A Chance for Sunny Skies Read Free

, Harry and the Hendersons , even Wall-E had produced not a single tear. Nothing. Nanny Marie had always marveled at the fact that I hadn't really cried as a child, either. I seemed to be crying twenty-six years of built up tears all at once.
    After only a few minutes in that shower my positive thoughts had turned. Okay! became okay... became am I okay? became more crying. My shoulders shook, I curled down, wrapped my arms around my knees, and continued to cry my Most likely to die alone tears.
     

2
     
    The slide show came back.
    Picket fence.
    Yoga bag.
    Green shoe.
    Old woman.
    Lightning picture.
    Dog collar.
    Pond.
    Was I dead? Dying again?
    I peeled one eye open. Then the other. Nope, just asleep. The theme music from Downton Abbey played from my phone next to me on my nightstand. I tried to curl onto my side, my usual kinda-thinking-about-waking-up first step, but all that salt water must have dried me out. My skin screamed when I tried to move, it was so tight. I felt like one of those mummified cats you see in creepy curiosity shops or Ripley's books. I think I might have been making the same kind of face as I grimaced through the pain.
    Benny purred and stretched his legs out so they pushed on me. He was a red head, like me. Well, orange head (as close as a cat can get). His green eyes focused on me as he contemplated who-knows-what-goes-through-a-cat's-mind, his head resting sideways on the covers. I ruffled his fur and he whined a complaint.
    "Oh, stuff it, Benedict." (Yes, I did name my cat after the actor on Sherlock, shut it.)
    I tried to get up again. This time, I built up momentum by rolling back and forth a tiny bit each way, groaning as I sat up. My muscles screamed louder than a Jerry Springer paternity special. It must have been the swimming. I rubbed my arms. Going from no exercise at all to swimming for my life must have been a shock to my poor muscles, all three of them.
    A plus-side to living alone was that no one saw me zombie-walk into the bathroom to get ready. I didn't just walk like a zombie; I looked pretty darn undead to boot. Sleeping on my hair wet had produced something alive and angry looking. I wet my fingers and ran them through the red mess until it looked somewhat tame.
    The rest of the morning was pretty regular everyday. Put on pants. Pinched at muffin top while making nostrilly upset face. Covered muffin with loose shirt. Wrangled hair into bun. Found matching shoes. Shoved a bagel in my mouth. Walked as quickly (and stiffly) as I could to Gerald because, "holy goodness how the crap was I so late?"
    I pulled an only slightly fishy smelling Gerald into the parking lot of the Henry Phillips building five minutes late and let my head fall forward to hit the steering wheel. I would have stayed there forever, but the work day called, so I peeled myself out of the car and shuffled in.
    I graduated with a psychology degree, I guess trying desperately to understand myself, and maybe the people who teased me.  Sure, it helped me figure out that my oddness was indeed a disorder and got my butt into counseling (thanks to the student insurance benefits), but once I graduated and my insurance ran out, I regressed. A lot. Looking into jobs where I was supposed to help others like me sounded too much like the anxious leading the anxious.
    I stuffed my degree and focused on things I could do, like temp jobs where other people did the searching for me. Though, none of them came with benefits, so I seemed to be sinking further and further into my silence as I moved from job to job, not feeling as if one ever fit me right. I helped as an archivist in the city's library, had done a quick stint as a transcriptionist, and now I worked as a close caption typist for a local news station's pre-recorded segments.
    Yeah, I bounced around. I'd been at KMPO 4, Willamette Falls' only news station, for almost a year and liked it okay. Even though it was uncomfortably close to another sore subject from my