Us Versus the World

T-Minus 84 Hours to Performance

I couldn't stop looking at myself in the mirror. I almost didn't recognize myself. Part of it was probably the lack of sleep, and the magical street lamp lighting, but part of it was that I looked 17 and a half, instead of 14 and a half. I couldn't stop thinking about what my parents would think if they were here. They would probably say that I looked like a prostitute, which was something they said a lot. But somehow knowing I was doing something that they wouldn't like made it even better. Murphy looked over at me indulgently.

"You should be working on your poem instead of staring at how much you look like the Joker." But she was smiling while she said it, and so I wasn't upset. I was upset at how my poem was coming along though. I couldn't think of anything worth writing about, because it had been so long since I wrote a poem, and since then I had been relatively uninteresting. I was nervous that I wouldn't have anything to say in 4 days, and then I'd really be screwed. I was anxious, but mostly I was tired.

"Where are we going to sleep?"

"You could take a nap now, I won't mind. I was thinking of driving straight through the night anyways."

"No, you're going to go in the back and sleep. Schedule or not, you are not exempt from normal human needs."

She contemplated this for a bit, seemingly wondering if she was, in fact, exempt from normal human needs.

"Okay, we'll pull over in the next restaurant parking lot you see. We can have dinner and then crash there. Oh and make sure it looks like the expensive kind of place with waiters in suits, because I'm done with fast food."

"How did you get all this money?"

"You don't want to know." She deadpanned, winking.

I laughed, poking her. "Yes I do."

"No you don't." She forced a laugh, but the edge of her voice gave her away.

"Yes I do," I insisted, harsher this time. "Tell me!"

Murphy kept her eyes trained on the road.

"Murphy!"

"Devon, drop it." She snapped, slamming the breaks harder than she really needed to.

My stomach dropped. I looked at my lap. How could I have been so naive to get into the car with somebody who I barely knew? How could I have not questioned the cash in the CVS parking lot? Now I was hours away from home, and there was nothing I could do.

"Shit. Devon, don't cry. Don't cry. I'm not angry." Murphy pulled over into the first parking lot she saw, and gave me her full attention, taking my head in her hands. Murphy took a deep breath. "It's mine, Devon. It's all mine. It was my college fund."

"My mom is a single parent, and she did a damn good job of taking care of me my entire life. She, um, she just got diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's last year. She's fine, she'll still ive and everything, it's just that she needs some help now. I'm going to stay with her, Devon. There's not really another option."

"Murphy, I didn't know."

"I didn't tell you. I shouldn't have told you."

We sat in the car for a while, each second more excruciating than the last. After a little bit, I realized that Murphy was trying very hard not to cry. I leaned over the center console, and awkwardly pulled her shoulder towards me. It was a clumsy gesture, but she seemed to understand, and firmly planted her head on my neck. I stayed until she broke away.

"Do you want to eat?" I asked, even though I knew she wasn't in the mood for fast food.

"Yeah." She said, even though she wasn't in the mood for fast food.

Neither one of us mentioned the tremor in the other's voice. There was a lot that was left unsaid that night. It almost felt like something that deserved a poem.

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