There is a point in life where there is no turning back. There are limits, boundaries, and all we really have is trust, our honor, our loyalty. Nothing matters more than relationships. So when we are mentally broken down, so that we strip everything around ourselves that has any meaning. Sometimes we are left bare, not knowing who we are…scrambling to keep moving to the next minute, then the next, then somehow the next.

When I drove to the prarie to meet Jake it was like I was driving in a movie. I looked around at the giant Live Oaks laced with gray, looped spanish moss, and it was as if they were put there for my immediate benefit. The birds chirping…what plesant sound effects. The rain was drizzling gently for me, a perfect mood-setting for the moral self-mutilaitng I was about to undertake. Gently stepping outside of myself made it all possible. The driving, the yanking the large van into gear at the lights almost shocked me out of my daze. But pulling up to the Prarie parking lot for the second time that day and seeing Jake standing there outside of his truck with the shattered windshield, left me with a wildly thudding chest, like I was having a small, delightful heart attack. I laughed with horror, the kind of horror you tempt yourself with through haunted houses and roller coasters, at giving myself this gift…at shedding responsibility as if it were wrapping paper and then appearing in front of him as a person with nothing left. I was a character looking at the shell of myself just as much as he was. I couldn’t help but think, as he walked up to my van, crunching over the rocks and pine needles, opening the door, wrapping his hand firmly around the back of my neck and kissing me like I was all his and always had been, that perhaps he knew my next move, better than I did.

I dropped Kat off at the coffee shop. I was supposed to drive back to St. Augustine now. I held tightly on to the steering while of the van. My hands were sweating and when I took them off and looked at them, they were covered in black bits of rubber. I wiped it off on my shorts and stared at the window of the coffee shop. I had successfully alienated another friend, my best friend, the one who never judged me,  until today. 

There was only one person in the world who knew me for who I was and accepted me that way. Just one, and I had left him with a broken windshield and a bloody fist. But I knew that even so, even so he would be happy to see me if I wanted to see him. I smiled to myself. How lucky I was to have that, to have one person. He was the one who pointed that out last night, that we “got” each other. All I wanted to do now was see him. I thought about our night in the woods camping, sitting in the front seat of his truck, completely not being able to resist him and the leaves and the stars and the fireflies. I sucked in my breath and looked around me. He was in this same town somewhere. I looked at my phone and then thought about the other side of this. I still hadn’t completely messed things up. I still hadn’t crossed any lines over to no return. But calling Jake would put me on the Jake side of the line instead of the Chris side. Well, thinking of it like that, at this particular second made it easy. 

I texted Jake, “I can’t stop thinking about you.”

Then I looked up at the coffee shop and could see Kat sitting there talking to her friend just like when I came to pick her up. But event though I was looking at exactly the same scene as I did about two hours ago, things were completely different now. Clouds started to cover the sky and I smiled. If it rained for me, then it would wash away all the pain and if I could have Jake there with me, maybe I could find a small piece of perfection through the torment of my brain. Just a few minutes of relief…it seemed like a drug I needed to get to right away. I looked down at my phone. It said, “Do you know where the prairie is?”

 I smiled and my heart started to pound. Relief wasn’t too far away. Then I suddenly thought about just driving home right now, just drive home. I put my phone down and thought, well, I’ll head to the prairie and if I change my mind along the way…I change my mind. 

The prairie was endless grass and wildflowers. I leaned on the railing of the raised boardwalk over the sinkhole and spring full of alligators, and stared at the blue sky with the clouds drifting slowly by. Time didn’t affect them. The sun was warm on the top of my head, it felt good on my arms. I closed my eyes and breathed in the air. It was so peaceful here, so quiet. I thought about going home today instead of going out with Kat tonight. I was missing Zoe already and Chris would feel better if I got back the day before the closing instead of the morning-of. I thought about Zoe spending time with Luna, and how sometimes she didn’t even seem to notice that I was a part of her life. She had a connection with Luna. I realized I felt a tinge of jealousy at this and shook it out of my head. I imagined Zoe and Luna and Chris just having a nice calm time at the beach house without me and my drama. I looked down at my sandals an sighed. The three of them were probably having a nice vacation from Mama. I was an extra mouth to feed for Luna and she always changed my bed sheets and garbage cans and mopped the whole house all the time. I did it about once a month and practically had to race her to it to get to the jobs first. Why did she even put up with me?…probably because she liked having Zoe and Chris around.

I stood there feeling a little numb now. This was stupid though. Why should I stand there and let my thoughts work me into depression? They loved me, or they wouldn’t put up with all of my crap all of the time. This suddenly made me sad. Why did I put them through things? 

