Letters to Angie

Part 6: The Drive

They drove around for the remainder of the day. Sweeping from one place to the next as if carried by the wind. They never stayed anywhere too long, just passed through towns and rerouted back to the highway while listening to the radio.

With the windows rolled down, they cruised along the ocean, taking in the salt-soaked air, watching as the sun dropped low behind the distant waves. Tegan convinced a gas station clerk to sell her Viceroy cigarettes and tried smoking one. Overcome with a horrendous coughing fit, she immediately relinquished her smoking habit and threw the pack of cigarettes in the back seat along two empty Gatorades and a partially empty Coke.

Intermittently, when the conversation between them died down and the music from the radio prevailed, Henry found himself caught in deep contemplation about the folded-up letter in his back pocket. The emptiness that awaited him. The heavy burden of expectation.

"You know what I always wondered?" Tegan said, lowering the volume on the radio. "Why'd you try to fistfight your teacher?"

Henry snorted. All that time they'd spent together, and not once had he ever told her. It wasn't surprising really. Considering how much flak he'd gotten for it from his dad and the police. Even the teacher he'd fought, Mr. Drummond, had berated him for the matter. Not in a way expressing anger or hate, but one with rank disappointment because even in the end, Mr. Drummond was a teacher first, a friend before anything else.

"He pissed me off," Henry admitted.

"No kidding. And here I was thinking you just did it for fun like a proper little psychopath." She beamed at him. "What'd he do to piss you off?"

He gazed into the darkening sky, looking past the clouds in hopes of finding the stars. It was still too early.

"Alright, fine." Tegan sighed. "Let's just play the alphabet game again. I'll start. A, Applebee's. You have—"

"I got into a fight with my teacher because he told me to wake up," Henry interjected. "He said I needed to stop moping around and get my life back on track. That I was wasting a great opportunity by being..." "Being what?"

"I don't know. He never finished his sentence because I'd hit him by that point."

"And they expelled you for that. Sounds like he was kind of being a dick."

"He was trying his best to look out for me, I get that now," Henry confessed. "But no, they expelled me because I didn't stop hitting him until he started fighting back. Even then, I'm not sure I stopped."

She nodded and pulled into the other lane to speed past some guy on a motorbike. Henry stuck his hand out the window to let the wind rush between his fingers. Something he used to do with his mom as a kid.

Fly free, she'd told him. Like a bird.

"It took five fights before they kicked me to the curb," she said. "Five different girls in the span of a month. Each one worse than the last. From what I heard, Stacy Albright had her prom photos ruined by her blackeye."

"What'd they do?"

Tegan grinned maliciously, overjoyed by the memories flooding back to her. "About the photos? Nothing really. Slathered her in makeup and tried to pretend it wasn't that noticeable. An old friend of mine said that Stacy's mom started crying about it."

"No, the girls that you fought," Henry reiterated. "What'd they do to make you fight 'em?"

Suddenly, her jovial expression leaked away. Her eyes took on a wide, perplexed stare that Henry struggled to meet.

"What?" he asked.

"N-nothing. I'm just used to everyone blaming me for starting those fights," she said. A thick veil of darkness draped across her face as she turned back toward the road. "Even my mom blamed me. Right in front of everyone.

"The principal called a meeting with all the parents of the victims, and we sat down to discuss further arrangements. She stood up in front of everyone and started apologizing for me as if I weren't fully capable of comprehending my own thoughts and emotions. Said she would strive to make me better. To help me become a mature member of society. They sent me off to a new school anyway. The apology wasn't good enough."

"Well, to be fair, you don't exactly exude remorse," Henry said. "And you definitely don't act like someone who'd been attacked."

"That's because I gave those bitches exactly what they deserved. I wasn't going to sit there and take all their shit like everyone else."

The edge to her voice sent a shiver down his spine, engraving a personal message into his brain: Don't get on Tegan's bad side.

"So, what'd they do to piss you off?" he asked again.

"The same thing that all those Freshman bullies do," Tegan explained. "They felt scared about their place in the high school monarchy, felt insecure about themselves, so they took it out on everyone else. They targeted people younger than them. People that were too nice to fight back."

"What then, you elected yourself as some kind of vigilant protector? Like a superhero?"

She shook her head, not taking the bait to laugh. "I wasn't just going to stand by and watch them get away with it. No one deserves to be treated like that." She palmed the steering wheel. "Nobody..."

As the daylight fell away and the highway reintroduced a sense of society, Tegan pulled onto the offramp for home. She pressed the brake pedal and slowed to a stop. The blinker arrow flickered on and off as they waited for a convoy of vehicles to pass.

"You know what I've never done before?" Tegan said.

"Do I wanna know?"

Her elbow found his ribs. "I've never watched the sun rise. Not once in my life. And I've always wanted to." She looked over at him. "Whatdya think? Should we see the sunrise together?"

Henry mulled over her offer carefully. The night was just beginning. They'd have to camp out somewhere and wait hours on end. Could he really stick around in her company for that long? Could he shoulder that internal knife of guilt tearing his guts to ribbons, telling himself to remain empty so as to feel nothing at all?

"The sunrise?" he repeated.

"Yeah, consider it a birthday gift," she said.

"It's not your birthday." At that, she smiled. "C'mon, don't be a party-pooper. Fun hater."

He groaned. "Alright, fine. But you're really not missing much." "I'll decide that for myself when I see it."