I have a recurring dream that happens when there’s a thunderstorm. My dad is in the next room screaming weird phrases that appear scrawled on the walls when the lightning strikes, a static-screened Brooke Shields sitcom hovers around the room, a hard-faced skinny old man wearing nothing but a wife-beater, polka-dot boxers and socks holding a Chihuahua appears on a porch stoop where my closet’s supposed to be. It’s jarring and disorienting and changes quickly and each new element overlaps with all of the others and all I want to do is wake up. After that I find myself trapped in a mold of plaster and my mouth and nose disappear from my face and I can’t breathe. My best friend’s little brother appears when I realize I’m still not awake and he starts banging me against my bookcase and the wall of my room while the noise just builds and builds. I wake up from it an hour after I’ve fallen asleep, usually right before the sun comes up.
   I don’t get back to sleep. I get into my car and drive to the pavilion in Harmon Park and climb up on top of it to watch the sun rise.

I’ve never understood why anyone would like a sunrise better than a sunset. They’re dull and depressing.

I’ve never understood why anyone would like a sunrise better than a sunset. They’re dull and depressing. A sunrise isn’t a light show like a sunset is—the sky just changes from dark navy blue to light blue. The snow we’ve been getting washes out the color in the sky making the sight even more dull. In a movie I saw in Chicago there was a part where these two characters talk about how they love sunrises so much more than sunsets. I think that’s the only reason I kept going. I could’ve used a discovery like that. If you’re watching the sun rise it’s likely that you haven’t slept. If you see them a lot it’s safe to assume that you are suffering from insomnia. I stay up on the pavilion for about an hour until daylight is painfully evident and I see the cops driving their cars into the parking lot by the police station. Once they start to come out of the building again and get into their police cars it’s safe to assume that since you can see them they can see you too.
   From there I go to the nearest gas station and buy a French Vanilla Cappuccino—a drink made specifically for wimpy non-coffee drinkers like myself who need a caffeinated beverage to get through the day.
   "What’re you doing up so early, man?" the cashier asks. He’s at least three years younger than I am.
   "I haven’t slept and I have to go to work now."
   "Well, if you had to work, why didn’t you get any sleep?"
   I look him in the eyes.
   "Wow, what a novel idea. I could’ve used that kind of thinking six hours ago."
   He squints at me.

   I work at a dry-cleaners in an affluent part of town next door to a retirement community, dealing with understandably bitter retired people who have little more to do with their time than argue over the price of dry-cleaning:
   "That’s $4.82, sir..."
   "Wait a second. I brought that in on Wednesday! Is that with the ten percent? Is it already on there?"
   "Yes, it is."
   "Well, that’s not much of a discount, is it?"
   "It takes care of the tax and that’s about it."
   "Well, that’s a pretty worthless discount. Taxes are so frickin’ high here!"
   "That’s Leawood..."
   Or those who expect something for nothing:
   "Why is that discount only available on Wednesdays?"
   "I’m not really sure, but I’d guess that it’s because Wednesday was the lightest day, so to pick business up they started offering a discount on that day."
   "Well, that’s not very fair is it?"
   "Ummm... Why’s that?"
   "I can’t make it in on Wednesdays—I work."
   "Mmmm...hmmm..."
   "SO, I want you to give me the Wednesday discount today!"
   "I can’t do that."
   "Why not?"
   "It’s Saturday."
   "Well, I want you to do it for me on Saturday."
   "No. Don’t think so."
   "Tell your manager that I know that it’s illegal to offer a discount on only one day of the week."
   "Will do, but I doubt her answer will be any different from mine."
   "Good, thank you," she smiles smugly.
   "Oh no. Thank YOU. And have a nice day."

   The last time Ana Deal and I went up onto the roof of the pavilion together was during my second visit home from college in Chicago.

She was the only girl that would ever climb onto the roof with me, even if she was wearing a skirt.

She was the only girl that would ever climb onto the roof with me, even if she was wearing a skirt. Her hair was still the red color from high school. We had been at a party that her new boyfriend Jack’s friends were throwing and we got bored. When Leigh, my first ex-girlfriend from high school and her best friend, showed up and wouldn’t talk to me we decided it was time to leave.
   "How are things going with you and Jack?"
   "Fine I guess."
   She stared off across the city’s lights, "Actually, I have no idea why we’re together."
   "Why not?"
   "I don’t really like him that much."
   "Then how did you end up together? I thought you were just friends."
   "It was stupid.

She turned her eyes back down to the ground and wrapped her arms around her knees and said, "I don’t know... I guess there really isn’t anyone else..."

We were both drunk one night and we started fooling around and it wasn’t until afterwards that I realized it was a bad idea. So we broke up and then the next night we were drunk again and it happened again so I guess I just can’t seem to get out of it," she turned her head and stared into my eyes. We sat there quietly for a moment and her expression grew a bit deeper and her blue eyes only seemed to get wider. I looked away.
   "What are you going to do?"
   She turned her eyes back down to the ground and wrapped her arms around her knees and said, "I don’t know... I guess there really isn’t anyone else..."

   I awoke to the sound of the buzzer connected to the front door. I’d drifted off while I was folding cardboard hanger-covers and listening to the alternative station in the back. The radio was crackling so I turned it off.

