and find out what scuttlebutt they had to share.

OR ... I could go out to the parking lot and see what new irritation was causing Joey to be on his cell phone, yet again separated from the group and yet again expressing his anger to any who might be close enough to observe and overhear.

OR ... I could find a stranger and touch him or her in such a way as to see if my talent for absorbing people's painful memories was in full bloom for the evening, thereby adding a third such encounter to the list of interactions that had occurred on this trip.

OR ... I could just do what people do when they are celebrating in a bar and order a new drink.

As it turned out, all that brain consternation was for naught, as what I was about to do was decided for me, by none other than Laura, who walked up to Mattie and I with a round of beers for the three of us.

***

"What are you two doing with empty drinks? This is a party!" Laura delivered the next round with attitude and a little bit of judgment. "Cheers!"

Mattie and I clicked our bottles with hers and we each took a swig.

"You two looked so serious. What were you talking about? Everything OK? Worried about the puppy dog?" 

I had noted before that she spoke quickly ... but, while under the influence, she was approaching a speed that was making my head bounce as I tried to follow along. Before Mattie or I could reply, she was already moving on to the next thought.

"I can guarantee you that my daughter is taking good care of little Gator. All you have to worry about is stopping by tomorrow on your way out of town to pick him up. I heard you're driving now instead of flying?"

Once again, by the time I took a breath to answer, it was too late, as she was continuing on without waiting for a response.

"You know what else I heard?"

By this time, I knew to treat that as a rhetorical question.

"I heard that Joey's situation changed at the last minute, and he no longer has a flight home. Maybe he could ride with you and Gator?"

Again, I was aware that that wasn't necessarily a question for me, per se.

"I'll go find him!"

She turned around and left as quickly as she had arrived, passing Mario, who had emerged from the back room with a very serious look on his face. I watched him pause and gather himself, and then head right for me and Mattie.

***

"Hey -- can I talk to you?"

Mario seemed a changed soul since he had disappeared into the bowels of the bar, and he asked that question with a sadness and an urgency that I wasn't expecting.

I turned to Mattie. "Can you give me a minute?" 

Mattie and I exchanged glances, and I did my best to communicate that things were fine and that I just needed privacy. Of course, that's what I was trying to get across to him, but since this new skill set that I had discovered on this trip didn't include telepathy -- or at least it didn't yet in any way that I could control it -- I could only hope he was intuitive enough to grasp that this conversation that needed to happen needed to happen in private. One way or another, he got the hint and stepped away.

"What's up?" I was worried that we were going to revisit the story of the stalker that had been coming into this bar where he worked to find me.

"I gotta go. She's making me leave."

"She?"

"That was my manager." He fidgeted for a moment. "She says that I was wrong for serving the drunk the night you were in here, and so I'm on probation -- and, being on probation, I'm not supposed to be in here even as a customer."

I couldn't quite get why he was sharing this with me. I had just met him the other night, and although there was the odd series of events and that stranger that now connected us, he seemed to be baring his soul. And then it hit me. Maybe he wanted me to help him get out of trouble.

"Do you want me to talk with her? I can tell her my side of the story and share everything I observed ...:"

"Don't do that." He interrupted very quickly to chase that thought from my mind. Back to square one -- I was still at a loss as to why he was telling me all of this.

***

"It just couldn't have come at a worse time."

Mario was continuing to commiserate with me about the probation he had just been given by his boss.

"I just moved into a new apartment -- and my sister was laid off from work because she got hurt ... and her disability case is still winding its way through the system."

Once again, I was second-guessing why he was sharing the story with me -- as I still thought of myself as mostly a stranger. Did he think I was some rich kid on vacation and he was going to shake me down for some cash?

"Well did she say when you can return to work?" In case that was his motive, I decided I should focus his thoughts on the fact that this was likely just a temporary setback.

"Not really. I have to come in for another meeting next week, and she said she'll know more then." He shook his head dejectedly. "But if they decide I'm a liability and a risk, they probably won't let me back." Another head shake. "I don't know what I'm going to do."

I wasn't sure how to respond, so I just let the awkward silence linger. Should I tell him that I didn't know what he was going to do either -- but that, since I was expecting to leave the state in the morning, I didn't really see it as my problem? In the end, I did what I thought anyone would do in that situation.

"Can I buy you a beer?" I asked, in hopes that it would interrupt the scene. I briefly considered how one offers a toast or a cheers to an unknown future, but then I didn't have to.

"Oh no -- I can't. She told me I can't drink here at all. Hey -- I might be back -- I see someone over there I have to say goodbye to ..."

With that, he extended his hand -- and, without considering the consequences, I grabbed it to shake it. It seemed like the right thing to do with the guy for whom I was about to buy alcohol.

And true to form when it came to this trip, I immediately started to experience a transfer of his memories.

***

It was such a natural thing to do -- to shake his hand. If I had only thought before I had done it ... but the drinking had probably dulled my instincts a little, and so I was now paying the price.

Mario and I made eye contact, and on each upward and downward shake of our connected hands, more and more of his memories were downloading into my head. I absorbed his emotion from the meeting that had just happened in the back of the bar with his boss, and I took in his apprehension about how he would afford his new apartment, and his concern over not being able to help his sister. Moment after moment replayed as each one transferred from his brain to mine.

It was all happening so quickly, just as it had done the last two times -- well, the first two times to be more accurate -- but bits and pieces were clearly coming through in rapid succession. Unexpectedly, there was a shame that was present that was also washing over me -- and as I focused on the details of this transaction between us, I realized that I was learning that his probation was not due to being accused of over-serving the drunken stranger we had all met earlier that week, but because he had been caught taking home bottles of alcohol when he closed the bar.

Neither one of us could look away, so I could definitely see that he was aware of all that was happening -- and he was aware that he couldn't stop the truth from flowing since I was reliving the moments he had just experienced. I felt his grip tighten and I saw his eyes narrow as he stared at me, trying to make sense of what was happening, a prisoner to this exchange.

I was a few seconds away from yelling out in pain as he was crushing my hand while he was wrapped up in the intensity of the moment, and then, as quickly as it had started, it was over. And just like before, the silence was just as powerful. We withdrew our hands -- me shaking mine in pain, and him letting it drop to his side. My body returned to a more normal state, and my breathing recovered. I became more aware of my surroundings, and was instantly grateful that, being in the crowded bar, no one had noticed anything out of sorts.

A strange grin showed up on Mario's face, and he continued to not take his eyes off of mine. Finally, he spoke ... "That drunk was telling the truth ... you're a ..." His voice trailed off as he searched for the right word. "A ... freak. How did you do that? Hell -- *what* did you do?"

He finally broke his gaze to look around, quickly drawing the same conclusion that I had just drawn -- that no one nearby was any wiser to what had just occurred. He was clearly thinking to himself ... slowly and purposefully ... each part of his processing evident as it was momentarily etched on his face. His mouth was agape and I thought he was going to hurt himself from concentrating so hard, but then he finally closed it and I knew he was ready to talk with me again.

"And why do I feel so good?"

I shrugged my shoulders, trying to communicate that I had no answers to his questions. I stood as still as I could, waiting for him to make the next move. Suddenly there was a flurry of activity, but, surprisingly, it was coming from just behind him.

***

"Why are you still following me!"

The hubbub directly behind Mario heralded the return of Joey from having been outside on his phone, surely having gotten agitated again, and apparently now being chased indoors by Laura -- who, in her defense, had told me she was going to go get him just moments before.

Mario stepped off to the side to avoid getting run over by a rapidly moving Joey, who spun around to confront Laura face to face, demanding an answer to his question.

"I can help. I don't know why you are being so stubborn." Laura seemed exasperated, even though she had only been gone just a few moments.

"I didn't ask for your help. I don't want your help. I don't need your help." Knowing what I knew of his past, I recognized that this had probably been his mantra from the last few years -- his creed -- his coping mechanism for the hand that life had dealt him.

"That's just stupid." Clearly Laura was applying her experience in raising her daughter to the Joey situation at hand. "And ridiculous. And kind of rude." I could see a tear roll down her cheek. "Have you learned nothing from being here these past few days. Do you think I would have chosen a life that meant becoming the charity case for you and your college friends ... someone in need of rescue?"

Joey stared her down, not answering. I had seen this look in his eyes before -- the morning we were late to the work site and had talked by the pool -- the time I thought he was going to attack me in anger. I contemplated whether I should get up and get involved.

Laura continued her speech.. "When help is offered, you take it. It doesn't make you weak. It's what makes all of us strong. It binds us together as a community of people. Who are you to interfere with what makes everyone better?"

The tone had taken a turn -- and I wasn't convinced that this was the pep talk Joey needed to hear. Or maybe it was, and no one had ever taken the time to yell at him in this manner. And then she threw the gasoline can directly onto the blazing fire -- well, verbally speaking, that is -- with her summing up statement.

"Grow up."

With that, I couldn't take the chance that he would react in anger just like I had seen him do so far on this trip. I jumped up from my seat, knocking over my bar stool, and lunged to get between them.

***

I had broken my own rule about just liking to watch drunk people in bars and to not get involved -- but I was afraid that Joey was so angry that he would attack Laura.

And so, up I went, knocking over my bar stool and finding myself between the two of them. As the crowded establishment began to take notice of the argument that was happening (the sound of the falling bar stool drawing much more attention than the heated words that had been exchanged), I could see that Mario was caught in an awkward position.

"You and I. We're not done talking about this," I heard him say to me from the place he was standing to the side of the disturbance. "But I can't stick around and get in any more trouble -- and trouble follows you everywhere it seems -- so I'm out of here." With that, he slipped away in the opposite direction from the crowd that had started to form.

"Joey. Joey!"

I was trying to break the tension, to get his attention, and to stop him from exploding in anger, as was his normal behavior when pressed like this. Instead, he just stood there, one arm in the sling from his original outburst back on campus, the other hand bandaged from the day before -- his eyes glazed over, his cheeks and the exposed part of his neck and chest glowing a bright red. I was standing close enough that I could sense that he had tensed every muscle, and he was clenching his jaw with the intensity I assumed he normally reserved for his fists. At that moment, I was glad that he was so bandaged -- it was practically a straight jacket to keep him in line and to minimize whatever damage he was intent on causing.

"She was only trying to help." I prayed that my attempt at reason would calm the beast. But had I had more time, I would have realized that the word 'help' was an antagonizing word and the last thing he wanted to hear.

He finally spoke -- a quiet angry tone with each word delivered as the equivalent of a slap across the face. "Just like you, right? You're going to help, too, aren't you? Ride in here on your white horse and save me from myself and offer me a way home." He gestured wildly around the room with his slingless arm -- "Just like all of these goodie two-shoes, coming down to Florida to help the poor victims. But, you know, just for three days -- and then they all get to have a celebratory party so that everyone can feel good about themselves and how much better they are than anyone else. Oh yeah -- help. That's what you want to do ..."

It might have been the most that kid had ever said to date ... to any of us. That was the thought that passed through my mind, ever so fleetly, as I instantly started to try to predict his next move. I decided not to engage in his diatribe ... to just let him vent ... and so we found each other, yet again, in a stare down of sorts with each of us facing the unknown outcome of our engagement.

***

One ... two ... three ...

Since we had reached an impasse -- mostly because of my decision to not respond to his rant -- I was counting to ten, because someone somewhere told me that taking a breath and counting to ten would diffuse a situation like the one we were in.

Four ... five ... six ...

I never made it to seven. And it all happened so quickly that my reflexes were robbed of any response. Instead, Joey raised the bandaged hand -- on the arm that wasn't in the sling -- and he reached out and slammed into my shoulder and pushed me backwards with all of his coiled up strength. Accompanying his actions, he threw in a screamed "Get out of my way!" for good measure.

What he hadn't counted on -- because he had no way of knowing -- was that the contact he made with me was enough to activate this new talent of mine. The difference though, was that this time, it was so fleeting a connection of person to person that the memories being transferred to me were jumbled more than usual. And then there was the buzz from the alcohol -- present with both parties -- that was clearly interfering. Plus the fact that I had just gone through this exact same thing with Mario, and my body had barely had time to recover.

I didn't feel physical pain where he had pushed me -- it was open handed instead of a punch -- but the overall shock to my system was affecting me unexpectedly. Image after image flashed through my head, and I couldn't process them fast enough to understand what I was seeing. But the sights didn't matter, it was the emotion -- such anger and frustration and disappointment and loneliness -- each one feeding off the other, each one amplified in my brain and then coursing throughout all of my body's systems.

Joey had made it just a few paces, and then he turned around slowly and stared at me. I was used to that expression now as this was the fourth time this had happened between me and someone since this vacation had started. Even though I had said how little I knew -- or anyone knew -- about Joey's present situation (or his past for that matter), of the four with whom I had had this exchange, he was the one about whom I knew the most.

And I was paying the price for that knowledge. I felt my knees buckle, and I started to drop toward the ground.

***

I grabbed on to the table to keep myself from completely collapsing.

My brain hurt. My breathing was shallow. I was having difficulty focusing on the scene around me, let alone processing the pieces of Joey's memories and of his pain that I had just absorbed. I just stood there with my eyes shut, struggling toward stasis, unsure as to which part of me would feel normal again first.

The sounds around me were muffled, and so I honed in on things I could recognize -- ice being dropped into glasses, bottles being opened, pool games being started with the breaking of the balls, television shows filling in the nooks and crannies of the background noise... then voices -- laughs, whispers, story-telling -- and finally a voice at my side, a familiar voice, a female voice, a voice calling out my name.

"Alan ... Alan ... are you okay?"

I opened my eyes, slowly and squintingly, surprised that even the relative darkness of the bar was too bright for me at that moment. I turned to that voice -- to Laura -- and nodded my head. I wasn't ready to speak yet, which, of course, had never really stopped Laura before -- or now.

"Are you *sure* you're okay? I didn't see everything ... but did he hit you? In your head?"

I summoned the strength to speak. "No. He just pushed me out of the way. I'm fine -- it wasn't from him."

"Maybe when you jumped up? The bar stool fell over -- did you maybe hit something when you scrambled to intervene? I don't see any blood ..."

"No, no ... really ... I just need a moment. Where's Joey?"

"Are you feeling nauseous? Maybe you drank too much? I can get someone to help you to the bathroom. Do you feel like you have to vomit?"

"Laura -- I'll be fine. I just need a few moments. And you didn't answer me -- where's Joey?"

"I don't know ... and I don't care. He was here a minute ago, and now he's gone again. And that's fine by me. Look, I'm worried about *you*. Are you certain that you did not hit your head -- or that that jerk didn't hit you in the head."

I opened my eyes wider, grimaced at the pain, and scanned the room. My mind was racing, but I thought that maybe I needed to reconnect with Joey -- maybe this was all because the process didn't have time to finish. Maybe the brief contact when he pushed me out of the way had started something in me that had to go to fruition, and that I was stuck in limbo until I could complete it.

The faces all looked the same -- and then, over in the corner by the front door, I saw him. But not him Joey -- him the drunken stranger whom I had met a few nights earlier, and whom Mario had said was stopping in regularly to try to find me again. As far as I could tell, I saw him before he had seen me, and I knew that I was in no shape to interact with him and to admit I had no answers to the questions that he surely had to ask me.

As quickly as I could in the condition I was in, I shifted so that Laura was between him and me so that I would not be in his line of sight.

"I think I need fresh air. Can you come with me to the parking lot out back for a few moments?"

***

Haltingly, and by heeding that classic advice to just put one foot in front of the other, I executed my temporary escape, with Laura making a way through the crowded bar so that we could get out the back door and into the parking lot. I doubted that I could stay there all night long and avoid the return of Mario and to escape the stranger from my first night at this bar ... but if I could just get back on my feet again and fully recover from what had just happened, then I would have felt like I had made some kind of progress.

Besides -- I hadn't ruled out that Joey might still hold the secret to a complete return to normal, so I knew I'd have to soon return to the lions' den, but fresh air and a pause from all of the action were exactly what I thought I needed.

I leaned up against some stranger's car for some kind of support, and took in several deep breaths. Laura had been quiet on the short trip from the scene of the argument to this spot of respite, but I knew that wouldn't last long.

As such, I decided to speak first. "Thank you. I just need to clear my head. And this is perfect."

She looked at me as if she was trying to diagnose my issue. I half expected her to start checking me for blood or wounds or bodily damage of some kind, but luckily it was darker out here and so, if the thought had crossed her mind, she hadn't acted on it.

"You had me sooooo scared." As she elongated the word, I got a real sense that she was much closer to drunk-and-out-of-control than I had realized. I couldn't ignore the alcohol on her breath. It struck me that maybe that was why she was so loud with Joey.

"No, no ... I'm fine -- I'll be fine. I just got ... " I searched for the best descriptive word for how I felt -- and then it hit me ... "I just got overstimulated."

"Well, I really care about you. We both do -- me and my daughter. And there's that puppy dog at home waiting for you to claim him in the morning, so we all need you to stay healthy -- and to stay out of trouble. And if that means staying away from Joey, then that means stay awaying from him."

"Actually -- I think that part was just a big misunderstanding. We need to clear things up when the dust settles ... do you know ..." Laura put her finger up toward my face to silence me. Then she looked directly in my eyes, and I suddenly knew that she had misinterpreted my attempt to bring her outside with me alone.

"I reeeeally care about you."

I was still processing things too slowly to prevent what happened next. And so I just stood there as she grabbed my face and kissed me.

***

Of course, I should have blocked or ducked ... or dodged or bobbed or weaved or somehow diverted the action.

But since I was no prize fighter (a la Ali), I wasn't prepared to move that quickly. And I had no special Ops training, so no quick diversion just happened out of some honed instinct.

I was buzzed -- and so was she. It was unexpected -- at least for me. I had barely recovered from the toll that had been taken on my body and all its systems in the exchanges that had just occurred in the bar between me and Mario and me and Joey.

