"somewhere other than inside the out there." -- part thirty seven

on the drive back to austin, i slept for most of the time. in the backseat of her car, staring out at the darkened sky from my eyes properly placed in my head propped on the armrest of the car door.

i clung to each song that i knew.

i listened to them bicker in the frontseat.

i picked at the safety pin on the cuff of my hoodie.

no one had forced me, and not one person had to persuade me. i had climbed in that car on my own, slammed the iron door shut, and taken my own body back over I-10.

"my sweet darling happiness, you've been away from me all along."

i ate each star, as they began to glow big and bright, driving further and further into the heart.

this next part, hell. you gotta fucking understand. that's why i have my whisky here i guess. i chain smoke through this part too, just to warn you.

you can't begin to realize anything. this is something that i've learned. scratch that, this is something that i've been forced to learn, if only from it all playing out over and over again in my head until that day, that temperature, that fold of my comforter is permanent. you can't begin to realize anything until it's gone. i don't mean, fuck, i don't mean gone as in, someone stole my wallet.

it's not coming out right.

we'll try it this way. when i was little, (a lot of my stories start this way) ... when i was little, just like any group of siblings, i guess, we went through an extreme amount of rodent pets. i had hamsters, guinea pigs, gerbils, mice. the mice were my favorites. i would have two or three at a time and rejoiced in naming them. simple things. i didn't understand what was happening when they ate their babies. i didn't get it that those were little creatures, robbed of something by the things that created them. behind our garage, at one of our houses, we had a graveyard. yeah. little popsicle stick markers and everything, glued in the shape of a cross.

every time that one of their lives ran short, i made a little box, softened it with kleenex, and buried it behind the garage.

i didn't get it then.

i get it now.

i get all that shit that happened in my head when i was nine years old and burying my friends.

saturday night, we got home really late, but i called him. we said goodnight. he told me that he had cried on his way to work. he told me that he thought i was being taken away from him again. he told me that he was angry. i told him that i loved him.

sunday night, we talked again. i didn't have a job, so we spent most of the day on the phone. that night, we talked late into the morning. i don't remember what we talked about, but we just did.

monday, and i remember this clear as a fucking bell. it was about three o'clock in the afternoon. i was sitting on the couch, not watching tv, but i was watching the tv. it was just sitting there. it was off, and it was doing a good job. i turned my phone over and over, and i thought about how many minutes that i had used that month. i wanted to call him. i wanted to talk to him, and i wanted to let him know that i was thinking about him. i put the phone down, and i went and read a book. franny and zooey.

he was supposed to call me when he got off of work. around one.

one thirty, and i called our old number. it rang and rang.

two thirty, i was still calling and his roommate picked up.

"i don't know where he is."

"tell him i called."

three thirty, and i called again.

"sorry, linds."

"ok, well, i'm going to keep calling, just turn off your ringer."

"ok."

i kept calling until about five thirty in the morning when i passed out from exhaustion, worried.

less than an hour later, my phone rang, but it was a number i didn't recognize. i thought he was calling from a calling card.

"hello?"

"lindsay?"

it wasn't him.

it was some woman's voice, vaguely recognizable.

"yeah?" i was still sleeping, in my heart of hearts, i kept sleeping.

"i need you to wake up."

she sounded like she was crying?

"what?"

"lindsay, it's me. i need you to wake up. wake up lindsay."

and i did.

he was in the hospital.

i woke up.

he was asleep.

i threw that cell phone away six months later.