Freaks

18(Continued)

PLAY: Dream A Little Dream of Me -
The Mamas & The Papas

What's like a storm...a storm that never ends, runs through her head. Rain and thunder. Waves crashing up and down. Wind twisting the clouds into disaster. It all happens behind her eyes, like how life continues underwater. But sometimes it leaks. Seeping out of the creases, the corners of her eyes. Breaking into a massive waterfall. Until it finally dissolves in the pores of her cheeks.

She dreams endlessly, sleeps forever. She dreams of being somewhere else, another world where it's happier. She flips through her memories of him like an old photo album, flip after another, practically reliving her life again behind closed eyes.

She finds one that's hard to forget, it seems to repeat itself when it passes her mind. She thinks about it every day.

Many months ago, around December, when it was chilly outside and the sky was dark, she and Malakai drove out farther from the city. Essentially, they wanted to go see the Christmas lights that filled up the island houses that were surrounded by grassland. Nobody cared where they were going, Luka wasn't interested enough to join them. It was a traditional thing to do with all three of them, but this time it was just them. Aster still wonders if Luka didn't go on purpose.

On their way through red and green, sometimes multicolor, the tire of his truck popped and flattened randomly, but it wasn't a surprise from all of the messy semi trucks that passed on that road.

He pulled over to fix it. Aster could've stayed inside but she wanted to get a feel of the air before the year was over. The wind was blowing fairly strong and Malakai must have sneezed and sniffled a thousand times as he replaced the tire.

They were stuck on the side of a long bendy highway, surrounded by nothing but a few lights in the distance of the long fields blocked off by fences. Aster threw her hoodie over her head and looked up to see she was in a large dome of purple sky, with no clouds, just covered with billions of pretty white stars.

Malakai finished the tire and looked across the truck to find her still staring up. He stared at her for a long time, too long maybe. She could see him out of the corner of her eye but supposed he was thinking of something else. But eventually, he stopped, went around to open the bed of the truck, and slipped his way inside, laying down, hugging himself to stay warm.

He waited for her as she started to come around with confusion over her face, staring at him from his crossed feet, "Aren't you freezing?"

"Yeah." He shrugged, "It's okay though."

She didn't put much thought into it and hopped up and joined him, she also wrapped her arms over herself, bent her knees up, and watched the sky again. That was Malakai at his finest, pure randomness, that was normal to her. They could've gone home, they could've sat in warmth and looked at a closer fire instead. Neither of them wished or even thought that of course, they would do anything to be as close as they were then, it was a fever dream to have been alongside each other with no words, laying in perfect silence as they froze, to death would've been fine because they were together.

What wasn't so random was when he took away one of her arms and held her hand between their bodies, twisted up beside their faces. He placed the back of her hand on his shoulder and his cold fingers lightly crossed between hers, then out to the top of her fingertips and down to the base of her palm. She kept staring above as her body shivered, still not able to say anything. Her arm and her hand grew all kinds of prickly and sensitive. He didn't say anything either, but he must've been aware of it because he kept doing it.

She felt it was some sort of message. One that she understands now but didn't then. It was him unconsciously showing her what he wanted. It showed his comfortability with her, it showed his weakness. It showed just how much he tried to keep to himself and that time he accidentally slipped. And once he noticed he slipped he just let himself fall.