The Summer Affair

Chapter Seven *Edited*

Making sure nobody saw me, I walked out the side door and over to my car.  I jumped in and with a twist of the key, I was speeding out of the school parking lot, going almost thirty miles over the speed limit.  Seventy, seventy five, eighty, ninety, the numbers kept speeding up.  Was it reckless?  Yes.  Did I care?  No.  I felt empty and alone and quite honestly didn't care what happened to me at that point.  

I barely made two of the turns on the way home and passed more cars than I could count.  I pulled into the drive in a cloud of dirt and just missed the corner of the garage as I jumped out and ran inside, sobbing uncontrollably as I tried to open the door with shaking hands.  I kept fumbling with my keys, not able to get them into the lock.  

"Shit!" I exclaimed as I dropped my lanyard, everything falling onto the ground.  I went to pick it up but froze when I saw that one of my keychains had broken.  It was a palm tree, seemingly simple and insignificant, but it was one of the last things Olivia had ever gotten for me.  Things were literally falling to pieces, and I gingerly picked up the broken tree and cradled it to my chest as I took a deep breath and sat down on the steps.  

"Dammit, Olivia," I said as I looked at the tree in my hand.  "Is this some sort of sign?  I mean I get it, I'm falling apart, but this was a little much.  Don't break things you spent money on, especially when that's all I've got left of you."  It was almost as if I could hear her sighing and watching her roll her eyes.  Get it together, Anna, she'd say.  And she wasn't wrong.  I was definitely two issues away from being a full subscription, and I needed to gather my shit and figure out what I was doing with my life.  

My phone started ringing and I looked down to see Mitch's number.  I hit decline and got up, shaking off the dirt from my butt.  I walked around to the back of the house, just wanting to sit on the porch swing back there.  As soon as I sat down, Mitch was calling again.    And again.  And again, but each time I refused to answer.  I didn't need boy drama, I needed a therapist.  Someone who could help me sort myself out and Mitch didn't have the professional accreditation for that.  

My phone rang again, and I didn't even look down to reject and silence it.  I took a deep breath and ended up just turning off my phone completely.  I wanted to talk to absolutely nobody but the one person there was no way to properly communicate with (apart from ouija board, and I sure as hell wasn't about to mess with that).  I rolled my eyes at myself, thinking that I was already crazy for everything else, so who was it going to hurt just pretending Olivia could talk back to me?  So I looked down at my little keychain and started talking to it like it was my dead best friend.  

"Well, Olivia, if you've been watching, I'm sure you're just shaking your head at me.  I'm in a pickle, huh?  Feeling the same stupid emotions that I always have, wishing I was dead or at least somewhere else, somewhere away from all of this mess.  

"Alec and Mitch...what a disaster.  It's like the first time I meet someone that I might, under normal circumstances, be 100% interested in, he just happens to be enemies with my brother, which in and of itself is weird as hell.  I mean, this is high school!  Who has enemies in high school, unless you ended up screwing someone else's girlfriend or something.  But still, Mitch seems like the first nice guy I've met since Jordan who isn't just trying to get in my pants.  And now Alec is acting like a total prick, taking a swing at me when he was drunk?  I mean, who does that!  Every other drunk person I've ever met is just happy and extremely clingy, while I get to deal with the violent one.  Who set up that deal?

"Whatever the case is, nothing here is the same without you.  I didn't just lose my best friend that day; I lost my brother and my boyfriend too.  I lost the sense of who I was and where I was supposed to go in life.  I'm supposed to start touring colleges next year, and I don't even know what I want to do with my life.  Nothing makes sense anymore, and I'm left standing here feeling like I'm screaming at the world to help me and nobody will stop and listen.  I feel like I'm just a burden; like I'm not worth anyone's time anymore.  I can't keep doing this, and one day I'm afraid I won't be strong enough to fight this anymore," I trailed off.  I was staring at the palm tree, cupping it in both hands, waiting for it to answer me as if it could.  I ran my thumb over it lovingly, coaxing it to speak up, but I dejectedly sighed at myself when it didn't.