Sound Asleep // Self Para
If I could sleep forever, I could forget about everything If I could sleep forever. If I could sleep forever. If I could sleep forever...
It was late, the sky a navy shade with few stars to light the road as they drove. The pavement was lonely and quiet, the breezy summer night began to whisper to it sweetly, seduce it’s pebbles with kisses that made them roll around behind the shaking wheels. Nowadays it seemed like everything was sleeping but Andrea, even the branches of trees grumbled when the wind tried to wake them, but she remained silent in the passenger seat of the boy’s beat up car. It was a Friday and they’d been on the road long enough to forget the faded sounds of a party in the town that neither of them were attending. She hadn’t told her 'parents' where she was going let alone that she was going, and the pale, obnoxious boy with tired eyes that gripped the steering wheel wasn’t her friend. But, he was as close as anybody tried to get since last October.
Andrea anxiously scratched at the tearing leather seat, her unpainted nails making popping noises as she picked at it to occupy herself. Weeks passed since the message from Ruby Grant found it’s way to her but her heart hadn’t changed pace, the nerve racking and constant thought that this faceless and untouchable person was real, everything in that book was real, and the burden of other people’s power over her was inescapable. In her rare occasions of drift off, sitting on the sofa, reading something, Andrea’s dreams were consumed solely by the possibilities of what would happen if her secret ever got out. She wanted to reassure herself that no being was capable of completely ruining someone’s life in one effortless blink but she couldn’t, she knew better, she’d seen souls so dark as to make sure another wouldn’t ever blink again. As much as she wanted to shrug off the task of 'visiting her family' and forget about it, laugh and say it was stupid and pointless because who the hell did Ruby Grant think she was? Taking merriment in the dictation of people she didn’t really know, Andrea couldn’t ignore the crumbled up thought of things going wrong. If playing with old leather took her attention away for just a moment, preoccupied her ever running mind for a single breath that didn’t sit it’s weight on her chest, then it would suffice.
“Aye, could you fuckin' not do that?” Connor’s face bunched up to mimic both irritated and tired as he looked at her, and without words she pulled her legs up to her chest and stopped.
A few minutes later with nothing playing but his fingers tapping along the car door, Andrea leaned back into her seat. “Thanks.” she said, for all of this. It was two in the morning and they were alone on a long path to, for Connor, nowhere. She texted him last minute about driving her somewhere tonight and he never really had anything better to do than to find things to complain about, things to hold against her, plus he mentioned something about leaving soon and he figured a nice long drive would feel like running away.
“Whatever.” There was a small pause between their sentences, leaving room for the silence that needed somewhere to go, before he turned to look at the bag she had tucked under the dashboard where her feet would’ve been. Curiously, and a little displeased that she refused to tell him anything about where she was headed, and slightly comfortable with not having to know, he finally asked. “What’s in the bag?”
Andrea leaned on the door beside her, her head balanced comfortably on her palm as she curved her lips just enough to form a smile, “It’s a secret.”
Connor rolled his eyes, but looked back at her to return the teasing quiver of the lips, he let it go. “Whatever.” Thanks. She thought to herself. They remained this way until he pulled up in front of an old house, the yellow was noticeably newly painted but it had that look to it that it’d been lived in before, worn out, used and sleepy. Andrea had only seen the house herself such few times given her visiting periods; it didn’t look anything like the house she herself lived in, especially since there were no traces of her in it. This was not her home, and the people that lived here survived fine without her. She exited the car with nothing but the bag in her hand, slinging it over her shoulder and sticking her head into the car window to thank the boy one last time before he drove off.
A hard, thick swallow pushed its way down her throat as she approached the house but angled her body so that she moved in the direction of it’s side. With her goal in mind and the time, the door wasn’t the best option. Andrea walked alongside the left wall of the house, her feet crunched the uncut grass and she stumbled before she reached the window. Before peeking in to assure she was at the right room she shut her eyes tight and she prayed, she prayed that she didn’t have to look at something she didn’t want to see, like her parents huddled together in bed asleep. Asleep, sleeping soundly for another day while she stayed awake at night with heavy breaths trying to escape the possibility of another flashback disguised in the cloudy haze of a dream. She couldn’t bear that. She couldn’t bear looking into the living room where all the picture frames were on the wall leading up the staircase, set up one beside the other on the table against the wall, family portraits and middle school class photos. The house looked nothing like the house she lived in, because the family that lived in this one was real, and even the traces of her that remained with them were not as strong and fulfilling as her presence.
