Fighting for Amely | Ongoing

Nathaniel | Bringing Her Home

Amely grows quieter the closer we get to the rising sun and the destination she plugged into the GPS. Since I woke up, conversation has strayed from topics like music to the bizarre dreams we had as children. While she had a cigarette every now and then in the early hours of the drive her mouth has become a chimney the faster we drive. She has blown through two packs in the past two hours and the inside of the Jeep is full of smoke. My window is open but the rush of wind from the highway has done little to help clear out the enclosed space. Amely also hasn't said anything in the past half hour, leaving me to babble uselessly about the time my cousin almost broke my right knee. It's one of my best stories but even it doesn't have her laughing, or rolling her eyes, or even Irving me an depression. At all.

    Instead, she's sitting with her hands tense on the steering wheel and her eyes staring straight ahead. Her shoulders are all but hunched in and her jaw is locked. I trail off in the middle of describing the way Ethan's baseball bat connected with my knee cap and look out the window. The stretch of highway we're currently driving down is tree lined, as are most of the roads at home, but the leaves are not the same lush, almost always wet looking, green that the leaves back home do. Somehow, the green is milder, and there is much more brown.

    Early morning sunlight drips over the boughs that stretch above us and color the cracked pavement and steel guard rails in vibrant scenes. It bounces off the dashboard and illuminates Amely's face, giving her already pale skin a translucent sheen. The corners of her mouth twitch as she reaches forward, turns the GPS off, and turns the radio down. It's almost seven in the morning. And we're nearing our destination.

    Amely flicks the end of her cigarette out the window and hits the right turn signal. We're turning off of a small exit with a signpost that reads "Food" and has the names of two fast food restaurants on it and another sign indicating there is a gas station. "Too young, too dumb." Amely mutters as she speeds up.

    I watch her expression instead of the road, just waiting for her to say more but nothing else leaves her lips. Her eyes are narrowed into slits, her lips pursed into a puckered, thin line. She makes an abrupt right hand turn and suddenly we're on a dirt road, her arms tensing. Her knuckles are white on the wheel.

    "You okay?" I ask in the tense silence, reaching for the bottle of water sitting in the console.

    Amely jumps, as if realizing that I'm still sitting in the car beside her. "Peachy." Her tension doesn't dissipate despite the terse smile she flashes in my direction. "Just...I thought coming back would make me happy."

    "You grew up around here?" If I keep her talking maybe she'll calm down a little bit.

    She nods and takes the bottle of water from my outstretched hand. "Welcome home to me, I guess." We pass an old looking sign that reads the name of the town and she lets out a soft sigh.

    We don't say anything else. The water bottle gets passed back and forth a few more times. When the car slows to a stop it's in the driveway, dirt, of a small bungalow style house situated on a street with spaced out houses. There are two more cars in the drive and a motorcycle parked between them. A girl is standing on the front step, in blue stripped pajama pants and a blue t-shirt, her blonde hair piled on top of her head. Amely's out of the door in a heart beat and throwing her arms around the girl as they collide in the grass before my seatbelt is even undone. Behind them some guy walks out of the house in nothing but a pair of black boxers, his hair sticking up in all different directions. His left bicep is covered by tattoos, the statement a red dragon whose head is situated on his shoulder. He smiles when he sees the girls, a tender look you'd think would be impossible on his features. Then he turns in my direction, expression relaxing a little, and makes his way to the Jeep.