So she kissed me. And for the third time in a fifteen minute period, I was helpless to do nothing but stand there and accept the assault.

Mind you, the kiss wasn't so bad in and of itself -- it was the fact that the contact between her and I led to that recurring and unexplained phenomenon whereby I absorbed all of her painful memories. Let me tell you -- she had more than enough to share. Yet again, wave after wave of incident after incident -- all that she had disclosed over the course of the last few days -- how she became a single mother, what happened the night she was trapped in the storm, the sadness of having lost the family pet, the inability to console her daughter -- it was as if I was being beaten mercilessly by memory upon memory.

This time, there was no stopping the onslaught and no control of my reaction. My eyes rolled back in my head, and I sank to the ground next to the cars in the parking lot. The last sound I heard was Laura screaming for help ... and then ... darkness and silence ... and peace and calm from knowing that I had served my purpose and left the world a better place for having been in it.

There was no bright white light ... no walking down a tunnel toward the outstretched hands of loved ones that had gone before. There was just pitch blackness and welcoming stillness -- an absence of presence and a presence of absence. I drew one last deep breath ...

***

CHAPTER 7

... and with it, I felt like I was struggling to begin some kind of out of body experience, but my soul and my thoughts couldn't get separated from my physical being that was slumped there in the parking lot, subjected as it had been to absorbing everyone else's painful thoughts.

For a brief moment, the sights and sounds returned -- blurry and muffled to be certain.

"Somebody call an ambulance!" were the only words I could make out, and I could sense a bustle of activity at my feet.

Then I shut it all out and withdrew back to my peaceful place devoid of thought or emotion. I couldn't know for certain, but I felt pretty sure that I had to be smiling.

And I welcomed the darkness again.

***

If only that darkness would have lasted.

But no, instead I was to find myself alternating in and out of consciousness, laying there on the ground, reveling in the respite, brief as it was, and then being jolted back to the painful present to barely absorb the sounds and images around me that weren't completely formed.

First up ... the flashing lights of an ambulance pulling in to the parking lot.

Although I knew it was clearly for me, I did not rise to welcome it, nor did I greet those who were rushing to provide me with assistance.

Instead, I resisted that urge to be helpful that would have been natural for me under any other circumstances, and I allowed myself to slip back into my unconscious state ...

***

I could almost remember how I got there.

Just like I could almost remember what they were saying to me, as they tried to get me to respond.

And just like I could almost remember that I didn't recognize any faces, which made me realize that no one from the group had decided to ride along in the back of the ambulance.

I was strapped in and strapped down, undoubtedly for my own safety ... and I was attached to things, that much was clear. In my state, I fought hard to let my overactive imagination not get the better of me. Yet all I could think was that this was the end, and that I was on the gurney to accept my punishment for having stolen the memories of the strangers with whom I had interacted on this trip.

I couldn't focus enough to see into the eyes of those beside me, and so I couldn't fully answer the question of whether they were friend or foe.

I could sense a bit of panic in me as I struggled against the needle in my arm which was connected to the liquid that may or may not have been signaling the beginning of what maybe was my lethal injection. I fought to find a voice ... to scream ... to get up and out and off of this thing to which I was strapped. But I couldn't muster the energy.

And my feeble efforts were clearly having an effect on my tormentors ... or were they my saviors? I could sense them scramble as they tried new things to keep me calm, to let the liquids do whatever job it was for which they were intended.

Whatever it was, it worked, for just as quickly as the panic had arrived, it dissipated. Which meant the only way I'd know if it was death or revival would be to force myself to wake up again, sometime soon ... sometime later ... sometime after another rest ...

***

Beep. Beep. Beep.

For all I knew, it was a lullaby.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

A musical performance to which only I was invited.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

A metronome for the good of my soul.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

Sweet respite, respite and nepenthe, evermore.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

***

I had no sense of time. Actually, I had no sense of much of anything.

Which didn't mean that I didn't have to deal with sounds and images. It's just that they didn't make sense. It was still just shadowy figures and muffled voices, as it had been since I had collapsed.

Lots of them. Thankfully, my focus was gone, so everything was fleeting. 

Kids screaming while cavorting on a playground. Adults screaming at those kids. Ambulance sirens, first in the distance, and then getting closer and just disappearing. Blood on a sidewalk.

Couples fighting. Then another couple fighting, this time a different one. No, no, wait -- this was the same guy but a different female voice. A guy on a couch. Crying ... and more crying.

A guy stealing alcohol from a bar. A guy that looked so familiar, and yet I couldn't quite place him. Same guy in a heated discussion with his boss. A door flying open, that guy rushing out, and the boss following shaking her head.

More jumbled images, now so jumbled I couldn't make them all out. But strong feelings ... anger, frustration, disappointment, loneliness ... so powerful, like an emotion-kaleidoscope wreaking havoc with my brain.

I mustered all of my waning energy and I focused on not focusing. The emotional assault finally faded, only to be replaced by rain and wind and a storm ... a storm that would rock me back to sleep, a sleep deep enough to free me from having to try to make sense of it all.

***

Like an exhausted person whose head snaps back as it nods too far too fast on the way to an unexpected nap, I snapped and I was awake.

Awake but a bit disoriented, as it took me a minute to process where I was. They were familiar surroundings, but not immediately recognizable. As I looked around, I concluded that I was in the bar in Florida, on my school's service trip. Surprisingly, I wasn't sitting at the spot I thought I preferred in the back corner where I could see everyone. Not that there was an "everyone" to see, mind you, as the bar was dark and almost empty. I got the sense that it was almost closing time.

I looked to the back room and saw a bartender making a round to clean up after those that were drinking earlier that night. He seemed to be one of those bigger younger guys who spent more time in the weight room than the classroom, but his back was turned to me so I couldn't make out his face.

Alongside the bar beside me were a few dedicated drinkers like myself. I didn't want to stare, so I tried to deduce what I could by surreptitiously peeking at them in the mirrors of the establishment. There was a drunk guy engrossed in his cellphone, a sad older gentleman just staring at the ice left in his drink, a disheveled woman playing a video game in the corner and another college kid like me with his back turned staring out the window.

I realized that, as embarrassing as it was that I had apparently dozed off, I wanted one more beer before packing it in for the night. Hopefully I could still get served. I heard voices behind me, and realized that the bar employees were talking to each other.

"Mario, can you handle it from here?" asked a female voice.

Mario. Mario. That name seemed almost familiar, like these surroundings. Right, right ... he was my bartender when I had arrived.

"Yep, I got it. I'll do last call and lock this place up," he replied.

I felt like I was looking at half of a picture. Something was missing. The puzzle pieces weren't all present. I had cobwebs in my head that I needed to urgently shake out.

Mario the bartender walked around the corner of the bar, and I tried to flag him down for another beer, but he wasn't making eye contact. Maybe he had caught me dozing after all.

Still ... I just couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong, but I just didn't know what.

***

Oh that nagging feeling.

I knew I had to resolve this dissonance before I could continue. But resolution meant that I had to define the dissonance, and I just wasn't capable of doing that. Plus -- I was running out of time, as I knew that last call was about to be announced.

The bartender named Mario still hadn't responded to me, but I also realized that I had a full beer just within my reach. I guessed that I must have ordered it before I had apparently dozed off, but it was a welcome addition to the task at hand all the same.

Mario ... Mario ... I focused my hazy thoughts on that name. I knew that I knew more about him. By embracing this brain teaser, I finally stumbled on the crux of the issue. I had to determine if this was my first day in town or my last. After all, I had fractured memories of the whole trip, of having met my classmates, of having spent multiple days rebuilding a lady's house that had been damaged by the storms, of celebrating our accomplishments at this bar -- the same bar I had chosen on my first night in town on my vacation before the work had started ... when Mario was my bartender.

If this was the last night of the trip, where had everyone gone? If this was the first night of the trip, where did all those memories come from?

I turned to the drunk guy who was engrossed in his cell phone and asked him. "Hey. Excuse me, buddy ... and I already know this will sound like an odd question ... but what day is it?"

The cell phone guy didn't even look up from his texting. I tried to contort myself so that I could see the screen to see if it offered a clue, but it was just too far away, and I didn't want to add to the awkwardness of the moment.

Without an immediate answer, my mind started racing. I looked again at the disheveled woman at the end of the bar who was playing the video game, and I suddenly remembered that I knew her name. Laura. Or maybe I didn't. Had I made that up? What if everything I thought I knew about the trip that had supposedly already happened was my imagination interacting with my loneliness with a catalyst of alcohol affecting the outcome? Maybe I spent the whole of my first night in Florida sitting alone at *this* bar, making up stories about the people around me to pass the time. Mario ... the disheveled woman whose name I thought was Laura ... that other college kid who might have been that guy Joey from my fragmented memories ... even the obsessed texter ... I was now recalling real ... or fake ... bits and pieces of interactions with all of them.

I simply had to know what day it was. I turned to the other gentleman on my other side -- the older one who seemed as if he was watching his ice melt, hopeful that it would mix with the last bit of booze in the glass -- a last chance to leave no drops of alcohol behind.

"What day is it?" I implored, with an urgency in my voice that I hoped would inspire a response. And it did, as the man, if ever so briefly, interrupted his study of melting ice to look at me -- and then say nothing, and go back to his glass.

However, it was all I needed to add another piece to this puzzle. *That* was Lee's grandfather -- from the plane ride. Except, as I was putting pieces together, he wasn't ever in the bar with me. He was only in the plane. I was befuddled -- and frustrated -- and I knew the lights would be turned on soon and we'd all be sent on our way.

***

The nagging feeling I had had was now replaced by dread.

If one of these just-before-last-call guests in the bar with me was Lee's grandfather from my plane ride down to Florida, then ... maybe I was still on that plane ride and not in the bar at all.

Which meant ... maybe all these pieces of people's memories (both mine and theirs) were all just my imagination running wild, and maybe it was my wild imagination that had created this environment and put me and these people in it.

I strained to remember the last vivid experience I had had on the plane -- and then it hit me.

It was me reading and dozing and then waking as the plane lurched as we hit turbulence. I remembered white knuckling the seat arm facing the aisle and jockeying for a better position with my left elbow to get a tighter grip on that side. And then feeling the knot in my throat and the pit in my stomach, and wondering if the knot left my stomach, thus creating the pit.

For the first time, I could see the finish line of this mental puzzle in front of me -- all the pieces were coming together. Clearly, I was dead, and the bar was purgatory like that island on that TV show, and we were all waiting to move on. Which is why no one really communicated with me, despite my efforts to talk to the bartender and the obsessed texter beside me. I was stuck here ...

Emotions overwhelming me, I yelled at the top of my lungs, "We're all dead, aren't we?"

No one responded directly, but everyone slowly turned their heads to face me. Then, as if they were given some signal that I didn't see, they all opened their mouths and yelled at the same time, in the same pitch -- a wail that was assaulting my senses and nearly driving me mad. The disheveled woman at the end of the bar was the only one to move. She approached me slowly and I didn't have any power to run away and avoid her.

She reached my spot at the bar, grabbed my face by the chin and pulled me closer to her. In one quick motion ... she leaned in and licked my cheek.

***

She wasn't through with me.

The other patrons were still screaming in my direction, all in tune, sirens beckoning me to another world, and the disheveled woman who had reminded me of Laura and who had licked my cheek was still standing right in front of me. And I still couldn't move even if I had wanted to (and, I'm pretty sure that I did want to -- to escape the noise, and to flee the awkwardness).

Next, she licked my chin, and then moved back to slowly nibble on my ear.

I'd say it caught me off guard, but let's face it, I'd been getting accustomed to the fact that I was existing in a permanent state of being caught off guard now for most of the hours and days I could almost kind of remember since this adventure started.

I wasn't being turned on per se, and I wasn't being grossed out per other se, but I was keenly aware of being in that moment and not knowing from where the next moment would come.

Around me, the wail reached a crescendo, and the absurdity of the bizarre moment gave way to the very realistic understanding that this was kind of a ticklish experience. I couldn't hold it back any longer, so I just closed my eyes and started to giggle.

I embraced the fact that I was losing my mind ... and I gave in to the laughter. Regardless of where that next moment would come, I was going to go into it in good spirits, courtesy of an ear nibble.

Such was my life ... or, if my most recent theories were right ... such was my afterlife.

***

Nibble nibble. Tickle tickle. Giggle giggle.

With that, I opened my eyes to a bundle of energy I recognized even if I had only spent a few moments with him -- Gator, my recently acquired pit bull puppy, was crawling all over my head and having his way with my ear.

It took a moment or two until I could look beyond what was happening *literally* in front of my face, but when I did, I came to the slow realization that I was in a hospital bed and it was daylight.

I stared at Gator, and he returned my gaze. Maybe he was as surprised as I was that my eyes were now opened. Regardless, I felt like he wanted to tell me something, like he could clue me in to whatever had happened ... although, let's face it, he probably just wanted me to explain why the salt from my sweat reminded him so much of bacon but yet he couldn't actually bite into my earlobe as he hoped.

Before I could interpret any more of the look that was boring into my soul, someone came over and grabbed Gator before he slipped off the bed, and dropped him into a small crate in the corner. To my surprise, it was Joey.

"I should get someone now that you're awake," he mumbled.

"Joey -- wait. Where am I?"

He looked around before he answered, gesturing broadly. "The hospital, obviously."

"Right, right ... I mean, clearly. But how did I get here? And how did Gator get here?"

"Ambulance ... and 'cause I borrowed him from Laura."

I forgot that Joey was a man of few words. He was not going to be a part of the process by which I figured all of this out.

I said what came first into my mind, not thinking of how it might sound. "And why are *you* here?"

His reply definitely wasn't an answer to the question I asked, but more a judgment on my line of questioning: "Dick."

He spit out the insult and walked out of the room. I took a deep breath, glad to be alive and outside from within my own haunted head, but feeling like there were still many answers I needed to uncover.

***

Joey returned to my hospital room soon enough, this time with a young nurse in tow.

She practically was squealing, "It worked! It worked!"

In short order, she took charge of the situation -- but not quite in the way I expected. "Ok ... so I want to get a picture really quick of him awake with the dog. Joey, you grab Gator and put him back on his chest, and I'll just snap a quick photo."

Joey did as he was instructed, and soon I had a ball of energy licking at my face again.

"Joey, you have to hold him there but try to hide your arm to stay out of the frame. And ... 1 ... 2 ... 3 ..." She took a picture, but, from her expression, clearly didn't like it. "He's wiggling around too much. Can you make him stop?"

Joey let out a loud "Hey!", and Gator froze. The nurse got her photo, and me, I felt a new warmth trickle down through my hospital gown and onto the bed.

"Perfect!", squealed the nurse again.

I finally spoke up. "Ummm ... Hi. I don't know your name, but I'm pretty sure that Joey scared the puppy when he yelled. I'm glad you got the perfect photo and all, but I'm pretty sure Gator ... uh ... relieved himself on me."

"Oh my -- so sorry. My name is Rochelle, and I'm on duty right now." She pointed to a whiteboard at the end of my bed that had been updated with times and names. "Let me get you a new gown -- I'll be right back." She turned to Joey, and continued, playfully now instead of professionally (or what had posed as professionally a moment ago when she was focusing on her photography and I was getting pissed on by my puppy), "... and you, mister, need to sneak him back out of here in the crate."

For a brief moment of panic, I pictured a crate into which Joey would be placing me. But, of course, she was referring to the dog, and, again, Joey did exactly as he was told.

Not knowing if or when he'd be coming back, I wanted to at least try to get an explanation. "Joey -- what the hell just happened?"

Unfazed, he looked at me and answered very matter-of-factly. "I saw something online about a cat that went to nursing homes and it would choose which bed to sleep on by somehow knowing who was next to die. I thought I'd try the same thing with your puppy, and if he decided to sleep on your bed, then I was going to assume the same and not stick around here any more, you know ... 'cause ... you'd soon be dead. But hey -- who knew? It looks like you're going to live."

***

Joey was clearly in a hurry to get out of the hospital room, but I was still hoping to get some more information out of him.

"So ... you say you were using Gator to check my chances for living ... to determine if you were going to stick around ... but what did that matter to you?"

He stopped just shy of the little hallway leading past the bathroom and out the door. "Don't read too much into it, dude. I have a deal with the dean."

I wasn't surprised to conclude that I was going to have to approach this as a teeth-pulling exercise. "A deal? About what?"

"Did whatever she did to you make you lose your memory too?" was his less than helpful reply.

"She? Who do you mean? The dean?"

"Laura. In the parking lot. When you collapsed at our party and you got carted away in an ambulance."

Those pieces were slowly coming back to me, and now I had to chance to start to figure out what had actually happened, and what was just in my mind.

"I saw her today when I picked up the puppy, and she said she was too embarrassed to come in to see you. Something about some word I had never heard." He paused and then repeated the word syllabus by syllabus in the way that he must have gotten himself to remember it. "Suck. You. Bus."

He must have found the word itself comical, because he started to grin and said, "And if that means what I think it does, and that explains what she was doing to you out in the parking lot, then I'd give you a high five if my hands weren't full -- and if you weren't sick with whatever you got from her."

I weighed priorities -- should I educate him and redirect his understanding of what happened in the parking lot behind the bar that night, or should I proceed with trying to satisfy my need for more information. What came out was more of a stutter ... "Well ... no ... I ... we ... that's not what ... "

Sputtering as I was, I decided to use whatever time I had before he left with one more chance to understand more about why he was in my hospital room in the first place.

"Wait, wait. Don't go yet. The 'deal with the dean'. What's that mean?"

***

"Hey -- don't get so worked up, or you're going to slip out of consciousness again."

Contrary to Joey's evaluation, I wasn't at risk ... I just wanted answers. Luckily, he continued.

