The daddy longlegs made its slow way across the ceiling, pausing briefly at a crack before continuing on its business.  Normally, spiders of the harmless variety didn’t concern me (unless, of course, they were attempting to crawl on or land on my person), but as far as I knew, arachnids did not generally come in brilliant violet.  I stared up at it for a few seconds, squinting at it through my horn-rimmed (retro—I wore them to be ironically fashionable) glasses.  The distance from my flopped-down-in-a-heap position on the bed and the ceiling made me a little unsure if the spider was actually purple, or if it was some weird trick of the light.  I stood up on my bed to get a better look.  Yep.  It was definitely purple; the hue quite close to the color of the petals of the flowers that dotted the tiny strip of grass that masqueraded as a lawn in our trailer’s lot in early spring.  Not that there were any violets showing now; it was November first and the only things dotting the grass were discarded candy wrappers from last night’s trick-or-treaters and wet leaves. 

                I wasn’t thinking about last night’s Halloween festivities for two reasons.  The first was the fact that I had been invited to none of the various Halloween parties thrown by my high school classmates, nor had I wanted to participate in the traditional trick-or-treating.  Personally, I found it silly for kids my age to dress up in some thrown-together-at-the-last-minute costume and go door to door, begging for candy that they could just as easily buy for themselves.  Plus, no one had asked me.  The second reason Halloween was far from my mind was that the daddy longlegs that was walking across my ceiling was purple.  I sighed, using the end of the exhalation to blow my hair out of my eyes, which had absolutely no effect on the errant strands of blue dyed hair.  Annoyed, I pulled the long shock of hair out of my eyes and tucked it behind my right ear, wedging it behind the temple of my glasses.  I looked up to see where the spider had gotten himself to, catching sight of the bright purple little guy heading for the corner where my ceiling met two walls.  As I watched, however, the daddy longlegs flickered a little bit and then disappeared.

                “Well,” I said to the empty room.  “That pretty much sucks.”  Stepping down from my unmade bed, I picked my way around piles of papers, discarded socks, my galaxy-patterned Converse lo-tops, dirty glasses, empty water bottles, and other random bits and went to the door.   “Dad!” I yelled out into the hallway.  “Where are you?” I pulled one earbud out of my ear, stuffing my IPhone in the pocket of my maroon hoodie, emblazoned with the name of a college that I had some faint hope of attending in a couple of years. Our trailer was pretty small—only a single wide, and Dad could hear me when he was anywhere else in the house. 

                “Kitchen!” I heard from the other end of the house.  “Doing the dishes you said you’d do today.”  Crap.  He was right.  I walked down the hall, past my dad’s bedroom (as messy as mine, but with different kinds of bits and piles), through the living room and into the kitchen. 

                “Sorry, I forgot,” I said, moving to stand beside him.  “Let me finish them, ‘kay?” 

                “Too late,” he said, running a glass under the faucet.  “They’re done.”  He put the glass into the drain board next to the sink, reaching for the dishtowel to dry his hands. 

                “Sorry,” I said again.  I put my hands into the pocket of my hoodie.  “I really meant to do them, but I was listening to this podcast, and then…” Mentioning the podcast I had been listening to, a nice cheery discussion about how global warming would be affecting the production of coffee beans in Guatemala, made me remember the daddy longlegs I had seen.  I sighed.  “Dad,” I said, not looking at him.  “I gotta tell you something.” 

                “Sara,” he answered, his voice mimicking my tone.  “Sounds serious. What is it?  Did you rob a bank again?  Or is the drug cartel after you?  Have you been running that prostitution ring again?  I told you that prostitution was going to get you in trouble.” 

                “Come on,” I said, raising my eyes.  “Don’t be a goof.”

                “Have you met me?”  My dad grinned, his blue eyes crinkling at the corners.  He reached out to ruffle my hair, making that long lock fall into my eyes again. 

                “Yeah, I’ve met you,” I said, smiling back a little bit.  I shook the hair out of my eyes again. 

                “Why do you keep that piece so long, if it just falls into your eyes all the time,” he asked, shaking his head a bit. 

