The Race Car that was Tyler Scott

Chapter Seven

My thoughts were quiet on the journey back, hushed down, I was tired. I wasn't excited or happy, I wasn't sad - I was scared. I didn't understand what was happening to me. As I watched the countryside disappear as the light faded, more and more solutions came to mind. I'd had a boyfriend before, I didn't love him, he went out with me purely down to my popularity. I didn't know what love was, I didn't come home each night to a family, to two parents who were madly in love and had decided to build a life together and start a family. This was the first moment in my life that I had stopped to think about this, I longed for my parents, I needed them to guide me. I needed them to console in. I wanted a mother, a father and my brother. I watched my reflection in the window, I was crying - I hadn't even noticed. I had mascara down one cheek and a small black smudge under my other eye. My eyes were red from the tears and my sight had gone blurry. I put my hood up and wiped my face carefully - so as not to smudge any more makeup. I was falling for him, I was falling faster than I knew and I couldn't control or stop it.
I took a taxi to Toni's house, using some money she'd lent me that morning for trains. I used the drive to gather myself and my thoughts back together. It was as if my mind had been unpacked and my thoughts, its contents had been spread all over the place.
There I was trying to piece it all together again, trying to bottle back up what I didn't even know I felt.
We drove up the drive this time, through the arch and parked in front of the house where I paid the taxi driver and thanked her for the journey into the middle of nowhere. She drove away back down the track and behind the stable block towards the gates. I stayed to watch the taxi leave before I mustered the strength to walk inside.
Mr and Mrs Holt, Toni and their dog Wilfred, a very excitable German Shepherd, were all watching a programme about cooking on their television, so I walked quietly past the sitting room and up the grand staircase into Toni's room.
My bed was unslept in because I'd slept downstairs on the sofa the night before and the mattress was unlevel to the ground as it was lying on top of several layers of Toni's shit. I brushed my teeth and then observed myself in the mirror for a long while. Not looking at my reflection but at my head and the thoughts I had inside. I looked at my eyes and wondered why I found the concept of them so interesting; windows to the soul. When you stare at something that you find so utterly ordinary, if you look at it for a long while it becomes odder and odder - until you wonder whether it is supposed to belong in this world at all. After staring at my eye and pupil I looked away and back again, sure enough it looked completely bizarre.
I walked over to my bed stepping on everything Toni had kindly placed under my feet.
I lay silently, exhausted, staring at the legs of Toni's bed. My thoughts drained me even more and sent me gently into sleep.