GONER

29 • Fear and Cars and The Pamphlet Project

A/N: You are impowered. You are in control.

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Fear is one of the most powerful things in the world, and it is the only thing that you can always count on to stop you. It hinders anything it can and breaks down everything that people are, tainting it to the point where there's nothing you can do about it. And maybe I'm afraid of a lot of things, but fear keeps us in line, and it keeps us alive. I hate to say that I appreciate being afraid, because I really don't, but it's another thing to recognize its importance. And it's important.

If we weren't afraid, we wouldn't run. We wouldn't understand and comprehend danger, and we wouldn't move away from it. And if we weren't scared, we probably wouldn't ever have anything to pride ourselves on. What's the point of your existence if you have nothing to conquer? That should be what your life is. A series of events you needed to overcome and get through, and what are you supposed to congratulate yourself about if you're not getting anywhere?

Therefore, I would like to point out that being fearless is just a hope and a dream that some people have, because the fearless person is only ever afraid to fear. So, yes. I was terrified walking into school, because I didn't know what was going to happen, and the element of surprise isn't something I've ever dealt well with unless I was the one who housed it.

Last night, I had a dream about jumping off a building. It wasn't the way you imagined it, and I could feel myself plummeting, but I wasn't falling. I was just getting closer to the ground with every second that passed, and I never hit the ground. I just kept going. And I'll never understand what it meant to never hit what I was supposed to, but I'm glad I didn't.

And I realized that I'm also scared to hit something too hard to recover from. And that's what Josh felt like. Slamming into something with the force to knock the air from your lungs. And that's what walking into the school felt like.

It was the first day of school again in my mind, and it was a battlefield, and I was walking across it, and no one was on my side. I didn't say a word, and I didn't look at anyone as much as I looked over them, and I wanted to get to my locker. I needed to get to my locker. I didn't want to be in anyone else's line of sight, and I didn't want to give them another reason to think Josh was a whore. Or a slut or a murderer. Or whatever they thought of him. I wouldn't let them.

So instead of thinking about my fear and the way I wanted to sleep forever, but only for small amounts of time, I thought about what he said to me yesterday. And kept repeating it in my mind, because, frankly, I was sick and tired of my head constantly attacking me. There was too many things for me to have to focus on. I was done. I had so many things fighting on the opposing side, and I wanted to line them all up, and tell them they weren't in control of me anymore. I had control. Or maybe I didn't. But I needed it.

My locker was within my vicinity when someone came up behind me, wrapping their strong arms around my thin waist. A smile involuntarily bloomed on my face, and I didn't realize how tense and cold I was until I wasn't anymore. My body felt an automatic sense of release, and it was all because of his.

"Hey," he breathed lightly, smiling against the side of my head. Knowing he was happy sent an automatic pop of satisfaction to my brain, and I leaned into his hold, my teeth digging into my bottom lip.

"Hi."

"I missed you last night," he said, coming to the side of me. His eyes literally glistened in the lights of this stupid school, and I blushed. It was much different going through the things that he said when he wasn't here, but now that he was, I didn't know how to feel. "You didn't text me or anything after you got home."