“So, what do you want to do?”

I rested back against the uncomfortable booth we were sitting in, looking at the ripped leather near my leg. We were in some shitty dinner, visited by roaming truckers seeing the sign from the freeway and the owners of cars breaking down at the gas station across the road. It was quiet enough to not agitate the ache in my head, minus the sounds of silverware getting washed in the kitchen, all those loud clinking sounds. It was getting dark outside – sunset was coming soon, but with the heavy rain clouds outside no one could really tell anyways. I sighed, looking back up to the cup of coffee I had in my hands, eyelids feeling so heavy. I was tired from yet another night of tossing and turning, staring at the green dashes making up numbers on my alarm clock, not even budging when I saw a spider crawl across the floor I was just a few inches above. I had been lying on a bloodstained mattress without one care in the world.

I felt the table shake a little bit. I looked up again, this time to see my dad sitting across from me, obviously just having moved the table around to get my attention. His arms were rested on the tabletop, hunched over just slightly in his seat. In that small second, I noticed for the first time the patches of gray in his hair. He was waiting for my reply.

“Do with what?” I asked. I finally took a sip out of the cup in my hands. I’d been holding onto it for a good five minutes. It was almost cold.

“Didn’t you hear a word I just said?” he asked. I shook my head and looked back down the cup in my hand; I heard him sigh. “The house. Did you want to keep it? Without your mother around, I don’t think we will ever need that much room again.”

I winced, trying to dismiss the thought of empty rooms and dressers filled with clothes that would never be worn again. I tried to think of leaving the house in any other situation but this one. “She loved the place, right? That should be grounds on keeping it. But eh, I don’t really suppose it’s my decision. I don’t own any part of it. And, not to sound rude,” I said as I shot a glance to him, “there’s nothing in that house to keep us together now.”

He stared at me blankly. “What do you mean, exactly.”

“We’ve never been close, and I think the only thing that ever kept us from getting into more brawls than we already did was that mom was there. She cared about us both, didn’t want either of us hurting each other in any sense. And now that she’s gone… well, I’m not going to go back on that unspoken agreement to not fight with you. It hurt her too much to see that. If you want to let the house go, then it’s your decision. I’m not going to argue over it. I’ll find a way to survive.”

My dad continued to stare blankly at me, as if our fights in the past were sudden news to him. When he finally did break eye contact, he looked down to the table and lowered his eyes, shrugging his shoulders before pulling back from the table. He looked out the window to his side, momentarily scanning the parking lot.

“I doubt you would,” he muttered before picking up a cup in front of him and taking a long sip.

I felt my brows lower as I fixed my eyes directly on his. “Eh?”

He returned the eye contact. “I can’t ever imagine you living on your own. I think you’d die if there were no constant human contact, no constant care for you. Even when you look like you’re doing well, there’s always something wrong… like when you came home from the hospital to stay with us again. You’re doing exceptionally well for about six months – you’ve got a job, you’ve got a license and a car all on your own, you’re making friends at work, you’re keeping your right doses of medication, no drugs - and then out of nowhere, you try to kill yourself?”

I continued to look forward, continued to make that eye contact I loathed so much. I tried to see if I could find any sort of compassion or understanding, or even just an attempt at trying to in his face. I was trying to see if there was any honest questioning in his words. I was trying to find something genuine.

There was nothing there.

“I know your mother cared about you. Hell, she may have cared about you more than she ever did about me - but that’s how it’s supposed to be between mother and child. Right? Nothing else is ever supposed to come between that. Do you have any clue how much it hurt her to hear the things you were doing?”

“Do you have any clue how much it hurt me to be quiet,” I muttered.

I realized the second after I had said that, I already knew the answer. I shook my head.