                “Because I like it,” I answered, running my hand reflexively over my head.  I wore my hair very short, except for the long bangs that reached my chin if I let them fall over my face.  Dad didn’t care what I did to my hair, so the fact that the front was dyed a deep blue and the rest of it was bleached almost white didn’t faze him.  “Listen, I gotta tell you this.”  I looked at him, making eye contact so he could see that I was serious.

                “Ok, Sara,” he said.  “What’s up?”

                “I, uh.  I think the meds stopped working again.”

                “Why do you think that?”  Dad was serious now, no hint of his joking mood remaining on his face.

                “Because I saw a daddy longlegs in my room,” I said.  “It was purple.  And then it flickered and disappeared.” 

                “Are you sure you saw it?  Maybe it was a trick of the light; that it looked purple, but really wasn’t?”

                “Yeah, I saw it.  It was crawling across the ceiling, and I stood up on my bed so I could get a better look.  It was definitely purple, I definitely saw it, and it definitely flickered and disappeared.”

                “Oh.” The look on my dad’s face told me what he was thinking. 

                “I don’t want to try another medicine,” I said before he could suggest that.  “I’ve tried six different medications and they all have the same result.  They work for a few months, I have horrible side effects, and then they stop working.”

                “Well, what about that new one?  Dr. Sharif said that she had heard some pretty positive things about it.”

                “No, nope, no way.  I’m done.”  I shook my head firmly, making a little moan of frustration when that stupid lock hair fell into my eyes again.  I pushed it back again.  “I’m tired of being fat and having zits because of the meds.  I’m tired of being exhausted even before I get out of bed in the morning.   I’m tired of dry mouth and bad breath, and stomach aches and feeling like shit.”  I could feel tears welling up in my eyes.  “I’m tired of going through all of that crap and still having the hallucinations come back.  I’m just gonna have to deal with them.”

                “Sara,” My dad lifted my chin so he could see my face.  He reached into his pocket and pulled out a tissue.  “Are you totally sure you want to give up finding the right med?”

                “What, and give up all of this?”  I smiled and pointed at my face, marked by at least ten zits, before reaching down to grab my more than ample belly.  “At least I can finally try to lose weight.  Dr. Sharif said that if I go off the meds, it should come off if I eat right and stuff.  My face should clear up too.  I hope.”  I took the tissue and wiped my eyes.  Dr. Sharif was my psychiatrist.  She’d been my doctor for three years, ever since the first time I had hallucinations at thirteen years old.  None of the meds she had tried me on had worked more than a few months before the hallucinations came back. 

                My hallucinations weren’t the weirdest things anyone had ever seen.  In fact, most of the time they were pretty ordinary.  I could be walking down the street and see a car approaching.  It would look and behave just like any normal car, except that it would flicker and then disappear after a few seconds.  Or I’d see some random guy riding his bike, and not think anything of it until he too, disappeared.  Other hallucinations would be a little weirder.  I’d see animals or insects or whatever that would look like a normal thing, except for a weird color or pattern, like the daddy longlegs I’d seen in my room.  It looked and behaved exactly like any other daddy longlegs I’d seen (and given the number of them we had in our trailer, that was a lot), except for the color.   

My mom had hallucinations too, for which she’d refused to take meds.  It was one of the reasons she and my dad would fight.  I’d hear them, late at night.  They tried to keep their voices low, but even so I could hear them through the thin walls of the trailer.  Dad would beg her to see someone to get help, but she always refused.  It was because of her “visions” that she didn’t work.  Money was always tight; even though Mom was on disability, the little bit she got per month was barely enough to cover lot rent and groceries.  Dad had his own garage, but his take-home pay wasn’t that much after he paid his receptionist and Joe, the other mechanic who worked for him.  Even so, they seemed pretty happy with each other for the most part, so it was a huge surprise to both Dad and me when she left. 

I was thirteen the first time I’d had a hallucination.  I remember it vividly.  I had just gotten off the bus from school, when I saw this little grey cat with big green eyes sitting by the bank of mailboxes that flanked the road leading into the trailer park.  There wasn’t really anything unusual about him; he looked just like any other cat, except that when I crouched down to pet him, my hand went right through him. I’d frozen in place, staring at my hand which was buried up to my wrist in cat.  The animal didn’t seem particularly concerned; in fact, it didn’t react at all, not to me or my hand.  As I watched, it flickered once or twice and then disappeared.  I had decided to keep the phantom cat secret from my dad, who was still pretty broken up from Mom’s leaving, but the hallucinations started happening more and more often.  It was easier when they looked weird, since I’d know they weren’t real, but the ones that tripped me up were the realistic-looking ones.  The people and animals that looked and acted the same as real ones.  I never heard any voices or sounds from the hallucinations, so sometimes I’d get lucky and realize they were too silent to be real, but finally Dad caught on.