"It's exactly as it sounds. I made a deal with the dean. I don't know if you remember, but I had lost my way home over some mis-communication about the extent of this service trip being my punishment for my wildin' out on campus. Well, when you went down in the parking lot, or the other way around if you know what I mean, I saw an opportunity and seized it."

So this is what it feels like to be a pawn in someone else's game, I thought to myself. And I so need to explain to him what a Succubus is, I also thought.

"So long as I deliver you back to campus, my trip back will be subsidized again after all by the school. And since you already planned to rent the car and drive back because of this guy ..." He stopped to gently wave the crate with Gator in it in front of me. "It looks like I'm going to be able to pocket that money!"

Oddly enough, it all kind of made sense to me. Even if I was kind of being taken advantage of.

"You just have to hurry up and get better and discharged, and then I'll be sitting shotgun and making sure that you don't try to die again, especially as, you know, I'd need to grab the wheel in that scenario."

More pieces to the puzzle. I remembered that I had offered him a ride home with me that night in the bar, and he was too angry to accept. So, same outcome, but on his terms, I guess. Whatever.

"Right now -- I have to get out of here, because I don't want Nurse Rochelle to get in trouble, and because I have to get Gator back to Laura."

Unexpectedly, he had one more comment to add to the explanation. He looked over the top of the sunglasses he was wearing and made direct eye contact, dropping his voice so that no one else could hear.

"Besides ... you and I have unfinished business. You know, about how you violated me in the bar."

He didn't wait for a response, which was a good thing, since I had none to offer. He pushed up his glasses, and left without saying another word.

***

"Is Joey still here?"

Nurse Rochelle was back in my room and back at my bedside. Thankfully, she had a fresh gown and bed linens.

"You literally *just* missed him," I replied. "He's sneaking the puppy back out of here. What was that about anyway?"

"First things first. Let's get you out of that and into something new before the doctor comes in to see you. Why don't you take this in to the bathroom and I'll change out the bed."

Hey -- who was I to push things any further. Answers were coming in bits and pieces, anyway, so it wasn't so much a surprise that this wasn't any different. I did as she told me, and wheeled myself into the facilities to swap gowns. By the time I was done, she had already taken care of the bedding.

"So now you can lay back down and I can check your vitals. We've notified the doctor that you've awakened, and someone will be here soon to answer all of your questions." She put the thermometer in my mouth. "If I could just ask for one favor -- and that's please don't bring up the dog."

I attempted to say the word "why", but I couldn't quite enunciate. I could see she was able to guess what I was trying to say all the same.

"I'm doing a paper for school on dog therapy in hospitals and nursing homes. Don't worry, I'll be changing your name to make it anonymous and blurring your face out of the photo. I'm planning to work your situation into my project, because, what can I say, I'm an overachiever and this is bound to get me an A." She smiled widely at me and reclaimed the equipment that had been in my mouth.

"So ... how do you know Joey?" she continued, clearly ready to change the subject.

"He goes to school with me up in Pennsylvania," I offered.

"Well, he's very nice. He told me all about your situation when we went out after work last night -- I mean, that's how I found out about the dog in the first place. Is he coming back soon?"

It struck me that I was really quite the windfall for Joey. In addition to the money from the dean he had just told me he'd be pocketing to get me back to school in one piece, it seems like he was using me as if I was some kind of wing man, albeit an atypical one at that.

Before I could affirm that yes, he would be back, a doctor walked in. "What is that smell?" was the first thing he said, something I imagine he might actually say a lot in a hospital setting such as this. Rochelle quickly gathered up the soiled items, and scurried out of the room.

The doctor approached my bedside. "Hi, my name is Dr. Bittles. I imagine you have a few questions. And if you don't, I most surely do ..."

***

"Let's start with the obvious. How much had you been drinking?"

This doctor was getting right to the point. Right to the wrong point, but, hey, what did he know. I decided that I might have to play this all close to the vest, so that he didn't have me committed to whatever was the state mental institution in Florida -- if I disclosed what had actually happened the night I overdosed on stealingother people's painful memories.

"It wasn't quite like that --" was all I could reply before he cut me off.

Standing at the computer that obviously stored my records, he clicked through the keystrokes in a rapid fire fashion. "Young man, you were brought here from the parking lot of a bar after midnight. Do you think you're the first out of stater who comes to Florida for spring break and ends up in our emergency room? You may not be able to imagine it, but I was your age once."

I quickly did the math, and I figured he was my age about forty years earlier. But that wasn't something I was going to try to confirm. "Well, yes, I was at a bar. But I didn't have *that* much to drink. It was a party for our service group."

He didn't necessarily acknowledge my attempted defense, as he kept on reading more information on the screen. "Speaking of that project, how about you tell me how much you had been drinking in that time frame that was or wasn't alcohol."

"Well, it was awfully hot at the work site, but I tried to stay hydrated." I know I remembered drinking lots of water.

"And ... any drugs? How much partying were you doing at these parties?"

I struggled with how to answer. Should I tell him about the sleeping pills that Joey had slipped to me so that I could avoid those nightmares I was having?

"No, no, no -- nothing like that."

"Sure," was all he said. Having just met him, I couldn't tell if it was "Sure, I believe you" or "Sure, I was young during the time frame that you've already calculated when drugs were everywhere, so don't pretend with me."

Regardless, he was apparently finished with my questioning, as he walked over to my bedside.

"I'm going to perform a quick physical examination now. Can you sit up for me?"

***

Pokes, prods and palpations ensued.

I knew the doctor wouldn't find anything, because I knew my underlying issue wasn't physical, but I relented and let Dr. Bittles have his way with me. After all, as certain as I was that the new abilities I was developing were all mental, I did collapse when my physical body was overwhelmed, and so maybe there were corporeal manifestations of this new skill set that I didn't yet understand.

If so, this doc wasn't finding any. And, with the bias he had already disclosed against "out of state spring breakers coming to Florida to party", I can't say that I was surprised by his summarizing comments to me as he wrapped up.

"So Alan, consider this your celebrity breakdown moment. I'm going to chalk up your experience to exhaustion brought on by dehydration, exacerbated as that was by your drinking. There's nothing abnormal in your test results, and now that you've had time to sleep it off and to have some liquids forced into you via IV, you seem to be responding just fine."

I briefly thought about protesting his findings, but since I knew things I hadn't disclosed to any one, I couldn't really take him to task for what I saw as his erroneous diagnosis. Besides, this permitted me to finally put this vacation behind me, and to get out of Florida and to return to my normal life and to focus on my upcoming graduation.

"Does that mean I'll be able to get unhooked from this equipment and be discharged today?" I asked.

"I'm starting that paperwork right now. Someone will stop by with things for you to sign, and you should be out of here within a few hours. Do you have any questions for me?"

"Nope. Thanks. I appreciate it. I'm good."

He seemed just as happy to be leaving as I was to see him go. "Fair enough. And thanks for visiting Florida. Have a safe trip home." He stuck out his hand for me to shake it, and my heart rate on the monitor started to climb. If I shook it, would we have an incident right here in the hospital? Would this delay my ability to depart?

And then the most important question of all smacked me upside the face, and caused yet another increase in the heart rate monitor -- the doctor had been touching parts of my body throughout the exam, and nothing had happened, yet touching a stranger in some manner or fashion had seemed to be a trigger in everything that happened heretofore.

When I collapsed in the parking lot, did I lose these abilities? Do I somehow have to recharge? If so, was the amount of rest I got since arriving at the hospital sufficient?

Dare I shake his hand?

***

Maybe it was the very audible reminder of the pressure I was under with regards to the heart rate monitor to which I was attached.

Maybe it was a desire to gather more and more data to try to understand the real truth about my condition.

Maybe it was just that it was so awkward with the doctor standing there, arm outstretched, waiting for a sign that I was reliving him of his duties.

Maybe it was that the handshake was the last perceived obstacle to my getting out of the hospital.

Regardless, I took a deep breath and shook his hand ... and nothing happened. Well nothing unusual happened. I mean, clearly I executed the handshake: I grasped his hand in mind, squeezed politely and gently shook our clasped hands up and down three times for good measure.

But there was no memory transfer. No rally from my physical body to deal with an onslaught of feelings and emotions. No flashes of everything painful in Dr. Bittles' life being downloaded to my brain.

With that test completed, my heart rate returned to normal. I knew that the sudden spike had been noticed by the doctor, but it looked like he was content to let it go. He paused as if he were going to comment, but decided against it and walked out, having already said his goodbyes.

Could it be that I was cured? Not that what I had done on this trip was a sickness, per se. But maybe it was all an anomaly, a fleeting glimpse at some power I might one day have, maybe something I could one day control and call it to action when I chose it to occur.

Or maybe there was something about those other interactions that was different from this one. Either this ability was already gone, or there were rules about this skill that I had to decipher. I needed to map this all out and look for patterns. I leaned over to the stand beside my hospital bed in an attempt to find paper and a writing instrument, but was startled instead when the bedside phone began to ring.

Was this the person already calling about my discharge?

"Hello?"

There was no response -- just silence. But no dial tone, either, so surely it had rung and I wasn't making that part up.

"Hello? Hello? Anyone there?"

***

I knew someone was on the other end of the line. There wasn't static and there wasn't a dial tone ... there was definitely someone breathing.

And then, someone giggling.

I decided a stern approach might do the trick. "Hello?! Hello! I'm going to hang up if you don't say anything. Who is this and what do you want?"

In the background, I could hear a voice. "Who are you talking to? What are you doing on the phone? Give me that!" And then, the voice was on the line and it was instantly recognizable to me ... "Who is this?" she said.

"Laura ... it's Alan. Was that Britney?"

Silence again. I had the distinct impression that she was considering hanging up on me.

I doubted myself for a quick minute. "This is Laura, right?"

"Hi Alan."

"Hello."

She took a deep breath. "I'm sorry. My daughter apparently called the hospital and asked for your room. Joey was just here to drop off the puppy and he mentioned that you had woken up. She must have been listening in." Having explained, she decided to continue. "So ... how are you?"

"I'm awake. Still kind of putting all the pieces back together from that night, but I'm going to be fine."

Another awkward silence. I was kind of glad that she was at a distance, over the phone instead of shuffling in front of me, not sure of what to say next. I knew that she knew that I knew that she was one of those pieces to which I had just referred. She had always been so quick talking in the past, it was like I barely recognized her.

"Sorry I wasn't there today. I was, um ..."

I finished her sentence for her. "At the worksite. Of course, I understand."

More dead air. Just as I was ready to give up and say good night and wish her well, she took the conversation in another direction.

"And I'm just so embarrassed about my behavior that night."

***

"Let's face it. I was emotional and exhausted ... and I'd been celebrating just a bit too much that night. I just wasn't myself."

As she started to pour out her take of what had happened, I wasn't sure how, in this rewrite, she'd describe the kiss -- or, more importantly for me, what happened after the kiss.

I didn't have to wait long. "I should never have done that. I'm embarrassed."

"Laura, you don't have to say anything. I understand. After all, I had been drinking as well."

It felt like we were breaking up and yet we were never really together. I half expected her to say "It's not you -- it's me!" as the next item.

"Right. But I had reallllly been drinking". She stretched out the word really, and in so doing, she finally started sounding like the bubbly Laura I had gotten to know at the worksite. "There's actually much of that night that I don't remember. Things are a bit foggy, to tell you the truth."

Hearing her describe it all just made me wonder. She was the third person at that party with whom I had interacted according to my new abilities, and there's no doubt that it was what pushed me over the edge, so maybe the whole "taking away of the painful memories" didn't really finish its download, for lack of a better word. Maybe I just gotten a glimpse of all of them and then I collapsed -- so maybe, in turn, she didn't have any understanding of what I had done. Or maybe she (and I) were just so inebriated that the process I had been experiencing was somehow diluted.

Of course, for every painful memory I may or may not have lifted from her, my collapse and me being taken away by an ambulance certainly may have just replaced whatever I had taken, resulting in some kind of sum zero situation.

I felt like I had been quiet for too long, lost in my introspection. "Don't worry about it. I get it."

She seemed just as eager to move on beyond this conversation. "So ... what's next for you? Are you getting discharged? Heading home? Can you still stop by and get your puppy?"

***

"Actually, there's someone here right now to help me with my discharge papers. I should go."

I looked around the empty hospital room, wondering if she could hear the lie in my voice.

"Right. Sure. Well, I'll talk to you later then. Joey knows how to get a hold of me, and I'll get all of the puppy dog stuff ready for your way out of town."

"Thanks," was all I could muster as a reply.

"Take care," was all she could say in return, and then our conversation was over, ending as awkwardly as it had begun.

I felt guilty for rushing her off of the phone, but I did not want to have to hash out how much I had done to her, and what she remembered, and whether she knew more than she was letting on. It was awkward enough because she had drunkenly kissed me -- I had no desire to bring in the whole "special ability" side of things into the conversation equation.

Of course, I wouldn't have that kind of trick at my disposal on the path that was ahead of me. It was going to be a long drive with Joey back to Pennsylvania and back to campus. And, since he had already made reference to the night at the bar, I had a feeling that he was going to bring it up. My only hope was that there was just no natural opening in our conversation where it would fit.

Maybe I'd be lucky and he'd listen to his own music the whole drive, earbudded up so as not to require dialogue. Or I guess I could hurry up and try to consume some newspapers or magazines to arm myself with small talk ideas.

Lee's grandfather, the angry texter, Mario the bartender, Laura ... with all of them, it happened and I never had to see them again to discuss it. Joey was going to possibly ruin my record of painful-memory-theft-hit-and-run in which I was engaging. I didn't see a way around it.

I flipped my room TV to the local news to begin my small talk homework, but I only had caught the weather before I had to entertain another visitor.

***

"Alan? May I come in?"

I replied affirmatively, and in walked my visitor, an employee of the hospital who arrived just ten minutes after I had pretended she had been there in order to rush Laura off of the phone.

"I understand you're ready to head home. Your vacation is over too soon, no?" This one seemed all business. I read her nametag that said Natasha, which I guess she thought was sufficient in that no introduction was made. She smiled, but it didn't seem authentic. Of course, this is probably what she did all day long. Print forms, put forms on clip boards, shuffle from room to room, collect signatures, go back from whene she came to file those forms, and then repeat ad nauseam.

Speaking of collecting signatures, her next statement provided just that directive. "I need you to sign here, and here, and here ..." She pointed to three Xs, and I performed my duty, sure that whatever I was adding my John Hancock to was for my own good -- or the good of those whom would fight over payment for my treatment.

She continued. "I know the doctor had stopped by earlier, but he just wanted me to remind you to get plenty of rest and hydration and to consider moderating your alcohol intake. Additionally, you should visit with your primary care physician when you get home, just in case he or she wishes to run any other tests."

"Also -- I spoke with the nurse and she said your 'friend' is coming back to get you, so if you just want to get dressed and wait here, she said he'll be along shortly". I wasn't sure if I heard the word friend in quotes, or if she actually made the air quotes when she said the word, but it struck me that people might be getting the wrong impression about me and Joey.

"And, if you don't have any other questions, that's everything we need."

I didn't have any other questions, which was a good thing, because her phrasing of her parting words was such that other questions didn't exactly seem welcome.

She gave me a moderately heartfelt "Safe travels!", and then she was gone.

I was ready to put all of this behind me. Actually, I was *more* than ready. Like a good boy, I got dressed and gathered my things.

And I waited for my 'pal' Joey to come and claim his 'friend'.

Ahead of me, I mean us -- a road trip that would put everything on the table.

***

CHAPTER 8

Like a child forgotten at the mall by his parents, I waited in my hospital room, all packed and ready to go, but without the ride on which I was relying to get me out of Florida and to get me back to Pennsylvania and my final weeks of school before graduation.

I read my discharge papers, and then re-read them, and then read them again and even looked at all of the fine print and the legal language on the third pass-through just to fill the time.

The judge show on the television came and went, although only someone paying close attention would have known, since it was followed by yet another judge show, and then, almost unbelievably, a third one. Sure there were different looks on each of the ones in charge of the courtroom, but the common thread of idiots airing their collective dirty laundry on the TV ran through each of the episodes.

I think I heard the hospital staff in the hallway talking about how sad it was that I was there alone, but that, if push came to shove, I'd be removed from the room so that someone else more deserving could be "checked in". But none of them actually came in to tell me that to my sad face.

Finally, Joey returned, and I was somewhat relieved that push didn't have to come to shove.

Feeling both well-rested and stir-crazy at the same time, I quickly got up and grabbed my things. "Hey there. Good to see you -- we need to get going, 'cause we still have to stop at Laura's house and pick up the puppy ... *and* I'd like to get as many miles behind us as we can before nightfall.".

Joey all but shushed me. "Wait a minute, kiddo. I just walked in here. Breathe ... or else you might collapse again." He winked at me, but I knew he was mocking me and not being chummy.

"Right, right, I get it. It's just that I don't want to be delayed talking to Laura and Britney, and you know how she is once she gets started."

He all but shushed me yet again. "Actually -- we won't be stopping at Laura's house."

My heart sank. Despite what she had told me on the phone earlier, had she changed her mind? Was I not going to get to keep the puppy I had named Gator as a memento of this trip after all?

***

"What's the matter with you? You look like a little boy who just lost his puppy dog!"

Um ... salt-in-the-wound much Joey, I thought to myself. Of course, what he said was exactly how I felt after he surprised me with the news that we wouldn't be stopping at Laura's house on our way out of town to claim my new pet as I had thought.

"I don't understand. I was just talking to her not that long ago. She didn't even *hint* that she was changing her mind. Besides, I don't think you're allowed to do 'takebacks' when it comes to animals." I actually think I felt tears welling up in my eyes -- and I wasn't sure if they were sad ones or angry ones.

"Oh don't be such a baby." Joey had such a way with words of comfort. "The dog's already in the car. She said I had literally just left the place she's staying at when you two talked, so she called me and had me turn right around and come get him again. She thought that made more sense."

