Route 262

~18~

The first thing that I notice is that he's dirty, and it occurs to me that in the years that I had known him, I had never seen him not showered, not looking like everything was perfectly in place, a look that some would take hours to achieve and yet he pulled off so effortlessly. 

This is a different James in front of me - skin almost a pale blue, and practically covered in dirt. He's hugging his knees to his chest, his jacket torn, his eyes raw and wild. 

But despite all that, it's him, and I practically have a heart attack trying to form the first words I want to say to him, which end up being "Holy shit." 

He looks up at me, and I can't tell if he's glad to see me, or horrified. 

"Dante?" he says, and his voice is hoarse, a remnant of what I remembered it being when I talked to him a couple days ago. 

Has it really only been days? 

"I'm like - I can't believe you're here. Did the police send you? My parents?" 

"No - me and Sydney came by ourselves," I say, realizing a little too late that may be the opposite of what he wants to hear, that I brought Sydney, an old stressor of his, right to the only place he may have felt safe. 

And maybe that thought is right, because he seems to deflate a little before my eyes. 

"This is too blunt," I say, "but where the hell have you been? Have you been in this cave the entire time?" Apparently you've disappeared off the face of the planet since I talked to you the other night, I think, but I stop myself from forming the words. 

If it had to be anything I'd just said, I wouldn't have expected that of all things to make him crack a smile, to look a little bit like his old self again, but for some reason that's exactly what he does. 

"I talked to you that night," James says, "and I went home, and I ate dinner, and - I don't know - I thought about the things I said to you. And maybe I was just projecting when I rambled to you about my life, but it helped me sort a couple things out." 

"Like what?" 

"Like I had nothing  put together. That everything was so fake. I scribbled everything out, and drove up here, and squashed that piece of paper with everything I was feeling into the guardrail, assuming no one would ever find it. 

"But I was still thinking about everything I had said to you, and I knew you would suspect, and so I drove up to the school and threw that Post-It into your locker. I don't know what I was thinking - I just thought that if you saw it, you would get the hint that I was OK, and you wouldn't wonder, even if everyone else did. 

"And I got in my car that night and drove up this road until I didn't know where I was any longer. And I pulled up to the side of the road - it must've been 3 or 4 in the morning, and I fell asleep. 

"In the morning, I was so groggy, and I knew people were going to be wondering where I was and searching for me - maybe even the police would get involved - so I kept driving. On and on, all day, until I stopped in this tiny town, and I ate a bowl of Trix in this old diner, and I stared out the window, and everything just seemed to come apart. 

"I felt like I had to leave - right that instant - and start some kind of new life. I don't know - I didn't know what I was even thinking then, I had no sleep and was going on autopilot. But I started to drive back, when I dozed off, and I wasn't wearing a seat belt, and I crashed into something. And even before I could think if I had been hurt at all, I crawled out through my smashed windshield, and walked through the woods here just as it had started to snow." 

James shrugs. "And I don't know, you probably get the rest. I found this cave, I crawled down it a ways, coming down here just to think. Maybe to die if I got cold enough, but the ground is warm in the winter. But hey - now you're here." 

I can't think of anything to say, and he leans his head back and looks up. Silence hangs in the air for awhile. 

"Thank God you finally got here," he finally says. 

~~

Hey everyone! Sorry it's been so long since I updated; I was never a huge fan of this story while I wrote this (trying a little too hard to be John Green), but I figured I would just finish it out based on the outline I wrote at the time. 

Thank you so much to everyone who's taken the time to read/comment/like! Means a ton to me :-)