DAMAGED

COURT

She was still sitting on that old suitcase with her knees up to her chin and her head on her knees. The closer I got the easier it was to recognize the fact that she was asleep. Her hair hung in damp chunks to cover every inch of her face. Her temper was like thinking you made it through a window and realizing there was glass still in the frame. I wanted to push a strand away from her face but I wasn't interested in being on the other side of the bark. Her friend Harper with the stoplight red hair was already asleep. Her body curled sweetly into the corner with headphones big enough to eclipse her head. My first instinct was to leave her on the suitcase and crawl into the decrepit old cot that would probably break after the first few minutes I was asleep. My second instinct was to either smoke and then carry her into the room or simply smoke and share the night with this softer version of the girl on the bus.

The match flared to life and she stirred but did not wake. I sat on the cracked cement with my back against a faded red pole and let the stress of jumping from tour to tour leave me. Each exhale sounded loud and drawn out but I suppose I wanted her to wake at this point. It was odd to share a humid night with a sleeping stranger. I had been the first in the shower and when I came out the four other band members she was with were either asleep or absent. That left Casey in the motel room watching reruns of friends and drinking from a flask my grandpa had given him. I cracked open the door and gestured for him to come outside, take a walk with me. I lived in a permanent state of cramped. He glared at me in the dim blue glow but rose to come out anyways. Once his boot hit the cement I was trying to convey that his silence was important. I passed him a cigarette and we walked off towards the highway and over grown grass.

"What is she doing out there?" It was the first question once we were far enough away from the motel. I shrugged and drew in on the cigarette until I tasted the burnt paper and flicked it towards the beaten down asphalt. "I have no idea. She was awake when I came out to smoke and then she was asleep when I came back. She's a weird one." Casey looked at me like he couldn't figure me out. "What? Why the long stare?" It had irritated the fuck out of me my entire childhood that Casey would rather go without words and stare than explain whatever was in his head. "That's Kat Hale; you didn't hear a damn word they were saying tonight. She's all messed up man, be compassionate." I was struggling with the name and why I should care. He was right I was in an exhausted fog and nothing in the motel room had sunk in. His face got even more disbelieving at my lack of recognition. "I don't even know how you get dressed sometimes man, you just float around until the music comes on and then you are present. Those people in that room are from the band Glitter Punch. Kat Hale is actually Katastrophe Hale, daughter of punk icon Lane Hale and Taylor Winters, ringing any bells?" Each word felt a little heavier as each one sunk in. Lane Hale was an icon. His death was as legendary as his life. Oh Fuck! I was an asshole. I rubbed my hand down my face but no matter how slow or how hard I did it I would never be able to erase asking that girl if she had been in a few wrecks. Jesus. I was now wearing the heavy crown as the king of Tactless.

"I know that face Court, how deep did you lodge your foot in your mouth this time?" I looked up and debated not saying anything. It was pretty bad. I just shook my head and looked back down at my feet. "You do this every time, either you have your foot in your mouth or your junk in too many places at once. We are on this tour for the next six months, do you even realize how long that is?" He was agitated, his face in the shadows. He was right. I was always doing this. I was either fucking up or fucking the wrong people. It was a bad habit. This tour was supposed to be my reinvention where I didn't cause shit to go awry. Tour 1, Court 0. I would fix it, I would at least try. The panic in her green eyes on the bus flashed through my mind. "Why don't you get some sleep Casey? You have been up for almost twenty-four hours. I know you didn't sleep on the bus." He nodded and turned with his hands in his pocket walking away more slumped than he had walked out. I waited a minute staring at the fields gone a blue silver under the heavy summer moon and wished for the hundredth time that we had just flown down here.

I walked back to the room careful not to step on the rough areas of the cement until I was standing in front of her. She was sound asleep. I put one arm behind her and worked the other arm behind her thighs and knees. She was shockingly short. I startled her eyes open by lifting her too hard. She stared at me with no recognition then her eyes narrowed before they closed again. I smiled, she was still fierce but there was an elfin quality to that sharp little face that made her nothing less than...cute. I was as surprised by that as she had been when I picked her up. Her hair smelled like coconut.