BROWN SKIN | BOOK 1

|| C H A P T E R . 27 ||

I think I am dangerous now. I guess some kids are just born with tragedy and disaster in their veins.

That's what you told me right before it happened. Before you have stripped away from an open grasp as if you never existed. My nails were clawing at air and your escape became more freeing. You could be tracked down with a locator, have satellites bouncing off in the air on land or sea travel in a global perspective while signals picked up receptions at every angle. . .

and you'll still be missing. Not from the police, them— how you prefer to call the others, not your mother or father. 

But you'll be missing from me. 

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The car drove over graveled rocks on the ground causing us to shift in a soft shuffle in our seats. The seatbelt didn't cut into my ribcage this time. But everything that touched any part of my sensitive skin still left unmarked burns from the previous car rides that jerked my body around like a ragdoll. It's funny, because Beau's catastrophes and disasters already faded away from a distance as his place just became a faint memory and another building that will be looked past even though it was so much more. We would have to forget about the fighting and killing as if they never happened and move on the way motivators or counselors get people to push themselves to forget about the alcoholic drinking and memory lane that was haunting; the key always to forget and move on. Tell me now, how do I forget about deaths I've seen with my own two eyes and not on a screen? Or the fact a car exploded from a bomb while I could've still been in it, my guts pouring inside out as my natural cremation was the fire from the burning hot gasoline. Who was going to read a eulogy as petals flourished out of their mouths and flowers died at my grave? Give me peonies, and make them white like the color of bright halos and snow. When my birthday comes around another year, refresh the old to new for the day I received a bouquet on the day I turned eighteen.

  "It took awhile, but I wasn't sure flowers you liked. Sorry." He removed his hands from his back and displayed a bouquet of blossomed white peonies.  

  The rain would act on cue and there would be a mourning silence as if I was remembered yet forgotten. 

Death ran through my mind more frequently than all the times to live and I wondered out of the window if that was concerning. The sun was melting down ice cream from cones and popsicles before they can be handed off to customers as they were sold off the side of the road. It's light bathed in our skin and smothered into cracked pieces of this car and internally us. Beau never mentioned when and where he got it. The license plate was out of this state, but I still had questions, searching for answers for more important things. I'll have to find time to hear the story another time. 

"So tell me, what's going to happen Ebonee?" Beau asked, still in black when the temperature blazed hot enough to turn bodies into ashes. My eyes traveled like the trees passing by and the bridges we crossed over behind us. I didn't have to rake at my brain to explain what was going to happen, we planned this out this early morning as a recitation that came naturally.

"To not telling anybody what happened last night and if they ask, I'll tell them I went hiking and stumbled and fell a couple of times because I lost my step. I was with Beau and randomly decided to take a long trip but we ended up still having a good time."

"That's right, just how we discussed, so what's with the worried face?" He asked quietly and I wondered if Beau was apprehensive about not following up with the plan.