The Run

117

This is wrong. This is all wrong, Tyler. Nothing makes sense. Why did I? I shouldn't have. What was I thinking? This was never a good idea. I fucked up. Majorly. This is NOT what I had planned – and I do sense the irony. It hurts. It hurts deeply, and my mind tells me, yells at me, SCREAMS at me that I deserve it. It's all I deserve, it's all I've ever deserved and I know it and you know it, wherever you are.

Are you there? Somewhere? Up there? I don't know. I don't know why I'm addressing these letters to you. Maybe in the hopes that someone, when I'm done here, will find them and bring them to... someone you loved? Your family? Or mine, maybe. Although I'm not sure anyone will be able to read my frantic scratches. Even I can't read myself sometimes.

But anyway. Let me just –

All right. I took a breather. I'm a little bit calmer but my hands are still shaking and I don't know what to make of all these thoughts that are running through my mind. But I should probably try and tell it from the beginning if I want it to make sense to someone. How did you do it, by the way? How did you manage to write these songs that didn't seem to make any sense yet managed to grab everybody's attention and touch them right through the heart? I've never understood that. Look at me, trying to piece together bits of my mind to write a simple letter and failing miserably. You know, when you told me that one time that you could totally continue on your own and that you didn't need me to be successful? I think maybe you were right.

Ugh, see? I did it again. I digressed.

I've written a couple letters to you since we were in Orlando. Not as much as I used to, but enough to give you a good glance into our road trip. I told you about the numerous days spent in Florida, roaming the beaches, Miami, Fort Lauderdale, the Everglades and Key Lime pies. I told you about Savannah, Georgia, where we decided to take on the East Coast fully before visiting further into the country. I told you about South Carolina and its plantations, Myrtle Beach, and even though I wanted to skip it, I told you about our visit to Wilmington, North Carolina, only so she could chase all these places where One Tree Hill and Dawson's Creek were filmed. I didn't even know what Dawson's Creek was, so she made me buy the DVD set and all that was necessary to watch it when, at the end of the day, we crashed into our very uncomfortable bed-seat in the RV. It was almost fun.

Did I tell you about Shenandoah National Park in Virginia? I think I did. And DC, of course, I did tell you about Washington DC. The Capitol. The Lincoln Memorial. The Washington Monument. We went to all the museums and learned all the things, and I almost forgot about it all, like I was living another life, one that didn't belong to me. She jumped in the fountain to recreate that Forrest Gump scene and we almost got arrested, but since she got us out of that in a hot minute, I didn't even get mad at her and when we watched the movie that night, I was lying on my stomach, she was sitting cross-legged next to me, and she started rubbing my back with the tips of her fingers and it felt so nice I let her. We didn't talk about it, because that would have made me feel vulnerable, but since I didn't complain I think she knew I liked it, because she did it again the next day, caressing the hair at the nape of my neck also.

Time went slower then as we left DC for Baltimore, and then Maryland for Delaware. We didn't know much about Delaware, so I did a thing. I bought her a new smartphone. I could have just bought a book like the ones they make for tourists, but I didn't. I was... soft. Soft and stupid. She made me soft and stupid, I guess. But anyway. I think Delaware is the place where we decided we should just drive through all the States in the country, even just for a day each, because it wasn't fair for poor Delaware-like States that didn't have much to show for themselves. How stupid is that?

We spent a couple days in Jersey shore after that, then a couple days in Philadelphia, and she would always find interesting things to see on her phone whenever we had Wi-Fi. We didn't want to tackle New-York straight after that because we know it would take more of our time and we thought we'd better get to Maine before the weather started to get dirty, so we drove up there and went south instead. New Hampshire was done in three days, two for Vermont, same for Massachusetts and Connecticut. By then, she had started to get closer to me come bed time, and often I woke up with her in my arms, the tiny baby hair on top of her head tickling my nose. Sometimes, during the day, when she would be super excited by something we were visiting, she would take my hand and not let go. And I let her. I let her do all that.

When we got to New-York City, something had changed between us. It's like she didn't fear me anymore, and maybe that's what fucked it all up. I should have kept that distance; I should have kept that angry tone all the time. I should never have had that idea for a road trip in the first place, mind you. And we go back further, you know that I should never had taken her with me. But what's done is done, as they say. I can go back as far as I want, you're still gone.

We had booked a fancy hotel in the City, because we thought our backs deserved it, after so many nights spent on that uncomfortable RV "bed". It was nice to rest in a real one for once, and hadn't she forgotten her bag in the car, I wouldn't be as pissed as I am right now. Ugh, it makes me so mad just thinking about it. I've been here for almost an hour, she must think I got lost on the way. But I can't face her, not right now. If I do, I don't know what will be left of her when I leave.

Because, you see, the girl I've been getting closer to, the girl who's made me drop my angry attitude for a new sense of wonder and brightness, the girl who's made me, even for a second, hope for something slightly better, that girl Emmie, well... She's not who she pretends to be. Because when I grabbed her bag from the back seat of the RV, ready to go back and chill on the hotel bed, something dropped out. I picked up her wallet then, immediately put it back in there... and something in me, the old me, made me pick it out again.

I opened it, smiled at an old picture of her as a child (there was another child in there, I think it was a little guy), counted a couple dollars, and my eyes went straight for her license. She looked good on the picture, unlike most people, unlike me, and I blinked because when was the last time I had found a girl pretty? Then I blinked again, and again. And one more time. Because the picture looked like her, but the name... The name was different.

Turns out I have spent more than seventy days with a girl named April Jackson, and I have no idea who she is.

|-/

Soo... I think you should have a pretty good idea of what the chapter titles mean now. Do you? 

Things are going faster now, and we're almost at the end of part 1 of this story.  

What do you think of Emmie/April? What is she hiding? And why? 

What do you think happened to Tyler and Josh?

Are you excited to know more?

Thanks for reading!