Take Me Home | ✔

Chapter Twelve (edited)

[ twelve ] - british imposters  

            ↠  saturday - six days before graduation   

        When I was a little girl, I was fascinated with the idea of fixing people. Obtaining the knowledge to save someone's life, and going home and thinking, "Wow, someone's breathing today because of something I did." 

         But the main reason I was so obsessed with fixing people was because my mother wasa fixer too. More specifically, she was a doctor. I idolized my mother. Of course, my father played a big improtant role too, but my mother was my best friend up until I started puberty and teenage hormones came raging in. Nevertheless, my mom was my hero. It was because I've never pictured her anything less. 

            That was before. Before my mother had messed up for the first that I'd ever seen her mess up; she screwed up and a mistake led to someone losing their heart. 

             Not literally. But my mother had unfixed someone's beating pulse and changed their emotions. My mother had cheated on my father with another man. After that, she was no longer my hero. She was no longer invincible, she was just as flawed as the rest of us. She was no longer the person that saved people's hearts and lives. No, that woman was long gone. She was someone who broke them. 

- 

              I woke up, gasping and clutching at something in the darkness that wasn't there. My shirt was damp with cold sweat. I hated when my memories came back to haunt me, replaying every horrid detail again and again in a nightmare I couldn't stop. It was probably because of all the beef jerky. Yeah, that was the reason.

 Sitting up, I was shocked to find someone stirring beside me, until I remembered the fact that I was traveling across the country with an enthusiastic, convertible-fearing, beef-jerky obsessed guy. Elliot started to move around, and his eyes soon open. Apparently, he had laser vision in the dark, since he saw my frightened expression.

"What happened?" he said groggily, looking around and rubbing his eyes. "Did something happen? Is the tow truck here?" 

Now I knew why girls had this craving for a boy's sleepy voice. There wasn't anything special about it, but at the same time, it made you feel safe, comfortable. Wanted. I blinked those thoughts away and shook my head quickly. "Nothing happened. I'm fine. And no," I glanced at the clock - it was already ten pm. " -- the tow truck hasn't come yet," I sighed. 

"Did we miss it?" he asked. 

"Don't you think we would've noticed if the car was being towed?" I asked him reasonably. 

"Fair enough." He rubbed his face and sat up, only to hit his head hard on the roof of the convertible. "Damn convertibles . . . " Elliot muttered. 

That nap took a toll on my brain, and I saw my surroundings as new and never before seen. It was now that I noticed how comfortably close we had gotten, despite me being in the front seat and him being in the driver's. It was dark both in the car and outside in the corn fields, the only source of light coming from the gas station aisles. It pained me to think how much road we could've covered in the time we stayed here. 

"Elliot, what are we gonna do? What if that tow truck never comes, and we're stuck here, wasting time?" I couldn't help but stare at the clock, biting my lip nervously. 

For a while, Elliot was silent, and we both had no clue. It seemed like this was always happening to us. I should've just forfeited the idea of graduating and going to college. Time was seriously not being our ally right now.