We’d been walking back to our house together in the park when a guy on a bike came up over the hill, right towards us.  It didn’t look like the guy had seen us and Dad was looking down at his cell phone.  I shoved myself into my dad, getting us both out of the way of the oncoming cyclist, just as he flickered and disappeared.  Dad, of course, hadn’t seen him since he wasn’t really there.  He’d questioned me pretty thoroughly once we got home and I’d admitted to seeing the stuff I’d been seeing.  It was not even a week later when he’d gotten me in to see Dr. Sharif. 

“Dad,” I said, lifting my chin and staring straight into his eyes so he’d know I was dead serious.  I was going to try to put my foot down, although he’d probably fight me on this.  “I don’t want to be on medication anymore.  It’s not going to be like Mom.  I’m going to figure out how to deal with the hallucinations and I’m going to finish school and go to college like we talked about.  I promise.  It’s not like they’re dangerous or anything.  I just see things that aren’t there.”   My dad shook his head, his teeth clenched.  I knew that look.  He wasn’t going to let me go off the meds.  I was going to have to start cheeking them or something like that.  But his next words surprised me.

“Ok,” he said heavily.

“Ok?”  I had been gearing up to argue more with him. 

“Yeah.  Ok.  You don’t have to take the meds anymore.  I know how much you hate them.” 

“Really?”

“Yes, really.  But I want you to think about some things first, before you make up your mind.  That driver’s license that you were wanting to get?  Forget about it.  You can’t risk having a hallucination when you’re driving.   How are you going to know if the car coming at you is real or in your head?  Or the girl running out in front of you?  Or anything else, for that matter?”  He shook his head.  “These hallucinations will get in the way of you doing a lot of things, Sara.  You can finish school, sure, and probably even go to college, but what are you going to be able to do?  Your mom couldn’t work, you know.  Before she left, she was seeing more and more of her visions, and she wasn’t just seeing them; she was hearing them too.”

“She was?  How come she didn’t tell me?”

“She didn’t want to tell me, either.  She didn’t want us to worry about her.  That was our last fight, you know.  Before she left.” He sighed heavily.  “I begged her to go see Dr. Sharif, but she wouldn’t.  So I…”  He stopped.  “I threatened her.  I told her I’d take you away from her if she didn’t get help.  I didn’t mean it.” 

“Dad…”  I didn’t even know what to say.  I’d heard them fighting that night, but I didn’t know it had gone that far.

“She kind of freaked out,” my dad continued.  “She just kind of ran out of the house; didn’t even take a jacket.  I was upset, so I didn’t go after her at first.   When she didn’t come home by the next morning, I went out to look for her, but she’d gone.”   I knew the rest of the story.  My mom had left without anything except what she had on her; her wallet and some cash, but she had even left her cell phone at home.  She didn’t have any real family, just a sister she hadn’t talked to in decades, and who I’d never met, so we knew she wasn’t there.  Dad had told me the cops had traced her credit cards downstate to the city, where the trail had gone cold.  He’d said the detective thought she had just wanted to stay gone.

“So she went to New York City to, what, get away from you?”  Was it my dad’s fault that Mom had left?

“That’s just it, Sara.  She didn’t.”  I felt myself grow cold.

“Didn’t what?”

“Didn’t go to the city.”

“But you told me…”

“Yeah.  I told you that she took off and went to New York City to find a new life.  But that was a lie.  She left the house without anything, not even her wallet.  I made that stuff up so you didn’t worry.  But the cops never found her.”

“Wait, what?  What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that your mom took off in the middle of the night, three years ago, and disappeared.  They never found her.”

“Are you saying she’s dead?”  I was getting really upset.

“No.  I’m not saying that.  They never found a body.” He folded his arms. “I don’t think she’s dead, Sara.  Just…gone.  I think I’d know if she was dead.”

