Awake (Book 3)

Nine

Things went from bad to worse between me and August.

            Each of his attempts at some sort of reconciliation was met with resistance on my part. He didn’t understand. I did. More than I ever have. I was doing this for him. For everybody. It was just better that way.

            So why don’t you just leave?

            That was the question.

            August was much better, able to move around by himself. The only thing left for me to do was pack up my bags and head out. But I couldn’t. And I thought he might have picked up on my inner dilemma, and this hurt him, so we reverted to shuffling around each other like incompetent zombies.

            And I hated it.

            This was August Masterson. My August, and we were acting like we didn’t even know each other.

            You could fix it.

            Didn’t mean I should.

             “We’re going to the training grounds.”

            I flinched automatically, just because of the word “training”. Good things never followed with Lucille. “Yeah?”

            August appeared in the doorway of the kitchen, where I was at the table drinking some tea. He tucked his phone into his pocket. “I told them everything. They’re in shock but ecstatic to see you.”

            The words were good but his voice was monotone. Unenthusiastic. Dead. And I hated that it was my fault.

            “Okay.”

            He didn’t move, shoulder propped against the wood door jam, staring hard at me. The hollowness in his blue eyes was unfamiliar and lanced into me with raw hurt. I didn’t know what to say so I just returned his stare, something building inside of me, begging to be released, but I instinctively pushed it back down. It was what I was trained to do. What I knew to do.

            Change was just so hard, and whenever it happened, it was harder to undo it.

            August pushed off the frame and sauntered out of the house. I finished my tea with haste and thought about what I needed to pack, and realized there was nothing. So with just myself, I darted out the door and joined him outside. Together in silence we walked through the underbrush until arriving at his car, where we slid in and he started on down the road.

            Passing the time in silence seemed borderline unbearable, and August must have realized this, too, because he turned up the radio. And of course “Renegade” by Styx would play. Of course.

            August drummed the wheel with his palm in time with the beat, and sang softly under his breath. And it was funny, how even songs could act as little portals in time and take you back. Take us back, to a time months and months and months ago, at the start of our journey, flying down the highway with no clue what would happen next. No clue of the heartbreak or the struggle or the pain. When it was just us, me eighteen-years-old and August fresh from Yale, with no idea—absolutely no idea—of how interwoven our lives would become.

            So when the chorus rolled around again, I opened my mouth and sang at the top of my lungs. Because we weren’t the present August and Ellie. We were the August and Ellie of unpredictable beginnings when we couldn’t even fathom foreseeing the unprecedented events yet to come. August joined me in this lapse, turning the dial of the radio up another few notches, blasting our song, and we shared a broad grin and a laugh and for a moment everything was okay. We sang along like our lives depended on it. Just us on a lonely, long stretch of highway, windows rolled down, top down, wind whistling through our hair, and everything was okay.