Project 43

There are moments in your life where I think you’re forced to mature a bit. Seeing through other people’s eyes can be one of them. I haven’t wanted to face the music that I could be a cure or something, but Nathan was right. People where dying.

He hasn’t spoken to me in three days and doesn’t seem to care when I leave the house. I’ve been going on my walks, but I can see those things wandering the streets from our hillside. There are clean-up crews and people still working but it’s only essential personnel. There’s one woman down below I see inside her house with her children checking the locks, rechecking the locks. Her husband keeps leaving the garage open and even though they aren’t always around the construction keeps filtering them into her neighborhood and through her fence line to the back yard sometimes.

It makes me wonder if that door doesn’t lock, if they can turn door handles. Maybe she’s worried one of them won’t be seen by her husband. I’m not sure- but she yells at him anytime he does it and checks. Sometimes I wonder if that’s where she also goes to cry.

I watch her from the roof top from binoculars. I wonder if she ever sleeps. one hundred and thirty-two times she’s checked the locks in a twenty-four-hour period as I looked down. I’ve been sleeping but with Nathan being upset things are tense, so I’ve only been getting a few hours here and there. Going back to old comforting habits when I couldn’t leave but not being in the same room with him, I went to the roof for a breath of fresh air. The best of both worlds, feeling free seeing everything even if I was under an umbrella- but also staying in the same general area, pacing and watching the world around me.

She’s blond and clearly terrified. For her this is real and happening in a world where she has babies to protect. Instead, I chose to block out the bad somewhere between home and horror to this place on the hill. Maybe it was Nathan or the prospect of being around someone else. Freedom to try exotic things that I didn’t know had existed as far as food and movies...

Nathan didn’t need to dial the number.

I did.

Maybe that makes me weak.

They’ll be here any time I imagine. The lady on the phone seemed to think I was making it up. So, I gave her the code to the case. The code to my life. One that under any emergency I was to submit. “Just put the number next to my name or statement or something.”

“Yeah, ok kid.” Sighed the lady on the other line sounding bored with me. “2-3-2-3-7?"

My breath caught in my chest for a moment- but as soon as a saw a flash of yellow hair in a window curtain upstairs peeking out the tightness was gone. "Yeah. Yeah, that's the number."

I don't know what I've done... but it's been done.