STATIC (LGBT)

Chapter 49

It's strange. It's so strange.

It's incredibly strange to find yourself in a waiting room and not be allowed to see the person you care the most about. The nurses telling you that only legal guardians can go in and anyone else with their permission. You still waiting for those people who you're sure will let you in. Your friend, with whom you were having such a great time the whole day, seeming pale next to you...

Your shoulders shaking because you don't know what to expect. The nurses and doctors not saying a thing about anyone or anything. News of the crash on T.V. People calling you because of the same fears you have. Your parents making sure you're okay. You making sure to call other people's parents and friends...

You trying not to draw conclusions, trying to close yourself off from everything. Every sound, feeling and thought.

Because you're scared.

So, so scared.

–

It all happened in a flash. I was going up the stairs with Simone behind me, us talking without any more shame in the world. The corridor was as silent as ever because of my parents' absence. The phone laid still on a small table between my room and the guest room. The air conditioner and the heater were off because of how fresh it was outside. The wooden floor was cool against my bare feet... and there was nothing wrong. Nothing.

“Woah,” Simone had said, “Your room is so much like you!”

I had frowned and smiled as I headed to my desk. “I think Zoë said something like that when she saw it.”

Simone had started to look into my stuff knowing that I wouldn't really mind. Everything that is interesting is outside my drawers anyways. So she had started to ask me about a few pictures, the black violin, the music sheets I kept in here. And I had told her a few things about them even about the picture now lying on my desk in its frame. It's one that Zoë had brought in one of these days. Me and her smiling at the camera at Zoë's last Big Air competition.

That's when I had seen my phone. Three missed calls and voice mail from Zoë. Different times.

“Zoë called.” I had said to Simone without feeling as if anything was wrong. I only found it strange that she had called so many times and did not text me instead. “She left me a few voice mail messages.”

“Better listen to them.” Simone had said as she turned on the TV I had dragged into my room last night to keep myself distracted from the conversation I had had with my mom. It was a good distraction technique. It also had distracted me from thinking completely about my career choice.

As Simone clicked through the channels I listened to the voice mails. The first one had made me laugh a little since I could totally imagine Zoë's expressions. The second... I just listened. I don't know how to describe it but just listening to her voice and the story made me feel so in touch with her. I could even understand why she so wanted our parents to meet now. Make it more official even if I were to feel so incredibly awkward about it. Probably everyone would feel that way except for my mom and her parents...

And then I had heard the third message. The tone of her voice, the noises in the background, saying to me that she needs me...

“Oh My God...” Simone had said when I had finished listening to the message. My eyes had felt as if they were concentrating in nothing in particular leaving me with full concentration on my thoughts, so when I had heard Simone I had looked up and seen what she had been looking at.

It was a large truck... and a blue SUV.

Jessica's car.

And it was still raining at the scene. And it was sprawled upside down onto the side of the road. And the windshield was shattered into pieces. And one of the sides was partly crushed against a large pine-tree.