I was speechless, in just a little bit of shock at Joey's manipulations of my feelings. Before I could articulate what an ass I thought he was, he was already moving on ... and was almost out of the room, before he spun around and tossed me a sealed blue envelope, immediately followed by the rental car keys.

"Hey -- she said to give you this card -- but you don't have time to read it now. You need to get downstairs and watch the dog. I mean, I cracked the window, but this is Florida and all, so, you know ..."

With that, he started back out the door, until I stopped him with a yelled out, "Where are you going?".

"I promised your nurse Rochelle that I'd say goodbye. I'll meet you at the car in like thirty minutes -- sixty at the most. Oh, and you should probably roll down the other window for yourself. It's hot out there."

And then he was gone. I was standing there with a card that I hadn't yet read and keys to a car that I hadn't yet driven. Nor did I even know where it was parked.

***

It wasn't exactly like I had much of a choice.

I had to wait out Joey's time with Nurse Rochelle, and I had to start by finding the rental car with my puppy inside. I picked up my belongings that now included my discharge paperwork, my card from Laura, and the car keys he had tossed to me, and I left the hospital room.

Was I cured? Well I guess that depends on how you were looking at it. I was standing upright, so that was an improvement from how I was when I had arrived. If you had asked the professionals who were treating me, I was rehydrated, and all my needs were met from a Maslow perspective. If you had asked the doctor himself, I was chastened and advised against drinking so much ever again, even though I knew that wasn't what led to my collapse in the first place.

If you asked me, I was escaping this situation without having had to disclose my secret skill to anyone, but actually that was going to problematic for two reasons. First, I had no idea if this new ability that I had uncovered on this trip to Florida was temporary, and perhaps it was now latent again based on what I had gone through during my treatment. Second, I had to drive back to my school with someone with whom I had interacted in this special way, and I couldn't see a drive of this magnitude ending without us talking about it at some point along the way.

More than all of that, my immediate task at hand was to find the car. I left the main entrance of the hospital and headed across the sidewalk to the massive parking lot. I confirmed that the key fob had a button on it, and so I realized that this should be easier than I had at first feared.

I pressed the button and listened intently, but didn't hear any response as I had hoped.

Cursing Joey ever so slightly for making this more difficult than it had to be, I ventured into the sea of cars, hitting the button every few steps. In the corner of my eye, I saw flashing lights in the distance -- but not from me having pressed the fob. It was a hospital security truck that had gathered by a small crowd who was surrounding a car.

In the pit of my stomach, I knew immediately that it had to be mine -- I mean, ours -- and I started jogging toward the commotion.

***

If only I had arrived a few moments earlier, I could have probably avoided the unpleasantness that ensued. But, I hadn't and I didn't and so I had to deal with the unfolding scene. As I got closer to the car, I affirmed that it was the rental car attached to the fob on the keys that Joey had given me, and the security guard and the small crowd got a noticeable surge of energy when they heard the beep and the sound of the unlocking doors. Almost in unison, they turned and spotted me jogging down the rows of cars in the parking lot.

The security guard was first to bellow in my direction. "Is this car yours?"

I arrived, slightly out of breath, and nodded my head.

"You arrived just in time, son. I was about to break the window."

It took me no time at all to realize that Joey had not cracked the window as he said he had. And then even less time than that, if that was humanly possible, to figure out that the small crowd was collectively not a fan of mine.

Gator, certainly unintentionally as he definitely had no way to know any better, was egging them on by jumping up and down at the windows, racing back and forth between both sides of the car, panting and smiling and yipping at the folks who had gathered around the vehicle.

"How long were you in the hospital? How long was that poor puppy without fresh air?" The guard was still bellowing, even though I was standing right in front of him.

I debated how best to explain what had happened, and how it wasn't my fault, and how Gator surely wasn't about to expire ... but my brain beat my tongue to any response, and I accepted the fact that the "villagers" had already passed judgment on me. I had been tried and found guilty in absentia, and there was no convincing anyone otherwise. I was just lucky that no one had ready access to pitchforks.

All the same, I had to respond. "It's not what it seems. I just got discharged --"

"You mean that you left him in here since you were admitted?"

I couldn't ignore the gasps and murmurings of the mini-mob. I overheard someone say, "People like that shouldn't be allowed to have dogs."

"No ... no ... this is my friend's rental car. He *just* got here to pick me up. And it's only been a few minutes."

The guard shook his head. "Sometimes, that's all it takes. You have got to be more careful."

I wanted this to end, so I tried every phrase I could to create a sense of finality. "Yes, sir. Definitely. I'm sorry. It won't happen again. I promise."

***

Thankfully, that worked. I must have appeared sincere, and, come to think of it, I *was* actually sincere, so any "appearance" of sincerity was actually 100% authentic.

Regardless, my assurances to the security guard that this would never happen again were enough for him to lumber back over to his miniature truck with the flashing lights, and to drive away. The mini-mob that had been busy judging me also slowly dispersed, although I had a brief moment of panic when I considered that the guard leaving was resulting in the guard leaving me alone with the crowd.

I took immediate action, and climbed in the car (which was, in everyone's defense, admittedly a bit too warm), and I accepted the onslaught of little puppy kisses that greeted me. I turned the key in the ignition so as to lower the windows, and I noticed a shadow on the passenger side. I tensed again for more vitriol to be directed at me.

"Hey mister. Does he want this?"

I looked up at a small girl's face, and then, after the relief came over me that it wasn't an angry adult visage in my view, noticed the bottle of water in her outstretched arm.

Smiling, I replied. "Why yes, that would be quite nice of you. I appreciate it."

"Can I pet him?"

"Sure ... of course." Truth be told, it wasn't exactly a situation where she needed to ask nor I needed to approve, as Gator had already decided she was worthy of his attention.

"What's his name?" she asked, as he settled in to gnaw on her fingers.

"Gator."

"He's really cute."

I'm not sure if it was an older sibling, or a parental unit, or what ... but the playdate ended abruptly as another woman came up behind her and pulled her away.

"Thanks for the water," I shouted as she left, but I'm not sure that she heard. She had been yanked around in the opposite direction, and the older one of unknown familial connection shocked me with a hand gesture -- not the one fingered salute, but the the double fingered 'I'm watching you' movement instead.

I couldn't help but laugh at the absurdity, and I dismissed it all and focused on the two most important tasks at hand -- getting Gator to have a drink ... and planning my revenge against Joey, assuming he was planning to show up in the next half hour as he had said.

***

In all this excitement, I almost forgot that I still had the unopened card from Laura.

Luckily, little Gator had tired himself out with all the drama of the last few minutes, and it didn't take long for him to snuggle up on my lap (that is, after I got him to drink some of the water that the little girl had just given us). I knew I had to pass the time waiting for Joey, so I moved very slowly and carefully so as not to disturb his little puppy nap to grab the blue envelope from the dashboard where I had put it.

Looking at the card, I started to believe more that what Joey had said was true and that the decision to call him back to get the puppy instead of making us both stop by on the way out of town was a hastily made one -- or at least I guessed so based on what looked like the quick scribble of "Allen" across the outside of the envelope.

I opened it up to discover a colorful card, with the words "Thank you!" in the middle of it. I peeked inside and didn't see any printed poem or formal verbiage of any kind, but, instead, that she had taken the time to write something.

"Dear Allen:" was how it started.

That alone was enough for me to put this in perspective. At least she was consistent when it came to misspelling my name.

But then again, we had barely known each other, so why would I expect otherwise. It's not like we had reason to exchange names in any formal way so that she would know I spelled it A - L - A - N. Heck, for all I knew, her name was Lora or Lara or Laurel or something, and I had it all wrong as well.

Of course, considering the overall scheme of things surrounding our fleeting interactions, especially the one in the parking lot at the bar when she kissed me and when I collapsed, and how they were of the intense kind, how little we knew of each other didn't matter when it came to where our "relationship of sorts" had ended -- in this card, in my hand, that I was now about to read ...

***

It was time to read the whole card that Laura had written.

"Dear Allen:

I'm so happy that we got a chance to meet each other. 

On behalf of me and my daughter, I hope that you and little Gator make plenty of memories together, and I know that you'll be a good caretaker of him."

If only I had had that endorsement a few moments ago when I was dealing with the security guard and the gathered crowd. Regardless, I continued reading.

"I know I'll never forget how grateful we were when you found the puppies in that trash pile. You were responsible for helping my daughter smile again, and you brought her out of her depression that she had been in since the storm had hit. Plus, I will always remember how you reacted, and how you thought that you were being attacked by an alligator. I mean, come on ... that was just classic.

But it didn't stop there. You made me smile, too, every day when I saw you and your friends at the work site. I want to make sure that you know that I appreciate what you did for my community, but especially for me. I will soon be sitting in my new house with my daughter and our pets, and I will always be surrounded and powered by the love and care that you and your group, and the others like them who contributed and who proved that, when push comes to shove, we really do rally together to take care of each other."

I don't know if it was a noise outside in the parking lot, or if my leg twitched and woke up the puppy. He raised his head and cocked it to the side, looking up at me, as if waiting for me to give him a cue as to what he should do next. I rubbed him behind his ear, and he settled back in to the spot on my lap, content to return to his nap.

At that moment, the words in the card were literally coming to life in front of me. I realized that that's all anyone wants -- to be safe and warm and surrounded by actual loved ones and memories of past interactions with other loved ones to recharge you for the life that lay ahead. This puppy on my lap was just the beginning of what I'd be creating for me and mine. Maybe it was just that simple after all ...

***

Of course, there was more in the card. I mean, after all, Laura did have a tendency to speak with a mile-a-minute rat-a-tat-tat delivery style, so, it stood to figure that when she was presented with a blank card to capture her thoughts, it was, without a doubt, going to be filled up.

"I also owe you an apology of sorts.

As I mentioned on the phone to you, I was exhausted. I was emotional. I had been drinking too much. Under any other normal circumstances, I would not have tried to kiss you. But, let's face it, my circumstances haven't been normal for a very long time.

I know that I'll probably never see you again, except as a memory. You should know that I'm sorry for making our last moments together so awkward. And you should also know that I don't regret what I did -- not for one moment. I've learned that life is too short, and that time with loved ones is too precious, and that what's here today may be gone tomorrow ... and, because of my life experiences, I've banished the concept of 'regret' from my life.

I don't know if you will understand this, but something happened when we kissed. And I'm not talking about the fact that you collapsed on the ground just afterwards ... or that there was chemistry or a spark ... but you set something free in me. All of my worries were discharged, my fears alleviated, my pains dissipated. I had a moment of clarity about my life that I had been seeking for years and I knew what I had to focus on to get my life back on the right track.

Somehow you gave me that gift, and, for that, I am eternally grateful.

I wish you nothing but happiness and success in your future endeavors, and I thank you from the bottom of my heart. Take care of yourself and continue to make taking care of others a priority in your life.

All the best ... Laura."

A tear rolled down my cheek and landed on the card.

Did I really do this? Was this what my new found ability was for? Could I change the lives of others with just one touch? Was this the path ahead of me?

***

I sat there deep in thought, letting Laura's words settle into my being.

Which is totally why I didn't see the security guard making his rounds through the hospital parking lot yet again, and which is also totally why I didn't know he was so close to the side of the car.

But hey -- I had a puppy dog now, so I didn't have to be as aware of my surroundings, because I could rely on him.

Sure enough, Gator bounded off of my lap and jumped up to the open window as the same guard approached with a disgusted look on his face.

"What are you two still doing here?" he said, voice booming into my ears.

"Sorry. It's just that I'm waiting here for someone. He's my ride back home." I hoped that he would be reasonable -- at the same time I doubted the chances were great that he wasn't the type for whom power went to his head. Although, let's face it, the power of patrolling a parking lot couldn't have been that much of a personality changer ... could it?

"Well you can't hang out in my parking lot. I don't allow loitering. Although I do appreciate that you at least rolled down the window there for your little dog."

My hopes faded. He was king of this castle after all. Or would that be that he was master of this moat, since we were on the perimeter of the building? Although the way he said "little dog" made me think of the Wicked Witch of the West. I smiled at him as I tried to work through the analogy to figure out what was best for this situation.

"Look, kid. I already know that you have the keys to the car. So, you need to call your friend, and tell him that you'll going to meet him somewhere else, but you're not going to stay here and creep out the people who are supposed to be here. There are a number of fast food restaurants right around the corner, and I'd think you'd fit in better there, with the other hooligans."

I wanted to ask him how I was being a creep, but I knew better than to antagonize. The "don't poke the bear" standard advice seemed to apply at that moment.

Although "hooligan" did seem awfully strong, I ended up capitulating, even though I *so* wanted to know if he was judging me because my puppy was a pit bull. I turned the key and started the ignition. Looking in the rear view mirror to back out of the spot, I saw another car pull up on the other side of the guard's tiny truck, blocking my path, so I slammed on the brakes.

***

For the first time in a bit, Joey was displaying perfect timing.

He jumped out of the car that I had seen pull up in the rear view mirror and waved at the parking lot security guard.

"Hey guys!" He looked right at me. "You better not be leaving without me, Alan."

The guard spoke up. "Well, he was about to, on my orders. And the *both* of you need to leave. He's been loitering in my lot."

Joey held up his finger and pointed it at the security officer. "Hold on there, buddy. Let me just say goodbye to my girl."

He ran back to the waiting car, and leaned in to the driver's side window to accomplish that task. I could barely make out the face of my nurse Rochelle, before he blocked it when he gave her a kiss and whatever else he was doing -- exchanging numbers, letting her down easy, making plans for a future together -- I had no way of knowing what was being said.

Quickly enough, she drove off and he ran back over to our rental car, but this time where I had been sitting.

"Alan -- move over. I wanna drive first."

I put Gator in the back seat, got out of the car and walked around to the passenger side. The guard glared at me, which wasn't anything new, and he growled as I walked past, "I don't want to see you guys back here hanging out in my lot again. Do you understand?"

I nodded, determined to not engage in anything that might lead to more trouble. He climbed into his miniature truck, and then he slowly backed out of our way.

I got into our car and prepared to give Joey my two cents as to the situation he had put me in, but I stopped short as he looked at me and smiled. I think it was the first time that I had seen him so happy, and, quite simply, it was so unexpected that it stopped me in my tracks.

He put the car in reverse, pulled out of the spot and squealed away in the opposite direction of the guard's truck as I grabbed a hold of the little handle above the window.

***

"Slow down, Joey!" I yelled instinctively.

We had a seventeen hour drive ahead of us, no matter how fast he peeled out of the parking lot -- although I'm not sure that logic was the best way to interact with the kid at that very moment.

"Aww ... give me a break. I just wanted to show that security guard what I thought of. I'm a very good driver."

My first thought was to ask him about Judge Wapner, but, in case he hadn't seen the movie and wouldn't have gotten the reference, I kept that comment to myself. Instead, I decided to try to guilt him into taking more caution.

"Well, that may be true. But there's a puppy in the back seat, and neither one of us knows how he'll handle this car trip ... so unless you want to have a lap full of puppy puke, I suggest that you keep that situation in mind."

"I got it. Don't worry about me." He gave me a side glance and shook his head slightly. "And lighten up, will ya? We've got a lot of time together on this ride, and I'm not about to listen to you complain the whole trip."

"You give *me* a break, why don't you? I just got out of the hospital, remember?"

Joey started laughing.

"What's so funny?" I asked, still perturbed that he would call me out like that.

He shrugged his shoulders. "Just at how much the tables have turned, that's all. You're the miserable one, and I couldn't be happier. Although some of that is thanks to Rochelle." With that, he winked in my direction. "I mean, even if this trip was originally planned as a punishment, I wasn't about to come all the way to Florida for spring break and not get laid."

I couldn't dispute what he was saying -- well, about how the tables were turned, anyway. I obviously had no idea what he did with my nurse when I was passed out. This was clearly a new Joey -- smiling, winking, laughing. And I get that Rochelle clearly contributed in some way to this mood change -- or in multiple ways, for all I knew -- but I also couldn't help but wonder if some of this couldn't be traced back to our interaction at the bar, which I suspected might get discussed at some point on this excursion.

***

"So ... what's the plan?" I queried Joey as we got on the interstate and left the city behind us.

"I don't know that we have a plan. We're just enjoying the moment. Although she did say that she'll come up to visit me for graduation."

I had forgotten that the last time we had exchanged words was when we were talking about his ... um ... adventures ... with her. "I didn't mean with Rochelle. I mean ... for the road ahead ..."

"Oh. Right. Of course. I just thought I'd drive for a few hours, and then we can switch off. You know, get as far as we can, and then get a cheap hotel by the highway -- unless you think we can go straight through?" Joey motioned toward the back seat. "Plus puppy pee breaks, obviously."

I nodded my agreement and tried to resist the urge to have everything much more planned out. But silently, I did start to do the math, calculating how many hours we'd be in the car, and how far we'd get until it got dark, and then adding in some time for food, and occasional stops for the dog, plus estimating the fuel gauge to factor in stopping to fill up the tank. I studied the map and determined a goal.

"I bet you we can get all the way up to just over the border into Georgia. We should aim for that, and then crash for the night. Well, not 'crash' exactly -- but you know what I mean." I held up the map and pointed to a town called St. Mary's.

"Sure ... that works if we can get there. I'll be truthful, though, I'm not in any hurry to get back to school ... just sayin'. I mean I'm expecting these last two months of classes are going to be the longest two months of my academic career."

Ahhh ... small talk. With someone I, for all intents and purposes, had really just met. Small talk expected for hours on end. This was not my specialty. I had to strategize some way to avoid this as much as possible, just as I had done on the plane ride down here in the first place.

I announced the first step in my new plan. "Well, if that's the case, then I'm going to try to doze off while you take the first leg of this journey."

I rolled on my side, as best as I could, and closed my eyes with my face in the window. I wasn't sure if I could actually sleep, but I could at least make it seem like I was, to pass the time some other way than talking about the weather, or our upcoming academic schedule, or what he did with or to Rochelle ... or about what had happened in the bar the night I collapsed.

