Wake Page 0,1

and he is flustered. He tries to speak but he can’t get his mouth around the words. The other adults are all wearing crisp suits. They laugh and point at the bald man in his underwear.

The bald man looks at Janie.

And then he looks at the people who are laughing at him.

His face crumples in defeat.

He holds his briefcase in front of his privates, and that makes the others laugh harder. He runs to the door of the conference room, but the handle is slippery—something slimy drips from it. He can’t get it open; it squeaks and rattles loudly in his hand, and the people at the table double over. The man’s underwear is grayish-white, sagging. He turns to Janie again, with a look of panic and pleading.

Janie doesn’t know what to do.

She freezes.

The train’s brakes whine.

And the scene grows cloudy and is lost in fog.

“Janie!” Janie’s mother is leaning toward Janie. Her breath smells like gin, and her straggly hair falls over one eye. “Janie, I said, maybe Grandma will take you to that big fancy doll store. I thought you would be excited about that, but I guess not.” Janie’s mother sips from a flask in her ratty old purse.

Janie focuses on her mother and smiles. “That sounds fun,” she says, even though she doesn’t like dolls. She would rather have new tights. She wriggles on the seat, trying to adjust them. The crotch stretches tight at mid-thigh. She thinks about the bald man and scrunches her eyes. Weird.

When the train stops, they take their bags and step into the aisle. In front of Janie’s mother, a disheveled, bald businessman emerges from his compartment.

He wipes his face with a handkerchief.

Janie stares at him.

Her jaw drops. “Whoa,” she whispers.

The man gives her a bland look when he sees her staring, and turns to exit the train.

September 6, 1999, 3:05 p.m.

Janie sprints to catch the bus after her first day of sixth grade. Melinda Jeffers, one of the Fieldridge North Side girls, sticks her foot out, sending Janie sprawling across the gravel. Melinda laughs all the way to her mother’s shiny red Jeep Cherokee. Janie fights back the urge to cry, and dusts herself off. She climbs on the bus, flops into the front seat, and looks at the dirt and blood on the palms of her hands, and the rip in the knee of her already well-worn pants.

Sixth grade makes her throat hurt.

She leans her head against the window.

When she gets home, Janie walks past her mother, who is on the couch watching Guiding Light and drinking from a clear glass bottle. Janie washes her stinging hands carefully, dries them, and sits down next to her mother, hoping she’ll notice. Hoping she’ll say something.

But Janie’s mother is asleep now.

Her mouth is open.

She snores lightly.

The bottle tips in her hand.

Janie sighs, sets the bottle on the beat-up coffee table, and starts her homework.

Halfway through her math homework, the room turns black.

Janie is rushed into a bright tunnel, like a multicolored kaleidoscope. There’s no floor, and Janie is floating while the walls spin around her. It makes her feel like throwing up.

Next to Janie in the tunnel is her mother, and a man who looks like a blond Jesus Christ. The man and Janie’s mother are holding hands and flying. They look happy. Janie yells, but no sound comes out. She wants it to stop.

She feels the pencil fall from her fingers.

Feels her body slump to the arm of the couch.

Tries to sit up, but with all the whirling colors around her, she can’t tell which way is upright. She overcompensates and falls the other way, onto her mother.

The colors stop, and everything goes black.

Janie hears her mother grumbling.

Feels her shove.

Slowly the room comes into focus again, and Janie’s mother slaps Janie in the face.

“Get offa me,” her mother says. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

Janie sits up and looks at her mother. Her stomach churns, and she feels dizzy from the colors. “I feel sick,” she whispers, and then she stands up and stumbles to the bathroom to vomit.

When she peers out, pale and shaky, her mother is gone from the couch, retired to her bedroom.

Thank God, Janie thinks. She splashes cold water on her face.

January 1, 2001, 7:29 a.m.

A U-Haul truck pulls up next door. A man, a woman, and a girl Janie’s age climb out and sink into the snow-covered driveway. Janie watches them from her bedroom window.

The girl is dark-haired and pretty.

Janie wonders if she’ll be