Have you always been this weird?

CH - 13

‘Drowning. She was drowning. The waves were lapping at her, the white foam sinking into her flesh, pulling her away. Away from him.

He had to save her. Stop her. She was drifting away. He needed to pull her close, close to home, close to him.

He didn’t hear her scream, but he was sure she was struggling. How couldn’t she?

Displaying no mercy, the waves roared again. They were pushing her away.

Wait.

He could see her move, she was moving! She was trying to survive!

Her movements weren’t as scattered as he would have thought, they were synchronized. She seemed composed, too composed.

She was swimming, swimming away from him.

Why was she pulling away? ‘

“Aren’t I glad to see you back at your game!”, Asa leapt at him,” But next time, you’re losing”.

“Whatever you say man, I’ll look forward to watching ‘A – H’ climb up ‘K-B’ on the score boards.”

“They will, they will, don’t get too cocky now”, Asa cracked his neck. He thought over his speech one last time in his mind and then decided to let go. Speeches weren’t his thing anyway.

Asa squeezed his shoulder, a little too tight; his intention wasn’t to hurt but to comfort.

“You’re doing good man, great even. Don’t lose that yeah? You’re a good guy Keith.”

Keith nodded reassuringly,” Yes sir”, patting Asa’s back a few times, “ I’ll prove it to you by beating you again Howard”.

He was halfway home when he realized he hadn’t returned the bowling-alley shoes, pulling over to switch to his normal ones. That was when his phone rang. ‘Mike?’

“Hello?”

“Hey man..uh this is Mike”, the voice on the other end sounded unsure, wavering off to an awkward silence and before Keith could prod him for his identity, he spoke up again, ” It’s Mike Stone”.

“Mike Stone?”

‘Mike Stone.’

Keith felt his heart sink and as he rested his head against the window, he wondered if he dared to continue.

He was at the edge of a new road, an empty one at that.

‘A blank canvas.’

“Hey Mike, what’s up?”

****************************************************************

“Why won’t you tell me where you’re going? Why are you going?”

“As if I’m the Priest listening to your confessions”, she scoffed.

Nails scratched against the blackboards of her mind, her limbs twitching and crying out to be soothed. They had walked circled around their argument and always ended up in the same place; strikingly opposing ends.

Andrew peered at the hunched over body in his passenger seat. Her clothes were sticking to her body as if they were her second skin. It was almost as if they wanted to trap her, limit her to herself; bind her.

He drooped down, tugging at his seatbelt. Andrew thought he had been forced to swallow sandpaper, even gulping began to hurt him. Just like the day before, he had been the one contributing to the conversation. Or as Sarah put it, ‘interrogation’.

He had to drop her to the bus stop, it was his end of the deal. Never before had Andrew felt like backing out, as he did today. He didn’t want to let Sarah go, not without an answer. And not until he absolutely had to.

‘Why?’

‘Why do I care?’

‘Why?’

Andrew turned the AC to its maximum speed, shuddering at the sight of sweat dripping down Sarah’s body.

Turning to face her even though he knew she wouldn’t look at him, he lay down his final card.

“Look, we both have our secrets. And we don’t want to share them. So why don’t we strike a deal?”

‘At this rate I should probably become a dealer.’

“You accompany me- or I drop you till New York. I mean that’s the direction you’re going in right?”, he waited for her response. She didn’t dare give any.

“Right so, we go up till New York together. No questions asked okay. And once we’re there, we part our ways. You go wherever you want to go. And I’ll leave you alone.”

“No questions during the trip and no me after.”

Sarah played around with the blower, shifting its wings from blowing straight in her eyes to her burning forehead.

Andrew’s obstinacy was incorrigible and she doubted her strength to fight.

‘It doesn’t seem like that bad of a plan really.’

‘I really don’t trust him to ask no questions though.’

‘What if he calls someone after I’m gone?’

‘Who cares? I’ll be long gone.’

Conflictions were her kryptonite, that wasn’t a secret. Conflictions with herself were a different deal in themselves.

Contrary to what one would think, inside her mind Sarah was considerably smaller in size with respect to her thoughts.

She was a withered out leaf, blowing around and dancing to the strong winds of her deliberations. She stopped moving and lay on the ground, exhausted.

The winds didn’t need her anymore and paid her no attention either, battling amongst themselves.

A little while was all it took and she was pulsing again, moving but not of her own volition. It wasn’t one of those violent winds, but a gentle breeze. It was tipping her over in tiny, measured movements.

