Mixtapes & Polaroids | Sam x Deena

52

Is it possible for time to stop only for you?

The rest of the world, and everyone in it they keep going. The sun rises and sets, the birds fly near the clouds, the cars passing by and life keeps unfolding for everyone but you. It's almost like you're stuck in a glass box, unable to leave, bound to a fate that will leave you behind. Sitting there watching time pass for everyone but you, it feels like someone is carving out your insides with the screams you can never release— because nobody will hear it.

Deena always used to feel so bad for the paintings hung up in museums. She had only ever been to a handful, mostly because her mother loved it and a lot of the good ones were hours away from Shadyside. Deena would watch as people stare in awe while she stared in remorse. Painted faces forever stuck in time, Deena wonders if anyone else knows they're miserable or if only she does. She wonders how they must feel, if eyes with such emotion can ever truly be lifeless, reduced to brush strokes and dry paint.

Deena feels just like that.

Like a painting people pass by, frozen, gawked at, but never truly free. Frames of hurt and guilt keep her feet chained to the hard ground, watching as the world moves on without her. She wonders if she could ever truly catch up, if every step she took would bring her farther, or exhaust her in place. Forever in the winter of 1993, forever in that cold, cold lake— forever in everything she had lost.

She can hear Sam's voice.

It sounds distant, yet so, so frantic. Like she's a thousand miles away and right next to Deena all at once. Deena feels the drenched fabric of her clothes sticking to her skin, icy, with every gust of wind making it painful to breathe. Her fingertips— she tried hard to move them but it was like her mind and body were two completely separate things. Then her ears ring, and she can feel hands all over her. They're desperate, so desperate, like they're trying to pull her back down to earth.

"Deena? Please wake up. Fuck— Fuck. Wake up. You're freezing!" Sam begs, nearly in tears as she rushes to pull an unconscious Deena up into her lap. Her knees dug into the snow covered dirt as she held Deena close, praying to the gods above she wasn't too late.

Just minutes after Deena had stormed off, Sam did too. She watched Simon walk back into Turf's, all eyes on him, defeat written all over his features. He only looks at Sam, she doesn't know if it's a look of apology or desperation— but it's all Sam needs to step away from her parents. Her mother tries to stop her, but Sam keeps going. She doesn't even borrow a car, she just runs.

And Sam runs through the snow, and it feels like a movie. It feels like agonizing radiance, the tragedy of winter and the cold as she leaves a trail of footprints and despair. Sam first goes to the woods, out of breath with her feet going numb. Deena's not there. Then Sam goes to the cemetery, flickering lampposts the only thing to accompany her. She feels like her body is about to give out, but when she finds no sign of Deena all of her pain is replaced with worry.

With every empty place her stomach sinks deeper, a feeling in her gut she just couldn't shake. She knows something is wrong, and even if every step shot pain through her legs there was no way in the universe she'd stop before she finds Deena. Sam doesn't know how she figures it out, she's halfway down Hempstead road when it finally hits her. The only place Deena could ever be, was the most painful one.

Her feet take over, pure memory from the one time she had driven Deena kicking in and when she gets there, heaving and covered in cold sweat she spots Deena's car. Headlights on, a door left swung open with nobody inside and Sam knows. She could fold over and puke with how sick she felt, but when she spots a body by the water she wastes no time. She finds Deena, passed out and soaked, already peppered with snow and Sam feels her world stop too. And everything goes quiet.