The apartment was fairly spacious, to the point it could have been a two-bedroom place if it actually had walls. As it was, the only walls encircled the corner, where a single shallow closet and the bathroom were. The bathroom, I couldn’t help but note, was ridiculously small for the size of the overall apartment. Toilet, sink, and shower stall, with barely any room to squeeze in between one thing and the thing or things beside it.

I stepped into the bathroom and disrobed, leaning out past the door to hang up my jeans outside, so the humidity of the shower wouldn’t get at them. I hung up the rest of my clothes on the inside of the door.

It was paranoia over preserving the raw denim and bringing out any dye that regular wearing hadn’t already worn away, maybe, but I’d spent a week’s pay on the jeans. If they had been free, I still would have been attached to them, because they reminded me of Dean, and because they were getting to be the most comfortable jeans I’d ever had, after rigorous wearing. I was going to be fussy.

I hadn’t gotten to be fussy with other things. A year after I had gone to the hospital, my mom had donated just about all of my clothes to charity.

There had been things I’d bought with Dean, with friends, with Aunt Sarah or Crystal. Uncle Neil had always spoiled me rotten, going to Crystal for tips on what to get me, and there had been four or five things I would have liked to have. Some had been milestone things, dresses I’d worn to school events, clothes I’d gotten to take home from photo shoots, and small accessories I’d bought as rewards to myself, like saving my first thousand and two thousand dollars, when I’d thought I might move to another city to follow Dean, if the PRT moved him.

It hadn’t been like she’d needed the room. Dad had moved out by then, I was gone, my sister was gone. It had been… her ripping off her own band-aid, by giving away my treasures.

I could have turned the shower to a scalding heat to try to find a physical way to reflect what I was feeling otherwise. I could have turned it to freezing cold, to wake myself up.

I opted for the embrace of warm water in lieu of the warm hug of the sweater I’d taken off. I got into the shower and used my flight, bringing my knees to my chest and hugging my legs tight, closing my eyes.

I rotated in the air a few times over the course of what might have been twenty minutes, letting the water pour over me. I didn’t open my eyes once for the duration, and I didn’t feel like I might fall asleep.

⊙