Jesse Neilson wished someone would kick him in the jaw. He'd traced every inch of the ceiling in the fading light from the window well and had felt himself falling down every crack of its smooth plane. His clenched fists had dug so deeply into his hair that they streaked grease when he then dragged them down his face. When he opened his eyes, he found his own watercolor reflection in the portrait atop his dresser, and he thought of Adrienne. He groaned and flailed himself out of his soft bed, crashing two feet to the floor. Finding his footing, he held his aching temple as the newly toppled bottle beside his bed spilled muddy liquid like a runoff drain on the first stormy day of the season. It pooled on the carpet. Sorry, Thomas. Goodbye, Maxwell. His roommates wouldn't have to worry about crashes like that ever again.

He began moving, first yanking the off-white hoodie over his torso and then a jacket over that, then flipping the duffel bag over his shoulder, then snatching the keys from the counter, and finally making for the door. Here he stopped and returned to grab a card, beautifully stylized in flowery art with a gilded “Happy Birthday!” scrawled overtop, from his drawer.

Five and a half hours later found him far away and sitting in the cold of his car in the dark. He didn't exist. The porch light was off and so was the house. Everything was different under the glow of the stars. The moon wasn't out, and everything was different.

It was too cold. Jesse exited his car and stepped between the wicked black locust trees along the curb. He walked in the dark to the door of the house. A cleaving wind cut him and cracked the skin of his hands as he hopped the aged, wooden picket fence. He stuffed his fists deep into his hoodie and scraped dead cells on loose threads. The yard was neatly trimmed and Jesse stumbled while crossing it. But he reached the chipped, concrete porch and he hopped up its steps to the door. He knocked and knocked, and his knuckles split in the cold. The porch light turned on, and the door opened as Jesse resolved into being. Rick was fumbling to put on glasses on the other side of the threshold.

“It's cold,” Jesse said. Rick stared at him.

“No one's making you stay outside,” Rick said, clearly shaken but orienting himself. Allegedly, Rick's voice had once been as smooth as cream liquor, but now it only sputtered with a pulpy quality as though soda had curdled the mix. “How did you get here? Or were you staying at Frederick's?” Rick had never seemed to Jesse the greatest at orienteering.

Jesse pushed past him and entered his house. His mother's house. His house. It'd never been so perfectly in order. He turned on the light of the sterile sitting room and then dimmed it. The grandfather clock ticked each second with soft, ambient clunks.

“Is Mom asleep?” asked Jesse.

Even the blankets had been folded and put in the corner.