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"I can't keep speeding like this. There are police cars everywhere," Chandler breathed out, referring to the flashing lights of deputies surrounding them and speeding past them and the rest of the other cars to get there.
"What's going on? Come on, you're worrying me... why are you crying?"
Rhiannon sat crumbled in a ball, staring down her trembling hands. She tried to control her shaking enough to speak, but when she raised her neck to look at him, the words tumbled out of her mouth in a stuttering mess, merging together and drifting spaces.
"Austin'satI-40, and there's awreck and... a-and hesawGarrettbutGarrett is... dead. He'sdeadhesays. B-bodybag. They'retakingGarrett away in abodybag."
Chandler's lips parted and he sat there driving. He let the news make an incision in his veins and soon he began to shake as well. Garrett was someone he barely knew. Someone he barely saw, but when he saw him he was alive. Reacting. Blood pumping through his veins and his chest involuntarily inhaling and exhaling breaths. His eyelids would move and he would blink and he would feel pain and his body would react to that pain. Like when Austin nearly beat him to a pulp. He felt that. Now he feels nothing. Now he is not his body and his body is just a cold, empty shell. Trash.
Chandler could not speak. He couldn't cry either. He wasn't sad. It was just an eerie shock. People around you can die with the snap of fingers and you aren't there to feel it like they are. You can't ask them how it feels to die because they're dead.
They arrived at I-40 and parallel parked to the side of the road behind where Austin had parked.
They both mustered the bit of strength they had left in their weak, aching bones to push open their doors.
Chandler acted as if he were making the smart move and stood back, when really, his legs wouldn't allow him to move because he was so scared. Rhiannon's feet hit the soft grass and her knees shook. They were out of control, sending her to the ground in an ungraceful flop. She picked herself back up and tasted the blood on her lip. Prickles of pain shot up through her body like heroin.
Austin's fluffy dirty blonde curls were hidden in the car, visible through the window. She used that as motivation to force her legs to move firmly and carry her to him.
She ripped his car door open and saw him in shambles. He stared back up at her with a cry for help. Ghostly marks of his where his tears had fallen off his face littered his cheeks. The whites of his eyes matched the color of his tear ducts. His lips stood out as fairy floss pink compared to his whitewashed skin.
They both looked to be in the same state by now. They just stood there like a paused motion picture, her hands clutching the door handle and his hands intertwined with his own on his lap to stop them from shaking.
His hand brought itself up to her cheek to wipe a falling tear of her's with his thumb. He brushed her hair out of her eyes and tucked the piece behind her ear. Slow motion stopped, and everything quickened again. She crawled into his lap and sat there, draped around his body like a curtain. They hugged for what seemed like eternity, his hands gripping the small of her back and her fingers petting the warm curls at the nape of his neck.
He buried his head in her shoulder, feeling her heart beat and her lungs work to take in the air that they breathed. That was soothing music to his ringing ears. He liked hearing her live.
Tears and blood chapped her peach lips. They brushed against his neck to whisper in his ear.
"Where is Garrett's body?"
She began to sob harder when she was trying to force the word 'body' out of her mouth followed by Garrett's name. This wasn't real. It couldn't be.
