Unwritten

Chapter 2- The Car Ride from Hell

Curled up in the backseat of my Chevy Impala, another cough blossomed into harsh reality and sent me to curl into an even tighter ball. I could barely hear the music that was playing as I stopped coughing, trying my hardest not to cry or pass out. We were halfway to Chicago and even though we were approaching the adult vampyres, which would apparently make me better, I wasn’t feeling any better. If anything I felt worse. Yes, of course, the fact that I wasn’t close to the school was the leading factor in my decline in health. Add that to the smell of pig shit, I was honestly not feeling well. I tuned everything out except for the aggressive roar of the car under my head.

After some time, I heard my mom’s voice, although I didn’t bother to figure out what she was saying. My head hurt too much, and I was already struggling to stay awake, or better yet, alive. The voice in the back of my head was telling me not to close my eyes, because deep down I knew that if I closed my eyes I might die. I took a deep breath and sat up as much as I could without exploding into a fit of coughs.

“Sorry mom, I didn’t catch that, can you say it again?” I croaked from the back seat. My voice was hoarse and raspy, almost as if a raccoon was set loose in my throat. The next cough that came wasn’t as intense as the others, it was weaker. I could tell that my strength was fading and that I was slowly going to fall into the cold hands of death. My permission slip of life would soon be invalid.

“I just asked if you needed anything, I can always pull over.” My mom looked at me worriedly from the rearview mirror, her voice full of concern.

“No, I’ll be fine.” I leaned against the back of my seat, watching as the cornfields flew in an array of greens and yellows.

“Are you sure? Not to be rude or anything, but you look like crap.” I could hear in my mom’s voice that she was on the verge of tears. “I just don’t want my baby to be in pain...” I could hear her sniff and I scooted over so I was in the middle seat.

I put my hand on her shoulder and smiled at her. “Mom, I’ll be fine. We don’t have that long, right?” I knew I was somewhat right. We just passed Hebron as we moved with traffic on I-65.

“We have about an hour left. You should call your dad, it’s not that hard for him to get to Chicago. It might be better if he knew...” I could hear the concern for me in her tone, though the thought of talking to my father obviously didn’t make her happy. It didn’t make me happy, either. It’s not like they tell me anything. Grandma dies? None of my business. Dad is in the hospital with lung cancer for six months? Gee he only made me and called me his daughter.

“He’ll find out when he calls me, like I did when I found out he had cancer. I mean it’s basically the same, it’s surprising. Well for him it wasn’t because he’d been smoking for thirty years, but still. He didn’t expect to get lung cancer. And you can live or die. If I live I become a vampyre who lives for a thousand years, and he gets a few more years. Or we could die by coughing so much we choke on our own blood. Yeah I’m upset that he has it, it’s a huge deal, but maybe the bitch that calls herself my step mom could have called me. Or my step sister could have texted me about another tragedy. With the cute little dead emoji.” I knew I sounded like a bitch. I didn’t hate him because he had cancer, I hated him because he was a bad dad and he didn’t give a rat’s ass about me. He didn’t call me I found out from a facebook notification in the middle of class asking how I was holding up from my aunt. It was harsh, and really, really embarrassing.

“Honey, I know that you don’t like him or Helen but you need to be-” my mom was cut off as a huge cough passed through my entire body and some blood spattered on the back of the bench seat. “You still need to be respectful, though you don’t need to call him. Please just rest. Message Louie or something, he should know. And I’m pretty sure that you two will finally meet if you tell him you could die soon.” My mom grinned at me, and despite the content of the joke, I smiled back at her.