I thought about what I wanted and although I missed Zoe, I was a little relieved to be away from the responsibility. I thought about if I got in that VW bus and drove further away. They could have more time relaxing without me. But they wouldn’t relax, they would be angry with me for being irresponsible and not coming back when I said I would. 

I looked over at Kat who was taking a photo of an enormous alligator on the bank across the spring. He seemed to be staring right at her.

“I’ve never seen Yosemite before” I said.

“What?” Kat turned around and looked at me.

“I lived in California for a while but never went to Yosemite, or Hawaii.” 

“You gotta see the Half Dome before you die” she said, and went back to focussing on the alligator.

Before I die. 

“Maybe I’ll drive out and see it,” I said.

“That van of yours will never make it,” she said.

“Your car will.”

“My car needs to take me to work tomorrow morning. I have a 12 hour shift starting at 6am.”

“Don’t you want to blow it all off?”

“I want to be able to pay my bills at the end of the month. Something you never had to worry about!” She raised her eyebrows at me and I nodded sheepishly. But thank God I wasn’t tethered to a pay check. 

“I think that Zoe and Chris are probably better off without me” I said.

Kat walked over to me and leaned on the railing of the boardwalk. “It sounds to me you are trying to talk yourself out of feeling guilty for potentially ditching them and driving off to see Yosemite.”

I shook my head. “I just stay there with them because I love them. But I make their lives hell.” 

“Why do you do that?”

I shrugged. “I ca’t help it.”

“Of course you can. You have power over your own actions.”

I nodded. “You would think.”

“How long are you planning on leaving for?”

“I’m not going anywhere” I said grumpily. “I’m just going to hang around, fucking up my daughter’s life.”

“You sound like some kind of deadbeat dad”, Kat snapped. Then she sighed. “Listen, if you need a place to stay while you figure things out, you can stay with me. I’m not going to judge you. But my heart breaks for that little girl, and for Chris. You know they love you so much.”

I stared at a blue heron walking so close to an alligator. Why didn’t it just eat the heron? Perhaps it was too long and bony to bother with. It stepped carefully and gracefully by. 

“Jake’s truck could get me to Yosimite” I said.

Kat shook her head. “You know if you do that you are giving up  your family, right? I mean, Odette,  you could go back now and see them and everything will be OK.”

“But everything is not OK. I feel like I am suffocating. I’ve been trying to get away from all of this for the past year but my conscience keeps tugging me back, and my love for my family. But I just think they would be better off without me. They can feel my restlessness. I don’t want Zoe to grow up feeling like she was never good enough because her mother always wanted to be somewhere else but just stuck there because she was supposed to.”

“Is that how you really feel?” Kat said.

“Sometimes. I do this second. But sometimes, a few fleeting moments here and there, I feel completely happy at our home at the beach and during those times I feel terrified knowing that I sometimes feel the opposite. Even when I am happy I am worried about being unhappy.”

“There is medicine for that.”

“I know.” I looked at Kat’s face. She had bright blue eyes and she looked really concerned. I knew that look well. Just about everyone I knew had gazed at me like that at some point, complete worry-mode.

“It seems to me like you should go back to the beach and get yourself some Zoloft or whatever else stops depression or whatever, and then carry on without hurting yourself or your family.”

I imagined going home and walking around like a zombie on Zoloft. “I can’t think on that stuff, or feel, or exercise without constantly weirdly yawning.” 

“Oh, well then if you can’t bare to yawn, then stay crazy” she said.

I smiled, then laughed. She said the best stuff. I nodded, “OK, maybe.”

“You should get in your van and just go home now. I have to work too early tomorrow to feel good about going out tonight.”

We started to walk down the boardwalk in the direction of the small, dirt parking lot a half a mile away. “You just don’t want to hang out with me now that I have revealed what a horrible person I am to you.”

“You have no fucking self esteem” she said.

“Yes I do.”

She looked at me. “Ok, you do in a way, but knowing you are pretty isn’t enough. You have to know that you are appreciated and loved and trusted too.”

“Why do those three words make me want to run?

“I don’t know, Odette. I don’t know.”

The thing about Kat is that I knew I could tell her all of my indiscretions and she wouldn’t leave the room deciding she needed to de-freind me in the name of loyalty to Chris. She didn’t care about my mistakes. In fact, I got the weird feeling she actually enjoyed them a little.

“Girl, first I can’t believe you stayed at a strangers house last night. Secondly, you have no self control when it comes to that Jake guy!” she said, then laughed, spitting some egg out onto her lip them sucking it back in again.

“Ewww!!” I giggled, “gross!”

