Enigma

2. Roadside Assistance

"Run away with me."

The four words uttered quietly in the whirring, mechanical silence echo and bounce around the graffitied walls of her mind, like sonar, like a train passing through a tunnel.

"W-what?" Her shaking hands still.

"I know you heard me."

"I-" Lowry begins to speak, but the words are stolen from her.

"We can go away, to London, to Paris, Amsterdam, anywhere you want to go. Baby, it's killing me to see you like this." And that word, baby, fills her up and takes her back to a long time ago, and any resolve she may have had comes crashing down. He knows this.

"I have everything we need right here," he gestures to the bags, "and my car is outside. Just say yes. Please baby, let me take you away from here."

And her head begins to spin. Everything replays behind her eyelids.

The hazel eyes that broke her so, so many times.

Her birth certificate, Father: none. Little girl unwanted.

The pills in her hand, the pills in her throat, the pills in her stomach. Over and over again she tried to escape.

The Polaroids of every friend she's lost along the way.

The sleepless nights and days and nights, the sallow sunken eyes.

And then hands. Pale, bony, tattooed hands that drag her out every time.

"Okay."

"Okay?"

"Okay." She says it, because she wants to be his everything, someone's everything, but she's not sure if she means it. She says it because she might be in love with her best friend.

But what's the difference between running away and dying?

She doesn't know this either.

All she knows is that, her whole life, it's been Jake. He is familiarity and he is comfortability, and she's been in love before but not like this. So she lets him be her conscience.

"Jake, do you have any tape?"

"Yeah," he unzips the front pocket of the black bag and hands her the roll, "why?"

She grabs one, two, tissues from the box by the glowing clock (10:14!), bites a length of tape, and yanks out her cannula needle, applying the tissues with pressure and using the tape to hold it down. It works well enough.

"I need clothes." She says. He places the navy backpack at the foot of her bed.

"Your mum wasn't home, so I asked your sister if I could go into your room and get some stuff, I picked up everything I've seen you wear recently. There's a brush and your make-up bag, and underwear, and other stuff too." She peers inside to confirm what he said, and tears sting her eyes. He really knows her. He knew to pack her old, brown purse, and the handbag she received for her fifteenth birthday. He knew to pack her favourite sweater, and her white lace lingerie. He knew that the only book she needed was The Lovely Bones.

And she never cries, but tears are the only way she knows how to say I love you.

She blinks, one, two, three. The declarations of love taste salty when they creep into the corners of her lips.