Runaway

II. Sometimes Goodbye

We pulled over at a truck stop in central Florida and slept throughout the greater part of the daytime in the car, in the parking lot. I sprawled out as much as one can spread out on the uncomfortable backseat of the car with Charlie reclining his seat back, lying at what looked like it had to be an uncomfortable angle but he wasn’t complaining. He actually smiled when I asked him if he was okay that way, like I was telling him a joke.

We would have stayed that way for a long time if a graying old trucker hadn’t have rapped on the window, scaring us half to death just to tell us that it was five o’clock, and we couldn’t stay here any longer. So we each had a couple of handfuls of Fritos and a bottle of water before we took off again, laughing to ourselves about our wakeup call.

“Not quite like a five star resort, eh?” he asked me, chuckling.

I smiled at him, and he reached across the car to me to take my hand from my lap, placing it in his on the center consol. I squeezed his fingers and smiled when the corner of his lips twitched upward, but not all the way.

We stopped at another truck stop along the highway to wash up. We took to our separate bathrooms with armfuls of essentials, and I got ready to be the grimiest person alive bathing in a public sink.

There was no one else in the bathroom, sparing me some embarrassment at least for now. I dropped all of my things on the counter and sighed, leaning forward onto the soapy countertop, my fingers mingling in the outcast sprays of soap. I looked up into the mirror, looking at myself, and immediately made a face.

I hadn’t realized how pale and sunken my skin had gotten. It looked like I had two black eyes, and like I wasn’t eating enough. I looked down at my wrists and noticed my shirt was fitting looser than it normally did. I plucked the material away from my skin and looked, and my wrists were bony and looked fragile, like one good hit could snap it in half.

I frowned, tugging the material back.

In moments like these, moments where I felt like dirt that had been treaded on continuously for millions of years, I looked at myself in the mirror and wondered what a guy like Charlie saw in me, wondered what all of the three guys that asked me to prom even though I had a boyfriend were thinking. I leaned a little closer to the mirror, plucking at my slightly curled red hair, such a shade that I have more than once been accused of dyeing it, but it was completely natural. I tended to describe myself as being a butter-face because I always looked a little thick, even though I thought I was skinny, and had been told I was. My skin now was milky white—I had been avoiding the sun for the majority of this summer, all for fear of burning and having the disease seeping into my skin, but this had been a paranoid summer, all things considered. My eyes were a greenish brown, the perfect combination of my father’s and my mother’s, and I loved it for the way it looked against my hair.

I was wearing my favorite sweater but it didn’t look right. This sweater had never hung off of me like this before.

I looked down and realized that I hadn’t even noticed I had lost weight. My rings were a little bit looser and my jeans were falling down, and my bra was too big. I frowned down at my chest.

It was times like these where I honestly wondered how in the world someone like Charlie would pick me out of all of the girls in the world. I often wondered how, out of all of the fish in the sea, he had chosen me to stick around for a little while.

And for that, I would always be thankful.

My hands curled into fists on the counter and I gritted my teeth, letting my eyes slide shut for a long moment before I shook my head and pressed on, turning on the water and flipping my hair over, using an old cup that had been festering in Charlie’s SUV to pour the water over my hair. The water was cold, but somehow it was still comforting.