“Sorry! But you seriously don’t have ANY. You crack me up. And I can’t believe you just left him out there in his truck with a busted windshield and a bloody fist, Jesus!” she laughed again,  stuffing more egg in her mouth.

I looked outside the greesy windows. Trucks lined the parking lot, lots of GATOR stickers plastered all over dented bumpers. A couple smoked outside of the door, leaning that relaxed way that smokers do with their cigarettes dangling…just about to fall from their long fingers, but not quite.

“Odette!” She said.

“Huh? Oh yeah, my indiscretions crack you up and I’m a horrible person for ditching Jake like that.” I took a sip of my orange juice.

She held up her coffee, “cheers” she said.  I wasn’t sure what we were cheering but I clinked cups with her anyway. “It is so good to see you friend. You do realize I’m coming to the beach like, next weekend, right?”

“I’d love that” I said, whith a mouth full of grits. “You would be amazed at what Zoe can do now. She knows all the captials and all the states when we do her United States puzzle.” I pulled out my phone and held it over the table to show her a puzzled of Zoe, sitting on the wooden floor of Luna’s living room, working on the puzzle.

“She’s so beautiful  like her Mama. And she’s like a little autistic genius. Like a little Rain Man.”

I felt a bit of a sting in my gut. “She’s not like Rain Man,” I said. “She is completely her own little person. And don’t call her autistic, I hate that, as if she were a ‘type’ of something. She is not autistic, she is Zoe, and she happens to have autism too.” I took a big gulp of orange juice then looked over the plastic cup at Kat who was open-mouthed.

“Sorry” she said. “I was joking around a little, since you know, Rain Man was a genius. He was pretty cool. It’s not like an insult or anything. I said she was beautiful.”

“I know,” I said, shaking my head. “I’m not mad or anything. It is just everything gets confusing sometimes. I just don’t want her to be stuck in a box becuase of her diagnosis. I worry about her so much. I don’t know what her future is goning to be like, if she will ever make friends or ever, you know, drive or have a boyfriend…get married or even ever have a job. I just don’t know.” I gulped some more juice and realized that was the first time I had ever said that outloud. “Sometimes I have to get away to clear my head, so I can get back to her fresh and be a good mom.” I had to fight back tears.

I looked up at Kat who was enthusiastically finishing her eggs. She nodded. “These are really good eggs. They slather so much butter on here. How do they do it? How do they make EGGS taste so good?”

I looked at her with wonder. Hadn’t she heard anything I just said?

Then she put her fork down and looked at me inquisitively. “Sometimes I’m really glad I don’t have kids. It seems like way to much emotional crap for everyone. My brother is freaking out because his son is biting anything that moves and got kicked out of preschool. The parents there actually signed a petition to get rid of him! And now my brother has to stay home from work for two weeks while they find another preschool. I don’t know how you all deal with all that crap.”

I sighed a big sigh. “Your poor brother. That really sucks but it will be a story to laugh about in a couple of Christmas’s. Mine won’t be.” I felt a bit solemn.

“Maybe not with biting, but he’ll probably being doing something else by then to terrorize his family.”

I laughed. Everyone has kid issues I suppose. I sighed. “I miss Zoe.”

“What about Chris, do you miss him?”

“Yeah.”

“Even though you are still lusting over college boy.”

I gave her a hard stare, but simply said, “yeah.” Then I smiled. “I should introduce Jake to you…get you guys together. Then he would be even more inaccessible because he would be yours.”

“As if I would do that. Anyway, isn’t he getting engaged?”

“I seriously doubt that’s going to happen” I said, finishing up my grits. “Damn it, you are going to make my stomach hurt.”

Kat laughed. “Haven’t you heard the fraise, you can’t have your cake and eat it too? Well its because when you do eat it, your stomach hurts, just like your’s is hurting right now.”

I put my fork down and nodded. “I’ve had enough.”

“Let’s go see some alligators at Paynes Prarie. You can practically touch them there.”

“Really? I don’t know about that. I’d like to make it home alive, not all chewed up.”

“No, they are totally used to people. It is amazing to see them out in the wild and not all caged up like that Gator World of yours down in St. Augustine.”

“OK” I grinned while pulling out my wallet. “Let’s go.”

It was one of those morning where the birds were singing so loudly that you wake up and realize that other creatures live in this world besides yourself.

I snapped out of my trance to the buzzing of my phone and I grabbed it from the floor and silenced it quickly. I really wanted to just sneak out of that house and disappear. My host(ess) would think I was just a dream except for the solid proof of her clean house. I immediately thought about Jake, remembering last night with a wave of dismay. Well, I mused,  there was nothing that could be done about that now so there was no point in wasting a good day by worrying about it.

