At First Light - Rina

At first light, I lifted my head from the pillow, brain buzzing with anxiety. After 2 hours of lying in bed and trying to go back to sleep, all I had succeeded in doing was making myself feel even more uncomfortable by tossing and turning in bed, earning a kick from Lisa whom I had inadvertently disturbed. Since last evening, Rina’s words had been reverberating in my ears, “You haven’t seen the last of me”.

It was stupid how I was worrying about Rina. Who was Rina anyway? Just some girl living in my head. Medical professionals see it as a split personality, perhaps linked to schizophrenia of some sort. But I knew there was nothing wrong with me. I was a regular college student getting As and Bs on my tests and who never missed a day of school. Everyone who knew me could attest to my diligence.

Nevertheless, when the doctor’s diagnosis reached my parents, they started making me stay home under their so-called ‘observation’. They mailed the college and started working from home. Mom would take the morning shift and Dad the night one. I was under 24-hour surveillance with no private space or time at all. Lisa was even forced to move into my room to sleep with me. Ironically, home had become my prison, and all I could turn to was my imagination. Suddenly, Rina began to assert her presence more strongly, demanding all my attention. Desperate to escape the confines of my home and being unable to do so physically, I willingly indulged her and brought her to life.
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Appearance-wise, Rina was not like other girls. In many respects, she was quite the opposite, donning a red cap and blue board shorts whenever we met. Every night, we would sneak out and head to the nearby 24 hour convenience store, buying milkshakes and fries and proceeding to the nearby car racetrack to watch the gangsters race, their cars throwing up bright orange sparks in the darkness. She was friends with all of them, and being with her was like driving a racecar at full speed and knowing you could crash any second yet somehow not believing it could actually happen. I suspect it was a similar feeling to taking drugs.

It was Rina who had gotten me interested in racing. She was an eternal tomboy, but who also possessed an aggressive sexuality that I thought most evident in her competitive streak. When she raced and I sat in the passenger seat, all I could see were blue, pink, green, yellow blinding lights flashing by the windows, trapping both of us in a vortex of colour and confusion. I would gaze at her, but she was so dazzling that I could never make out her exact features. Instead, I would feel her smile and say “I can’t see you but I know you’re beautiful.” She would just laugh, sometimes a hearty laugh like my mother’s in happier times, other times a high-pitched tinkling sound that sounded just like the wind-chime hanging at my door.

This time, her laughter was a tinkling that reminded me of silver, the silver of the frozen lake as sunlight hits it, the silver rain that falls on sunny days, the silver coin, the silver of my grandmother’s dentures…At that very moment, silver flashed before my eyes. Headlights. It was too late, we were going to collide. Clenching my eyes tightly shut, I felt my stomach lurch as the car swerved right.

On impact, I jerked violently, eyelids flying open. In the darkness, I was just able to discern the painting at the corner of my bedroom. I was on my bed, but it was soaked with pee. Immediately, I glanced at Lisa, and finding her sound asleep, allowed myself to breathe a sigh of relief and collect my thoughts. 

What had happened? Hadn’t I been at the racetrack with Rina? It seemed too real to just dismiss as a dream.

That was the first time I was involved in an accident with Rina. The next morning, I heard in the news that there had been a car accident in a nearby neighbourhood, and coincidentally, one of the cars involved had been carrying two girls. The report went on, and I realised one of the girls – the passenger – had died upon impact. Seeing that, I couldn’t help but breathe a sigh of relief. That could have had been me.

“Leslie! HURRY! We’re going to be late!” Lisa voice rang up the stairs, shaking me out of my reverie. Without a second thought, I grabbed my bag and sprinted down the stairs, only to remember halfway that I had forgotten to bring my shoes for Physical Education that day. Rushing back to my room, I flung open the door and was prepared to quickly swipe my favourite pair of sports shoes and dash down again before Lisa could complain, but a thought flashed through my head and stopped me dead in my tracks.

Hadn’t my bed been wet with pee when I had woken up in the middle of the night? I walked over to the bed, leaning over to touch and smell it. It was clean. Not a whiff of pee. Had someone changed the bedclothes when I wasn’t looking? It couldn’t be – I had been in the room all morning. And Lisa had not mentioned a thing. Knowing her, she would have freaked out and labeled me a baby at the very least.

All this was very strange and somewhat disconcerting, but for the moment, I could not ponder this issue further. Rina had some explaining to do. With that, I grabbed my shoes and raced to school.

TBC