“How?  How would you know?” I was trembling at this point, my throat feeling tight.

“I just would know.  I can’t explain it.”  He shrugged.  “She’s not dead.  She just left.  I’m sure she’s not dead.”  He reached out his arms and pulled me close to him.  “What do you think, Sara?  Does it feel like she’s dead to you?” 

I leaned against his chest for a minute, thinking about what he’d said.  The morning after Mom had disappeared, I’d felt upset and sad of course, but her being dead never even crossed my mind.  I thought about it now.  I tried to imagine the ways she might have died.  Did she get picked up by some stranger and get raped and murdered?  Or did she fall down a ravine in the woods near our town?  She couldn’t have been hit by a car on the highway or a road or something; they’d have found her.  And there was this feeling; I couldn’t really explain it.  I just knew she was alive.  It was weird.  “She doesn’t feel dead,” I said. 

“Right,” Dad said.  “Not dead.  Just not here.”

“Yeah.  That’s it.”  I sighed.  “Not here.” 

After that painful and weird conversation with my dad, I knew I needed to get out of the house.  Normally I’d go over to my friend Zak’s house, which was three trailers over from mine, but I knew he was at the high school, working on some sets for the upcoming play.  He was really good at painting stuff and they always wanted him to work on the sets for both the musical and the drama the school did every year.  I figured I’d go up to the school and meet him there, if I could pry him away from his paintbrush.  I pulled my coat on over my hoodie and stuffed my earbuds into my ears, the first chords of a song performed appropriately enough by Death Cab for Cutie hitting my eardrums.  Dark music for my dark mood.  Perfect.  For a second, I imagined what I would look like from a distance, as if someone was watching me on a movie screen.  The camera would focus on me for a few seconds, and then pan back, the music (of course, the song on my IPhone) underlying the dismal scene—a drab trailer park, dead grass littered with wet leaves, grey clouds low on the horizon, and me.  Oh, definitely, that’s what people want to see in a movie; a short, fat, blue haired girl in a ratty (but still really cool) military trench

coat, hands jammed into her pockets as she wandered aimlessly and feeling sorry for herself in a random Upstate town.  Yeah, no.  I shook my head at my ridiculousness.

Hunching my shoulders against a gust of wind, I hurried down my front stoop towards the entrance to the trailer park.  Walking quickly, I exited the park, heading up the street towards downtown.  The wind was pretty strong for early November, picking up leaves and loose trash and swirling them in little eddies.  I looked up into the sky, wondering if the rain that the dirty grey clouds threatened would hit any time soon.  I was rewarded by another gust of wind, blowing into the partially open front of my coat and down my neck.  Shivering, I pulled the collar fully up and tugged the hood of my sweatshirt over my head.  Passing the drive through beer store and the defunct gas station, I reached Main Street just in time to feel the first drops of rain on my face.  I grimaced, but a little rain wasn’t going to stop me from my grand plan of—what was it?  Oh yeah, wandering aimlessly and feeling sorry for myself.

Turning right, I headed up the street, passing the diner and one of the four hundred pizza places that my town had.  Ok, maybe four hundred is an exaggeration, but my town seems to have an excess of both pizza places and drug stores.  And Tim Horton’s donut shops—my town is pretty small, but apparently we warrant two of them.  Thinking of Tim’s made me think of delicious coffee, but now really wasn’t a great time to think of coffee, especially since I had about six cents in my pocket.  Rain was coming down harder now, soaking through the material of my hoodie.  I shoved my IPhone deeper into the pocket of my coat, hoping the wool would keep it from getting wet.  The song had changed by then.  Another melancholy song by Regina Spektor.  I had the “shuffle” feature on, but it seemed that my IPhone knew the mood I was in.  For the next few minutes, I focused on the music, trying to ignore how wet I was getting.   I’d passed through a good chuck of downtown by this time, the expensive shops and touristy restaurants still open, but empty.  There weren’t too many tourists in my town in November; people were generally too smart to come Upstate once the peak of the autumn leaves was past.

