The Girl Who Lived

On the Road again

 Jake started his car and we drove away from this town away from all the bad memories, and he said you look tired you should sleep. We will be driving for a while. I looked at him and said Nah I’m all right. He looked at me in disbelief but said okay. I started asking him questions and he answered all of them honestly, at least I think he was being honest. I couldn’t really tell by his expression.

When we stopped a house about 10 miles outside of town, I was wondering why we stopped. He looked at me and said that “we stopped because this is where we are spending the night tonight then tomorrow we'll go further.” I said “okay.” and when we went into the place a lot of other people were in there in the ‘common room’ playing games, and everyone stopped playing their games and looked up at us. One of them said, “Jake you never bring any girls around here!” I looked at him and then at Jake, and I just shied away from the other guy. Jake put his arm around me and said: “Mouse shut up, man!” A girl peered out from Mouse’s arm and looked at me and was about to say something but Mouse spoke first and said: “ hey girl what’s your name?” I didn’t answer. I didn’t know him and after all, I just went through. I didn’t want to talk. I was tired and wanted to go to sleep. Jake looked at me and then looked at Mouse and said “ I think she’s tired. Can someone get her some food and somewhere to sleep. Please!” The girl said “Here some food, and you can sleep on that….” and Mouse said, “Hey that’s our bed, No she cannot sleep on our bed where are we going to sleep?” Jake looked at him and then back at me and said “ Mary do you want to go somewhere else?” and Mouse said, “oh so that's your name.” I looked at Jake and shrugged scared of what Mouse will do next and Jake said: “okay, we'll never mind about the food and the bed we are going to go somewhere else for the night.” We went out of the house and walked back to the car. When we were back at the car Jake looked at me and said “You okay?” he had a concerned look in his eyes that something I hadn’t seen in a while. I said “yeah I’m all right.” but he knew that I was lying, he could see it in my eyes. He didn’t question me any further and he just drove. We kept on driving in silence for a while until I said “I’m gonna fall asleep, is that okay?” and He said, “of course it's okay, I’ll wake you when we get to where we are going.” After he said that I shut my eyes and fell asleep instantly. I dreamed I haven’t dreamed in a long time but I dreamed tonight. I dreamed about us, and what we are and what we could be. I woke up 3 hours later and we stopped at a gas station and I couldn’t see Jake anywhere, I called out to him but nothing. I started to worry and when I worried I started shaking, I put my head between my legs and by then I was shaking harder. By then Jake came around the corner and he saw me shaking. He started to run to me and when he got to the car he said “Mary, Mary? Hey it's okay I’m right here no one's going to hurt you I thought you’d still be asleep before I got back, I’m sorry” and I looked up and he was there helping me get through my panic attack. When I finally calmed down, I asked: “where did you go?” “I went to go get some food for the trip so when you woke up you could eat something,” he said I looked around and I didn’t know where we were. I probably looked scared because then he said: “ if you want to go back I will bring you back.” I said “no, I just didn’t realize that we were this far and he said “ yeah”. That's when Mouse came into the parking lot when Jake saw him he looked confused at first when he realized what Mouse was going to do. He buckled up, turned on the car and drove away. He started to speed and I asked what was going on? I was so confused I didn’t know what was going on. I asked again “ what's going on?” and he looked over at me but he didn’t say anything.