***

As Joey drove and I faked being asleep, I wriggled around so that I could peek around the seat and check on Gator in the back. He was snuggled up in the blankets that Laura had given us. It looked like he had moved them around until he got just the right little nest, and he appeared to be out cold.

My concerns that he might not take to the long drive in the car appeared to be unfounded, and if I listened very closely, I could hear little puppy snoring in the dead spaces in the music that Joey was playing and the rhythm of the bumps on the road beneath us.

Not wanting to talk, I stared out the window at the side of the highway, watching signs go by ... getting mesmerized by the repetition. Every now and then we'd pass a car or a truck or a tractor-trailer and I'd make brief eye contact with the driver of the other vehicle.

Beyond that, I was seeking no human interaction and I was lost in my own little bubble.

It wasn't long before I was struggling to stay awake instead of struggling to fake that I was asleep. Even though I had spent a good bit of time "unawares" while in the hospital, once I did awake, I had gone through a lot of stress in just a little bit of time. Maybe I deserved to just rest.

I closed my eyes and listened to the road ... and to the puppy snores ... and tried to clear my brain of anything that would interrupt that symphony of sounds that was lulling me to sleep.

Sure enough, it wasn't long at all before I was snoring in a harmony of sorts with Gator. Or at least that's how I imagined it -- it was probably more of a cacophony to Joey's ears. If I had been able to see me in an out of body kind of way, or as the drivers of those vehicles we were passing were able to see me, I might have adjusted myself so as not to have my forehead pressed against the window, a bit of drool falling from the corner of my mouth.

***

I don't know how much time had passed.

Hell, I don't know for sure whether any time had passed at all.

What I do know is that I could feel the car speed up, so I assumed that we must have hit a quiet spot on the interstate, and that Joey, who was driving, was looking to make up some time. The acceleration was gradual ... but constant ... until the point where it felt like we were flying, practically hovering over the highway. In my sleeping stupor, I focused on the sounds, anticipating from the way that the vehicle's whine was changing, that we would soon take off ... or shift into turbo ... or blast with fire into jet propulsion a la the Batmobile.

Out of the corner of my eye, with my head still pressed against the window, I sensed flashing lights -- not the red and the blue of the authorities but of white lights blinking on and off, like someone was in the lane next to us and trying to get our attention. Even though we were clearly in the passing lane and going at nearly supersonic speed, the car attached to those lights was rapidly catching up.

As it approached, I looked to make eye contact with the driver, just as I had been doing before I dozed off. The face was obscured because the person was making frantic hand motions to roll down my window. I did as was being requested, and immediately regretted it as the burst of cold wind hit my face. My first thought was to check the back seat to make sure that this change in air pressure wasn't going to wake the puppy dog that I remembered last as having been cuddled up and snoring.

Before I could do so, the driver turned to my direction, and I was immediately engrossed in the scene before me.

Navigating the vehicle next to ours was one of those bodies with a mannequin like face, making noises like screaming but not able to communicate precise thoughts. Those were the beings from my past nightmares, and now they were chasing us out of Florida. My heart sank knowing that I hadn't left them behind.

The car on the side was now matching our speed, and was slowly closing the distance between us, that face getting closer and closer to mine. I wanted to roll up the window but felt paralyzed ... mesmerized by the thought that if I just focused, I could figure out what those creatures were trying to communicate.

Breaking my gaze on the driver, I noticed for the first time that the car was full of similar bodies, all yelling in my direction ... all faceless ... all unable to truly communicate. If only I could determine if they were warning me ... or chastising me ... or coming to take me away ...

Then ... an epiphany ... maybe it wasn't me with whom they were concerned ...

***

Those weren't my demons driving the car next to us on the highway. After all, I had dealt with my demons many years before. I had put the foster homes and surrogate families and awkwardness of my youth behind me, and I was thriving near the end of my college experience, before this service trip to Florida on spring break had introduced these new issues to me.

These weren't *my* demons -- they were Joey's. From having taken his memories that night at the bar, I didn't have to see faces on them to know that one was the girlfriend with whom he had recently broken up, and one was the father that had been called to serve overseas and who had fallen in love with someone else and abandoned him and his mother, and one was undoubtedly the dean who had imposed this trip on him as punishment for the damage he had done on campus when he punched out the window in the dorm.

As a matter of fact, with the car now practically merged with ours, speeding down the interstate, I could see the other body in the back seat ... and there was the dean. She was screaming and yelling with the other faceless bodies, and because of the wind whipping through the car, her exact words were lost to me.

I didn't have time to ponder as to why two of the three bodies didn't have faces and yet one did, as I noticed sparks as the two vehicles actually made contact.

Now my screams joined theirs. I didn't know names and they didn't have faces anyway, but that didn't stop me from yelling. "Joey's dad, get away! You're going to make us crash!" My attempt to engage faceless bodies in dialogue wasn't working, so I turned to the direction of the back seat and the one complete being I had finally recognized: "Dean Mooks, make him stop!"

Still nothing changed, so I took further action and reached my hands out of the car through the open window, literally (and foolishly, I might add) attempting to push the other car away. Once I realized that their driver's side window was also open, I contemplated more drastic action, thinking I could reach through and grab the wheel and make it veer off of the same path as us.

Then, from over my shoulder, Gator, the puppy dog, scrambled over the headrest and clawed his way to the window. Before I could react, he jumped from our car to the one next to us.

I could do nothing but yelp, "Nooo! Not the dog!"

Then, as if it were the puppy that they had been after all along, the car broke off and somehow started going faster than us, or else we were dramatically slowing down.

I had lost all sense of perspective, as I stared at the haunting image of my puppy dog's face hanging out of the back seat window of the disappearing demon car.

***

Our car came to a stop.

"We have to get the dog!" I yelled, to no one in particular.

Then, finally fully awake, I turned to my left and shouted, "We have to get the dog!" to Joey.

Joey was unfazed, and I got the distinct feeling that he had been watching me for awhile. He cocked his head and said, "Ummm ... we're at the rest stop. I thought it might be a good idea to get some food. And besides, my arm is starting to hurt so I'd appreciate it if you drove the next few hours."

I looked at him, my mind still scrambled from having seen the images of the demon car, and the faceless bodies driving it, and Gator jumping into it and watching it drive away in the distance ... but I started taking deep breaths and determining exactly what the reality of the moment was. I glanced over my shoulder and saw my puppy looking up at me from his nest of blankets on the back seat, and it struck me that he was looking at me with the same cocked head and quizzical expression as Joey.

I tried to salvage the awkwardness of the moment by repeating, this time with a little bit less urgency, "We have to get the dog ... something to eat!"

I knew that Joey could see through my attempts. We were sitting just a few feet apart from each other, and I couldn't really mask my confusion, no matter how hard I tried.

"Are you sure you're okay to drive?" he asked. "I mean, maybe the hospital shouldn't have discharged you so soon. You look a little rough."

I struggled with how to respond. We had many hours to go on this drive, and I knew that I couldn't escape having a conversation with him about what was happening to me and how that played into what had happened to him. But I was hungry ... and I wanted to gather my thoughts before we talked about such things ... so I decided that this was not the time.

"I'm fine." I lied. "I dozed off and had a bad dream." At least that was the truth. "Must have been the medicine they gave me. Don't worry about it."

Three out of the last four things I had said were obfuscations. I felt the need to tilt that percentage to the other side with another truth or two, so I continued ... "I'm hungry. Let's eat."

***

Thankfully, the next part of the trip was relatively uneventful.

We grabbed a quick bite to eat at the fast food restaurant at the rest stop, let Gator out to do his puppy business, and climbed back in to the rental car for the last few hours en route to our stopping point for the night.

Joey wasn't in the mood to converse, which suited me just fine, and so he was soon wrapped up in whatever music was flowing from his phone through his earbuds to his brain.

With Gator back to sleeping in his blankets on the back seat, and since darkness had now fallen, I was left to focus on my driving and to keep myself from dozing off again and risking another descent into the world occupied by the demons inside my head -- the demons I had taken from the ones with whom I had come into contact on this blasted trip.

I paid attention to the road, and kept a constant calculation of how many miles were left so that I could distract my mind. In the boring sections of the highway, I thought about what would happen in the weeks ahead once I returned to school. I still had a few weeks to go on my internship as a grief counselor, and I had to submit my final write-up about *that* experience, and then there was graduation looming. I hadn't finalized any plans for the summer, and I had toyed around with the idea of taking a few months off before I started the job search in earnest.

Plus -- now I knew I had to consider *this* development -- my new found skills -- and to see how that affected my ability to execute on all of these plans.

This line of thinking reminded me of what I had almost started back in the hospital room ... putting all of this down on paper so that I could try to find patterns so that I could understand my "powers" better, as that would be the only way that I could control them. There had to be some rhyme and reason to this ... something that I could figure out if I just stepped outside of the situation and analyzed it.

Maybe I could uncover some pieces of this puzzle on the drive ahead ...

***

Or maybe I couldn't.

Turns out it was way harder than I thought it would be to think through all the thoughts in my head in some kind of analytical fashion. I needed bulletin boards and yarn and index cards and such to make it work. Trying to make heads or tails of it all whilst I was driving was just asking for trouble.

So I banished all such thoughts from my head and just focused on the boring task of driving in the night, counting the miles down until we finally left the state of Florida and crossed over the Georgia line, watching for lights on the side of the road that might be police people who wouldn't take so kindly to my attempts to push the amount of miles over the speed limit I was going.

We had previously agreed that the little town of St. Mary's, just over the border, would be the place we'd stop for the first night of our trip back to PA, and I started looking at each and every billboard that we passed searching for a clue as to the best place to spend the night.

I saw a sign for a cheap chain hotel a few miles ahead, and pointed to it, getting Joey's approval in the way of a head nod as he remained too engrossed in his music to verbalize his agreement.

Within five minutes, we were off of the interstate and pulling into the hotel parking lot. I motioned for Joey to release himself from the hold his earbuds had over him. "So are you going to go in and get a room while I wait out here with Gator?" I asked.

"Me?" he replied, somehow confused that that would be the next logical step regarding our plans for the night. "You're paying for it, dude ... I'll watch the dog."

Somehow I had forgotten that he was my dean-arranged "chaperone" for this return trip back to campus, and that he had manipulated the situation to work out to be what was best for him and his needs.

"Right. Of course." I deadpanned in reply. "You wait here ... I'll be right back."

***

I felt the tiniest bit the criminal for not disclosing to the lady behind the desk that we were checking into her hotel with a puppy dog in tow, but hey, I hadn't planned for this road trip, and I wasn't about to go explore the local scene in order to find one which establishment was the pet-friendliest.

From my perspective, he had been the perfect little puppy so far, notwithstanding the parking lot problem back at the hospital that quite simply wasn't his fault. And we were headed right back to our travels as early as possible in the morning, so I felt like I was well in control of the few hours where we would have to smuggle a puppy into our room.

I got my keys (one for me and one for Joey) and signed my receipt and my hotel paperwork (which I think was officially the criminal act, had I taken the time to read the boilerplate legal language at the bottom of the form), and got oriented as to the location of the room courtesy of the little map on the front desk.

When I got back to the car, Joey was wrinkling up his nose.

"What's wrong?" I queried.

"You know how they say to let sleeping dogs lie? Now I think I know why. I think I surprised Gator when I woke him up ... and he pissed all over his blankets. I thought it was drool at first ..." He sniffed his hand and made that same wrinkled-up-nose face. "But no ... it's piss."

Karma, I thought to myself. This was payback for when Gator urinated on me in the hospital bed ... the moment orchestrated by Joey that brought me out of my long sleep earlier that day.

Instead of sharing my inward glee at what had happened, I announced a plan. "Yeah ... maybe they'll have a washer/dryer on site. I'll get him situated and then go check."

"Sure. Well ... give me my key. I'm going to go see if they have a six pack on site, as that will help me get situated."

Joey left on his mission to find alcohol, and I grabbed Gator and snuck him into the room. Luckily, it was pretty late at night, so I was sure that no one had witnessed the activity. Knowing how well the blankets had worked for him in the car, I grabbed the towels out of the bathroom and bunched them up in the corner in hopes that he'd maybe do the same.

Feeling good about these puppy dog plans, I grabbed the ice bucket and went searching for the ice machine, hoping that a washer/dryer might also be in the vicinity ...

***

Success!

Next to the ice machine, where I first stopped to fill up my bucket for the beer that Joey was to be bringing back to the room, was indeed a coin operated washer/dryer set-up. I ran the bucket of ice back to the room, pausing outside to make sure that Gator was not making any kind of noise that might get us in trouble, and then rewarded him with a treat when I got inside, since he was cuddled up in his nest of towels and was being quite well-behaved.

I got the dirty blankets from the car and got them into the washer so that they'd be clean for the next day's leg of our journey, and then returned to the room to wait for Joey to get back.

I was disappointed when he did so ... empty-handed. With a scowl that I'd seen before, he complained, "There's nothing around here that's still open. We are definitely *not* on vacation any more."

"Sorry, Joey," I said, certain that it wasn't really my fault ... but it felt like I should say something, and "sorry" seemed polite enough.

"Yeah it sucks. What can you do?" He looked around the hotel room as if he might possibly find some alcohol that the last guests had left behind, or that housekeeping had provided as a welcome gift. Seeing none, he declared, "Ugh ... I'm going to go jump in the shower."

Just then, I started to realize how much I had wanted the beer as well, because there were just a few ways I had learned that would keep my nightmares away, and drinking to the point of passing out was one of them. The other was shear exhaustion, and although the drive had been tiring, it certainly didn't drain me like working in the hot sun on rebuilding Laura's house had done just a few days ago.

As I considered my dwindling options, I remembered ... there was one other surefire way to block out the demons, but it would be a bit risky, in light of the situation at hand. Dare I try it?

***

The only other way that I had discovered to block out the nightmares was with sleeping pills.

Sleeping pills that Joey had slipped to me during the workshifts back in Florida.

Sleeping pills that were probably in the bag of Joey's that was on the bed in the hotel room where we had stopped for the night.

Dare I swipe a few more? Would he even miss them?

I weighed the benefit of knowing that, at least for while we were sharing the room, I wouldn't have an episode tonight -- or in the morning -- against the downside of stooping to the level of rummaging through his things to steal some magic pills.

I listened intently to make sure that I could hear the sound of the shower, and decided that pill pilfering was the way to go. Luckily, Joey didn't pack heavy and so there wasn't a lot that I had to go through.

"Hey -- we don't have any towels for some unknown reason."

I was too engrossed in the task at hand to have heard that the shower wasn't running any longer.

"And what the hell do you think you're doing?"

I turned around to catch a dripping wet Joey standing behind me, staring at me -- me with my hand still in his bag. Once again, words failed me, so I pointed to the puppy sleeping on the nest of towels that I had made as a substitute for the blankets that were in the wash. Then I held up the pill bottle still in my grasp as if that motion would somehow absolve me of my sins.

No such luck. As a matter of fact, a very distinct feeling of deja vu came over me. Just as had happened the morning at the pool when I watched his anger get the best of him, I watched Joey as his breathing changed, and his jaw clenched, and his eyes darted back and forth, and as he tensed every muscle.

I took a deep breath, knowing full well that this was going to be a long night.

***

CHAPTER 9

I knew I had very few seconds to avoid Joey's anger from taking over, and to avoid him taking it out on me.

Since my hand motions hadn't helped, I let loose a flurry of words in an attempt to distract him.

"Hey -- sorry -- I used all the towels to make a nest for the puppy and I forgot to tell you before you got in the shower ... and I forgot to go get some extra from the front desk ... and I should have said something when you came back and said you were going to get in the shower but I was too sad that you hadn't brought back any beer ... My bad."

My verbal assault didn't seem to have the desired effect of causing him to abandon a physical assault on me.

With steely reserve, and through clenched jaw, he spit out, "I don't give a damn about the towels right now. I can drip dry for all I care. I want to know why you are going through my belongings. What the hell, dude?"

"It's not what it looks like," I replied.

He cocked his head to the side. "Really? It looks like you are about to steal something from me." He reached out and yanked his bag from me.

I held up both my hands as if I were under arrest (and, truth be told, so that they'd be closer to my face in case I had to attempt to deflect a punch or protect it from his fists). In so doing, the pill bottle fell to the floor.

He glared at me. Then he looked down briefly at the pills, before directing his angry stare back to my visage.

I did my best to muster up an inflection that communicated the old don't-hit-a-boy-with-glasses messaging, complete with what I hoped would be a sympathetic stammer. "I ... I ... I just wanted more sleeping pills."

"MY sleeping pills," he countered.

"Yes, Joey ... I wanted more of YOUR sleeping pills. That's it. Really. I promise."

I had to break this tension. And I knew one surefire way how to do it.

***

It was simple. I had to strike first.

Well, not "strike" in the traditional sense. I couldn't win a fight against Joey. He spent most of his time at school in the sports center or on the athletic fields or in the gym. I was such a frequent squatter in the library that I had my own dedicated study carrel I thought of as my office where my friends first looked for me when they wanted to find me.

He was an athlete. I was a scholar.

I briefly considered whether I could count on Gator to come to my aid. But alas, he was just a tiny puppy, and we had barely bonded to the point where I would have expected him to leap up from his nest of towels and come to my defense as if he could sense that I was in danger. Instead, I listened to the delightful sounds of his continued puppy snoring, proving to me that he was oblivious to the scene unfolding in front of him.

In reality, fate and circumstance had thrown us all together, and it had just done so recently -- on this trip to Florida -- so there wasn't any history I could rely on to excuse myself for having rifled through Joey's bag to score some sleeping pills while I thought he was in the shower.

In any normal situation, I was in for a beatdown, even if Joey only had one good arm with the other still in its sling.

