The Scar
Part 1: The Night
“Nathan, wake up.” A familiar voice says.
I turn to my right and try to look out the car window. My head is foggy, and my memory of where I am and how I got there is a blurry haze. It takes a good moment for me to realize what’s going on.
Oh, I’m here again.
Outside of the window is a house. One I’m all too familiar with.
“Hey, don’t let it happen this time.” My friend James says to me as I turn back to face him, his face a scowl for a split second. I blink, and the scowl is gone, replaced with a cartoonish imitation of him smiling at me. Something’s off, I can tell, but my body doesn’t seem to register that.
“Say that again?” I speak without control, as if I’m still in a daze from waking up.
“I said have fun catching up with your sister. It’s late, so be careful.”
I step out of the car, my body again moving without my control, alarms going off in my head, screaming at me to walk away, run if I could, get back in the car, anything. I turn to do just that, but James, along with his car, is already gone. I turn back to the house and start walking. My heart is racing, and my mind is still screaming at me, but my body won’t stop. I keep walking. The door of the house opens slowly with a creak, and out steps my sister, suitcase in one hand and a duffel bag so tightly packed it’s close to bursting over her other shoulder. All of a sudden, everything calms down.
“Nathan! How have you been?” she says gleefully, a large smile on her face
“I’ve been great, Meghan! I finally got into -- Well, actually -- let’s talk in the car. We have to get you to the airport. Need help with anything?” I say, my anxiety calming with every word.
Is it going to be different this time? Can I change it?
She walks towards me slowly, obviously struggling with the over-packed bags.
“Do you mind taking these to the car? I’ve got to get the keys.”
“Yeah, sure,” I reply as she hands me the bags.
It has to be. I have to make sure of it.
“So, who’s driving?” She asks as I put the bags in the trunk of her SUV.
“I call shotgun!” I say jokingly as she walks inside to get the keys.
“Hah! Haven’t heard that in a while. We used to take that so seriously, huh?” I hear her saying in the distance.
“Yeah, we did, didn’t we? I’ll drive if you want me to, though.” I shout back at her.
“No, you called it. You get the passenger seat,” She says, walking back to me, raising her arms as if to surrender. “Plus, you’re driving back anyway to house sit while I’m gone. I’ll give you a break just this once.”
“Okay, I’m fine with that,” I say as I open the passenger-side door and hop in.
The moment I sit down and close the door, we’re suddenly driving through a winding mountain road, and I again have no memories of how I got here, yet I’m somehow in the middle of a conversation with Meghan.
“So you went up and asked him about it?” I say, my body talking without me thinking about it.
“Well, what else was I supposed to do? Just because it’s a super personal issue doesn’t mean he should have kept it from me for so long. I feel like I have a right to know why I got broken up with!”
“Oh, you definitely do, and keeping it from you in any fashion was a total dick move,” I respond, the conversation slowly coming back to me.
“Thanks, I appreciate that.”
“Did he answer the question, though?”
“Eh, not really. And I don’t really care anymore, either. He was too much of a coward to say it to my face, and it’s probably not something I want to hear anyway.”
“Yeah, probably. Man, you and I have not really had the best time dating, have we?”
“No, we have not. Granted, you haven’t put much effort into it since you broke up with Madeleine.”
“Well, to be fair, she was Madeleine, and that was not a clean break-up for either of us, so I wanted to take a break from dating for a while.”
“Nathan, you broke up with her at 18. You’re twenty, and you haven’t gone on a single date since. That’s less of a break and more of a ‘done with dating’ kind of thing.”
“I’m not done with it. I just…I’ve been caught up in other stuff! I…haven’t really had time to…that’s a lie. I’ve had a bunch of time. I have until recently, that is.” I say, trying my hardest to emphasize the last sentence.
“Why, what happened recently?”
“Well, I happen to have just recently been accepted into the University of Virginia,” I say slowly and smugly.
She freezes for a moment, sputtering and chuckling under her breath, then laughing out loud.
“You had me going for a moment there!” She says, laughing anxiously as I stay silent.
She keeps laughing under her breath as I look at her expectingly until she finally swerves into the closest pullout, stomps on the brake, and puts the car into park. As she does so, we both slam forward along with the luggage in the back of the car.
“What the hell was that Meghan?!?” I say, surprised by the stunt, that is, until she turns back to me.
“ARE YOU SERIOUS?!”
I stare back at her for a moment.
“Dead serious.”
“Oh my god!” she squeals as she practically jumps out of the seat to hug me, her arms wrapping around my neck tightly.
“Ah, Meghan, you’re choking me…”
“Oh shit, sorry!” she says as she lets go. “When did that happen, though? I thought you said you weren’t going to apply after all!”
“Yeah…that was a lie. I got in then, and I wanted to surprise you.”
“Goddamnit, Nathan,” She says, shaking her head, before looking out onto the road, contemplating something.
“I’m proud of you,” she says, turning back to me. “I seriously can’t believe that the man sitting next to me right now is the same kid that I grew up with. The same one who barely did anything through middle and high school is going to UVA, for Christ’s sake. I mean…you can’t get much more improved than that.”
“Aw, Meghan, that means a lot to hear you say that.”
“Well, I mean every word of it.” She responds.
I begin to contemplate something too, but as I do so, I feel like there’s something I’m forgetting.
You need to change it.
“Meghan, I…can I say something?” I ask her.
