may shatter on impact (tronnor)

46. Young Again & Wearing Stares Like Headlights

TRIGGER WARNING

Tyde is screaming at Oliver now, because the solution to his words is to speak over him, and to keep speaking over him until he's speaking over you and your words overlap like waves on a beach, the riptide flickering in the sunshine like diamonds, deadly and beautiful, like flowers with thorns to prick your fingers and leave the blood to drip, drip, drip.

Maya Silver, the three year old niece is crying, and you must speak, yell, shout, scream, whisper, over her too, because noise will stop the quiet. Noise means you aren't there, noise means you're somewhere safe.

Oliver seems to realize what he's done, his face a movie snapshot of horror, of regret, of what have I done? He's panicking over Tyde's panic, over the blood I remember slowly falling from Tyde's hair to his forehead to over his eyes and hanging off his eyelashes like snow, like rain, like tears.

The adults have turned to face us, their eyes like the headlight on a dark highway road lit only by the fireflies and a single car driving away, away, away, running to somewhere else, somewhere better, somewhere to start over, like they're young again, like they can start over with a new life, like they can go somewhere to make a new home.

But you can't trust home, you can't trust the screaming, because screaming means terror and terror means you're there, and you aren't safe and the tears are dripping, dripping, dripping.

Someone else is screaming, talking over Tyde, trying to get everyone to be quiet. Someone's trying to sing, get the baby to be quiet, stop crying dear, everything is alright, everyone is safe and everything is fine and that isn't blood dripping off of your cousin's fingernails, his nails digging into to his head leaving crescent shaped marks around his ears. There isn't blood on the window behind them all, there aren't tears still staining that tiled floor, we're all safe.

"We're all safe, Jamey. We're all safe, we're going to be okay, we just have to quiet. Come on Jamey, we have to be very, very, quiet now."

"Shh, don't cry, Maya, everything's fine, your cousins are just...just playing a game!"

"Like Hide and Seek!"

"Yeah. Like Hide and Seek."

"I'm just going to - " the aunt holding Maya points to the door and rushes out, the door slamming behind her, oh we're in so much trouble, we messed up, we fucked up everything, everything's just shattering and crashing and there's a fire in my mind that's consuming everything else until I can't think and I don't know what's happening -

But there are warm hands on mine and Tyde has stopped speaking and is rocking back and forth, silent, silent, we all have to be quiet, now. Like Hide and Seek. Like we're young again, on top of the world, living for the stares worn like the headlights on a car cutting silently through the wind on a dark and lonely highway.