   When I got home from work at around five my roommate Tom told me that my best friend Mike had called.
   "Hey Mike, what’s up?"
   "Not too much. Just hanging around. I was going to go to Winstead’s for dinner, you want me to drop by or do you want to come over here?"
   "I’ll probably come over there. I need to get out of here."
   "What’s going on?"
   "Nothing... I just haven’t been getting a lot of sleep lately..."
   "Really? That sucks, what’s keeping you up?"
   I laughed.
   "You’re never going to believe this."
   "What, it’s not Laura is it?"
   "Nope. It’s Ana."
   "Oh wow... that’s totally crazy! How long?"
   "A couple of weeks."
   "Wow, that’s rough..."
   "I get tired but my brain won’t... shut up..."
   "Why don’t you call her? She’s in town, I ran into her."
   "She’s still with Jack, though, right?"
   "Yea... fuck that though! You should really call her and tell her."
   "That’d be pretty fucked-up... I don’t think so..."
   "No, you should. There’s no way that he understands her. Do you think she’d read him her poetry or listen to the Cure with him? He wouldn’t understand that stuff about her—but you do."
   "I think she’s probably changed a bit, don’t you? All she does is party now. Besides, it’d really shake things up. I don’t know if I want to fuck it up for them."
   "Aidan, no matter what happens she’ll always be the way she was deep down—that’s what she’s like... you should call her and at least just talk. If you feel like you should tell her after that you shouldn’t hesitate. It might not be too late."

   After the second-week I decided to take Mike’s advice.
   Ana and I had gone to school together since kindergarten. We’d become close friends after I broke up with her best friend. We saw movies together and hung out in her room lying on beanbags, listening to music (the Cure mostly) and talking. Like a lot of people I was too stupid when I was 16 to realize what was going on. Or what I really wanted. I’d watch her lying on her stomach on the couch in her parents’ living room, her chin resting on her palm and her legs moving back and forth alternately, eyes fixed on the big-screen TV. My mind would go haywire and I’d imagine walking over to her and kissing her over and over and how we’d make love on that couch, her skin lit up by the lights flashing from the TV and how beautiful and perfect it would be. I knew I couldn’t do it though. We were just friends. I’d turn my eyes back to the TV screen.
   I buried myself in an infatuation for a girl I met in my freshman theater class. Ana liked Mike,

My mind would go haywire and I’d imagine walking over to her and kissing her over and over and how we’d make love on that couch, her skin lit up by the lights flashing from the TV and how beautiful and perfect it would be.

who didn’t really have any feelings for her at all. We dated each other’s best friends. We were dumped by each other’s best friends. I quit washing my hair and dyed it black. She quit washing her hair and dyed it red. If she stood in front of a sunset her hair would be almost invisible. We talked about taking a train to St. Louis to see the Cure play during the summer after junior year. We couldn’t go because we’d have to stay in a hotel. Instead my parents drove us and Leigh mooched a ride, then never spoke to me again. I wrote bad poetry. She wrote bad poetry. She was hiding cuts with her watch and a bracelet. I made her promise to call me, no matter how late. She did a few times. I’d put my head over her shoulder while she read Sylvia Plath’s poems and she’d lay her head against mine. She’d give me huge hugs and bury her head in my chest and not let go. We started arguing like married couples do. One night I put a Cure song ("The Same Deep Water As You") on repeat in my mom’s car when I drove her home:

      Kiss me goodbye, pushing out before I sleep
      Can’t you see I try? Swimming the same deep water as you is hard.
      "The shallow drowned, lose less than we," you breathe.
      The strangest twist upon your lips, "and we shall be together..."

   Mike was in the back seat and she began to cry. When we got to her house we all sat quietly for a long time. She looked over at me.
   "Please don’t do this anymore..." she said.
   Then she reached over, wrapped her arms around my neck and kissed me on the cheek and her wet eyelashes brushed against my face. She got out of the car and I watched her disappear into the darkness around her house. I sat there with my mouth hanging open wishing Mike wasn’t there so I could get out and find her under those shadows.
   She fell in with a different crowd. We talked less and less. We went away to college. She came to see me play at a few of my first shows. I didn’t think about it much until the last two weeks during winter break that I spent watching movies at Mike’s really late, driving home, parking on Warwick a few blocks from my apartment and pausing at the top of the hill by Brush Creek Blvd. in sub-zero temperatures to write lyrics and chord changes up and down my arms for a song called "Invisible Against the Sun" until my pen would run dry or I would hear a homeless man running down Oak street by the art gallery singing at the top of his lungs. I couldn’t finish it for three years.

   When I went to pick her up that last time I hadn’t seen her for two years. We sat in my car for fifteen minutes trying to decide what to do.
   "Do you want to see a movie?" I asked.
   "I don’t know, I’m not really sure what’s out."
   "I’m not either. I’ve seen almost everything I really want to see."
   "Me too."
   "So what do you want to do?"
   "I don’t know, what do you want to do?"
   I paused for a while.
   "We could just go out for coffee."
   "Okay. That sounds good to me."
   "Alright."
   "Afterwards, could you drop me off at a party at Jack’s house?"
   "Yeah... sure... no problem..."

   After that my lease ran out and my rent went up so I moved back in with my parents. I had a dream that I was at a Cure concert on the ceiling of a wooden building level with the treetops around it. During the middle of a song they stopped playing and left because someone was videotaping them. After the show I walked around the building and looked down at the ground to my left side and saw Ana walking on the level below. She had blonde hair and was wearing a white skirt with blue flowers on it and a blue shirt. She saw me and looked up at me and smiled. I climbed down a ladder and walked up to her and we kissed but her lips were chapped and cut mine. When I opened my eyes she smiled at me and said, "Oh, by the way, my name is Ana Coits now, not Ana Deal."
   When I woke up it was light out already and I had to get to work early again because it was Saturday. My dad was up and said his usual:
   "Morning, buddy, how’d you sleep?"
   "Not bad," I said.
   "I’ll fix you some chocolate-chip pancakes if you want," he went back to the kitchen to pour some coffee.
   "OK."
   He started to shuffle through the cupboards.
   "It’s a shame you weren’t up about an hour ago."
   "Why’s that?"
   "You missed one hell of a sunrise."