I was passing by a tiny little park next to the court house when a much stronger gust of wind came through between the buildings, stirring the thick layer of yellow and red leaves that carpeted the grass.  In a matter of seconds I was engulfed in a blizzard of leaves, yellow and red flashes whizzing around me, some slapping against my face like hundreds of tiny little fingers flicking my skin as though I’d pissed off an entire forest of tree spirits.   In fact, as I stood there, I could see them; tiny angry-looking little creatures like hummingbirds with long curved beaks and wings moving so fast I almost couldn’t see them.  They were the same colors as the leaves; red and gold and brown.    It was a strange but cool kind of experience, for the few seconds it lasted.  The gust died down as abruptly as it had started, the hummingbird creatures flickering and then disappearing.  The leaves dropped suddenly, one bright yellow maple leaf stuck to my cheek.

                The leaf-blizzard hallucination thing left me wetter and colder.  I turned and started walking again, hoping that a quicker pace would warm me up a little.  I continued up Main Street, thinking I’d cut over towards the high school in a few blocks.  The walk wasn’t bad; even though I was pretty overweight, I wasn’t too out of shape, especially since I had to walk everywhere.  I hadn’t gotten my learner’s permit yet, even though I had been sixteen for a couple of months.  Thinking about driving made me get upset all over again; without meds there was no chance I’d be able to drive, just like my dad had said.  It was a shitty thought.  I needed to talk to Zak about it.  He was my best friend, and the only one who knew about my hallucinations.   But he was at the school and I was still a couple of miles from there. 

                I had turned into a development, through which I could take a shortcut to the high school.  It was one of those places where there were nice houses that looked all the same, like they were cut out by the same house-shaped cookie cutter.  I used to imagine that the people who lived inside those houses looked the same as each other too; identically dressed moms standing on their porches while the dads in matching white t-shirts mowed the lawns in the summer and raked the leaves in the winter while the boys and girls rode expensive bikes and longboards through the neighborhood.  I knew I was partially right; all the lawns looked the same.  They were all still very green, unlike the brown strips of grass in my trailer park.  They were also clear; piles of leaves sat neatly on the verge between the sidewalk and the street.   It was such a different world from my trailer park.   The city collected the leaves from the verge outside the park, but no one who lived in the park cared very much, and it was rare that anyone raked enough to make a pile.

 My thoughts were interrupted by the sound of a car horn.  I had been walking in the middle of the road because the trees that lined the sidewalks had been dripping on my head.  Without turning around, I moved to the sidewalk to allow the car to pass me.   For some reason, it didn’t, and then I heard the horn again.  I looked over my shoulder; coming up alongside of me was a powder blue Volkswagen Beetle with a ridiculous white and yellow daisy decal on the hood.  I knew that car; only one person at school drove such a stupid car.   Callie French. 

                “Sara,” Callie called.  She had leaned over and rolled the passenger window down.  It was not the smartest move, since she was getting rain in the leather interior of her car.  “Want a ride?”

                “No thanks,” I said.  Callie had been my best friend in kindergarten, but hadn’t been in any of my classes after that.  We’d seen each other again once we got out of elementary school; she’d been in a couple of my classes before, but we’d never really talked since we were five.  Besides, my best friend from second grade on was Zak, and I spent all my time with him. 

                “It’s raining,” she said.  “You’re wet.”

                “You’ve got a good grasp of reality,” I said, grinning to myself.  At least one of us did.

                “Come on,” she said.  “It’s like 37 degrees out, you’re wet, and you must be freezing.   Where are you going, anyway?”

                “I’m fine,” I said.  I really wasn’t fine.  It was freaking cold and my black Converse high top sneakers were soaked through.  I wasn’t sure I could feel my feet any longer. 

                “Dude,” she said.  “Don’t be a moron.  Get in.”  She reached over and pulled the door handle so that the door swung open.  I could feel a draft of warm air.  Dammit.  I got in, slamming the door behind me.   As I sat down with a squishing sound, I felt a spreading warmth on my butt.  I felt water run from my hair, down my nose and drip onto my lap.  To be polite, I pulled one of my earbuds from my ear.

                “Um.  I hope those are seat warmers.  Otherwise I’ve just peed on your custom leather seats.”

                Callie snorted.  “It’s seat warmers,” she said.  “But if you peed on my seats, my dad will probably kill you.  Don’t worry, it’ll be relatively painless, I’m sure.  He’ll use his Beretta, and shoot you in the head.  You won’t feel a thing.”  She put her foot on the gas and the car lurched forward.  I quickly pulled my seatbelt on. 

