Sidetracked

Date: 12/15/2025

My blasted brain. It’s a firework display with no finale — just endless bangs, fizzles, and smoke choking the sky. I park the work van somewhere sensible, I’m sure of it, and then immediately forget where “somewhere sensible” is. Who does that? Aside from me, obviously. Devoted to the art of almost remembering. I get sidetracked. Mum has invited me to a car-boot sale with Nan. Nan — who has been dead for twenty-nine years, give or take a haunting. But grief in my head doesn’t move in straight lines; it teleports. By the time I reach them, the fireworks settle and so does the nausea of the missing van. “I’m sorry,” I say, already backing away. “I’ll have to go back and find it” They nod, unfazed, as if losing vans and resurrecting grandparents are both just mild inconveniences, like forgetting milk. I turn a corner and end up at an airport. Or something pretending to be one. All glass, echo and the quiet aggression of delayed departures. Then — teeth. A blinding flash of turkey-white enamel. Graham. I recognise the teeth before the man. He’s already laughing — throwing his whole head back like he’s auditioning for Man Laughing at His Own Jokes. He laughs as if I exist purely to validate his sense of superiority. “What have you done now, Mand?” “I’ve lost the work van,” I say, sheepish, small, already bracing for impact. He loves this. He feasts on it. Bastes me slowly in ridicule. I let him. I deserve it. Somewhere deep down I believe this is my penance for being like this — for my mind constantly hopping fences. Then his face shifts. Mockery melts into seriousness. Graham, Workplace Coach. Graham, High-Visibility Authority Figure. From his fluorescent pocket, a PDA materialises like a sacred artefact. “You just click the FIND MY VAN icon,” he says, tapping with purpose. “GPS will take you straight there.” I nod, but I’m not listening. My brain is already elsewhere, sprinting barefoot across unrelated fields. “Can you hear that?” I ask. We follow the sound to a ditch where a digger lies upside down like a stunned beetle. A large man is wedged inside, inverted, his enormous legs poking out of the footwell. They kick helplessly, pale and fleshy, like two chunky hams auditioning for escape. “How…?” I begin. “I don’t know,” Graham wheezes, already laughing. I try not to, but it’s contagious. The absurdity gets me. The legs are just… too much. The angle. The indignity. Reality throwing its hands up and walking off. “Help!” the man bellows, his voice echoing off the ditch walls. “Sure,” I snort. “We’ll get you some help.” He glares, upside down. “Can you tell my boss there’s been an… accident?” Graham exhales, wiping tears. “I’d better go, Mand. Places to be. People to train.” Of course you do, Graham. You abandon me with the inverted lard ass like it’s a team-building exercise. I fully intend to help. Genuinely. But my brain yanks the lever again and I’m back in the airport-not-airport, colliding with a man who looks familiar-but-not. We smile at each other. My smile feels borrowed. Like it belongs to someone with a working filing system. “Are you ready for the game show?” a woman asks. Before I can answer, I’m pushed onto a stage. Lights slam into my retinas. The crowd roars. For half a second, I think they’re cheering for me. Then I turn around. Stephen Mulhern. Stethen sodding Mulhern. He’s bathing in applause, glowing, vibrating with the smugness of a man who has never lost a van. “Amanda!” he beams. “Are you ready to play a game?” “Um—” “Don’t be too excited,” he smirks. “So, what do you do?” Trap. If I say postwoman, he’ll summon Postman Pat. If I hesitate, he’ll eat me alive. “I’m a writer,” I say. It’s half true. It feels brave. He laughs — sharp, delighted. “Did you hear that, audience? Amanda thinks she’s a writer.” The laughter hits me like thrown fruit. He keeps going. “Have you written anything we’d know? Shopping lists don’t count. Neither do texts you never send. Or diaries you start and abandon by page three.” The crowd howls. “ADHD, right? Loads of beginnings, no endings. Bit like this sentence—” I genuinely consider rugby tackling him into the backdrop. Then I see him. The digger man. Upright now, furious. Grease-stained. Standing at the back of the audience like an unresolved tab left open too long. “Oh shit,” I mutter, bolting. I run. Stephen calls after me, “Careful! Don’t trip over a plot hole!” The digger man chases me, panting. “I thought… you were… getting help!” “Sorry!” I yell. “People to see, places to be!” The laughter fades, the lights drop out, and the stage does what stages always do — it swallows me. I’m in a canteen. Grease hangs in the air like stale nostalgia and burnt fat. Marnie — an old school friend — approaches. We exchange stiff smiles. “Remember when we used to buy donuts every day?” I laugh. Her face hardens. “No. That was my twin.” “You don’t have a twin.” I say, laughing too loudly. “Yes, I do. You were best friends with her.” She points to the counter. Another Marnie stands there, identical. Not reflection. Not tricks. Two fully-rendered versions, standing slightly out of sync — one tapping her fingers, the other staring straight at me. My brain stutters, tries to choose, fails. It flicks between them like a faulty signal, unable to lock on. Which one do I know? Which memory belongs where? My thoughts start overlapping. Voices pile up, speaking over one another. I can’t tell which Marnie is speaking because both of them are. My head feels like it’s being split into lanes with no signage, no exits, and no hard shoulder. “All this time,” I whisper, dizzy. “I thought you were the only one.” The Marnie beside me laughs, showing too many teeth. Big. White. Graham’s teeth. “Did you find your van?” she asks, in his voice. The lights flicker. I hear trains — dozens of them — thundering past in every direction. Each carrying a version of me waving frantically from the tracks, begging the next thought to stop, to notice, to help. None of them do. Somewhere between platforms, my van idles — engine running, indicator ticking impatiently — waiting for a driver who never quite arrives.