But this was not a normal situation. This was not the classic conflict between brain and brawn. I had the upper hand for an entirely different reason.

I could diffuse this situation by taking away the sense of betrayal that he felt and I could absorb his anger in a way other than fist-to-face. I could use my new power to protect myself.

I said a silent prayer in hopes that this plan would work as I hadn't done this since my release from the hospital, and I quickly reached out and grabbed Joey's good forearm before he could make the first move. Our eyes locked, his still in anger ... mine in apprehension.

***

I knew it was working by the look in his eyes.

And it was the strangest of these experiences I had had to date -- it was practically instant replay.

Sure, that time with Mario in the bar, the memories I absorbed then had also just happened, but they had occurred behind a closed door, and I wasn't privy to it in real-time, nor was I a co-star in what had transpired. This time, it was an immediate reflection on the previous few minutes -- although, strangely for me, from Joey's perspective.

I could feel his frustration at having gotten out of the shower to find that there were no towels ... and then his anger at stepping into the hotel room to discover me going through his belongings. There was nothing muddled about this transfer. It was as clear as could be, and I was seeing me as he had seen me just moments before. I could see my feeble attempts to explain myself -- first with the hand motions, and then with an onslaught of excuses.

But it didn't stop there as I expected it to. Just before I released his forearm from my grip, the images changed, and the faceless bodies that had haunted many of my nightmares appeared in locations I couldn't place. The anger that I had witnessed, now from both sides of the triggering event, was immediate and guttural ... but these emotions ran deeper and were more profound -- heartache and loss and betrayal. This was something more than just a kid -- me -- attempting to steal some sleeping pills ... I had touched a nerve, opened a wound, glimpsed into his past at others who had hurt him.

Oh that look in his eyes ... in so short a time, I had watched it go from anger when he caught me ... to shock that I had grabbed him ... to recognition that we were once again in this unique situation ... and then the calmness as I drained him of his agitation. But it was the final look that unsettled me -- I could see just the smallest bit of fear in his eyes -- a fear that he could sense that he was vulnerable and that what he was sharing with me was beyond his control.

That was too much ... I had taken it too far. I let go of his arm and stood there, each of us seemingly suspended in animation, unsure of what to do next.

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that we were not alone. Gator had awoken from his nap, and the puppy dog was just a few feet away ... not making a sound ... watching the both of us very intently.

I had no idea how long we actually all stood there in our tableau ... wet Joey, anxious me and fixated puppy. It felt like it could have easily been morning, but I also knew deep inside that it was all just a fraction of a second.

It was Joey who was the first to break the silence.

***

"Don't think that I don't know what you just did here."

It was time to pay the piper for my actions.

Joey continued, just as calmly as he had been a moment before when he had broken the silence. 

"So here's what you're going to do next. You're going to go to the front desk and get a fresh set of towels so I can finally dry off and finish getting dressed ... and then you and I are going to sit down and you are going to explain exactly what it is you do when you do your little ... " I could tell he was searching for words to describe the transfer of memories that he had now experienced twice. "Your little ... mind-rape trick. Got it?"

I nodded my head in agreement, after flinching at his choice of words, taking it as a clue that this might not be a friendly conversation. "I'll be right back," I said as I hurried out of the room.

As I closed the door behind me, I toyed with the idea of fleeing, but I quickly came to the conclusion that I had nowhere to go. I wasn't going to leave my new puppy with Joey, and he was serving a somewhat official capacity of escorting me back to campus as per the promise to the dean and seeing as how I had just been discharged from the hospital. Even if I had decided to abandon all responsibility and to just disappear, I hadn't taken the rental car keys with me, and I wasn't about to just walk away to explore the Georgia night.

I resigned myself to my fate, succeeded in getting the lady behind the front desk to get me the towels that we needed and headed back to the hotel room.

I took a deep breath and steadied my nerves, and then opened the door. Joey was playing with Gator on the bed and it was as if everything had returned to some degree of normal. He got up, took one of the towels that I offered him, ran it over his head and upper body and put on an old tee-shirt.

He sat back down on one of the beds and Gator bumbled up to him and starting chewing on the fingers of his good hand, content with that activity as only puppies could be.

He motioned for me to sit down in the chair across from him. All that was missing was the overhead light to shine in my face.

"Now sit down. And start talking."

***

"I should warn you. Your questions are going to lead to more questions instead of to answers."

I thought it prudent to try to manage Joey's expectations that our late-night conversation about my new "skills" wasn't necessarily going to be a satisfactory one.

He shrugged his shoulders. "We'll see." He stared at me, and I could see the wheels spinning in his mind as he tried to figure out how to begin this interrogation.

He clearly landed on a strategy. "Why don't you start at the beginning? How long have you been doing this little party trick on people?"

Party trick. I thought for a moment about that phrasing. It was so much less confrontational than the "mind-rape" wording he had just used. "It just started this trip. On the flight down to Florida."

He looked at me skeptically. "Riiight."

"Joey, I'm serious. All within the last fortnight."

"Fortnight?"

"The last two weeks. It had never happened before then."

"You said 'all'. Who else besides me have you done this way?"

I paused to consider to make sure I had the right number. "Five people, six times -- since you and I interacted twice."

"Others in our group? Anybody else from school know about this?"

I shook my head. "No ... no one else. The guy on the plane, the guy at the bar, the bartender, you, Laura ... and now you again."

"Laura? So that's why she was acting so odd around you?"

"I guess ... although she was pretty drunk when it happened, so it could be that she doesn't even realize what we did."

I could tell that even these pieces of information I had divulged were confusing to him. As if on cue, he confirmed what I was observing. He held up his good hand. "One step at a time. The first guy ... on the plane ... on the way down here ... tell me about that."

***

"Well, he *was* the first." I was referencing the old man on the plane ... the one I came to know simply as "Lee's grandfather".

Joey asked, "And how did you know him?"

I flashed a wry smile. "I didn't. He was a stranger on the middle seat of the plane."

I went on to describe the flight, and how I had tried to keep to myself, and how the unexpected turbulence had ended up freeing my seat-partners to discuss their inner most feelings, and how the old man relayed the horrific story about his grandson's death on the playground.

Joey listened intently, but also incredulously. I got the distinct impression that there was a part of him that thought that maybe I was just some pathological liar, and that I was spinning him a yarn suitable to be some type of twisted fairy tale.

"So you basically just eavesdropped?" he challenged me.

"Yep. I couldn't help but listen in -- I was trapped by the seating in the plane. Believe me, if I had the choice, I would have gotten up and left. But I didn't have a choice ... and so I heard every sad detail that he shared."

"And then what? You just reached over and grabbed him and released his demons in one of your little memory exorcisms?"

I paused to make note of Joey's phrasing, as it was perhaps the best one yet. I realized that if I was forced to talk about all this in the future, I'd need to create my own lexicon around that which I could do ... exorcising memory demons sounded almost noble.

"Actually, it wasn't so direct as that. I fell asleep, and the old man tapped on my arm to wake me up when the flight was preparing to land ... and that's when it happened."

Joey shook his head. "But wait ... I still don't understand. Why him? Why then? Why on the trip? What was so special to make that your first experience?"

***

"Well that's just it. That's an example of one of those questions that leads to more questions instead of to answers. I have no idea why it happened when it did. I mean I wasn't bitten by some spider ... or subject to some secret experiments ... or any other comic book-y event."

I thought I saw an almost-smile come across Joey's face.

"Maybe it was something special about Florida?" he offered.

I had proven that my new skill wasn't bound by geography moments ago when I had exercised it with Joey while here at the hotel in Georgia. "Maybe ... but if you think about it, I actually have no idea where I was up in the air ... other than somewhere above the East Coast or the Atlantic Ocean."

He was on a roll and clearly had ideas ... "So what about the turbulence thing you mentioned. Could it be that this thing was scared out of you? Like some kind of fight-of-flight release of more than just adrenaline?"

I was intrigued. What if this had been latent all along, and the trigger was being scared to such a degree that it launched my "power"?

"It's an interesting idea. I 'm trying to think if there's any time in my past where I had been similarly scared ..."

While I drifted off inside my head to purposefully flash my life before my eyes ... Joey jumped up without warning and palmed the top of my head, squeezing ever so gently. Gator got excited and bounced over to the edge of the bed to see what might be happening.

I looked up at Joey, confused.

"I'm checking to see if what you have is contagious. Maybe I can do it now?!?!"

***

I'll give him this much. His actions had broken the tension. But they hadn't made it any less awkward. As soon as he also recognized that fact, he let go of the top of my head, and sat back down on the hotel bed.

"Nope. Nothing happened."

I thought maybe his attempt to take on my powers by siphoning them out of my head via putting his palm against my scalp could be the end of our little talk about all this. However, that was not to be the case, as he picked right back up with demanding more information.

"So if sad old man on the plane was the first ... who was next?"

I sighed and started back in again. "Well, using your manner of describing things, that would have been drunk cheating man at the bar ... although I referred to him as angry texter. He was a few stools down from me but was on his phone almost the whole time, fighting with his girlfriend ... who eventually showed up to break if off with him."

"And how did you make contact with that guy?"

"Actually, I was trying to break up a fight and fell over in the melee, with the texter guy falling down on top of me." I paused as I replayed that scenario and remembered something key that helped explain what had just happened with Joey earlier.

He sensed my hesitation. "Something you want to add?"

It didn't make any sense to turn back now. Joey knew too much as it was ... I decided to take advantage of the situation to put it all out there like I had wanted to do by myself back in the hospital room ... or as I had tried to do in the car ride while I was driving.

"It turns out that when this happens, I can also see things that haven't been directly shared with me -- like I can see the layers underneath what's on the surface that relate to the emotions that are involved. I don't see the 'spin' version of what happened ... I get the real thing."

Joey was much quicker than I had assumed he was, even though the mechanics of him putting two plus two together were displayed all over his face. With a thoughtful glance my way, he theorized out loud.

"That makes you like a human lie detector, no?"

***

"Kind of".

I began to realize that those two words were pretty much my answer for any question that Joey was asking.

I explained further. "It's not like I see everything about everything during these events -- it still seems to be limited to what I've been told, or to what I've over-heard ... but the point that I was trying to make was that I see the truth. For instance, that angry texter guyat the bar told me that he hadn't cheated on his girlfriend with his girlfriend's sister, but in the midst of the memory download, I got to experience conversations he had with the sister about how he had gotten her pregnant -- a part of the story that he had never shared in the bar talk and that he was certainly keeping as a secret from his girl."

Once again, Joey looked puzzled. "Um ... I'm not sure I followed all of that ... but it sure sounded like a Jerry Springer episode I saw last week."

"Yeah ... tell me about it." I nodded my head in agreement.

Joey continued. "So I still don't understand how you find these people. I mean of all the people at the bar that night, I'm sure that most of them had normal lives and weren't living like they were in a soap opera ... or a trailer park ... or whatever ..."

"I didn't go looking for them. I've never gone looking for them." I weighed the truthfulness of that answer in my head and felt like I should clarify. "Well, I mean, until tonight, I had never initiated the situation."

"Riiight. That makes me special. Thanks for that." His words were dripping with sarcasm. Then he decided he should clarify what he said. "Well, that makes our *second* time 'special'. But going back to our first experience ... you're saying that that was also a coincidence?"

"It was. If you think back to what happened ... you pushed me out of the way that night at the bar. I didn't try to make contact with you. Although, if I'm telling you everything in the order it occurred, then we should probably talk about the bartender Mario."

"The bartender? You're like a little memory thieving slut, aren't you?"

I wanted to push back on his nomenclature, but as I still had no idea where this conversation would ultimately end, I decided to swallow the insult and to continue my summarizing of the story so far.

***

"I am *not* a little memory thieving slut!"

I changed my mind and decided to protest a little bit.about what Joey had called me.

"Ok ... ok ... calm down. It was just an observation on my part. Whatever. I don't want you to have another episode and end up back in the hospital. I am *not* driving you back to Florida."

We exchanged looks to express our intent to put that little tete-a-tete behind us, and he continued. "So what happened between you and the bartender guy?"

"It was much the same as everyone else. Although, like the angry texter guy, I actually caught him in a lie as well. The whole thing was that he had just been put on probation by his boss in the back of the bar moments before he shook my hand to say good night, and he had told me it was all a mix-up and that he was just falsely accused of taking home his own bottle service. Turns out the memory showed that he was indeed stealing from work, and between that and the fact that the angry texter guy had come in to the bar trying to find me and telling him his version of what I did to him ... so, because of our exchange, Mario had confirmed as true what he thought was that guy just telling drunk stories about me ... it was a bit of a mess."

Joey's eyes were glazing over, and this was clearly the most I had gotten to say without him interrupting. Maybe that was the way out of this ... talk and talk and talk until he just got disinterested.

"Oh -- and one more thing!" I added. "I had actually tested Mario the first night I was in the bar to see if my new found powers could heal physical wounds -- because he had a cut on his forearm from the tussle with the angry texter guy -- and I couldn't. So whatever this is that I can do is definitely limited to the mental space."

"Ok," was all Joey could say after all that story-telling. "And then it was my turn?"

"Yep. I tried to get in between you and Laura at the bar that night because I could see how angry you were, and you pushed me out of the way ... and that push set it all off. But hey -- you were there, so I'm not telling you anything new. Why don't you tell me your side of what happened?"

***

It seemed like it took him days to answer [  ] ... but at least he was clearly giving his reply some serious thought.

He *finally* responded to my challenge to tell me how the transfer of his painful memories felt, seeing as how I had done it to him twice now.

"I don't know how to describe it."

Well, I thought he was going to answer it. Before I could protest that there was something fundamentally unfair about me sharing something so personal without him doing the same, he found some words.

"It's peaceful."

I realized he'd need some more prompting, which I provided. "Do you forget the things that caused you the pain? The ones I absorb?"

"No. It's not like you give me amnesia or anything like that. It's more like you separate the emotion from the incident." He nodded his head, as if he were endorsing his articulated description, now that he heard himself saying it out loud for the first time. "Like I lose any anger over it. I mean ... I very clearly remember me finding you going through my things before we started this conversation ... but it's like I don't want to smash your face in any more."

Turns out I had taken action at just the right time. "So are you aware that it's happening ... when it's happening?"

"Yep. Kind of. I mean, there's this sensation that you're in my head ... like we're watching the same home movies of my thoughts about whatever had me upset. But everything's on super speed, and there's a lack of control on my part over the content of what I'm sharing."

Joey looked straight at me, and for the first time tonight, I thought I saw his eyes well up. He cleared his throat and provided the statement that gave me a little bit of insight into what had him so worked up. "For those moments, I'm completely vulnerable. Then ... there's a welcoming calm that takes over and suddenly, all my worries are gone. And all I can do is stand there and look at you ... a little shocked, a little confused ... and a little grateful."

That summed it up perfectly. That was exactly the look that I had seen from each of the people with whom I had interacted in this manner. That hit the nail on the head.

Joey looked away and I knew that this honesty was making him uncomfortable.

His voice was almost breaking when he tried to get the discussion back on track. "So ... tell me ... why were you going through my things."

***

"Well, that's just the thing."

Finally, I was being provided a chance to defend myself and the crime I had almost committed.

"The memories stick with me, and they kind of mess with my mind -- in my subconscious I guess ... but especially when I'm sleeping."

"Of course. Which brings us right back to the sleeping pills." Joey motioned to the spot on the floor where there were still sitting from when he caught me looking for them.

"It's getting worse. The people from the stories that I've heard are starting to interact with each other and I'm waking up all agitated."

I could tell that bothered Joey. "Wait -- what do you mean ... the people from the stories? You don't actually reach other real people via the one you're touching?"

"No ... no ... not like that. I mean if I already know the person or have seen a picture of them ... then they take a distinct shape in the memories. Everyone else is more like noise, but I can usually figure out who they are based on what I've heard. And they ... well, they ... "

I stammered because of all the things I said that sounded crazy, I thought that this point sounded the craziest. But hey, I had gone this far. I might as well say everything.

"Those ones are... faceless bodies ... and they creep me out the most. Like mannequins that move. And they're often the loudest with the most to say ... but they can't get it out. The faceless ones are the faces I can't forget ... if you follow what I'm saying."

I had pushed the limits of what Joey was willing to believe. He just looked at me, and I could see he wasn't grasping my explanation.

***

"Now you're making my head hurt."

My read of the situation was spot-on. Joey had clearly had enough of me trying to describe my new skills.

"Sorry." I checked the time on the digital clock on the nightstand between the hotel beds. "It is getting late. And we want to get on the road relatively early anyway."

"I'm thinking we can probably make it all the way back without having to stop again. I mean, besides for gas and to let Gator out."

I grabbed the opening he provided. "Oh ... speaking of ... I should probably take him out now one last time."

With that, I gathered up Gator and took him out to the grassy spot behind the parking lot so that he could do his business. While waiting, I reflected on the events of that night. I had known back at the hospital that Joey was planning on bringing it up at some point ... but I would never have guessed it would all go down as it had.

I distinctly remembered that I had so many questions ... would the fact that I had disclosed so much come back to haunt me in any way? What would happen to my life in the final weeks of school ... and the summer after ... and my life post-graduation? Was there any way to go back? Attempting to describe it out loud had somehow made it all the more real.

Being a cooler summer night in Georgia, I wasn't in the mood to contemplate the future for long standing there with my puppy under the stars. I hurried back to the hotel room. Joey was already in his bed, and there was just one light still on by the doorway.

He called out, "Hey. I put some extra pills for you in the bathroom by the sink. Figured you could use them."

The evening had come full circle. For the moment, at least, all was right with the world.

***

I slept peacefully that night, thanks to Joey's sleeping pills.

No nightmares. No memories of others set loose in my psyche as I slept.

Just me and my puppy dog, one of us under the bedspread and the other splayed about on top.

We were all up early (the puppy, myself and Joey), and we engaged in small talk (well, just Joey and I), making no reference to the discussion from the night before.

