On The Bright Side

Chapter Eleven- Car Radio

//there is no distraction to mask what is real, I could pull the steering wheel//

The cold air burns my lungs with every inhale. This isn't real. I can't- no. It can't be real. Please. Please. Please, it's not real. Some small, pathetic sob breaks out of my mouth, and before I can reign it in I'm crying on the outskirts of all this noise and happiness. Ed Sheeran keeps singing in the background and provides a juxtaposed soundtrack as everything falls apart.

I've never felt like this before. This isn't just rejection, it's disconnection; it's a total severing of ties, and there's no way to fix it. I can't fix it. Oh, god, I can't fix anything. Am I broken? I must be. I am. What's wrong with me? I should have done something myself about her dad instead of waiting around for things to get better. I should have told her how I feel. Because I feel so much, and it's so much all at once that I can't walk without stumbling on the uneven gravel parking lot. I pull out the car keys clumsily- Mom will just have to find another way home. I can't spend another second here. I can't spend another second existing. It's just so much, all piled on top of me at once, and now that Beck's gone I don't see anything to hold on to. God, I am such a fucking idiot. Why didn't I make an effort to tell her anything?

Every thought and feeling bangs around in my head and pools in my stomach. My hands are numb, from the cold and the shock, and my ribs collapse in racking sobs. I'm a wasting, bawling mess in the driver's seat with the keys in the ignition and my heart in pieces.

The thing that hits me hardest is that she thought she was a burden on me, because it couldn't be farther from the truth. I just want to talk to her. I want to tell her everything. I do really love her, I realize too late. I'm really fucking in love with her. Tears blur my eyes and slip down my cheeks, taking my makeup with them, and I can't bring myself to wipe them away. I deserve to feel like this, I think. I deserve it. I didn't care enough, and I was selfish with my feelings, and now Beck's gone.

Gone.

I have to get home.

The road twists in front of me like a snake lit up by the headlights, and it feels like it's going to swallow me up. The cigarette sky is mocking me. Ashy clouds twist vaguely into a malicious smile. You're alone, it tells me. No one loves you. No one cares enough about you to stay.

It's not true, I try to tell myself. But I can't- because the thoughts in my head are too loud, too persistent, too nagging, and I can't shake the gaping and smothering emptiness inside.

The car twists around a corner. I can feel my hands and old habits control the vehicle, but my head is somewhere else entirely.

A rattlesnake road hisses under the wheels. A biting, poison wind slips in the window. The air catches in my throat as the venom courses through my blood, dulling the screams in my head and magnifying the thumping of my crumpling heart. Everything is so numb- my fingers and toes are filled with static. Some powerful toxin is getting to the hidden center of my being. It's trying to get me from the inside out.

My thoughts are slowed to a lethargic jog. They're panting, trying to keep up with the accelerating venom, but of course it's useless. I should know by now that there's no escaping the snake, is there?
It's the beast from that book I read freshman year. What was it called? Goddamnit, Sawyer, what was it called? A hysterical laugh rips out of my throat. A wry, wide-eyed laugh. The beast is going to swallow me whole. I can vaguely associate the feeling of my shaking hands guiding the speeding car around another twist in the road.

The other car was a dark blue metallic ghost until it slammed into the front of me. An airbag like the pillow Othello smothered Desdemona with slams into my chest, buries me in unforgiving white, surrounded by the twisting, flaming metal of a two wretched car skeletons smashed together in a heap of crumpled doors and splintered windows and sparks. God, so many sparks, lighting up the dark as the faux leather seats burn up-

Breath can't find its way into my lungs anymore, all of a sudden, and my head lies defeatedly at an odd angle on the airbag. The poison is deep inside of me. It's only a matter of time before the beastie catches up. Cracked ribs that don't feel like mine are slowing down, little by precious little, as the world fades around its burning edges.

And the cigarette sky looks down and laughs.