Chapter 1
My mom once saw a shooting star.
She just so happened to be pregnant.
But I know I wasn’t what she wished for that night.
***
I’m driving. Both hands on the wheel just like they taught me in driving school. 10 and 2. Or is it 3 and 9? I suppose it depends on who you bother to ask but what do I care? Where I’m going, time is irrelevant.
And so is everything else.
***
My mom once had a high school sweetheart. And I once found a box with all their pictures in it. It was the only time I had ever seen her smile and I mean really smile – the kind of smile that reaches your eyes – not the kind of smile you plaster on your lips for show and tell. I guess she never smiles anymore because she never talks about him.
Sometimes, I wonder his name.
***
So, like I was saying, I’m driving. Both hands on the wheel and everything. I’m even using the blind spot detection feature. This specific feature came “standard” with my mom’s new car. Yeah, right. Anyone who knows my mom knows that she got suckered in by some smooth-talking salesperson. I would bet my life on it.
That’s the thing about my mother. She’s gullible.
She believes me every time I tell her, “I’m fine.”
C’mon. Everyone and their dog knows that’s just code for, “I’m fucking not fine.”
Maybe she just doesn’t care.
***
I once saw a sign.
***
Have you ever pressed on the gas pedal so hard that you can actually feel your automatic car changing gears? No? Well, it was only a question.
***
I was diagnosed with some rare disease in the summer before high school. You don’t have to worry about what it was because no one else cared and I don’t need someone else faking it.
The worst thing you can do while visiting someone at a hospital is smile. It makes us feel like shit.
But do you know what the real kicker is? The shitty daytime television you’re forced to watch while all your friends are busy making other friends because visiting someone at the hospital just isn’t very fun.
Well, neither is laying here all damn day.
***
When I was younger, I would ask my mom about that shooting star but I never got the answer I was looking for.
***
That sign I saw – it was red.
***
When I was finally deemed healthy enough to go back to school, I was the only freshman old enough to drive.
But I still walked there every day or at least, on the days where I could be bothered to get out of bed in the morning.
I had become so good at forging doctor’s notes that it was basically a get out of jail free card for any day of the week. And I was so sickly looking that no one questioned it.
I wish they had because then maybe I wouldn’t be here lying underneath a starry night made so dim by a sign I decided to ignore.
***
Have you ever made up a life for someone you know nothing about because it’s easier to turn yourself into a character in a story than it is to face your real-life issues the responsible way?
I don’t know about you but slaying my problems with a claymore is much more exciting than laying inside a medical scanner for hours on end. One is exhilarating. The other is torture.
***
When my mom bought her fancy new car, I was shopping around for colleges. I say shopping around but there was really only one I wanted to go to.
Mom said it was out of our price range, that maybe I should consider the local community college instead.
“I hear they have a pretty good art club you could join,” she said.
I would have preferred if she had just been honest with me instead of covering up the truth with some sugarcoated bullshit.
She didn’t like my artwork – it was as simple as that. And she didn’t want to waste her money on a failure like me. I was already way too expensive with hospital bills and all that. She didn’t need to add a useless degree to the mix.
***
I ignored that red sign like I ignored most things in my life. The biggest sign of them all came one night during my junior year. I don’t remember what season it was exactly but I remember it being bitterly cold. When I came in that night, I passed out on the bathroom floor. I stayed there through morning because no one missed my presence.
I probably should have called a doctor or something but I didn’t.
So, it festered inside of me until I missed a whole week of school.
Again, no one bothered to come and find me.
***
So, I found myself in the backroads, mom’s new car in the palms of my hands. Adrenaline coursed through my veins like fuel through a turbo-charged engine.
I had become one of those deranged characters from a soap opera they had loved to torture me with back at the hospital. I guess this is all my life will ever amount to.
Pathetic.
***
And that red sign blinked with all its might to try and stop me but I didn’t listen just like no one had listened to me.
***
Do you know that light at the end of a tunnel? Yeah, it’s an oncoming train.
***
Mom? Was this what you had wished for?
