Chasing Cars

Chapter Twenty Three

It had been three days since the fire. Also three days since I'd heard from Andrew. I'd rescheduled my surgery when I returned home, not wanting to have it right after the fire. I tried not to think about Andrew's not responding, telling myself he was shaken up by the fire and the Charleston visit. Surely it was shocking him. Krystine assumed his phone got destroyed in the fire and that was why we weren't hearing from him.

"He was in the office, where the fire was, after all," Krystine said pointedly during one of our marathon phone call sessions. I popped a Dorito in my mouth and agreed, just for the sake of avoiding an argument. I still had the feeling he wasn't just unable to respond. "They haven't mentioned anything on the news about finding bodies, Karev. He's fine," I could almost see Krystine rolling her eyes.

Since the fire I had done nothing but hole up in my room, questioning about how school would resume and eating chips from the junk food stash I kept under my desk. I hadn't seen my mother at all, but I knew she was around because she walks so loudly one would think there was an elephant clomping around the house rather than an unhealthily skinny woman.

The news channel had been up on my computer since I'd gotten home from school that day. I was constantly checking it for updates, but there were rarely any. It took three hours for them to put out the fire; they said it was coming from a source that couldn't be reached through windows.

It was a Sunday, and I had to go to a church service. It was the first time I'd left my room. "She's alive," I heard my mother say when I exited. Hilarious. My neighbors took me to church on the weekends, as my mother had no beliefs and refused to bring me herself. The whole way to the church, my neighbors hammered me with questions about the fire, and though I really didn't want to, I answered them all.

After the service, I returned home to find my mother's car gone and a note on the fridge that read "if you decide to quit hiding in your room long enough to see this, I'll be in Roach Lake for seven hours. I'll bring you Taco Bell." Having the house to myself was great, as the only reason I was staying in my room was because I didn't feel like interacting with my mother.

Heading into the living room, I checked my phone for the hundredth time since church ended. The only notifications were from Krystine, Cam, Amy, and other friends. None from Andrew. I didn't even bother answering the texts I had, as they all asked the same question. "Are you okay?" I didn't respond because the answer was obvious. No. I was not okay.

Instead, I turned the device off and shoved it in my pocket before turning the news on the TV and cleaning the small living room. Our elderly cat, Gertrude, hissed at me when I pulled a heavy blanket off of him. I didn't even know he was there. Yeah, He. We got Gertrude when my mother found out she was pregnant with me. He was three years old then, which meant he was older than me. I swear he's an immortal or something, as he's still alive today, making him around twenty two years old.

"Sorry Gertie," I rolled my eyes before throwing the blanket back on top of him and making a mental note not to sit on that couch. The news reporters on the TV screen did nothing but flirt with each other and say horrible puns back in forth. It was getting so bad I was seriously contemplating rolling down to their set and slapping them across the faces with Gertrude's heavy tail. It could be a weapon when he wanted it to be.

I really didn't care about the "top ten pickup lines in the nation," I wanted to hear about the school fire. After watching them talk for fifteen minutes, I sighed in frustration and went into the kitchen for some food while a Geico ad took over the screen. Before ads came on, the reporters had promised news on our city, and me being a stress eater, I had to prepare.

The oven was set to four-hundred-twenty-five degrees and I took an unopened bag of pizza rolls out of the freezer. While waiting for the oven to heat up, I made my infamous iced coffee recipe (courtesy of my old job at a cheap restaurant many years prior) and ate lunch meat. Not an ideal snack, but good enough.