The Tinted Sky

Places

A lot of people have asked me how I got into this mess. They wonder how a guy like me could have possibly done what I did. To tell you the truth I don't even know how I did what I did. Of course the deep set insanity that led me to it, all started with Mara's death. There's only so much I can blame on that until I have to eventually shrug and realize that I am the person to blame.

I had a foster dad when I was 12 who liked to play catch with me. He was by far the best foster dad I had ever had. He and his wife had three daughters so he loved taking me to ball games and playing video games with me. He was a good man, I stood with his family the longest I stood with anyone, 2 years. They wanted to adopt me but my mother refused to sign the adoption papers, and despite the legal battle going on for a year, they lost and I was sent away. In their home was where I felt the most comfortable. 

Comfort was hard to come by growing up. When you go from place to place with hardly a moments notice, you don't get comfortable. 

I looked up and down the block as me and the girl rushed to my car. There was a large woman walking with her poodle, but her head was looking down at her phone. I opened the door for the girl and ran over to my side and got in. I locked all of the doors and closed all of the windows, as if someone was coming to look for us right now and I wanted to make sure they wouldn't get into the car. 

"You okay?" I asked the girl and she nodded, looking quietly outside. I don't know what I was thinking was going to happen. Was I thinking I take the girl somewhere far away and we would be a family? Was I self-destructing? I didn't even know where I was going really. 

My mind went on auto-pilot and I just drove. Places passed by through the windows of the car, buildings slowly turned into houses, and houses slowly turned into fields of green and yellow. It became easy to drive and soon the nervousness I felt about being caught dissipated. No one knew I had her, and how would anyone ever figure it out? I had no connection to her that would be of any importance, and I had been a ticking time bomb for months now. Amayah would see me leaving as a relief. Finally I had done something that wasn't sitting in front of the t.v. all day wallowing in my misery.  

The girl was very quiet in the passenger seat next to me. She looked out the windows quietly. I wondered what she might be thinking but didn't dare to ask, as if asking might cause her to realize she'd made a terrible mistake. If this girl decided to change her mind, and that she wanted to go home, I would be screwed. Occasionally we'd pass by a farm with horses and cows and I'd open my mouth to point them out, but I'd decide against it. I had never known a child to be able to sit so quietly for such a long period of time. 

The fields turned into highways, and then highways turned into buildings again. Smaller buildings not as big as they are in the City but buildings all the same. As I drove I couldn't help but feel a deja vu almost like I had passed these places before. Places passing through my window never stopping. Just a permanent stretch of road and me looking through the window waiting for my stop to come. Would my stop ever come?