"I'm Not Crazy"

XXIII.

I woke up  several hours later, and was surprised to find myself alone. The car was at rest. It was dark outside, and Riley was no longer in the drivers seat where he'd been. The steadfast hum of the engine was silent and still.

My sleep had been deeper than normal, which contributed to my confusion. I'd blinked and then suddenly appeared here in this car in the dark. I didn't know what time it was or how long I'd been asleep. I didn't even really recall choosing to sleep. My previously messy  night of sleep on my pink sofa had caught up with me.

And with the aloneness came some type of clarity. The pills I'd taken had worn off only slightly. My mind had cleared and sharpened and as a result I could see that out the window we were parked in the shadow of a gas station. The neon fluorescent sign was casting a slight glow across the car. It was too dark beyond that to know what the other scenery looked like. With the engine silent, I couldn't check the time.

I blame that for what I did next. Maybe I was quite enjoying the way my heart wasn't hammering out of control. I had noticed it anyways. I'd just left my mother and Franklin in the middle of the night and by all historical counts I should have been panicking. I should have been losing my mind, actually. My chest should have hurt, but I'd taken pills and so it didn't.

When I dug in my pockets in search of my phone, I was doing so with the intent of checking the time. Instead of the smooth flat edge of my phone, I found the round rattling container that held the pills. My chest did not hurt, and so I impulsively opened the bottle and took another one.

I was still resealing the cap when the drivers door opened. Because I was medicated I did not flinch, but instead looked up to see as Riley slid his way back into the drivers seat with a steaming cup of gas station coffee in his hand.

"You're so fucking hopeless," Riley said, noting the bottle. He didn't sound judgmental exactly, but he wasn't pleased. "Also this coffee tastes like bog water."

He took another sip of his bog water coffee before buckling into his seat. Then he started the car and the clock on the dash told me it was encroaching on 5 in the morning. I put the bottle away and Riley said nothing more about it.

Riley informed me that we were only a bit under an hour out of Los Angeles. He had driven through the night, hence the need for the gas station bog water coffee. He had driven even slower than usual because he had discovered that he hated driving in the dark. He'd encountered ice once. He told me it was traumatizing, and that the car had slid for just a half second that he might have imagined. He told me he considered stopping in Sacramento to sleep and/or cry, but that he'd been brave instead. He told me I snored. Then he told me that was a lie and that he felt bad because I didn't laugh when he said it. He'd stopped for gas twice even though it was unnecessary. He hated the way the car sounded when it wasn't full.

"I'm taking you somewhere cool," he informed me.

I didn't protest because I was at least a little bit aware that Riley had not slept in what seemed to be nearing 24 hours. He was allowed to call the shots under those conditions.

"I don't know if you should talk to your parents anymore," he added nonchalantly some time later. "Definitely not your step dad. Those people were fucking nuts Charlie. I thought they were gonna pull out masks and hoods and start chanting like they were in a damn cult or something."

"I don't want to talk about them," I replied, and I kept my eyes angled out to the darkness through my window.

"Yeah, but unfortunately you brought me there, and so now I have opinions and such," Riley reasoned. I could practically hear his bouncy shrug.

"You made me bring you," I countered.

"No, I heavily encouraged you to bring me," Riley explained. I was refusing to look at him, but I could deduce he was smirking in the way he did when he thought he was right. "You're an adult. You made the choice."