27

It’s hard to believe there was ever a time before I knew Sky. Truthfully, Sky didn’t ever not exist to me. Even before I knew his name, he was an apparition in the back of my mind, an anonymous confession on my father’s deathbed, the reason for my distracted thought process as I stare at a can of baked beans in the supermarket.

Heinz or Bush’s. Which brand did Chuckie say he prefers? Fuck.

I turn my head from left to right, eyes scanning the vastness of produce, but I have no idea what I’m looking for, exactly. Another clueless customer like me, shaking their head, saying, “Just get what’s cheapest”? A chance to implore the personal opinion of an apron-clad employee, only to have them tell me, “I dunno, I just stock the shelves”? Maybe this is a wakeup call. Maybe this is my dead mother reprimanding me with, “Can’t even decide on what type of beans to buy? How indecisive can you be? Where do you think you’re going in life?”

It’s this thought that triggers me and sends me reeling. Helicopter rides, ant people, contorting metal, Native Americans on gurneys. The can of baked beans flies out of my hands and all I see is the white tiled ceiling before I hit the ground.

This is when the elevator music kicks in and I convince myself I’m dead. Why else would I be five years old again, wearing a Dodgers cap, bouncing in my seat, traveling southbound toward Los Angeles? Why else would my dad be next to me, singing along with the radio, “Excuse me while I kiss the sky!”?

I hate that fucking song.

When I wake up I think I’m in heaven, but the figure hovering over me is no angel. She looks like a lion strung out on coke and ran through the gutter one too many times, yet somehow, as she snaps her bubblegum in my barely conscious face, she’s able to pull it off. It’s her mystique. She’s got a wild, platinum mane that looks like it’s been dyed to hell and back and her eyes are the dullest shade of hazel I’ve ever seen, surrounded by aubergine silhouettes that might actually be intentional. Maybe she knows how lifeless she looks. It’s her shtick. I almost want to reach out and touch her dark circles to make sure they’re real and not just a liberal use of dollar store eye shadow.

Her cracked lips turn up in a sadistic smile and she lets out the most soulless laugh I’ve ever heard. There are some people you look at and immediately know they’re dead on the inside.

Candy is one of them.

“Smells Like Teen Spirit” is issuing softly through the intercom, filtered through the shelves of canned goods. I absentmindedly wonder what Kurt Cobain would think about a commercial grocery store chain playing the song he never meant to become famous in the first place.

She laughs again and the first thing she says to me is, “Cool shirt.” Not, “What happened?” or, “Are you okay?” Almost like she expected to find me here. Like she planned for me to faint in an empty grocery store aisle and wake up to the sight of her hovering over me like a deranged animal. Maybe she’s the one who knocked me out.

I look down, seeing the wrinkled, upside down block letters spelling out “THE DOORS” on my chest. I wonder how long I’ve been lying here for. Is she the one who found me? Is she the only one who found me? What if the same imaginary employee from before passed by and didn’t even bat an eye when they saw my pathetic body sprawled out on the floor, merely shrugging and continuing on with their duties?

She’s the only person that cares about me in this moment and that’s what scares me the most.

My forehead is throbbing and the inside of my arm itches. The overhead lights are glaring behind her fried hair and I’m still not entirely convinced that I’m not dead. She laughs when I don’t say anything in response, so she bends down and whispers like a phantom siren:

“You ever think about dying?”

It’s a coincidence, really. Or maybe she’s psychic. Psychic or psychotic, what’s the difference?

My first instinct is that she’s hitting on me. This is her strange, morbid way of asking me out. Maybe she practiced saying it in her mirror a hundred times before she finally worked up the courage to use it on whatever poor soul she happened upon first. I keep waiting for the punch line (“…Because I die when I think about you!”, “…Because you’re gonna die if you don’t give me your number!”), but it never comes. Instead, she laughs again. I wonder what she’s on. Definitely not meth; she’s got the whitest teeth I’ve ever seen. Percs? Or maybe crack. It’s hard to tell with her.

“You live around here?” She asks. I blink, nodding slowly as I absently scratch the inside of my arm. She sees this and grins. Just like that, she’s figured me out.

“You’re gonna fit right in.”

I’m definitely dead. Real people don’t talk like that. Real people don’t crouch above you, laughing like a hyena as you lay next to a rolling can of beans on the cold tile floor. Fuck, my head kills. She stands up and I come face to face with her skeleton legs consumed by combat boots too big for her feet. She tries too hard. I hope she kicks me in the face.

“I’ll pick you up at eight,” are her last words to me before she disappears, laughing wildly down the aisle. Pick me up where? For what? Who are you?

I get up after that, trying to ignore the knife in my forehead as I stumble through the store. I don’t end up buying the beans.