“Why, what is it?” she questions, pulling the car out of park and taking it back on the road.
“I know that our relationship had been a bit rocky since high school until recently, but I just have to say this now.”
“Nathan, I don’t want to have a repeat of the last conversation we had about that time…”
“No, it’s not that, it’s…Meghan, you’ve been such an important person in my life, and above all, an inspiration to me. Sure, I’m going to UVA now, but that’s after 2 years at a so-so college to get my grades up, but you went to MIT right out of high school. That’s much more impressive. Sometimes people would say that I was the smart one, but I…I just don’t believe it. You were always ahead of me, because you were dedicated to improving yourself. I was satisfied with just gliding on by, and I never took the time to figure my issues out until it was too late. I was always behind in that regard.”
Change it, do something!
“Nathan, I can’t speak on how you felt about me, but you were never behind because of your choices. You just had some stuff of your own that held you back, and I don’t want you to feel as if you’re falling behind. You’re my brother, and I care about you more than you know, so live.”
“What, live?”
No, I’m too late!
“Live, Nathan, for me.”
I look away from her to see the road.
There stands a man in front of us as everything stops, time itself freezing around us.
The man has my face. It’s me.
“No,” he mouths in horror.
Meghan swerves at the last second, turning away from the man with my face. The sounds of tires screeching echo in my head as we spin out, the car barreling down the side of the mountain. Both of our screams reverberate throughout my body, adrenaline coursing through me as we both brace ourselves.
A tree appears in view, and one scream stops.
Oh, that’s right. This can’t be changed.
“GAHHHHHH!!” I scream as I sit up in bed, drenched in a cold sweat, my chest panging in phantom pain. I pull off my covers to show an enormous scar down the right side of my chest. I breathe heavily as I simply stare at it.
It’s like my body just won’t let me forget.
I sit there for what could only be a moment, but what feels like an eternity, but I am soon pulled from my stupor by a loud banging noise.
BAM BAM BAM
“Ah!” I startle as I turn to face the noise, and to my chagrin, a familiar voice follows it.
“Nathan! Would you please stop screaming in your sleep? It’s six thirty, for Christ’s sake!”
“It’s not like I really have a choice in the matter, Mr. Wosniak,” I yell back.
I hear a faint “Pah!” and nothing more.
I hate this apartment. Did they really have to make the walls that thin? Well, whatever, I’ll do some journaling and head to work.
I turn to my left and grab my leather-bound notebook and a pen. I tend to journal fanatically since I was recommended to do it by my therapist. I like to think it helps, but it’s really just another thing to do.
August sixth, 2031
It’s been nine years since the crash, and I’m still having that dream. My scar aches every time I wake up from it. I’d been in therapy for ten years even before it happened, and I still don’t know how to stop having that damn dream. There are changes every once in a while, but it mainly just replays the events behind the crash and ends before the, well, aftermath. I always thought that it was some kind of cosmic joke that the reason I’m alive and she’s not is that I called shotgun. I try not to blame myself, but that’s hard for me. I’m the kind of person who takes on burdens just because I don’t like seeing other people carrying them instead of me. James says it’s because I’m too nice. Abby says it’s because “I’m too damn focused on my weakness, that I can’t see others are strong enough to carry those burdens too,” But in reality, I think it’s because I want someone to blame for it. “It was an accident.” I don’t believe that. “It was no one’s fault, especially not yours.” Fuck that. I can’t accept that it just happened for no reason. Whether or not it was on purpose, she died because of something I did. I might not be the one who killed her, but my actions did cause her death.
I’m not a religious man, but recently I’ve come to think that if there is a god, they’re kind of a douche. I love this world. I really do. But why would it exist if the people that we love and who love it most are meant to be taken from it? When I die, I have two things to say to god. First, I’d ask it why. Why did you make this world? Why did you make us? Why did she have to die? Then, once I got my answer, I’d thank it. I’d thank it for everything I’ve ever experienced. The good and the bad, every triumph and every tragedy. For letting me be her little brother. I’d thank it for this wonderful, this awful, this absolutely bewildering world.
My journaling is interrupted by another loud bang, this time not from an angry neighbor but from gunfire just outside my building in a nearby bank.
“What the…?” I say quietly as I sit up from my chair and move to the window. Just across the street, leaving the bank, are four heavily armed men, carrying assault rifles and covered head to toe in protective gear, each of which is carrying a duffel bag full of money slung across their shoulder. As pedestrians across the street run in fear, I think one thing to myself.
Oh, these guys are screwed. They’re practically asking to get caught.
Sure enough, in the next moment, the robbers start panicking, shooting at something in the sky as one loads up the duffel bags into a nearby car as fast as he can.
“Hurry up! Hurry up!” he screams, gesturing for the others to get in the car.
As they all pack into the car, I can’t help but laugh.
Hahaha! This is just what I needed after this morning. A group of idiots trying to fight a superhero.
As they try to start the car, one of them looks out the window and starts to panic as they see the ground getting farther and farther away.
“Need a lift?” the caped hero says jokingly as he lifts the car into the sky, away from anyone the robbers could hurt.
The people below him clap as the hero leaves, and I just groan at the joke.
“Really, ‘need a lift?’ That’s the best he could come up with? Ugh.” I say to myself as I turn back to my journal.
Wait, what time is it?
“Oh shit! I’ve got that presentation today. I’ve got to get to work!”