It was all business ... take the puppy out, jump in the shower, gather your things and load up the car. We were bound and determined to make the rest of the trip in just one day. We stopped for breakfast ... we stopped for gas ... we stopped for lunch ...we stopped to let Gator do his business. And when we weren't stopped, we drove, taking turns behind the wheel -- through the rest of Georgia, and South Carolina, and North Carolina, and Virginia.

I'm pretty sure we were in Maryland when it started to get dark. I know for sure that I was driving, and that Joey was looking out of the passenger side window, and that Gator was being well-behaved in his customary spot in the back seat.

Joey had his headphones on and I was entertaining myself reading the billboards as we passed them by, distracting myself by letting my mind become filled with random thoughts, none of which were related to my experiences on this service-vacation, and all of which were unimportant.

I didn't notice that Joey had taken out his earbuds -- and even when he decided to speak, his voice layered in with the routine sounds of the road racing past us, so much so that I wasn't startled when he started his story.

Still facing the windshield, he shared, in a small still way, "It's my fault she's dead."

***

I didn't say anything, mostly because I had no idea what to say.

Joey, still staring out the passenger side window, continued talking in the same small voice.

"We were juniors in high school. She and I had been dating for two years, ever since we met at the first freshman dance. We were in a bit of a rough patch, because I wasn't serious about college and she was under pressure to follow her father's footsteps and go to a school out on the west coast."

Joey paused, and I felt like I was being told about a time in his life that he didn't usually tell others. I didn't know if it was the darkness that made him feel less vulnerable, or the rhythm of the road that was lulling him into a sense of safety, or the fact that we had spent so much time in the car exchanging nothing but the occasional small talk ...but whatever the reason, Joey was getting ready to go deep.

"That week, I had told her that I was considering signing up for the military, and we hadn't talked for a couple of days. On the weekend, I went by myself to my friend's house for a party, and I got pretty drunk, pretty quickly and ended up pretty passed out in the basement. At some point in the night, my friend found me and roused me and I immediately vomited and then rinsed my mouth out with the strongest alcohol I could find ... except I didn't spit ... I swallowed it ... and then kept on drinking."

Every time Joey stopped talking, I debated whether I should chime in. And every time I had the opportunity, I passed.

"By that time, most of the party-goers were settled in for the night, and I was stepping all over sleeping bodies in every room looking for a bottle of anything that wasn't quite empty but that didn't contain any cigarette butts in it floating on the bottom."

I couldn't see Joey's face, but I felt the tremor in his voice as he got to the next part of his tale.

"I found her in my friend's little brother's room ... and I didn't recognize the guy that was lying next to her on the floor."

***

Awkward silence returned. Which, when it came to me and Joey, was pretty much par for the course.

I stared at the road ahead. He stared out his passenger side window. Gator wasn't staring anywhere, as he was fast asleep on the back seat.

I felt like I had to say something, even if it was for the first time since he started sharing his story with me.

"Was the guy that you found next to her your friend's little brother?"

Joey didn't answer right away. Just when I thought that maybe he hadn't heard me and that I needed to repeat myself, he finally continued.

"Nope. He wasn't at the party. He was out of town with my friend's parents. Truth is it didn't matter who it was. I wasn't expecting to see her at all ... let alone in that position ... lying on the floor next to some random guy."

I could tell that Joey was reliving that moment.

"Poor kid ... I went a little nuts. He didn't know what hit him. And I didn't know how to stop. I broke his nose and his jaw ... and I think I knocked out three teeth. Or at least that's what I remember from the doctor bills I had to pay."

With what I had already heard about him and what I had seen firsthand on this trip, I wasn't surprised about the content of what Joey was saying. It was just so eerie in the way he was telling it ... very factual ... never raising his voice ... not even once turning to face me. His voice stayed small and still, except now he was taking bigger breaks between sharing the information.

"In all the fuss, she woke up, but she was still drunk. I remember she climbed on top of me to try to pull me off of this kid ... but she couldn't stop me -- she was just a little thing. I kept on whaling on this guy, until my fists were covered in his blood ... mixed with mine."

I stole a glance toward Joey. He had raised the hand from his good arm in front of his face. The knuckles were lit up by the ambient light of the night surrounding our car on the highway. They were still scarred from when he had punched the wall that day by the pool.

"Kristian. That was his name."

I involuntarily shuddered as I considered the fact that I might have just heard a murder confession.

***

"Well ... Kristian *is* his name."

The brief moment of panic that I had thinking that Joey had just testified to killing someone passed just as quickly as I had felt it. Suddenly, Joey, who had been calmly reflecting on this time from his past, got a little agitated and the pace of the story picked up considerably.

"Somebody called the cops. And when Jenny -- she was my girlfriend -- when she found out that they were on the way, she decided to leave so that she wasn't caught up in the mess. She had only had a five minute head start on me, but she was just gone before I could get to my car. My friend was trying to hold me back ... I think partly because he wanted me to be there when the cops arrived ... but I succeeded in pushing him out of the way.."

His breathing got shallower and I could sense him tensing up again in the seat next to me. I had seen this behavior enough times to recognize the signs of his discomfort.

"The problem is that none of her friends tried to stop her -- and she was in no condition to be driving -- not that I was much better. I thought I could catch her before she got home, but despite risking it all by speeding on the route I knew she would take, I didn't run into her. I knew for sure that I wasn't going to go back to where the police were, and I debated whether I should just wait for her at her house ... but after waiting about an hour and she still hadn't shown up, I started back to my place."

This time, he took several deep breaths, as if he had to catch up on the oxygen he had been denying himself as he spilled out all of those latest details.

"I saw the lights about two blocks from my house." I had never heard Joey sound like he did as he struggled to say those words. He pushed through, even as his voice cracked, a sure sign to me that he was in tears.

"I thought they were the police waiting for me. But then I saw the ambulance ... and I recognized her car."

He had pushed himself to his limit. Embarrassed at the emotional toll it was taking on him, he shifted his whole body as far away from mine as he could despite the fact that we were both in the front seat of the rental car. He stared out into the dark night, trying desperately to regain his composure.

***

"Well, I recognized what was *left* of her car."

I was hearing Joey tell the story in such an odd way, what with him not even facing me, and so it was taking me longer to put the pieces together.

All of the relief I had felt after learning that the kid that he beat up at the party had lived, turned quickly again to dread, as I recalled that the tale had all started so suddenly with the words "it's my fault *she's* dead".

Joey continued, with long pauses between each thought. "At that point, I didn't care at all about my condition ... Although I did have that hour of waiting that had sobered me up a little bit ... I jumped out of my car and ran to the flashing lights at the accident site ... The responders didn't let me get too close, but I could see her car smashed into the telephone pole."

The whole thing was spooking me out. I started to look for a spot along side the road where I could pull over. I didn't know what it was exactly, but I just didn't feel right speeding down the interstate listening to the story of what was sounding more and more like a deadly car crash.

"They told me she didn't suffer. That she died instantly." From his breathing, I knew now that Joey was openly crying, even if he had his face buried in his jacket, pressed up against the window so I couldn't see it. "So they said that meant she didn't feel any pain."

I put on my blinkers, having slowed down enough to pull over at the next chance I could find.

"If I had just stayed passed out ... or hadn't gone into that room ... or didn't attack that kid ... or chased after her the first chance I had ... or gone to my place first instead of hers ... I had all those chances to have a different outcome and I didn't take any of them!"

His next action was so sudden that I was caught completely off guard. Without turning to face me, he reached out and grabbed my forearm that was holding on to the steering wheel and clutched it tightly, squeezing it as if he was falling and I was his only lifeline.

The wheel jolted to the right, and the car swerved across the white line on to the shoulder of the road, running over the rough tread bumps that were meant to alert drivers who had fallen asleep that they were leaving it. The noise and the sudden motion woke Gator up in the back seat, and he started barking non-stop.

Instinctively, I pumped the brakes, trying desperately to avoid a crash.

***

It was all I could do to safely manage the rental car.

I focused on the side of the road, wrestling control of the steering wheel back from having lost it when Joey had grabbed my forearm. He was still holding on to it tightly, and I finally maneuvered the car to a complete stop off on the shoulder.

Gator stopped barking, and before I could yell at Joey for the crash he had almost caused, he cried out, "Why didn't it work?"

I should have been connecting the dots the whole time he was telling the tale, but it was the first time (although, sadly, not the last) that someone else was setting me up to use my power for his or her own benefit.

"Joey -- what the hell? We almost ran off the side of the road!"

Still embarrassed by how much emotion he was displaying, he didn't have the courtesy to turn to face me.

"Make it happen!" he said in an anguished voice. I didn't think his grip could get any tighter, but it did. I could feel his fingernails digging in to the flesh just past my wrist.

"Joey -- you're hurting me."

Finally, he turned to look at me, his face stained with tears, and his eyes bore into my soul with an intensity that drew on the pain and suffering he had brought back to the surface.

And that ... that's how I learned that the memory transfer skill of mine was dependent on me and the other person making eye contact.

There, on the side of the road ... in the dark of the night ... just a few hours away from home and the end of this spring break trip that was so full of surprises ... Joey finally began to get the peace he was so desperately seeking.

***

For the third time in as many weeks, I connected with Joey on that level that only I could provide.

He had never let go of my forearm, so when he shifted in his seat to finally face me so that we could make eye contact, the absorption of his painful memories began in earnest.

As expected, at that moment, I began to feel everything that he had just described in detail ... emotion after emotion ... the confusion, the betrayal, the anger, the rage, the fear, the pain and then the guilt. In those few moments by the side of the road, I took on all of his burdens and the darkness that had consumed him over the chain of events that he put into motion back at that party when he was younger.

It was the guilt at the end of the memory transfer that was the most overwhelming -- definitely the most intense experience I had had since discovering this talent of mine. Whereas the other instances ... and even the beginning of this one ... had resulted in my own biology speeding up to the point where it was almost a rush ... this was different when it came to the guilt.

My vision got cloudy ... my breathing grew labored ... and the feeling grew inescapable ... it was moving like molasses through my circulatory system ... slowly paralyzing me as it spread. It was so dark and heavy ... like a tar gumming up my systems. Being a child of modern times, I had known of water-boarding as a torture technique ... and this ... this was like that was happening, but the water had been replaced by thick black oil.

I couldn't help it. I started to shake. It was getting harder and harder to focus on Joey's face in front of me, and I knew that he could sense that he was losing me.

"Hang on!" he yelled. "Stay with me ... just a little longer!"

My body was literally at a stand still. I sensed that my mouth was open, but my lungs had hardened and I could no longer remember how to breathe. I felt the color draining from my face ... and I could do nothing about it.

***

"Hey ... we're home. Wake up."

I was being jostled about, someone pushing me back and forth. I didn't immediately know how long I had been out, but I stretched in my seat and looked around. Just like he said, we were back home in Pennsylvania, outside my little studio apartment a few blocks away from campus.

"This is the correct address, right?" Joey didn't wait for me to answer. "It's what the dean gave me."

My mind was foggy, but not so much so that I couldn't remember that I was the one that had been driving the last I knew, and, at that time, we were still a few hours away from home. But now here we were and here I was in the passenger seat. I pushed hard to recall the last thing that had happened to me before being woken up, and the only image I could muster was my puppy dog staring at me intently, quietly putting his paw on to the side of my face. I felt like Joey and I had had another exchange, but I couldn't quite place all of the details.

"I popped the trunk so you can get your bag. Do you need help with the dog?"

It was such a strange feeling. Everything seemed normal enough, yet I couldn't shake the thought that I had somehow been, for lack of a better word ... violated.

"Hey ... I don't mean to rush you ... but I kind of do. I have to get this rental car back tonight before their office closes ... so, you know ... let's go." To reinforce his words with actions, Joey got out of the car and walked back toward the open trunk.

I gathered up Gator's things and put him in his crate, and headed back to meet him to get my bags.

He was avoiding eye contact, but he had something in his hand that he slipped into my jacket pocket. "Hey ... you can have these. You're going to need them." And then he slammed the trunk and walked around to get back in the car.

Then and only then did he finally look at me. I was too groggy to devote as much time as I would have needed to translate his stare into all that he was trying to say. Instead, all I got was a final, "See you around, kiddo."

Joey drove away, and I carried Gator into my apartment. I let everything fall by the door, and I reached into my pocket to find two things ... the bottle of Joey's sleeping pills that he had just put there ... and the business card of Lee's grandfather that he had slipped into my pocket when we stood by the luggage claim carousel on the very first day of my trip.

I put the pill bottle on my nightstand, and took the business card and pinned it up on my bulletin board. And then I said a little prayer that my life would return to some kind of normal.

***

CHAPTER 10

I didn't exactly become a recluse ... but I did make sure that I filled every waking hour of the final weeks of that semester with activities that kept me focused on my last academic commitments. 

And if I wasn't academically engaged, then I spent all my time with my puppy dog Gator, who grew a lot in that six week period between coming back from the Florida trip and my graduation. I chose not to socialize with anyone ... and especially not the kids who were all with me on that spring break "service" vacation. Joey and I didn't run in the same circles ... so that was pretty easy. But even when I saw the others on campus, I'd wave from a distance and keep on moving like I had some place to go ... which was true, since the place I had to go was anywhere where they weren't located.

Most importantly, I didn't let anyone tell me any story about any painful thing from his or her past ... and I kept my hands to myself. I had learned just enough about my new talent to be able to recognize situations where it would potentially come into play, and I stayed away from them. If that meant abruptly leaving a conversation and being thought of as rude or aloof ... I was content to become the "rude aloof" boy.

To demonstrate the depth of my commitment, I would even turn off the radio if a sad song came on ... or turn off the television if that which I was watching was taking an emotional turn. It should go without saying, but I also stayed away from all news presented in any format whatsoever.

That may all sound drastic now, but it actually wasn't that difficult of a plan to execute. Gator's puppy ways kept me entertained for hours ... and all the tasks associated with wrapping up my college years had me writing and revising and rewriting to-do lists every other day. Plus, I had succeeded in getting my doctor to write me a prescription for sleeping pills ... which kept my nights restful and my unconscious free from the interplay of all the characters from all of the memories I had absorbed to date.

Best of all ... I got the drugs with a mostly clear conscience, since I had told my doc that I was suffering from insomnia and nightmares. Of course, I didn't disclose everything about my burgeoning super-power ... and I asked after a ten minute conversation where I had talked about my past life as a foster child and the struggles I went through living in homes where I was loved more for the fact that I was contributing to the family's income than for any other reason ... but if he made the assumption that my nightmares were related to my past instead of my present ... well then, that was on him.

Which brings me back to my impending graduation ...

***

To graduate or not to graduate, that was the question.

Well ... kind of.

I mean, according to the school, I was graduating. My bills were paid ... my credits were completed ... my degree was being provided to me. 

Four years had flown by faster than I ever could have predicted ... four years on which I would look back fondly for the rest of my life ... four years where I was mostly isolated from the world and didn't realize just how lucky I had had it.

The debate I was having with myself, in front of the puppy, who just looked at me when I spoke to him and never really contributed to the conversation, was whether or not I should engage in all of the pomp and circumstance that was associated with the life event.

I'd been independent from the first day of my college education, and I had no close relationships with anyone from the foster families of my youth. I had to decide if I wanted to face the challenge of being surrounded by classmates whose big day was about proving themselves to their parents, or who were walking across the stage to the support of family members.

In this situation, I was my biggest fan ... and I had all of my allotted tickets for the reserved seats staring back at me from where I had pinned them to my bulletin board, because I had no one to whom I would give them. Why bother putting on a gown, and sitting through a speech -- that is, sitting through multiple speeches-- experiencing all of that awkwardness for the sake of impressing ... no one? All that mattered was that I impressed myself.

In the end, I left it all up to the flip of a coin ... heads, I'd attend the ceremony ... tails, I'd stay at home instead ...

***

It was the last time I would throw a shiny object up in the air ... well, at least, around my dog.

Luckily it was just a dime I was flipping to determine whether I would participate in my own college graduation ceremony. Because before I could catch it and see if it was heads or tails, Gator jumped up and caught in mid-air ... and gobbled it down.

Then, in a way that only pit bulls can, he sat down, looked at me and smiled as if he was waiting to play this new game again.

I figured I could wait until a few hours had passed, and then sort through his business to see whether it came out heads or tails ... or I could just consider the decision made.

After all, I couldn't resist the smile ... and I interpreted it to mean that Gator was telling me to go to the ceremony.

Of course, I still had those tickets that had been assigned to me for the reserved seats that I wasn't planning on using. The next day, I swallowed my pride, and headed to the registrar's office to donate them back.

"Hi. I have extra tickets to graduation that I'm not planning on using?"

The lady behind the counter looked up at me. If she was judging me, she was hiding it well. "Are you sure?"

I tried to avoid her eye contact all the same. "Yep ... no one is in the area that day."

Still no judgment. "Well, that's very sweet of you. We have a waiting list from classmates who requested more, so they'll be put to good use. And what's your name?"

"Alan. Alan Adler."

The registrar tapped her pen on her desk, staring at me just a little bit longer than I thought was to be expected.

"Perfect. Juuusst perfect." She took the tickets -- and I headed to class, unclear as to whether I should add extra import to her parting words.

***

At least it was beautiful weather when I woke up on graduation day ... not as hot as it had been in Florida, but warm enough to be tempted to not wear anything under the gown. I mean, after all, since I had decided to attend the ceremony despite the fact that no one was going to be in the audience cheering me on, I thought that I might as well have some fun with it.

Better judgment prevailed in the end, so I threw on shorts and a wife-beater and headed over to campus to the designated meeting space. Because I was already feeling awkward about it, I waited until the very last minute so I could just show up with seconds to spare and slide into the front of the line, seeing as how we were being arranged alphabetically.

