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21:17 - June 01, 2002
half there
The following transcript is a test of the emergency dream broadcasting system. Do not be alarmed. Thank you.

I drive out to Palatine with assorted people that I haven't seen for ages; they had nothing to do with each other before, but somehow these relics from my past all come together in order to drive to a drug lord's house in Palatine: Yexin, Jeremy S., Alicia L., Paul S., Mike E., Jacqueline, Taylor, and a few others. We go to his basement to check out his collection of all these rare and not-so-rare drugs. They're in a greenhouse, under special light. I look at the marijuana first, a splendid display of green leaves spread out on a plot of dirt. The heroin is particularly interesting, as it somehow is being derived from opium seeds right there under a glass overhang. I pinch a seed; it oozes green jello onto my finger and thumb, then helicopters to the ground like one of those elm things... is it elm? His collection of acid is impressive; small globes of pulsating multicolored blobs set in rows by initial color, whatever that means.

I call my mother to confirm our plans for lunch at the Northfield Restaurant on Frontage. She tells me she'll just pick me up from Palatine on her way over there so Yexin can take the car back to Hong Kong, where the dealership is.

'So what's the address there?' she asks.
'Uhmm...' I stall, standing in the center of a druglord's basement. 'No! No! No! No no no no!'
'Hannah, you have to tell me where you are.'
I growl through my back teeth. 'No.'
'It starts with a 51, I know, I've got Caller ID and I'm going to trace this number with an address and come and get you. See you in about a half hour, sweetie pie!' she trills at the end in an impossibly high voice and rings off.

I slam the phone down, began whimpering, and can still hear my mother's voice within my head, saying '51587, honey. 51587 Crescent Dr.'

'She's coming she's coming she's coming...' I gabble to no one in particular. Jeremy, Mike, Taylor, and Jacqueline turn around. 'My mom is coming and there's cocaine in the orchids and heroin under the white light. She's going to come and get me and steal all your drugs, Jamie.' (Jamie being the druglord, who wasn't around.)

Taylor bolts the door, then walks me outside. 'There's no such thing as an address caller ID. She's not coming anywhere. Now why don't you take some of this weed to replace the shit you've got at home that doesn't do anything and just leave a couple bucks for Jamie? I'll drive you to the end of the block so when your mother comes searching she won't even get to the house.'
'But I thought you said she wouldn't find the address?'
'I am so full of it..' he says, laughing and shaking his head. 'I mean, you have no idea how full of it I really am. I might even be so full of it I'm not really here. Who knows?'
'Shut the FUCK up,' I whisper, getting suddenly furious. 'You don't have any right to mess me up more than you already have.'
'Hannah, look at me,' he says, spreading his hands like pale eagles in the gray sky, then grasping me by the forearms. 'I'm only who I've ever told you I am, OK?'
'All eighty million manifestations of you, then, right?' I ask, bitingly.
He nods, moves his hands away. 'All eighty million.'
'So what are you going to do?'
'I'm staying as tangible as possible,' he says, choking on his words a bit. 'I'm afraid of disappearing. My face can't change like my mind changes... if I stay here doing all of Jamie's drugs with him then maybe I'll still exist. I don't know.'
'May I touch your hair?' I ask him, holding back my tears.
'Of course you can,' he whispers, leaning back against a tree, closing his eyes. 'God, I can't even watch this. It could go right through me.'
'What?'
'Your hand.'

My fingers find his hair. It's tangled; soft; golden brown between my fingers. My tears spill over and down my cheeks. In my confusion, I wipe his cheek instead of mine, or I mean to, but my hand just sinks into his face. Almost transparent, but not quite.
He slides down the trunk of the tree, ends up sitting, legs splayed out in front of him. I slide down into his lap. Cry like a baby into the front of his shirt, ignoring the fact that, really, he's only half there.

 

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