The breeze wanted to stay. It wanted to bask in Andrew’s warmth. It didn’t want to run from him.

‘Stay.’

The anticipation dancing on Andrew’s face dropped to a scowl when Sarah finally spoke,” I don’t want to miss the bus”.

************************************************************************

‘She had been avoiding him, for days. Ignoring his texts, dismissing his calls and changing her routes to avoid running into him at school.

He was perplexed. Was she angry? Had he screwed up inadvertently?

Maybe.

He decided to give her space.

She was gone for too long though, and he pined for her terribly. Now that she was finally here, she had wreaked his world apart.

“Wh- what are you saying? I don’t understand. Why this? All of a sudden I don’t-”, his voice turned stern, ”What the hell Sarah!”

She had resumed her silence, staring at his floorboards. It drove him crazy. She had shut him out for days, leaving him helpless with no explanation and now seemed to have taken this huge decision for them all by herself.

The least she could do was look him in the eyes as she did it.

“Look at me Sarah.”

She didn’t.

“I need to go.”

She didn’t turn back. She was swimming away.’

Keith slammed hard at the brakes, his car stopping only a few feet away from the Thomas’ front- door. He didn’t even have to turn to his left, he knew fate had positioned him exactly where he had wanted.

Parallel to the Thomas’ tree.

Sarah and Keith’s tree.

Object perception had always fascinated Keith. To him, it didn’t seem like a strictly scientific concept; context always played a huge role.

The tree had always been gigantic, branches stretching in every possible direction. The swirls in its trunk forming intricate patterns. It had also always been kind, willingly extending its shade to almost half of the lawn.

Today though, Keith felt a shiver run down his spine as he stepped near its base. Never would he have imagined that what he had once considered his stairway to heaven would turn into something so foreboding.

Extending his arms, Keith lunged upwards.

***************************************************************************

How do you escape being suffocated?

Mike had never thought about it. You never really give certain things a second thought until you desperately need them. And right now, Mike needed a way out. And he needed it fast.

“What is with this room?”

Maddie looked around, grimacing in solidarity. She had opened her mouth to say something, but what she let out was a terrifying shriek.

The sight had reminded Mike of a sack of potatoes, tumbling in, creating a ruckus. But once Keith stood up and dusted himself off, Mike felt like a potato himself.

“What the fuck dude?”, Maddie yelled again, but this time a lot quieter.

“What?”

Mike pointed to the door, ”Why didn’t you use the door? It’s a lot more convenient”. Had Keith always been this peculiar?

“And risk running into the middle of fight number five thousand and eighty two? Especially right now?”, Keith scoffed.

An understanding silence settled between them, along with the mutual agreement that there was no point in maintaining facades, particularly those not their own.

Maddie picked up a discarded bed-sheet, neatly folding it and placing it on the mattress,” Her dad’s not here, he left. Last week I think”.

Keith nodded, taking in the room he had almost inhabited for years and yearned for the sight of for months. It wasn’t necessarily messy, but something felt off about it. And what struck him the most was Sarah’s bed. Or what was now only a lonely mattress.

An empty mattress, no bed covers and no Sarah. She wasn’t there.

She wasn’t waiting for him and nor were her arms wide open for him to fall into. She wasn’t there for him to smother with kisses, wasn’t there to have him burning, to have him pushing her deeper into that very mattress.

‘She’s really gon-‘

Keith blinked back to reality and found Mike facing the couch on his left.

“She wasn’t sleeping on the bed clearly. So here it was I guess”, he mumbled the end.

Keith felt a weight on his chest, very sudden and very painful. He ignored it but Mike was pointing at his face.

“Hey, you okay?”

Keith pulled at his left temple,” Yeah don’t worry”.

He looked around once more. Funnily enough, the white walls made the already morose state even duller. And Keith felt reality piercing in through the fog.

“She’s really gone huh?”

The silence this time wasn’t very accepting of the truth. Reluctant was more like it.

“Do you-“, Maddie hesitated. She thought her emotions had bottled up to form a defective firecracker; it had sprung to life with a crackle and then immediately fused.

Mike continued for her,” We called you because we thought you might know something. I mean, did you guys talk about something like this? Maybe something that could help”, he trailed off. He wondered if that was how this whole situation was going to unfold. Wander around, in infinite search for a finite point.

‘She was running away from me. Only she never said it out loud.’

‘Wait.’

“Well, there was this one time…”