I glance up at her and nearly jerk away from her. My mother doesn’t look at me as she takes back her seat and lifts her coffee from the tabletop. There’s a slight tremble in her fingers as she takes a long, slow sip from the mug. But not by the flicker of an eyelash does she reveal whether or not she tastes the liquid she drinks.
“Those are for the nightmares,” she murmurs, nodding to the pills. “They’ll help.”
“Help?” I repeat the word. Odd that I’ve heard it before and yet now I have to wonder if maybe I’ve been wrong about its definition all along.
“The lotion is for your skin,” she continues without acknowledging that I’ve spoken. “Your…” She finally looks at me and her lips turn down. “You’ve scrubbed yourself raw, Juliet. Your skin needs to heal.”
My skin needs to heal? From washing?
It’s not clean, though.
I look back at the lotion and try not to pay any attention to the orange bottle. “Will it… feel clean?” I find myself asking.
It takes longer than I expect for my mother to answer and when she does, I don’t expect the truth. “No.”
Something cracks inside of me. I open my mouth, but my next question never leaves my mouth. I’m not sure I want to know the truth to this one.
Will I ever feel clean again?
I’m pretty sure the answer is the same and I don’t know that I can bear to hear it.
When I reach for the lotion, I find myself skipping it and latching on to the orange bottle. The one I tried to ignore. I lift it. There is a collection of little capsules inside.
“These… take away nightmares?” I ask.
“Yes. You won’t dream at all with them.”
I tilt the bottle to one side and then the other. The pills collapse together, each one following the next until they’re all collected on their sides, smashed against the inside of the bottle’s walls. My fingers close around the white label and I drag the orange container closer to my chest.
“What if I run out?”
“I’ll get you more,” she says. “As many as you need, Juliet. But just one. Only ever take one a day.”
“What happens if I take more?” I ask. Will it erase the nightmare forever? Will it take back the last twelve hours? Will it wind back time?
Mom’s hand comes out and grabs mine, startling me with the sensation of warm fingers on my cold ones. I turn and freeze at the look in her eyes—eyes a different shade of blue from my own but rounded in much the same way.
“Don’t ever take more than one a day, Juliet,” she hisses, her expression darkening. “If I ever catch you taking more than you’re allowed, I’ll take them away from you.”
“No!” I jerk out of her hold, my chair squealing across the marbled floors as I stand up and clutch the pills to my chest.
“If you don’t want to remember the nightmares, I suggest you do as I tell you,” she states.
“Okay,” I agree readily. “I will. I won’t take more than one a day.”
I want the nightmare gone. I don’t want to remember. I don’t want to…
Tears burn in the back of my eyes as I glance down at the bottle.
It wasn’t real, I remind myself. It was a nightmare. A horrible, terrible dream and with these, I won’t ever have them again. It’ll be like they never existed.
“I…” I glance at my empty plate. “I’m not hungry this morning.”
Mom is quiet for a moment, then she answers. “Okay.” She leans forward and nudges the lotion towards me too. I don’t want to take it. It won’t help, but I do anyway. I carry it with me as I round the table.
“Juliet?”
I stop in the entryway to the hallway. I clutch both items to my chest and slowly pivot to face my mother once more. She doesn’t look at me as she reaches for her phone and drags it closer. I realize now that her hair is piled up into a neat chignon at the back of her head, revealing the nape of her neck. There are little bumps raised along her flesh, barely discernible, but the early morning light hits her just right for me to see them.