“Don’t give me some thing about us not understanding what it’s like to hurt. You ever wonder why we adopted you? Four miscarriages. All in the third trimester. Somewhere in that graveyard your friend’s buried in, that’s where all our kids are. I refuse to remember the exact location. She… she just couldn’t stay pregnant. She wanted kids so bad, she went through the pain of losing four before she let go of the idea of having her own and decided she wanted to give a good life to one who would have never had one. We were sorting through adoption papers looking for the child she wanted – not the one I wanted. Hers. I wanted her to have everything she deserved. The second she heard what had happened to you, she knew you were the one she wanted to take care of. She knew you’d go through a series of bad homes and uncaring people if you didn’t go with us. And she fought for you. She fought hard, and she got you.”

I stared at the ground as I heard him sigh. “And for all the pain you put her through… we should not have ever bothered.”

I raised my eyes up to his. I didn’t notice how much spite was in his face until then.

“I don’t want you living at the house anymore. I want you to drive home, take your things and leave. Anything left behind is being donated. Clear?”

“Can I at least have a reason,” I said quietly.

He scoffed. “Well, where should I start? We both know all of them. The drug abuse, the constant cutting, the suicide attempts. Your total neglect.” The sound of his voice changed then. “Trevor.”

I froze. “… What the hell does Trevor have to do with any of this? He’s saved my life.”

He kept his eyes locked on mine. “I know about you two. The only thing good I will ever say about your mother’s passing, is that now she’s never going to know exactly what you two have been doing.”

OOO

And that, as they say, was that.

I didn’t have to hear any more of an explanation. How he had ever found out didn’t matter to me. I lowered my head, nodding silently before digging my hand into my pocket and pulling out a few dollar bills. I don’t even know how much I left him for the bill – I figured, as I slid to my left and stood up from the booth, that the handful of cash would pay for both cups of coffee and maybe for half of the meal he had ordered. I put my hands into the pockets of my jacket, the only reassuring thing in that moment being the sound of my car keys clinking as I took step after step forward, knowing at least now I wouldn’t have to go back for my keys. My breath was starting to quicken, I could feel the contents of my stomach wanting to come up. I wanted to take off running. Panic was starting to take hold of me. I turned the corner of the restaurant and saw an arrow with the word “RESTROOM” above it. I followed the arrow down a little hallway and pushed past the door leading to the men’s room. I looked around near the sinks and urinals nervously, hoping so much no one else would be in there, and when the silence confirmed I was alone, I practically bolted into a stall.

Without the door even shutting behind me, I doubled over and felt bile wash through my mouth just before it made a rush for the toilet. I only had a few seconds to catch my breath before I heaved again; there was more puke on that second time. I felt my legs shaking under me, absolutely ready to give out and let me hit the ground. I coughed, the remaining acid in my throat stinging and burning even more. I turned around and shut the stall door behind me, locking it before leaning my back against it and trying again to catch my breath. I closed my eyes and let my head fall back, forcing tears to stay down as I balled my hands into fists and wanted so badly to start punching the wall.

Nothing was really registered yet. All I knew is that I had to go back to the house, get whatever I didn’t want to be donated and forget I had ever called that house a home. It wasn’t so bad yet, no, it wouldn’t be so bad, it could be so much worse… god what the fuck was I saying to myself, yes it was. I felt my hands against my temples and moving over my eyes, trying to keep optimistic, trying to keep hope in my line of sight. But there was darkness creeping in. I could feel the hopelessness starting to pry through cracks of doubt, even the smallest amount of determination in me being hooked onto lead weights and sunk down. I was homeless. All I had was a car with less than half a tank of gas, and the only money I had on me was lying on that goddamn table. Anything I left in my room was going to be thrown out if I didn’t go get it right now. Right now. I had to go. I had to get there as soon as I can, before everything I had was tossed. I opened my eyes and felt the tears I had been trying to hold fall down my face.

