Asher Banning still mourns his mother after three years. When his friend, Caden, decides to get their group of friends together for Christmas as a way to help Asher not feel lonely for the holidays, things quickly turn upside down.
MATURE: for expl...
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I watched the snow-covered trees go by through the car's passenger-side window. Icicles hung from the branches, and layers of ice covered the bark. While trees covered every direction around the car, on the left side of the freeway was a cliff, and far below it a raging river crashed onto every rock each drop could grasp onto.
"You 'K?" asked Caden. He and his father moved here to Colorado from London nine years ago, but he still hadn't picked up on an American accent. He drove like an old man driving through a storm: hunched over the steering wheel, hands at ten and two; eyebrows furrowed.
My throat clenched. I held onto the seatbelt with shaky hands. "Yeah." I sighed, turning back to the window, the mountains and forests engulfing us.
"We're almost there," he reassured me. "It'll be okay. Don't worry."
How could I not worry?
"What do you think I'm worried about?" I asked, hoping my anxieties weren't obvious.
Now that these thoughts clouded my mind, the idea of seeing my friends was like pulling teeth. Facing my friends head on was like facing your fear: their judgments, their questions, their opinions gave me the excuse to run away. I pushed them away after my mother's death, so wouldn't they hate me because of it? Wouldn't they tell me that I wasn't worth their time or how none of them should've come back?
My chest tightened as my heart quickened. Even if they wanted to comfort me, they wouldn't be looking to repair our friendship. They'd be doing it out of pity.
I could hear their voices in my head: You should've moved on a long time ago. You don't deserve to have friends like us who care for you, but you pushed us all away. There's no point in coming all the way here to watch you mope around.
"You're thinkin' about the house, ya know? All those memories. And how everyone's gonna treat ya."
I hadn't thought about the house at all, but now that he mentioned it, I wondered how different it would feel after these last few years. Now that she's gone.
I continued staring out the window, watching the foggy and snowy mountains go by in the distance. We were already far enough from society that if anyone screamed, you wouldn't hear them. "Yeah, well, it wasn't my idea to come," I said in a sarcastic tone.
"Hey!" He now stared at me every few seconds. "I'm not the one to blame. I'm doin' this to help ya, 'member? You needed to get out of your depressin' dorm room, get some fresh air, and surround yourself with people who love and care about ya!"
He might've been right, but I didn't want to talk to him about it. Not now, anyway. "I only agreed to come if you drove, so please. Just keep driving."
While there were times he was a douche, he had the best intentions. This was one of them. It had been three years since our massive group hung out as one, big "family," and while I never was in the mood to properly socialize anymore, Caden decided it was time to get the gang back together. And of course, I didn't want to come. Not only because I didn't want to see the eight other friends I had abandoned, but because I didn't want to be around my parents' vacation home. The memories from that house haunted my dreams as if my mother haunted me.