I clicked the door shut as quietly as I could behind me and hurried to the van. I stood and looked at it. This cute, old blue thing was so loud, there was no way that starting it wouldn’t wake up Zombie Girl. That was such a mean name and she was so lovely. Why did Jake call her that? I hopped in and slammed the clunky old door. I started up the engine and it immediately misfired with a terrible bang, and I jumped so hard I thought for a second I was going to throw up. I breathed until I realized I wasn’t. “Stupid car” I muttered as heaved it into first gear, revved it up and puttered out of there, careful not to look over at the house incase she was peering out of a window or a door. I probably woke the whole street up. I looked only at the road in front of me and smiled that I had managed to escape from that whole business with little damage.

I was suddenly completely famished and when I realized I was going to see Kat in just a few minutes and probably get some breakfast too, I suddenly felt completely rejuvenated. The excitement that I had taken this trip in hope of finding, was finally filling me up. I grinned and popped in the next secret tape, hoping this one wouldn’t be eaten too. Bob was going to kill me when I brought his VW back with all his beloved music in a pile of old black tape. “Happy Together” came on and I sang it as loudly as I could until I got the coffee shop. There was a spot right in front of the window so I pulled up right there, not quite finding the break right away, but then stomping on it just in time, as I hit the wheel-stop, which lifted and scraped up the bottom of the van. “Shit” I whispered. I backed up and it ground with an agonizing creek and squeak, then the van thudded back down to the ground. “Shit” I whispered again.

I hopped out and slammed the door then lay on the ground to check if I had ruined the underside of Bob’s van. It all looked a mess under there. There was no way of telling that I had contributed to any of that. I got back up, brushed off my dirty clothes and pulled a leaf out of my hair, and saw Kat grinning at me through the window and people sitting down slowly, almost gingerly at the tables in front of the window. Had I scared them off with the van? surely not. Gosh it was amazing to see Kat’s face. I hurried inside and hugged her. “Please tell me they serve eggs at this place…and hopefully bacon and home fries!!”

“We are at a coffee shop, Odette.” Kat said. “They sell COFFEE here. You could probably get a stale muffin or something if you are starving.”

“I am starving. Let’s go to Waffle House!!” I said. “I seriously need some cheese-grits like, right now.”

“OK, come on then.” She grabbed her bag, waved to her friend behind the coffee bar, “But they are not going to be organic or local at Waffle House, you do realize that, right?”

I laughed and we headed happily together out into the sunshine and the clunker, arm in arm.

“Hey Ian, what’s up?” I plopped my ass down on the counter stool and fiddled with the straws as I waited for my bud to begin to fill my coffee cup.

Ian came over to the counter smiling, “Hey gorgeous, ready for some decaf?” we both laughed at that thought and I reminded him that I’ve only had three cups this morning, but who’s counting?

“Hey, so listen. My friend is coming to town. You are going to love her. Odette. Did I tell you about her before? She’s really cute and sweet and everybody loves her. Does my ass look big to you? I want a chocolate shake but I shouldn’t. I am going to totally go anorexic after Odette leaves.”

Ian laughed, “Listen girl, you have got to slow down. No, your ass isn’t any bigger than when you asked me yesterday, and it still looks pretty damn good in those shorty shorts. So have your damn chocolate breakfast-shake and relax. And by the way, this better not be some kind of weird fix-up. I don’t need to meet any more of your psycho friends.”

“Shut up. No, Odette is married and has a kid. She’s totally off the market. I want to get her drunk tonight. Where should we go? Oh God this is a good shake. Did you put Slim Fast in it for me again this time? She’s like a really good dancer. Or, she was. Do people with kids still go dancing? Oh my God, did I tell you that Paul called me again? This sugar-caffine overload is blowing my mind.”

Ian signed as he took my shake away from me and placed a glass of water down in its’ place. “Kat, lets just do water for now. Did you work an all-nighter again? I can’t believe the way you nurses destroy your own bodies….. So, do you want to come to a party with Shelby and me? It’s out in the woods, should be fun. Would your friend like that? What is she like?”

I started to think about the last time I saw Odette and wondered if she has changed much. Would she even like to go out? Maybe she just wanted to sit up all night and talk? Should I be taking time off work while she was here?

Just then I heard a loud bang causing me to nearly fall off my stool. “Fuck, Ian what was that?” We both saw it at once and after I got over the shock of seeing a VW bus in working order come barreling towards the coffee shop, I realized who the blonde was behind the wheel.

Ian began to clear the customers away from the window seats for fear that she would crash right through the window and I started to laugh hysterically as I realized that Odette was still as weird and fabulous as ever.

“Ian, this is going to be a fucking brilliant weekend”