When she could muster it, Andrea opened her eyes to a mostly dark room with a visible bed pushed up against a wall by it’s backboard. The room was lit by a revolving ball plugged into the corner and sat on a small three legged table she recognized. She cursed under her breath for how terrifying what she was about to do might seem to the room’s inhabitant but there was no going back now, raising her balled fist to tab a familiar drumming beat against the cracked window, probably open for breeze. Nothing happen. Huffing, she dug her fingers under the bottom of it and pulled it open, an old fashioned one but she got it just enough to try and squeeze through it, stepping on her tip toes to reach inside. She struggled and grumbled, pushing the bag in first but eventually dropping in herself, her petite body still making a thumping noise against the carpeted floor. “Fuck.” she whispered to herself to suck in the pain.
“Don’t move!” the voice was above quiet but just under loud enough to wake her parents. When Andrea looked up slowly she could see the naked, stubby toes of a young boy, up higher was the image of his fingers wrapped around a toy water gun she prayed was empty.
Andrea couldn’t help but let out a small laugh at the image, it was a weak chuckle because anything more felt foreign to her stomach. “Manny, it’s me.” she balanced herself on her palms until she could push her body up to her knees, hitting a height close to that of her brother’s.
“M-Marty?” It stung. Not a sharp, dramatic pain like that of a knife or a kick to the gut, but like a bee sting, the kind that pinched at a singular part of her skin before it traveled, numbing through her. She hadn’t been called by that name, by her real name, in such a while that she almost didn’t respond.
“Yeah.”
The little boy didn’t hesitate to grow excited, his previously faux brave face blossomed into a pink round ball of excitement as he dropped the water gun at his feet and it bounced. “Marty!” he yelled again, running into her and wrapping his arms around her waist. She stumbled back, breathed, and then laid her hand on his head. “What are you doing here?”
“Shhh. You can’t wake mama and papa, okay?” Andrea removed herself from him and sat on his twin sized bed, decorated accordingly in power-ranger sheets. “And hey, don’t ever ever do that again kay? If somebody randomly falls through ya window you run as far ‘s possible, alright?” she spoke lowly.
The younger boy pursed his lips and dramatically rolled his eyes at the girls hypocritical remarks, not caring much for a lesson so early in the morning. “But what are you doing here?”
With a slow creeping smile of pride and familiarity, Andrea reached into the bag she had sprouted on the mattress. “Did you really think I wasn’t gonna show up for ya birthday?” Maybe it was the way his face lit up that made her feel warm inside, but whatever it was awoke her from her body’s natural slump tiredness. When they got comfortable on his small bed, snuggled into each other so that his head balanced on her arm, she flicked on the small flashlight and started at the first line of a book.
She liked the way it felt, lying there with him as though nothing had changed, as though they were in their shabby apartment in Brooklyn and it was just another night. She felt like she owed him an apology, some kind of explanation for why everything changed so suddenly, but she was torn between believing he was too young to understand or that he probably already did. Worst of all, she wanted to apologize for the situation she put them in, but slowly she began to realize that their situation did not seem to have an effect on them. Their house was nicer, their neighborhood was safer, their fuck up daughter was out of the picture except every few months when she was allowed to visit. They seemed better off, almost, and in her own blindness Andrea took it as a sign that they didn’t miss her at all, that she was really the only one cut open and left to bleed from the mess she made. A long time ago she believed this was how she wanted it, them happy and healthy, but she couldn’t help but feel gross at the jealousy of it.
Andrea tried to be happy in that moment, smiling and yawning as Manny’s heavy eyes began to flicker and shut effortlessly, but she couldn’t. The scary thought stumbled upon her that it probably wouldn’t matter much if Ruby Grant revealed her secret. Maybe, she would have to be repositioned with another foster family in another random town probably farther away with it’s own set of secrets. She didn’t have any relationships in Harwich that she would miss that much and she wasn’t particularly fond of the town anyway. Sure, she would have to adjust to a new name but at this point she really didn’t want to be called upon anyway. It was so scary, so completely terrifying to come to the fact that if Ruby Grant spilled her secret out nothing would change, nothing would matter, no one would blink. They would stare, chatter, talk about it because her record is quite the story but it didn’t matter much. Her family would still get to keep living in this house, healthily and happily asleep.
Andrea wanted to be happy, sitting there with her younger brother wrapped in her arms. She kissed his forehead and tried to close her eyes behind him, still remembering to remind herself she had to be gone by morning, no traces left behind.