                “So you’re saying your dad’s a gun nut?”  I gave Callie a measured look.  I was pretty sure she was kidding, but I wasn’t too sure about her dad.   I was also not too sure about Callie’s driving abilities. 

                “Oh, definitely.  We probably have ten or more guns in the house.”  She looked at me and grinned.  “But I’m kidding about him shooting you.  But you didn’t pee, did you?”

                “No.”  Callie was funnier than I expected.  I glanced over at her again.  This was not  the Callie I remembered from elementary school.  She used to be a little blond thing, but now her hair was dyed pitch black and piled on her head in an elaborate style reminiscent of the way my grandmother used to wear her hair in the sixties.  Black clunky glasses adorned her face, hiding her grey eyes.  She wore heavy eyeliner on her top lid and black mascara.  Brilliant red lipstick completed the look.  She was dressed in a black and white plaid mini-skirt, black combat boots and a black heavy sweater.  

                “What?” she asked as she saw me staring at her.   I couldn’t think of what to say, so I said the first thing that popped into my head. 

                “You don’t match your car.” 

                She laughed. “What is that supposed to mean?”

                “I mean, you drive this girly powder-blue daisy car, and you look like you stepped out of a Hot Topic catalogue.  That just doesn’t compute.”

                Callie snorted again.  “The car is my dad’s idea of being a father,” she said.  “I found it in the driveway on my 16th birthday.  He, of course, was on a cruise with my stepmother.” 

                “Oh,” I said.  Callie’s dad was rich.  I couldn’t relate.

                “That’s not the stepmother that wouldn’t let me come over in elementary school,” she continued.

                “Oh,” I said again.

                “That was Linda.  She was a bitch.  I was glad when she left.”  She glanced over at me.  “I was pretty upset when Linda said we couldn’t be friends.”

                “That was a really long time ago,” I said. 

                “Yeah,” Callie said.   There was an awkward pause.  “So this stepmother is ok.  Really young though.  Like ten years older than I am.  My dad’s such a cliché.”

                “Oh.”  I looked out of the window as we passed by a cornfield.  The stalks were still up, brown and dead.  I always wondered why some fields never were harvested.

                “Sara,” Callie said, and paused again.

                “What?”   This was getting even more awkward.

                “So, I, uh, was really upset when Linda said we couldn’t be friends, like I said.  She was too hung up on what she thought other people were thinking about her.”

                “And I was too poor to be seen with you,” I said.  Suddenly I wanted to get out of the car.  We had gotten a lot closer to the school at this point; it was only about a five minute walk.  “You can let me out here,” I said.

                “Wait, no,” she said.  “I mean, what I’m trying to say is that I never wanted to stop being friends with you.  That was always Linda.  But by the time she left, you were already best friends with Zak, so I didn’t want to, you know, get in the way, or whatever.”  I looked at her incredulously.

                “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard,” I said.  “Besides, you have your own friends.”

                “Yeah,” Callie said slowly.  “I do.  But…”  She sighed.  “Listen, Sara, can we just…”

                “Can we just what?”

                “I don’t know.  Just, hang out or whatever?”

                “Um.”  I didn’t really know how to react to this.  “I mean, this is totally out of the blue.  Why now?  Why me?  I don’t get it.”  We had gotten to the high school and Callie had pulled into one of the parking spots by the pool entrance. 

                “You were my best friend—“

                “In kindergarten!!” I blurted out.

                “Yeah.  But you’re still really cool.  You’re totally down to earth.  The girls that sit at my lunch table; I never feel like I really have anything more in common with them than the fact our parents are friends and they have money.”

                “Sooo,” I said.  “You want to slum it?”

                “It’s not like that.  I just think we have more in common.”  She was looking down at her fists clenched in her lap.

                “Like what?”

                “Like the fact you don’t have a mom around either.”  That got me.

                “What do you know about that?”  I was starting to get upset.

                “Zak told me.”  What?  When the hell was Callie French talking to my best friend?  “We’ve hung out a few times.”  She shrugged.  “At play rehearsal.  He’s a really cool guy.”  She looked at me.  “I’m in drama club.”