When the Lights Go Out {complete first draft}

Day Five - I'm Already Gone

Friday’s were already long enough

 

To put it bluntly, my conversation with Coach hadn’t gone well: not at all. I had to leave shortly after telling her, but I stayed along enough to calm her down from her hysterical crying. She kept saying, over and over, how she had tried. This was my second chance, she’d said, this was a way to get over that I could have made it further. I had said sorry, but I was feeling better about myself, because this was the best way to do it.  

                  The day I’d died, that day, I hadn’t gone to my meet and I should have done. My Coach deserved to know that I wasn’t going to be there, so she had time to tell the scout I wasn’t going to compete. I wanted to save her the embarrassment that I had caused her that day. She would have had to quickly spin a story when I didn’t show up, and I can imagine how hard that would have been for her, especially if she had set this all up for me.

                  After a while, Vincent had grabbed my arm lightly, and had steered my out of the poolroom. We passed the gym and went back down the corridor, and out the door we’d slipped in a little while ago. I tried to ask Vincent where we were going, but I was now beyond exhausted. I just let him drag me. 

                  We got back into my car – as Vincent had filled me up with gas because we had a lot to do – and I turned on the ignition. For a moment, we just sat there as the engine rumbled and the heater blew in cold air. The windscreen wipers were going even though it wasn’t raining. There was something omnificent about all of this, it was like I knew the future, because I could tell, first thing in the morning, exactly what the weather was like.

                  “What do you want to do?” Vincent asked. It was obvious to both of us that I didn’t want to go back in thee, and neither did he. I knew I had to ring my mother, and tell her that she should stay at work, as I wasn’t swimming, but I didn’t want to deal with the pressure of having to tell her why. I didn’t know what I wanted to do. There was so much I could do. Heck, I could even rob a bank, because even though I would be arrested, by the time they took my prints and got me into a cell, I would be waking up in my room again, with a new Friday beginning. I could do what I wanted, so long as it didn’t involve going to far. I’d die before I got to somewhere like Australia, but at home, I could streak through the street, max out a credit car on an awesome car and great clothes to dress up in for the day, or I could climb a mountain. There was literally so much I could do, should do, and yet I was too tired. I didn’t really want to do anything except crawl up in a ball and go to sleep. I was tired, ever so tired.  

                  “I don’t know,” I answered honestly. I looked around the parking lot, where car after car was neatly tucked into their lines. Someone was dashing from the main entrance to their car, and I watched as they unlocked a vehicle near the front. After a couple of moments mumbling around in the trunk, they resurfaced with a text book that they’ve obviously forgotten. I knew they were a senior, like me, but I didn’t know their name. Surprisingly, I didn’t know lots of my classmate’s names. I should have been guilty about that, but the reason why I didn’t know them was because I was always in the pool, swimming, or the gym training. If they weren’t in my class, I didn’t associate with them. Even in Vincent’s parties, there were many people I’d had short conversations with but had never caught their names. “What do you want to do?”

                  Vincent shook his head vigorously. “This isn’t about what I want to do. That was brave, what you did back there, Marisol. I’m welcome to do anything that you want.”

                  “I want to go home,” I admitted.

                  “Then we’ll go home.”

                  Of course I wanted to go home, but that’s not what I meant. I meant home – as in my old world, not this paradox one. But Vincent couldn’t give me that. No one could. This was not something that someone could promise me.

                  “Marisol?”

                  I turned to Vincent, wondering why he was calling my name like that. He looked at me, with a questionable gaze. His eyebrows were furrowed and he was blinking a lot, confusion filled his dark, luscious eyes. “What?”

                  “You’re not moving,” he said, pointing to the steering wheel. “Why aren’t you moving? Don’t you want to go home?”

                  “Yes,” I said, but I didn’t want to move. I couldn’t be bothered to turn to reverse out of the space, and then drive home, stopping at traffic lights and being restricted to certain speeds. It was such a mundane thing, and it didn’t make me feel good enough to do it. It wasn’t as thrilling as the idea of racing around a track in a luxury car.

                  After a moment, Vincent cleared his throat and looked at me suspiciously. “Do you want me to drive home?”

                  I thought you’d never ask. “Sure,” I replied, opening to door. We swapped places, and I sat in his seat. After a moment, Vincent didn’t move the car either.

                  “Are you OK?” he asked, placing his hand on top of mine. “You seem quite pensive.”

                  That was one way to put it. I was feeling a range of things. I was grateful because I was here, I got to see the ones I loved, I got to spend time with them. But I was upset, devastated, because this wasn’t really living, and I knew it because I was already dead. I was angry, because I’d got myself into this situation of having to chose between my life and my unborn child’s, but I was also agitated because I didn’t need to make the choice, because neither of us were really alive. I was confused, exhausted, and truly sick and tired. “I’m fine.”

                  “I know this is a lot to go through,” Vincent said. “But I promise you, it’ll be alright.”

                  I snorted. It will be alright. Sure, why not promise me something that was impossible. Things weren’t going to be alright because he couldn’t make them that way. This was beyond his power, and his control, and it was wrong for him to promise such things. A lot to go through would be finding out that I was pregnant the day of the race that will give me a career. But finding that out, whilst living a day over and over after dying, well, could anyone really go through that and stay sane? I guess I was already insane, though, because this was happening to me. “It won’t be alright.”

                  “Well, do we need a discussion? What shall we do about this? There are a lot of options here, aren’t there? There is not just one path to take, or one solution. We live in a world now where we have many choices. Let’s talk about it.”

                  It was true. We did live in a world with many choices. Doing something, choosing to do something, one second earlier or later than you actually done them would have completely changed the world and you wouldn’t even know it. It’s a powerful thing, making a decision, although it doesn’t actually seem it. It’ll change billions of lives, and no one will ever realise.

                  “This is our baby,” Vincent carried on, “but it is your body, and you have the rights to it.”

                  I don’t. Not really. If I had the right to my own body, I could pull myself back to the real world, and out of this one. If I had the rights to my own body, I would have died that day without continuously resurrecting, and I would have been laid to rest, peacefully. The darkness was long over due, and I was waiting for it. “Great.”

                  “So, what do you want to do?”

                  He was really asking me that in a parking lot? Although, I guess he had the right to ask me. Have a point. This was his baby, too. “Nothing,” I answered, honestly. Because there was nothing I could really do. Not here. Not in this world.