My plan worked, so amidst the hubbub, I quickly gowned and capped myself and rushed to the line that was already forming to march across the quad. Some assistant to some admin person in the campus business office suite scowled at me as I made my presence and last name known.

"Mr. Adler, did you really not learn in the four years you were here that you will miss SO much of your life if you always show up late to it?"

I paused just long enough to make sure that the question wasn't rhetorical ... but since she didn't move on down the line, I mumbled a reply. "Sorry ... had to take care of my dog." I immediately felt guilty for using Gator as my scapegoat ... but the ruse worked, and she moved on to chide someone else two spots back whose cap was on crooked.

Within minutes, we were on the move ... and that's when I realized I didn't know the person in front of me or the one behind me. I wondered why we weren't grouped by major so we'd at least be surrounded by acquaintances ... and then thought that maybe it was my introverted approach to socializing that made my predicament unlike anyone else in the line.

Regardless, we reached the area where we'd be seated, and I decided to occupy my time by seeing if I could figure out where my family would have been placed in the reserved section had I had any family that would have attended.

Figuring that the likelihood was great that the registrar might not have been able to give all of my tickets to others with such short notice, seeing as how I had only turned them in a week before, I scanned the crowd to look for any spots with empty seats.

Before I could finish that task, the speechifying at my commencement commenced ...

***

"You are the future."

"The future starts now."

"Never forget this moment."

"Be the change you want to see in the world."

"Remember to support this institution financially, more so than you did by paying tuition the last few years."

All of the speeches ran into one another in the hot afternoon sun, but I'm pretty sure that each of those phrases was said at least once.

Then came the good stuff that everyone in my section was waiting for ... the roll call of our names began, and, one by one, we each stood up and strode across the stage, head held high, turning at just the right spot on the mark we were given, so that we'd be perfectly positioned for the photo that was being taken ... to sell to us afterwards, of course.

Part of me wished that my name was more in the middle alphabetically, or maybe even at the end, so I could leave after getting my expensive piece of paper. Instead, mine was one of the first ones called, which meant I'd be sitting for ages as they worked through every other one of my classmates.

"Alan Adler!"

That was my cue. "Don't trip. Don't trip." It was my only mantra as I bounded up the tiny stairs to the platform and worked my way across the stage. The yellow x that had been taped on the stage came into view, and I did my best turn, stand and model with my arm outstretched to accept that which was coming to me. Luckily, I had never shared any dark-story-telling-time with my college president, so the handshake that accompanied the degree had no effect on me (or her).

The crowd was clapping politely, which was actually a benefit of going early in the process -- before they got tired of trying to sustain that sense of exuberance -- and I performed my last academic task, which was to face the photographer in the front.

As forever memorialized in that photo, the smile I had practiced for that moment was replaced with a look of befuddlement, for there, just a few rows back, was one middle-aged lady, standing as she clapped.

***

Distracted by the photographer, I lost sight of the lady applauding my academic feat whilst standing on her *ow*n two feet. By the time I got off the stage and worked my way back to take my seat with my classmates, she had resume hers and had blended in to the crowd.

I craned my neck to try to spot her again, but it was a sea of people literally reacting in waves as various names were called and friends and family members jumped up to cheer. I resigned myself to waiting out the ceremony before I could try to solve that mystery.

As I waited, I began to think ... perhaps I hadn't seen anyone at all. If I had learned nothing else over the last few months (well, besides all that I had to learn in order to satisfy the requirements to get my degree), it was that my mind was a champ when it came to playing tricks on me. Maybe it was all an optical illusion ... a glare from the sun ... someone who had stood for the name called just before mine who was lackadaisically returning to her seated position.

"Englebert Flowers!"

In the time I had spent deep in internal thought, the announcer had already made it to the F's. All I had to do was to have a little patience ...

"Killian Kissinger!"

I had thought that the speechifying was interminably boring. Sitting there with prize in hand while every other person's name was called had turned out to be the real challenge of the day.

"Jerome Schools!"

So close to the end. Just a little bit longer. If only it wasn't so hot.

"At this time, we'd like to pause to pay special tribute to a dedicated group of individuals who have played a key role in the success of our graduating class." The announcer had given up the microphone to the school president. Somehow I had missed that.

She continued, with great fanfare ... "Ladies and Gentleman, I'd like to bring forward the Andante Auxiliary."

***

I had gone to this school for four years and I had never heard of the Andante Auxiliary.

So it was a complete surprise that the president was interrupting the roll call of names at my graduation to take the time to honor this group.

I was puzzled to say the least.

"At this time, I'd like the following people in the audience to stand up and to be recognized. And please hold your applause until everyone has been called. First, the Andante for Lee's teacher."

I stretched and strained to try to catch a glimpse, but saw no one. Surprisingly, the crowd stayed silent, as if the admonition from the president was a commandment not to be broken.

"And now, the Andantes for Lee's classmates."

I wished I had been paying more attention. I couldn't remember the person named Lee that must have gone before this break in the program. But at least it now was starting to make sense.

Plus I still couldn't see the people that were standing.

"Next, the Andante for the drunken texter's girlfriend's sister."

My head was clearly so focused on the graduation, that I hadn't realized what was happening. The non-reaction of the crowd should have been my biggest clue.

"The Andante for bartender Mario's sister."

I did my best to shrink into the chair on which I was sitting, while the president kept on working through her list.

"The Andante for Joey's father ... and his mother ... and his high school best friend ... and his dead ex-girlfriend ... and the ones who represent the EMT workers who were at the scene of the crash."

I knew I couldn't escape this. I stood up and faced the crowd.

***

As I had expected ... *they* had crashed my graduation.

Now that I stood up from my seat, I could see them scattered throughout the crowd ... especially since they were the only ones standing.

I wasn't sure why the school president had referred to them as the Andante Auxiliary, and I had never known them by any name of any kind, but I recognized them immediately.

They were the faceless mannequin-ish beings that haunted my nightmares ... the stand-ins for people relevant to the painful emotions that I had absorbed from those with whom I come into direct contact ... and *they* had crashed my graduation.

The president wasn't calling out any more names ... so there was an eerie silence. It seemed like no one in the seated crowd was applauding ... or moving ... or breathing. Somehow I was simultaneously have a stare-down with dozens of these creatures that didn't have eyes. But I knew full well that they were here for me.

As if to endorse the conclusion I had reached just then in my brain, they behaved as they had done in my past visions, and began making the shrieking urgent noises I had heard before -- all this despite them being without mouths. One by one, they pushed out of the row of seats in which they were waiting and they began to march down the aisles in my direction.

No one stopped them ... not the people in the rows ... not the people next to me ... not anyone from the stage. They advanced, their yowls getting louder, until they were all in front of me, converging into one mass hell bent on claiming me as one of their own.

I contemplated running away ... but decided to take my stand. With a scream of my own that was ultimately drowned out by the cacophony of their collective cries, I rushed directly at the center of their gathering.

***

The paranoid personality in me is sure to this day that someone tripped me. But the realist suspects that I might have simply gotten my feet all caught up in my graduation gown.

Regardless, the grand "Attack of the Andantes" abruptly came to a halt when my face hit the ground, and I realized that I had apparently dozed off as a side effect of the hot hot sun beating down on me, especially when combined with how bored I was waiting for the roll call to be completed.

Embarrassed, I rolled over and slowly got up, trying to stay as low as possible to the ground and I slunk over to my seat. I tried to block out the snickering in the crowd, and I could only imagine how it must have looked, me standing up and charging the seating area.

To no real surprise, I also noticed that the security guards that were positioned just off the side of the stage were now glaring at me. I nodded to each of them, hoping that the fact that no harm had come of anything I had done (unless you were counting my pride) would keep them from harassing me. Lucky for me, the ceremony was drawing to a close, so I only had to put up with their stares for just a bit longer.

As near as I could tell, I had made up the whole interruption to the roll call ... which included making up that name Andante. I had never known what to call the creatures that haunted me when I fell asleep, so I guessed that the name could stick. But still, I had to wonder from whence it came ...

At last, the final person's name was called and the closing comrade claimed his rightful rite of passage piece of paper, and there was an excitement in the crowd that this whole process was soon over, no doubt because the rest of the agenda for the day was mostly a decent amount of drunken debauchery.

But first ... the benediction, which used one of my favorite quotes from Winston Churchill ... "This is not the end. This is not even the beginning of the end. It is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."

A tear rolled down my cheek ... as we all stood again for the final formation, now officially graduates, each and every one of us.

***

It was my intention to skedaddle ... to get out of dodge ... to make like a tree and leave.

After all, I had compromised with myself to attend the ceremony despite not having any family in the audience ... so I had no desire to extend the awkwardness and make it an all day affair. Plus ... what would I possibly say to anyone who asked about my outburst ... it would end up being the elephant of sorts joining any circle of conversation.

In the back of my mind, there was that curiosity I had over who I thought I saw in the audience standing and applauding when I got my degree.

Instead, though, I made a bee line for the room where we were keeping our things.

An interrupted bee line, as it turned out, because into my direct path came none other than my "pal" Joey.

He gave me a knowing look.

"You okay?"

I stammered out a reply, "Yep, yep, yep. I dozed off and ... well, you know ..."

There was an unexpected comfort in being able to talk to someone who knew my situation.

"Good enough. You looked like a fool, just so you know. They may take your degree back and commit you, you realize that, right?" How I had missed that sense of humor ... well, not really ...

"Funny."

Before I could get back to my intended path, a young lady came running up beside us.

"Joey! You were great up there today!" The lady gave him a oversized hug, but Joey seemed to be pulling away uncomfortably.

"Thanks, mom. Now please get off me."

She obeyed and then turned to face me.

"Alan ... *this* is my moms."

***

So ... I guess she just looked young. Of course, she might have had Joey when she was just a kid herself. I had enough sense to know that I should not lead with that line of thought as we were being introduced.

"Hi!" was all I could muster.

"So you're Alan." was her reply.

I immediately thought defensively, as I tried to figure out what she meant by those three words. Surely Joey hadn't shared my secrets with his own mother.

"That makes you the reason my JJ stayed an extra week in Florida?"

When she said JJ, I couldn't help but look at Joey quizzically, half of a smile on my face. He scowled at me and shook his head, communicating that I should immediately forget the nickname that he probably only let his mother use on him.

As usual, the conversation was making me uncomfortable. I just nodded affirmatively, hoping that would end our time together.

"Well then, I owe you a thanks for getting hospitalized ... since that was the way that JJ could get home on the school's dime. God does work in mysterious ways."

I can say with certainty that it was the first and only time in my life that someone was thanking me for pushing myself to the limits and almost dying.

She reached out and patted me on the back, welcoming me into her little family circle.

And that's when something new happened.

***

Yep, just when I thought I had everything *almost* all figured out, my new skill threw me for a loop.

As Joey's mother patted me on the back, I had one of my episodes.

But this was different ... in that it was one-sided. I could tell that she had absolutely no idea as to the effect she was having on me.

And the effect she was having on me was also different when compared to the others.

For lack of a better phrase, this was a "fill-in-the-blank" phenomenon. I was replaying the memories that I had already downloaded from Joey that had involved his mom ... and now she was replacing the faceless mannequin creature -- the andante -- that my brain had used as a substitute, since I hadn't yet met her at the time I first interfaced with Joey (and the second time ... and the third time).

It was all confusing ... yet it all made sense in a way. After all, I couldn't shake the memories after I absorbed them. They became part of me ... and now some of them could be made more whole.

I experienced anew that pain from when Joey and his mom found out that his father was choosing to stay overseas because he had fallen in love with someone else he met while serving abroad. I relived how she comforted him after his high school girlfriend died in the car crash. All of it was immediately accessible to me ... and all of it was expectedly visceral.

Joey was monitoring everything. I knew that he knew that something was happening. And I knew that it worried him, probably for his own selfish reasons -- it was written all over his face.

"Mom, come on. I want to introduce to this girl I met a few weeks ago." That was the way he got us separated.

"Nice to meet you," I mumbled.

As they walked away, I couldn't help but hear her summation of our interaction. "He *is* an odd bird, just like you said."

I was more than ready to leave. I spun around to resume my mission to get back to the area in which we had all waited earlier in order to claim my things, and plowed into a woman who must have been approaching close behind me.

I felt it right away -- not any painful memory transfer, despite our physical contact.

But I knew all the same ... *she* was the one who was standing up for me in the crowd when I was on stage.

***

"Oh my ... I'm so so sorry."

My sudden spin maneuver to leave Joey and his mom that made me smack into this lady had clearly caught her by surprise, and she started apologizing immediately.

"I thought you were headed *that* way. My apologies, Alan."

Even though that I sensed that she was my solitary applauder from the ceremony, she didn't yet know that I thought that she was, and now she had tipped her hand, confirming my suspicions.

"I'm sorry, too. Ummm ... do I know you? You know my name?"

I had caught her. She couldn't be someone who existed only in my peripheral vision any longer. It was interesting to watch her draw the same conclusion. But, I'll give her this ... she was quick on her feet. She reached into her purse and pulled out a newspaper clipping.

"I do," she said. "I saw the write up in the paper about your service trip to Florida. I'd like to talk with you about that if you have some time."

I had nearly forgotten that we had had a reporter visit us on one of the work days. Seeing as how that trip had ended for me, I must have been in the hospital or on my way back with Joey on the road trip when the article was published. I was naturally curious, and reached out to take the piece of paper into my hands. Sure enough, there was my name ... and my photo ... and everyone else that was in our group.

But then the thought crossed my mind ... what did this lady care about what I had done two months ago? And why was she showing up at my graduation, following me around at a distance, stalking me through my day?

She must have been reading my face and translating the emotions, just as I had done to her moments ago, as she was the next to speak.

"Alan ... I'm connected to your family."

***

She had put me on the spot, and I had to think quickly to avoid some serious embarrassment.

"My family, huh ..." I stared off into the distance, trying to buy some time.

Truth was I didn't associate myself with a family so much. I had had my share of foster homes when I was younger, but I was back in the system by the time I got to high school, and so all of my recent memories were of a highly individual nature. I was the recipient of the scholarship for the four year of college I had *literally* just completed, and so this lady showing up at my graduation and telling me that "she was connected to my family" just wasn't registering with me.

"Are you sure you have the right person in mind? I've been on my own for as many years as I can remember." I considered once again that maybe this was all a mix-up.

"Oh yes ... I know."

She seemed genuinely sad when she said it ... so I stared into her face a little longer to see if doing so would spark some memory from my long ago life. I had buried as much as I could years before in an attempt to make certain that what I had been through wouldn't define what I could be ... and I wasn't eager to bring all of those emotions to the surface.

"Did I stay with you temporarily when I was younger?"

I decided that if I was going to be embarrassed, so was she ... for not having fought to keep me back then ... or not having kept in touch regardless of life's unexpected twists and turns.

She shook her head, and, for the first time, perhaps because I *was* staring at her so intently, I recognized something familiar about her face.

***

"I promise I'll explain everything ... but I'm sure you want to get out of that cap and gown get-up. There's a restaurant just down the road ... may I treat you to lunch? Or dinner? Or appetizers ... or whatever?"

I knew the restaurant well. Everyone at school did ... seeing as how it benefited from being open 24 hours a day, close enough to be a regular stop anytime anyone wanted to break up an all-nighter by getting in a little sustenance. Cheap enough for a college student ... and tasty enough to be a welcome reminder that one needn't eat cafeteria food for the rest of one's life.

"Franck's? Is that the place you meant?"

"Yes. Exactly," she affirmed. "Maybe in half an hour?"

I had already flipped a coin once today and allowed fate to make up my mind, and I thought it might be rude to do that right in front of this stranger who maybe wasn't a stranger who just wanted to feed me. "What harm could there be?" I thought to myself. It wasn't like I had graduation party plans.

"Can we make it an hour? I still have to go get my belongings and then run home and let my puppy dog out."

She held up the article again. "Of course ... the puppy from the picture."

This whole situation was barely walking the fine line between creepy and whatever just-this-side-of-creepy was.

I wanted to move things along, and to start the second-guessing period about agreeing to do this as soon as possible. "Ok ... so I'll see you in just one hour."

"That sounds great. Alan ... I really can't wait to talk to you and to explain things. And I'm so proud of you for your accomplishment."

It was unmistakable. She was getting misty-eyed.

But who was she? And why would she care so much?

***

A small part of me wanted there to be more fanfare.

I had spent four years of my life ... devoted almost every waking hour for almost 1500 days ... to being a college student. It just didn't seem right that the last act would be to change out of my cap and gown and claim my belongings from the little room in the chapel.

Sure, there had been the ceremony ... which had had its own degree of ... well, quite literally ... pomp and circumstance.

But then ... that's it. Nothing to see here. Get your things and get out. Don't care where you go but you can't stay here. It was worse than when the lights come at the bar and the friends you made on the other side of the counter all night long suddenly become your evictors.

Oh well ... despite my vague feelings of betrayal, I executed my last collegiate activity, and headed back to my apartment to take care of Gator. I tried to explain that I was just showing up to let him outside and that I was leaving again ... but he didn't seem to grasp that we weren't being reunited forever and ever. Of course, he was always like that ... and he always got over it ... so I managed my guilt accordingly.

Despite the thought that I might let the doubts about whether I should go meet the lady who had just introduced herself to me cause me to be a no-show, I had to admit to myself that I was intrigued. She had promised me that she would explain how she was "connected to my family" as she had stated.

So I left Gator alone and climbed into my car and drove the ten minutes it took to get to Franck's Family Restaurant in the nearby town.

Before walking in, I looked in the rear view mirror and gave myself a silent pep talk ... that no matter what secrets she unexpectedly shared, I would be able to handle it. And that I would stop her before I let the pain that I had buried come back to the surface.

At *that* moment, I realized why I had thought her face looked so familiar. There, in the rear view mirror, I recognized that, in some way, it was that she reminded me ... of me.

***

[to be continued ...]