four.
Four hours.
It has been four hours since Jasper Haxon leaves his sister, stepmom and the Greek-like mansion that is his house behind. He has crossed to another state, still unsure where he's heading. He’s had his breakfast/lunch with an instant ramen noodles and a Mars bar he purchased at one of the many gas stations he had stopped at.
He has his GPS on, but there isn't any clear directions by the device because, well, even Jasper has no freaking idea where he wants to go. He uses his GPS only to know what's ahead of him, like maybe a gas station in a mile or an ATM machine in the nearest town or maybe where the nearest fast-food restaurant is.
But for the past couple of hours, he has been ignoring the information given by his locator and turning into other streets instead. Streets that bring up the curiosity in him.
This feeling - this fleeting, fleeting feeling - perches the happiness in him, even by not much. Every unknown route he turned into, every time he ignores the instruction by his GPS, everytime he checks his phone and finds zero text messages and calls, a very thin smile of relief cracks on his perfect features.
But when, out of the moon, he sees his Dad's caller ID on the screen of his phone, he begins to speculate. What if he makes the opposite decisions of what he'd decide? What if he decides to stay at the funeral, listens to all the crap lies they talk about his best friend, and maybe if he convinced himself enough to know that people are full of crap but it shouldn't bother him to hear what they say about Max - because one thing, Max has left - then maybe he wouldn't be doing what he's doing right now? Or maybe, if he hit "answer" and not "decline", then maybe Edward will talk him out of this and sends one of his drivers to pick him up, and maybe things will be different; not better, but different. Like maybe if he keeps pushing the accelarator and crashes the girl lying in front of him, then maybe she would be happy to get what she wants.
But he didn't crash the girl.
Currently, he's staring at the girl, trying to decide whether there's a beating heart or not inside of her. He steps closer to the pale figure. The curling honey-blonde hair is almost freezing, petals of snow sinks deep into it. Her cheeks are red, hollowed, her snow-battered eyelashes invisible on the crook of her cheeks. Her face is something Jasper couldn't put his finger on. In her black-painted-nails hands, she holds a knitted plum snowcap. There's something comforting yet terrifying about her body posture, like having a nap after a long, long day at work and never wanted to wake up again.
The girl remains still. Unmove. Japser's heart plummets deep into his stomach like meteor showers, causing a hole or ten in it. For a strange, unexplainable reason, Jasper is a little envy at the person who had the privilege to kill her by running over her with their vehicle. But there's no blood or traces of someone just commited a murder that's encouraged by the victim itself.
Just then, he sees her eyes flinch, then her lids flung open one by one.
Jasper's heart rev up.
The girl stands bolt upright, losing her balance as she scrambles her numb feet on the ground. Her head throbs against the wall of her skull as if she just had the biggest brainfreeze of her life. She leans her back on a black Ford Fiesta parked on the sideroad, which, by now, Jasper has taken interest into. With his vast experience, he knows that it's her car - who else would've drive a Ford Fiesta but girls in their youths? - and by the look of it, the car has problems.
She hisses a long sequence of bad words, her head in her hands, not even caring about the presence of another human being close to her.
