Also, I keep adding more to this. Whoops!
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#005 Unbreakable
They tell me angels fear to tread where we are. Why?
Maybe it’s because they want what we have. Maybe they just don’t know it.
Sometimes I wonder if you know what you truly mean to me. I know that you didn’t care. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have known. Even boys with hearts of glass know how to feel.
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We met in the middle of fall.
The leaves were in the middle of their last crescendo, and already some of them were starting to drift to the ground. I was walking my dog on one of the trails and stomping on undergrowth. I suppose it’s lucky that you’d totaled your car the week before, or we wouldn't have met. You were riding your bike instead.
You sped past me, a blur on the wind. My eyes met yours briefly before you screeched to a halt in the middle of the trail and waited. I didn’t stop, only walked past you, praying that you’d stay there, that you wouldn’t follow me.
I was lying to myself, of course. It wouldn’t be the last time.
Before long I heard the sound of your bike tires crunching over the dried leaves. I kept my eyes straight ahead and said nothing. You, on the other hand, have never liked silence. You opened your mouth and out flowed a torrent of words that drifted around me and tangled in my hair and around the leash clutched in my hand.
By the time we reached the end of the trail, you’d spoken enough to fill an epic saga. I’d said nothing. Not until you asked a question that could be answered only by a string of random numbers.
I went home and upstairs, found my cell phone sitting on my desk. You’d already called fourteen times.
~
You came and got me last night. Pulled up at the top of my driveway in the car you’ve had for several months now. You beeped your horn. My parents were out, which was a lucky thing.
Ever since we started doing this, the almost nightly ritual, I’ve had the urge to jump out the window. It would have been romantic and daring, and I wanted you to be impressed.
But underneath it all, I’m only a coward, which is why I leave through the front door.
~
We don’t like to go anywhere in particular, do we? We just like to drive around and see the sights, even if the sights are just the dark outlines of trees in the distance, shining ghostly pale in the headlights as we pass.
Sometimes you let me drive. I pretend to scare you by saying that I’m going to accelerate too fast and that I’ll be the death of us both. You laugh and say that I’m too chicken.
You’re right, as usual.
~
We park somewhere. Neither of us knows where the hell we are, and we’re young and foolish so we really don’t care.
The slam of the car doors echo through the air as we climb onto the hood and lay on our backs. We can’t see the stars tonight, only layers of clouds. If I were superstitious I would say it was an omen.
But I’m not, so it isn’t.
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I think I missed the first warning sign.
~
The second warning sign was easy. You didn’t stop when I said no.
And hours later when you dropped me off at my doorstep, when I sat and cried and held my bruised wrist, I was positive that it was a mistake. Positive that you still loved me. That you and I were both normal, and that what you’d done was normal.
When my parents asked how I’d broken my wrist, I told them that I fell on the concrete.
What I didn’t tell them was that you pushed me.
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In the beginning, it was there was you and I, and it was good. And it continued to be good, perfect even. Until it wasn’t. Where before there had been kisses, caresses, there were only punches and pinches. There is no timeline, no specific place that I can point at, underline in red and say, “There. That’s where it all went wrong.” Your transition was smoother than silk.
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You killed me a month later. I lay dying on the hood of your car, underneath the hidden stars, foolishly wondering what you would do about the blood stains. Would you paint over them? Or would you just trash the car and tell the next girl that it was totaled?
You stroked my cheek and held me, told me that everything was alright, that surely I’d find a place in heaven, that you’d made it all better for me now. In doing this, you’d helped me atone for my sins. Like you were doing me some sort of favor.
I never did get to jump out that window.
~
Only fools go where angels fear to tread. Are we fools? Maybe we’re really the angels. Maybe we’re the only ones who know what’s going on.
In the end, though, we were just two teenagers on another car hood. Tomorrow things won’t be the same. You think that they will, but it won’t. And maybe it’ll be for the better. Maybe we’ll never know.
