What Happened That Night

13 ~ e m i l y

After Emily had pulled back the hem of her black hoodie and revealed the purplish bruise beginning to swell over her eye, just barely a fraction of her emerald iris left visible, and the small trickle of blood dripping from one of her nostrils, her cheeks red and glistening from crying, and her shoulders kept shaking as she asked me over and over again to take her somewhere else, I mumbled something even I didn't recognize as a word, held open the heavy front door to Scoops! ajar, and called out that I had to go. When Bex started to reply, I just replied, my voice not even raising to be heard as I retracted my fingers from the glass surface of the door and it began to close, that my shift was almost over, anyway. Then, I looked over my shoulder, and saw Emily, now in the parking lot, scurrying toward Black Beauty, her Mini Cooper, and yanking open the passenger side door, ducking inside. For a moment, I just stood there, unsure of what to do. I felt as if I should've called my parents or maybe even Nora or one of those hotlines for confused teenagers who need help in social situations. I thought of my grandfather, a former high school guidance counselor, telling me and my sisters when we started high school that there was no sort of situation you couldn't tell a guidance counselor, but I never really believed him. I mean, yeah, I know that they just wanted to help but there were just some things you didn't an adult, especially if he's a middle-aged man with a finger ready to dial your parents' phone number.

But, now, I kind of wanted a guidance counselor to tell me what to do next.

I glanced over my shoulder, my gaze penetrating through the painted glass of the window and into the ice cream parlor, and I watched, quietly, as Bex leaned down in front of the metal chair that we had docked my iPod, now abandoned by me, and she was scrolling through the songs, and I already knew that she was searching for something from Rent, and then I saw Kolby Rutledge, out of the corner of my eye, licking a chocolate and vanilla swirl with a chocolate dipped cone, as he observed the other paintings in the parlor, tilting his head occasionally, and I noticed a little ribbon of transparent, white-ish ice cream drizzling down his hand. Then I spotted Griffin, realizing that half of his phone number was still written, unfinished, on my palm, and I touched the ink on my hands with my ring and middle finger as I looked at him, looking back at me. He was smiling, but also kind of confused, and the pen was still in his hand, waiting to finish writing down his number on my skin, as if he were making it a part of me now, and I swallowed. Behind me, I heard the faint, slight tap of the horn emitting from the Mini Cooper as Emily tapped it, gently, kind of like she didn't want anyone else to hear it. I sighed, pressing my fingers into the number, and mouthed to Griffin as I stepped off of the sidewalk leading to the ice cream parlor and onto the pavement of the nearly empty parking lot, Sorry.

Out of the corner of my eye, as I turned toward the Mini Cooper, noticing Emily slouched in the passenger seat, her hands held close to her face and the hood was back over her strawberry blond hair, her index finger pressed against her cupid's bow, as Griffin just nodded, the smile slowly dropping from his lips, and he set the pen back down in front of the fishbowl filled with folded pieces of paper and names, and finished numbers.

Sorry, I wanted to say again, and again, and again.

Sorry.

.

I drove around for nearly forty minutes at first, glancing at road signs and street names out of the corner of my eye as I took turns that I had never taken before and pulled onto roads that I had never pulled onto before, and I rolled down the windows in the front seats so that the flapping of the air against the agape windows would drown out Emily's sniffling and thick swallowing, her breath hiccupping as if she just couldn't catch it. The air was warm and dense with humidity and it smelled like freshly clipped grass. I clenched my hands around the steering wheel, feeling as though I feel each number of his unfinished phone number pressing against my skin the tighter I grasped the steering wheel before, finally, I asked, "So, um, where are we going?" And then, she exhaled, shakily, reached forward and pressed play on the CD player, the chords of country music beginning to fill the car, and told me to just keep going.