Wednesday, November 30th, 2011.
Thanksgiving comes and goes. Daphne shoves the offending bag of pregnancy tests into the deepest, darkest corner of her closet and coasts through the week with (slightly misguided) ease. She eats loads of mashed potatoes and gravy and cranberry sauce from a can and possibly three whole pies, takes about six dozen photos with the digital camera John and Kathryn gave her for her birthday and posts about half of them to her MySpace page (no, she will not switch to Facebook), and receives one "gobble gobble ;)" text from Wilke.
Everything goes perfectly perfect.
School starts back up, and on her third day back she has what she might be willing to call the best moment of her life: post-basketball practice, sitting on the toilet in the girls' bathroom, and there's a nickel-sized patch of blood in her underwear.
Oh, thank god.
Monday, December 5th, 2011.
Her period doesn't last more than two, maybe three days, and it's a succession of mostly dry tampons, but she's too elated to care. (And if she hooks up with Wilke again, during her lunch break and decidedly not in the backseat of his car, well, that's just a consolation prize.)
Mid-to-Late December, 2011.
When Angelo returns, Daphne thinks he must be some sort of bad omen. He comes back, and everything goes so badly so quickly that she's certain he's brought around the end of the world. He's her father (Bay's father) (and how dare he call himself her father when he hasn't seen her since she was a toddler), and he knew that she wasn't his baby and watched her go deaf and he left.
Then, there's the guitar case. The guitar case that's full of photos of Bay, and only Bay, all chubby cheeks and missing teeth and training wheels and braces and Daphne can't think, she can't see anything except dozens of photos of Bay in a guitar case in her mother's closet. Her mother, who had been so surprised, so shocked, to think that Daphne had been switched only three months ago, when she knew. She'd known for practically her entire life, and she lied about it, out of fear, or shame, or guilt, or whatever stupid story she'd deluded herself into believing for thirteen years.
So Daphne moves into the main house, and she stays there for two weeks and things get a little bit better. Angelo disappears (good riddance), and Christmas comes and by then she can look her mom in the eyes and not start sobbing immediately, or fuming with rage that she's sure makes smoke come out of her ears and nose and mouth, and she's sort of forgiven Bay for bringing Angelo back into their lives because Daphne tried to tell her and she just looks so pitiful. Her grandma moves out, and she thinks something happened between her mom and grandma and Angelo, but no one will tell her what.
It all went horribly wrong, and then just a smidge of right, and then so miserably wrong again.
Saturday, New Year's Eve, 2011. 5:15 P.M.
There's a car accident. Not an accident, a collision, hit-and-run: car versus pedestrian.
A woman was crossing the street in front of a hair salon when the driver of a blue older model sedan went speeding through a red light. Authorities haven't revealed the name of the woman as of yet but the journalist says that she's alive and was transported to Saint Luke's Hospital.
Daphne watches this entire segment of the five o'clock news before her eyes register the sign behind the big blonde head of the reporter. Queen Bees.
"Kathryn?" she whispers, and she can't hear herself, but she's not entirely sure there's sound leaving her mouth at all. The neon green icon on the corner of the screen tells her the speakers are muted, so she lifts a hand that feels made of lead and forces it towards the screen. "Is that- is- isn't that the salon my mom works at now? The one with your friend?"
The neon green icon vanishes, and is replaced by rapidly increasing green lines. She watches Kathryn's blazer-clad back for ages, waiting for her to turn around and tell her not to panic and that everything's fine. She doesn't. When she does turn, her face looks drawn; her lips are set in a thin line, hard as stone, and her eyes scan the countertop. Back, forth. Back. Forth. Over and over, quick as a hummingbird's wings, until they stop.
"Daphne, listen to me," she makes her way around the big granite island until she's close enough to grab her daughter's face in her cool hands. "Give me Adrianna's cell phone number. Honey, give me your grandma's phone number, right now, okay?"
She thinks she might be frozen. She thinks maybe the temperature dropped sixty degrees and now her muscles are so cold and rigid and she can't move.
Kathryn already has her own cell phone in hand, hitting the call button, then the end call button, again and again. There's no answer. Daphne doesn't think there's going to be an answer. Mom's working today. New Year's, busy day, all the ladies want their hair done for their parties. The five o'clock news is on, she would have just left work. Would have been crossing the street to the parking garage.
Hands on her cheeks, once more. Firmer. She can feel it. Brown eyes staring unblinking into hers.
"Daphne. Give me your cell phone. Where's your phone?" The temperature rises. Her hand moves. The side pocket of her purse. One shiny, red, mostly new cell phone rests in the outstretched palm of her hand. "Okay, okay. Wait right here, okay?"
She nods, and she waits.
Sunday, New Year's Day, 2011. 12:01 A.M.
She waited. Now she waits again.
It was her mom. The woman who got run over by a car. She thinks with wry irony, we're not so different after all. Months ago. That awful day in cooking class. Sam the new interpreter. The blue convertible and Wilke dragging her backwards and honey you have to be more careful!
But it's not a blue convertible. It's not her. It's a blue sedan and it's her mother and there's no Wilke to pull her out of the way. There's no one going: jeez Regina you ought to be more careful.
Here's what there is: a head injury. Bad. In her brain. Bleeding, probably, in her skull and in her body, but she thinks that's stopped because someone told her something about surgery and medications and now she's just...
Waiting.
She doesn't know what for.
Notes:
hello? mr. president, sir canon divergence is going off the rails. oh god, she's rearranging the timeline too!