Exhale

Chapter Five

Chapter Five

My eyes flew open from a jolt sent through my body. It was like adrenalyn, and my heart was pounding. I glanced over at my mom who's eyes were glued to the road ahead of us.

"You're awake," she commented, not glancing at me.

I directed my eyes to the digital clock on the dashboard. Five hours. Five hours had gone by, and I had been sleeping.

"Why didn't you wake me?" I asked her. It wasn't normal for me to sleep as long as I did on a road trip, and it wasn't normal for her to let me waste away my hours when "there's so much to see on the road", according to her.

"I know this trip has been hard on you. I know everything has been. I'm taking you away from your home, your friends, your school. I think you deserve the right to sleep when we're dealing with miles of highway and cars."

"Well that's pretty reasonable," I responded, gazing out the window at the cars passing us.

I tried to calm my heart rate down. A nightmare, I thought. I just had a nightmare. It was vague, and I hardly remembered the details, but I could remember some of the things.

Claws. And a dark sky. And a beautiful pair of gray eyes accompanied by a crooked smirk.

Something about the gray eyes sparked a distant memory of some sort, almost as if I knew who the person those eyes belonged to, was, but I quickly dismissed the thought.

I was being ridiculous. The claws weren't real, the dark sky wasn't real, and neither was the person. In the process of telling myself that these were not visions I was dealing with, I couldn't help but feel I was wrong. They were vividly developed. Strong. Intense, yet vague. Once more I exiled the idea. These things were impossible. If I believed otherwise I'd for sure be considered crazy.

Five hours later must've meant we made it out of Illinois. Maybe even Indiana. Directing my thoughts away from my weird nightmare, I asked my mom, "So where are we now?"

"We are just about at the state border to Ohio. It's about another thirty minutes."

Okay, so not quite out of here, but it was close enough.

"You'll get another ten hours of land, cows, grass, and manure. And windmills. Thankfully those are kind of cool to watch."

"Terrific," I said, boredom scraping the bottom of my tone. "Just what I wanted."

"You're being a trooper though, Britt," she told me, throwing me a compassionate smile. "I was expecting you to complain a lot more than you have been."

I wasn't sure if I was supposed to thank her or glower at her. "I've just about outdone myself with a good amount of complaining in my head. You've been suffering too. You shouldn't need to hear my bellyaching when you're dealing with just as much, you know?"

She didn't answer, only placed a small smile among her lips. Then, as if to change the topic intentionally, she announced, "I stopped for gas about forty minutes ago. We should be able to go another 4 hours without having to fuel up again. And then it's a home-run from that point on, no pun intended."

I smirked at her cheesy joke. One of the charming attributes my mother had was her wit. That's one thing that attracted my dad to her when they first met. She was able to take any situation, good or bad, and make a joke out of it. Other people would gripe and curse out whatever bad thing was happening. My mom would just laugh. Or make a dumb little joke to lighten the mood. Not only was she witty, but she was also an optimist. An attribute I'd tried - and failed numerous times - to pick up from her. I was good at it for the most part. Being able to see the silver lining through the clouds, but eventually I gave up because of recent events. If something good came my way, fine, I' tried to recognize that. If not, I didn't see the point of searching for a silver lining.
Some people considered this pessimism.