Passenger | Unedited Version

chapter twenty four | bad blood

chapter twenty four | bad blood

"I just don't get why she feels the need to not tell us the whole truth about the situation, you know? It's just so dumb that she's doing this to us. I want to know the whole truth of the situation, not fragmented sections that don't piece back together when you try to make sense of them."

Indie hasn't stopped pacing the floor of her bus since we got back from Miss Mariam's house, even though that was a handful of hours ago and her legs have got to be killing her by now. Even if she was feeling any pain right now, I'm sure that she's too anxious to feel a smidge of it. She might never feel a bit of it, come to think of it, as I'm pretty sure that the kaleidoscope of feelings swimming around in my gut is enough pain for the two of us combined.

I tried to tell her half an hour ago to stop burning a hole in the ground from her walking, that it was making me feel worse than I already was, that I could feel the drums that used to be my heart ring right in my left ear, that the reality of the situation hasn't hit me yet because I'm too scared to admit that I've been pushing my family away from me to the point where it might be too late, that she should just fucking stop pacing on the goddam floor, but the words never came out.

Nothing is coming out right lately.

Indie isn't synched to me anymore, not after the news broke about Miss Mariam and her sugarcoated ways of protecting us from what really is wrong with her heart. She can't hear the thoughts that have turned my mind into a racetrack that won't race away from me, not matter how much I wish it would. She doesn't stop from her pacing to glance at me, to see the panic clearly drawn into every freckle on my face. She doesn't consider my feelings, just going on and on about how much she's annoyed at Miss Mariam.

"I'm just so pissed at her. I know that I said that I could deal with her decision, but I really don't think that I can. Or at least I can't deal with it and be sane at the same time, there's no possible way for me to face her after this with a calm expression and not give myself away. I'm too angry for that, you know?"

As if she suddenly remembered a joke instead of the details of Miss Mariam's operation, Indie laughed. It wasn't the kind of laugh that I was used to hearing from her, as that was the thing that I hoped to hear every day of my life. I don't want to hear this one, not ever again. It was twisted and cruel, all the things that I never would have thought to associate with Indie. "Oh yeah, I just remembered the best part. I won't even have to face here for much longer because she waited until weeks to tell us about her heart, so she could tell us the news and leave three days later to get the surgery done. How kind of her to think of how we might feel about her dropping the bomb then fleeing the damn town."

I've never wished that she would shut up more than I wish she would right now. She just keeps going on and on and on and on and on and I'm so sick of it. When will she stop talking long enough to realize that no matter what she says out of twisted anger will make what Miss Mariam decided to do go away? There's no use in anything she's doing, yet she thinks that it actually has some kind of impact. How dumb of her to think that.

I don't know why I've lost the ability to open my mouth and let the words come hissing out, but it might be for the best that I can't because if I could speak as freely as I'm allowed to speak, I would get myself into some deep trouble with the girl who doesn't seem to resemble my girlfriend at the current moment. Even her face looks different than the way I memorized it to be, like this pacing mess replaced the girl that was fresh out of the long car ride here in the beginning of the summer. I want that girl back. I want that me back.

As I press my hands deeper against my temple and try to stop the thoughts from lurking into such dangerous deeps that I won't ever be able to drag myself out of, Indie starts to pace even faster than before, as if she could just sense my thoughts. "I thought she was revolutionary, when I first met her. I never would have thought back then that she would pull something like this on us and yet here we are. I guess people aren't ever as great as you make them out to be in your head and never act the way you make them out to do in the dead of the night before your mind wonders off to sleep. I guess she was too good to be true. Fucking hell."