“Fuck…” I heard some shaking whisper say. I pulled my sleeve over my hand and ran the back of my hand over my face, sniffling as I wiped the tears off of my face. I couldn’t breathe so well now and my hands were trembling. I was scared, as stupid as the word sounded to me I was scared. I didn’t know where I was going to go.. every talk I’d ever heard about how not to waste my life was coming back to me all at the same time, guilt and regret and shame starting to pick the last few scraps of self reliance and maturity off of my bones. I just wanted to curl up in a corner and cry and wait for somebody who seemed fifty times bigger than me to pick me up and make everything okay again, for somebody to find me and take me out of the dark. All that darkness was closing in on me again, I was stuck in that small space again, locked in and waiting to die. More tears kept coming, my hands kept shaking, and I was on the verge of screaming until I felt the slight shift of something in my pocket.

I suddenly remembered that I had my phone on me.. and I remembered exactly what I kept hidden underneath the battery of it.

I pulled up my phone and quickly snapped the battery off of it, the biggest sigh of relief going through me as I saw the small razor blade I had carefully tucked in months and months ago. Without hesitation, I picked out the blade and shoved the contents of my phone into my pocket again and rolled up the sleeve on my left arm, only to be reminded even further of the past when I saw the multiple thick scars that extended nearly into my palm.

Too obvious, I though. It’s too obvious if I go there. Not only will a doctor know when I go to get my nerves checked in the future, but Trevor will know. I was left trying to think of places before I lost my fucking mind. My legs were as bad as my arms were before the day I had tried to drown myself. Where else could I go where no one would see? I folded my arms in, one of them just slightly rubbing against my ribcage.

That was it. My side. No one would be checking there. I took off my jacket and slung it over the door, loosely rolling up my shirt on my left side and draping my right arm across my stomach. I wasn’t used to cutting with my right hand, but I supposed I had better get used to it - it was the only hand I could use now.

I pushed the blade down into my skin, and before any fear could register in me, I dragged it as hard and as fast as I could over my side, losing control as I was gliding it and slashing down deep across my stomach, nearly colliding with my navel. Immediately I felt blood started to flow out of what felt like such a giant wound, surfacing as small beads before becoming small rivers and leading on into thick layers of bright red rushing down. Sharp, stinging pain began to strike me and it was almost hard to keep standing. My hands jolted out of the fists they were in, the blade dropping as I slammed my hands to the walls to keep my balance. I looked down and could see a dip in my skin from where the blade had cut – my skin had split a good depth by my ribs and gradually got smaller as the wound came towards my navel, but that didn’t keep me from bleeding in equal amounts from every part of this gash. I didn’t even feel it when my mouth fell open. My shirt began to loosely roll itself down, down over the blood and quickly soaking it in. I glanced down at the floor and I could see large drops hitting the white floor. I don’t think the way I started panting was helping either – every rise and fall of my chest seemed to bring up more and more blood.

That’s when I heard voices outside the bathroom door.

I grabbed as much toilet paper as I could and wiped off the blood on the ground, stray drops hitting my hands as I was bent down. I tossed the tissue into the toilet and flushed it down, watching as blood and vomit circled the bottom. I threw my jacket back on and zipped it up, clutching the blade in my fist as I could feel the blood running down my side going cold as it made contact with the little air it could, sending the cold downwards as blood began to seep down into my pants. I ran to the sink, the pure movement of my body alone shooting pain into every direction it could go, and I scrubbed my hands clean of blood on them before I went to the bathroom door, bumping into two men who were walking past me to the restroom. I hoped to whatever god that was watching this that I hadn’t gotten blood on them.

I didn’t even raise my head as I walked straight to the door of the restaurant, down the steps outside and to my car. I hadn’t even seen if my father was still there, or even if his car was in the parking lot. It was starting to drizzle as I unlocked my doors and got in. I shoved my keys into the ignition, my hand shaking uncontrollably as I started the car and put it in reverse. I looked down at my side to see blood was soaking my jacket.

