The Consistency Paradox

[Nona (DELETED 7562)]

Where else is there to go when 'home' is not an option? The two-bedroom apartment in Bullwood had suddenly, over the course of a single night, become too crowded and her parent's house, the house she grew up in -- her safety net, had become the same. For the one and only time in her life, her mother's door was locked, even to her. The porch light was snuffed out, the driveway empty. No amount of begging or bribing was going to change that. And every time she thought to give a call, just to test the waters, the reminder stood as a pixelated name on the screen of her phone.

Mom

The bar chatter outside the ladies' bathroom door yelled in at her, even from the distance. Deafeningly aware of every conversation happening, Nona took the chance of creating a back-up in the flow between drink, pee, drink by locking the door and barricading herself inside. She leaned back against the edge of a sink, hands to herself, gripping the sides of her own shirt and her phone to keep from accidentally touching something else, but she knew it didn't matter. According to every piece of lore that she and Okoro could come up with between each other for the last three hours, they couldn't be afflicted by such trivial things as a cold. In no story that either of them ever read had a vampire developed a case of the sniffles from dive bar germs, but she pinched the seams of her shirt even tighter.

She looked at the screen again, but it'd gone black from lack of activity.

When she was seven years old, as a curly-headed little girl with uneven braids and two bottom teeth missing, she had a best friend named Deidra. Bigger than her, stronger than her, and faster than her, Deidra always challenged Nona to little competitions, like racing from one end of the house to the other and back again -- the same little silly games that all the kids would play in school with each other. And when the sun went down and her parents called for the girls to retire to bed, their competitions revolved around who could sit in the dark closet the longest on their own and who could tell the scariest story.

Deidra won, and she took her victory to bed while Nona laid in her pallet on the floor, staring at the ceiling and the reflection of light from outside of Deidra's bedroom. The dark shadows splashed into the deep crevices of the corners started swallowing the room from all sides, overcoming her in the middle of it. She woke Deidra up, crying, shaking her friend's shoulder desperately who then had to wake her parents up to call Nona's mom.

Eighteen years later, she was that same little girl. A spring wound up in her chest, behind her breastbone, threatening to snap. Before she could think, her thumb punched the call button and she brought her phone to the side of her face. The first ring called out, over the background voices of the bar that filtered in through the walls. She closed her eyes. What would she even say? 'Mom, it's me. Come get me, I need you.' Her mother never left Ottawa, miles and miles away, still in that same house, working late nights. What if she was waking her up? She still didn't know what to say.

The second ring came and Nona quickly ended the call. Her fingers trembled against her screen, or maybe it was just her eyesight going fuzzy. She squeezed her eyes shut and clutched the phone to her chest. With any luck, her mom hadn't been home. With any luck, she wouldn't see her number come up on the ID and Nona wouldn't get a call back. With any luck...

Someone knocked on the door. A drunk woman needed the bathroom, probably, but it was Okoro's voice from the other side that forced Nona to breathe.

"Are you alright, Nona?" he asked. His voice was so soft, so gently inquiring. He probably expected someone else to be in there with her, another person in the stall.

"I'm fine," she called. "I'm coming."

She pushed her phone down into her pocket and wiped at her face as if her fingers could magically scatter any disarray. She even looked toward the mirror behind her to check, but there was nothing there -- like earlier, when she'd first checked. No reflection, no one. By rights, she shouldn't have even been able to open the bathroom door on her own, with a hand that didn't exist, but she did, coming face to face with Okoro. He smiled, with his face made for smiling, perhaps just at seeing her in one piece, and together they walked back to the bar.