may shatter on impact (tronnor)

43. Driving & Warnings

The headlights of cars glow like cat's eyes in the night, racing towards us and past us and away. Tyde snores softly in the darkness beside me, mimicking Dad, leaning against the window with his breath fogging up the glass, legs crossed and hands under his head.

Mum hums a soft tune to a song I don't know, her eyes on the small area of road that our headlights light up. Car around us honk at each other, their voices blurring into the background noise of highways at night.

"Troye?" Mum whispers. "You still awake?"

"Yeah."

"Good. Don't wake Tyde up." I nod, and she continues, her eyes never once pulled from the mesmerizing yellow lines of the road. "Your grandparents and uncles and aunts and cousins all haven't seen you since...since Sage's birthday last year."

I purse my lips and sigh. Maybe I had already attempted to count the days and add up the times together before and maybe I already knew what she was going to say, but it never hurt to pretend that you didn't. "Just say it, Mum." Maybe she'll disagree with the voice of worry hidden in my stomach.

"Troye, they haven't seen you since ages before the...shooting happened, and you know that I want to protect you from everything, but there are things that I can't protect you from and one of those things are the things that your family might say to you. Some of them aren't exactly... empathetic, I guess, the word would be."

I swallow, suddenly more scared than I had been before she began to speak, suddenly made up of the anxiety in the pit of my stomach.

"Yeah." Neither speak again for a moment. "But I think that I'll be okay." That was a lie, but my confidence seemed to let her shoulders relax and her hands grip the wheel just a little bit less tightly. "Have...have you told Tyde about that?"

"I told him before we left." I nod, and the other boy stirs in his sleep, his hands moving the seat belt farther from his neck then returning to their previous position. He smiles in his dream, not caught up in the nightmares that he used to have, not living in a dream that was a reality only last school year, so not even a real year ago. No longer terrified of the darkness that brings his dreams. He's just sleeping, just sleeping peacefully.

We drive in silence the rest of the way, until we pull into a hotel driveway and wait for the sun to rise and Thanksgiving to come.