“Holy… fucking… shit…”

Putting the car back into park, I clutched both of my hands onto the wheel and stared forward, my eyes wide and every bone in my body tense. You fucking idiot! What the fuck did I do… what the fuck did I do to myself… what the fuck was I going to do now?! I couldn’t go to the emergency room, I fucking couldn’t, they’d stitch me up and send me off for another eight rounds of electroshock. I knew they would. And I would die in an institution. I wouldn’t make it through, not again. I couldn’t fucking go back there. There was no way they would see this gash and think I just wanted to cut. Every single person I would see would think I tried to kill myself again. I kept hearing myself saying over and over again, “Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god…” like that was even going to help. I didn’t even know anything about things around my ribs and my stomach. I didn’t even have anywhere to go and rest this off.

I let out a small cry when I realized I still had to go to my house and pack all my things.

Nothing at my house mattered. It was all just useless shit. If I could just get to the house, then everything would be fine. I knew I could stay with Trevor. All I needed was a bag of clothes and to grab the remaining blades and needles I had hidden in my drawers. I’d stop bleeding soon enough, and this wouldn’t kill me. It would be okay.. I couldn’t think otherwise right now.

OOO

It was raining like a son of a bitch now, gone from drizzle to downpour in a matter of minutes. There was absolutely no radio reception because of it. I had decided to take the back roads to the house to avoid all the traffic I knew that would be on the highway because of this sudden burst, and fifteen miles in bumper-to-bumper traffic didn’t seem so appealing. I didn’t know when my dad was going to get home and I wanted the memory of the last time we’d see each other to always be at that restaurant.. some place where walls and ceiling could contain it instead of it staying in me, I thought.

I gritted my teeth and tightened my grip on the wheel. I didn’t want him to have the satisfaction of seeing me walking back to the driveway with a box of shit I thought was meaningful enough to not just be tossed back to the world I had gotten it from.

The speed limit on this particular road wasn’t too high – it was a curvy two-lane road, the particular side I was on having one side exposed to the space between hills, the sharp drops that didn’t look so far down because of the monstrous sized trees that grew from the bottom. I’d only seen two other drivers coming the opposite way, and both going well under the posted speed. I kept at a steady pace; all the standing water that I could see starting to form in the minor concave bumps in the road was making me nervous. I’d never seen rain this bad before, but I at least had one sigh of relief when this was all done – I’d never have to drive this road again.

I glanced down at the speedometer, and as I did I noticed the corners of the windshield were starting to fog. Neh, shit. I momentarily took one hand off of the wheel and switching on the defroster. There was no way in hell I was driving this car with any window cracked open, it’d be like a bucket of water getting chucked in here. I was almost done with the drive now, so even if it continued to fog up it would only be for a few more minutes – there was a curve up ahead, then over a bridge and taking the next left turn.

I was going over a quick list in my head.. shirts, socks, pants, only got one pair of shoes and I’m wearing them.. that box of Lissa’s stuff under my bed… that was all I needed really..

The sound of tires screeching snapped me out of my thoughts, and I looked past the rain that continued to hit the windshield to see a pick up truck not so far in front of me losing control on the turn. It swerved towards the hillside before it glided across to the other lane. My lane. Not more than fifteen feet in front of me.

I tried to slam on the brakes, so stupid that I didn’t remember the road was nearly covered with water, and doing so made the car lose traction with the road. The front of the car titled towards the right, coming inches from going over the edge. I turned the wheel towards the left, feeling almost weightless as the car slid effortlessly forwards the hillside before once again pulling towards the right. So focused on trying to not get into an accident, I again turned the wheel to the left to get onto the side of the road that had dirt for the car to run into instead of sliding off the side. This effort wouldn’t make a goddamn difference.

I don’t even remember the impact so much anymore as much as I do remember feeling the car being shoved across the road and over the side, the fall lasting for only a second or so as the car fell onto the passenger side, glass shattering on impact and continuing to crack as the car rolled until it finally smashed against a tree.