The Night Before
Chapter Four -- **MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD**
An incoming phone call and the message lay unsent.
Ava.
The name laid splayed across the phone and a forgotten promise to hang revealed itself. An expedition to Wave Way to drink a couple then regret it the next day – the one reprieve being smothered in a hoodie during the morning periods of school. The phone continued ringing, an impasse whether to let it go to voicemail. Suddenly, she could hear an engine idling as her consciousness left the comfort of her ocean floor. As she floated up to the surface, she recalled she had asked them to pick her up. The idling engine was, in fact, them, in front of her house. She had to pick up.
“K______! We’re outside”
Speaking was hard right now, outside of her pelagic comfort zone, sounds seemed to emanate from everywhere. She knew this was a side effect of the drugs – auditory hallucinations. Didn’t stop it from being disconcerting.
I’ll. Be. Right. There. Is what she thought she said. It’s what she hoped she said. She levitated off her sofa-throne and began ambling onto the door, throwing on her rain jacket and shades to keep the world an arm’s distance away.
~
“Sooooo how’re things?”
The SUV she hopped into roared off. Below her, old cans of beer. Next to her Ava driving. Behind, two other preps equally trashed, setting up lines of something or other.
“Yeah, they are okay.”
“Ugh. You won’t believe what Father told me today.” Ava began on one of her usual tirades against her parents. Her whole life had been given to her, unfortunately, that included her personality. As of late, she’d been trying to crack through the shell her parents gave her. Crack through it and shed light into whatever lay within her. This meant she’d been dressing down, cozying up to other cliques, trying to avoid the massive shadow of her net worth laying above her. “Can you believe that K____?”
“No, not at all.” She settled back into the music of the car. Trying to ride each note as it swam into her cochlea. The car rode through cliff-side roads, higher and higher as they ascended to Wave Way. The passengers in the back babbling about the newest drama in school or who likes whom, or who doesn’t like whom.
“Ugh, K____. I’m so glad you get me. I feel like we just understand each other, don’t’ we?”
While they both shared an affinity for numbing themselves with substance, besides that there was little in common. Hiding their addiction bounded them but their personalities kept them apart. K____ played a part for her, just like she did everyone else. Ava had no idea about the empty seed within her soul. Instead, K____ played the part of a doting friend. Ready to have a shoulder to cry on, in return for free car rides, booze, and cocaine. Ava was gentle, tender, and lost. K____ had no time to help guide a lamb.
“We sure do…” She hoped there was enough positive inflection in the sentence or at least that Ava was drunk enough to not notice. Periodically, she’d open her phone again, and look at the text unsent. Hover over the send button, then pull back. The high began settling her into her car ride and soon it felt as if she could see the car speeding down the cliffside roads in third person. Disassociation. The driver letting substance take hold while drifting in and out of the double-yellow. Other cars driving past, furious, letting their generational hatred out, whispering out platitudes like, kids these days.
Car after car. To text or not to text. Blur after blur.
Finally, she sent the text. Decided to put her phone down and not look at it when to her surprise there was an immediate response. The new kid and her began conversing, a little back and forth. Blurb after blurb. She looked back out the window, a weird sense of contentment fizzling within her, Ava and the others still chit-chatting away. It was too good to be true. As she glanced out the window, from the blur of cars she witnessed one car seemingly slow down. Within the black SUV, a group of Jocks. Suddenly, the contentment within her was drained and the emptiness grew boundlessly. She felt cold. Her breath felt distant. It felt as if she was outside the car. It felt as if time was this gelatinous object, she was both stuck in and whizzing past. The face of the driver of the SUV was imprinted on her brain. It looked at her and judged her. The face was the leader of all the Jocks in Sunset High. The star of the soccer team. About to head to Harvard to captain their team. No one at Sunset High worked harder than the captain. She was relentless. As opposed to K_____, she thrived under the pressure – no mask needed. K_____ hated her. Her high had twisted into a low, a low as the darkness trickled towards the edges of her vision. This low had one aim, to assert dominance. The low placed the opponent’s car squarely in front of her own, put her in control. Now she was the driver and a game of chicken commenced. She wasn’t going to lose. Fuck her.
Then oblivion.
From Ava’s perspective, K_____ seemed to have lost control. Suddenly putting her arms over her, debilitating her ability to drive causing them to swerve into the cliff-face soon to be met by the dancing Christmas-like adornment of the first responder’s emergency lights.
~
Then oblivion.
K_____ woke up to numbness. Then pain. Then numbness again. Numbness. Pain. Throughout the rhythm she could feel the seed of emptiness in her still there, for some reason the seed was invincible. To her left, Ava was still to come to. Behind her, the two passengers had left. Slowly, she peeled herself off the dash. Her limbs begrudgingly listened. They unbuckled her, propped her up, and got her out the window. The fresh air stung in her lungs as she inhaled, a revitalizing sting. Around the serenity two figures in the distance, the passengers of the car, huddled around each other talking on the phone. Her brain began to analyze, what would their parents say? What would her parents say? She shut her brain off and instead began walking. Walking across the street. Over the guardrail, and down the sloping cliffside. The brambles of the growth pricked her, lashed against her jeans, she paid no mind. Instead, she’d just walk. Walk away from this, from her troubles, from everything. Maybe to the beach, find her underwater haven. She’d walk.
Meanwhile, Ava woke to a web of lies already spun by her compatriots. The ambulance would get there soon. Their parents not long after. They’d have to blame K_____ for drinking, for doing drugs, for the crash. Their parents would all have to call the principal, the superintendent, and begin politicking.
K_____ would have to no longer be a student at Sunset High.
Ava would have to walk to school tomorrow.