Sunbound

☀ Troubled Waters

C H A P T E R 19: Troubled Waters

☀ ☀ ☀

It had been two days since Skylar left Santan Valley, Arizona and within those two days Scout-Juliet Compton had died.

Not in the sense of dirt and ash and peace lilies and the part were you cease to exist on the same plain as everyone who hadn't gotten into that car accident, or fell off of that ladder, or slit their wrists. She was dead in the sense that the power went out somewhere in her head. All of the little synapses inside of her blew like the lights on a circuit board, and although she was breathing and seeing and taking up space, in the same instance, she wasn't doing any of those things. Not really.

She was sitting outside of Georgia's house, in the muddy earth after the torrential downpour that preceded Skylar's departure. Her eyelashes dripped from the rain on the patch of dirt she sat on. Her knees were hugged to her chest with her head sandwiched in between them. She had buried her toes in the mud, and moved one every once in awhile to confirm that she hadn't become a part of the earth.

Scout had cried out all of her tears and sobbed until her throat was raw and her mouth tasted of copper. She wasn't enough of a fool to think that the love of her life had slipped through her fingers. Her heart did ache, but not entirely for Skylar. It ached for the notion that he was her chance to get out of this town, but, in more than one sense, it felt like he had thrown her out of a moving car on the interstate.

She should've ended it before it started. All she ever ended up was brokenhearted and disappointed, and she thought, on that note, that it was as good a time as any to cry again. But this time she couldn't. Her eyes stung like she was crying, and there was that repetitive hiccup in her chest like she was crying, but she wasn't actually. It was like the part of her that cried left in a fleeting attempt to catch up to Skylar. She bid it good luck in the form of a long sigh out into the stale air.

She rolled the word "why" around on her tongue for awhile, like a tooth fallen fresh from the socket. She could die considering all of the possibilities as to why he left; why he couldn't just stick it out; why he couldn't let people care for him. In the end, reasons didn't matter. Life happens, and it has to be faced in some way, no matter how much she hated it. Even with this realization, she was still high on terrible whys the whole slow and dreary walk back home.

Maybe it was her, she thought. Maybe all of her unlovable parts scared him off. Maybe if she had made herself more available, he would've stayed. But, no, she thought, because if she made herself more available, she would have made herself into something like Mandy, and that was the type of girl Skylar would use up in a night, and never speak to again. That's not who she wanted to be, but she didn't exactly know who she wanted to be. Maybe she just wanted to be his friend. Some distant part of her soul recognized a part of his somehow, and she missed the connection.

Scout hauled herself up the stairs, to her room over the shop. The sound of the rain dripping off of her in plops on the wooden stairs was magnified, and she counted each tiny explosion as she went. She was at fourteen on the last stair; nineteen when her hand reached out for her bedroom door at the end of the hall; and twenty-three when she stopped breathing.

Antonio was laying on his back in the middle of her mattress, staring up at the same ceiling Scout did whenever he came over for a fuck and passed out next to her, and she laid there wondering why girls let themselves get so used up.

"Hey," he said. His head fell to the side to match her stare. "Scott let me in. I've been waitin' here for an hour. Got some stuff we need to talk about."

"No," Scout whispered. "We don't."

Antonio sat up abruptly and Scout could practically feel the space between them shrink and some of the air leave the room.