Chapter Twelve: Boxed in My Head:

Sometimes, I walk through my head to calm myself down. My high school therapist was the one who came up with the idea.

“Picture your happiest memory,” she said. “Don’t say it out loud. Just picture it.” I find myself in a maze of yellow walls. It doesn’t frustrate me though. I just walk and walk while lost in my thoughts. There was no sound around me. There were no people around either. It’s just me. I walk with just my thought. The destination was not the point. I was just walking to clear out my mind to help calm down.

I started my mental walk after I hung up from my current therapist. By then, I fell asleep in my old bed again.

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Around seven in the morning, my mother opened my bedroom door.

“Celeste!” she said. “Could you go downtown and get me a can of dried tomatoes?” I grumbled as I rolled over in bed.

“What time is it?” I asked with a pillow over my head.

“Celeste!” mom shouted again. “Get up now! I need those tomatoes this morning. How am I supposed to make my spaghetti casserole without tomatoes?” She reached down and pulled away my sheets. I screamed as I huddled up into a ball.

“Get up! Get up! Get up!” my mom shouted over me over and over. I covered my head with the pillow in vain. I finally sat up and groaned.

“Alright!” I wailed. “I’m going! I’m going!” Mom watched me closely as I climbed out of bed and walked to my bathroom. Why does this keep picking at my wounds? I could still feel her eyes boring into my back. Can’t she just leave alone for three hours?

Moments later, I was dressed and heading out the door. This should be a quick and short trip, right?

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Meanwhile, Detective Daniel sat in the grocery store parking lot. He had the day off today. Gave him plenty of time to go over the case in his head. They had the main suspect but that where she was. Nobody was willing to give up anything. Either they were too scared or didn’t like police at all. Daniel rubbed his forehead.

“Maybe it was mistake to be transfer back home?” he asked himself. What could he do? What’s done already happen and he had to at least solve this case before he could consider what to do next. This parking lot wasn’t exactly his first choice to hang out anyway. Daniel was just driving around to fill his time and decided to take a break. He cranked up the radio and let his mind get lost to Blue Oyster Cult’s “(Don’t Fear) the Reaper” playing. His brother got him into this type of music. Tony was stand-up guy during their youth. There was this particular girl that he stood up for during junior high.

Daniel reclined his chair back. He couldn’t remember what her name was for the life of him. He shrugged to himself. Oh well, it would come to him. Eventually.

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I shoved my hands into my pockets. When was the last time I was here shopping in the downtown district? It gave me chills thinking about it. I shook my head. I haven’t seen anyone I know yet. It would be kind of foolish to hope it will stay that way. I won’t take to long on this trip. Just get the stupid tomatoes and get out. I looked down at my feet. Should take about a few minutes. If did have to talk to anybody, I was just going to keep conversation down to a greeting and saying that I was fine. If all went find, I could get myself a cup of coffee on the way home. Okay, I can do this.

I wanted it down to the Piggly Wiggly and pulled into the first parking spot I could find. I’m amazed that this town hung onto this grocery store as long as it has after all of this time. The bigger supermarkets never really took off around here. Sure, we have a McDonalds, Starbucks, KFC, Burger King, Wendy’s and other fast food chains in this town. But the people never gave up on the smaller stores. Loyalty is a strange thing, I guess.

I climbed out of my car and made my way across the parking lot the sliding glass doors.

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Daniel happened to see sit his seat upright when he caught a flash of dark brown walking by his car. His eyes grew large.