move my hips. Up and down and back and forth. Harder and faster until the
room starts spinning. Until his hands on my hips turn bruising. Dean curses
and clenches his jaw and then, I feel it. He fucking comes and sends me right
over the edge. I gasp as an orgasm swallows me up and carries me away as
his cock jumps inside of me, pulsing and sending me to infinity.
I fall back down to reality with gasping awareness as I collapse against
his chest. Panting, sweaty, bloody as shit, my back aching even as I finger the
lines I cut into Dean's chest.
"How was that for a little fun?" I comment dryly.
He laughs, but if he answers, I never hear it because in the next few
seconds, exhaustion finally overwhelms me and I close my eyes, falling into
blissful fucking sleep.
12
AVALON
THE MOON SHINES DOWN OVER THE OLD GEORGIA BACK ROAD AS I RECLINE
against the porch steps of Micki's house, letting the smoke from my cigarette
drift up towards the sky. The light from inside goes out and then the door
opens. She doesn't say anything as she descends the steps to take her place
next to me.
She's unusually quiet tonight. I get the feeling that there's a lot she isn't
telling me. A part of me wants to call her out on it. I refrain. Everyone's got
secrets—including her—I don't need to know all of her business. If she wants
to tell me, she will.
Something heavy clunks against the porch step and I look down, my eyes
widened as I spot the bottle of tequila, a giant ass liter at that. "Damn," I say,
"must've had one hell of a week."
She twists the cap off, cracking the seal, and chuckles at my comment
before lifting the bottle and sucking back the first few gulps. She doesn't stop
at the first few gulps though. My eyes widen as the once full bottle slowly
begins to drain. There's a twisted grimace to her lips, but it doesn't stop her. I
have to.
"Whoa, slow the fuck down," I say, reaching for the bottle. I snatch it
from her grip and some of the tequila spills out onto the wooden steps
between us. The scent of sharp, biting alcohol reaches my nostrils. I might
have thought she switched it out for water given that she gave no indication
of how strong it actually was had it not been for the fact that before she'd
opened it, it'd been sealed … and that smell. "What the hell are you trying to
do?" I demand. "Kill yourself?"
Micki sighs and lets the bottle go without complaint. I set it down on the
other side of me, away from her. "Not tonight," she answers. It's such a vague
and yet meaningful answer, it catches me off guard.
"What do you mean, not tonight?" I clarify.
She shrugs. "Just what I said, kid."
I scowl. "How many fucking times have I told you, I'm not a damn kid."
Her lips quirk up. "Hey," she says, ignoring my statement, "I've got an
idea. Wanna go somewhere?"
I eye her. "After all that shit you just drank?" I shake my head. "You're
not driving anywhere, bitch. Let's just hang here." I like it here anyway.
Patricia doesn't know about Micki—who she is or where she lives. I like it
that way. This is like my little safe place away from all the shit I have to deal
with on the daily.
She smirks at me before reaching into her back pocket and lifting a key
ring with a dangling rabbit's foot. "Who said I'll drive?" she asks. "I've been
teaching you, you can do it."
I stare at the keys as she swings them around her finger again and again
until the sight starts making me dizzy and I reach out, snatching them away
from her. It's better this way anyway. It's for safe keeping. "Where the fuck do
you want to go this late at night anyway?" I ask with a curse.
Her head lolls back on her shoulders and she stares up into the cloudless
night sky. "There's a train track bridge not far from here," she says. "Drove
by it the other day and wanted to stop, but couldn't. I kinda wanna go there."
I frown. She never leaves her house. The only reason she even has the old
behind. She found the keys under the sink, fixed it up, and got it running. It
shakes if you go too far past forty-five, but other than that it's alright.
"I don't know," I say.
Micki swings her head my way. "Pussy," she calls out.
"Excuse me?" I glare at her, but she only smiles.
"You fucking heard me," she taunts. "I called you a straight up pussy,
bitch."
"You're drunk," I snap. How the hell had she gotten so drunk so fast?
Was she doing shots before I even showed up?
She laughs. "Yeah, but you should still take me," she counters.
I roll my eyes, fingering the keys I'd taken from her. My tongue presses to
the roof of my mouth as I contemplate my answer. "Why do you want to go?"
I ask.
Micki doesn't answer immediately. Instead, she sits up and keeps her gaze
on the full, hanging moon in the sky. I look towards it, trying to see what has
her so enthralled, but to me, it just looks like a bit tit in the sky. Nothing
particularly grand or magical about it.
"I just don't wanna be here tonight," she admits quietly after some time.
And just like that, I know I'm going to cave to her ridiculous request. Why?
Because I fucking get it. Micki keeps her private life to herself, and no matter
how many times I come over and we talk about my shit with Patricia or
Roger or whoever the hell my mother's fucking this week, she never includes
shit about her life. If she does, it's always in the vaguest of terms. It doesn't
take a fucking genius to guess, though; she's just as trapped as I am. Who the
hell lives in an empty, barren house all alone at the age of eighteen, after all?
She's got a story, just not one she's willing to share, and I'm not willing to
push for it. We're friends for now. Friends by circumstance. Friends by
understanding. But no more.
"Fine," I finally say, pushing up from the porch and stabbing out my
cigarette against the wood. She doesn't complain. She never does. "Let's go."
Micki smiles and pushes to her feet. She grabs the bottle and heads back
inside, appearing minutes later with empty hands. We head around the side
of the house, to the half rotted out barn that houses the ancient Buick she
uses to get her groceries and disappear to God only knows where. The barn
is so old, there's no electricity so we have to figure our way out in the dark. I
smack into the front fender with a curse but use my hands to feel along the
car until I get to the driver's side door.
As old as this motherfucking car is, it's difficult to open the door even
though the locks aren't engaged. I spend a good minute or two fighting with
the rusted shut door until it pops open and the light inside flares to life. Dim
as it is, it's something and it helps Micki to find her way into the passenger
side.
"Turn left on the road," she says as soon as the car is geared up and
thrumming to life—albeit a bit too loudly.
I put the old Buick into drive and ease out of the open barn door and then
circle the house before hea
ding for the road. For the longest time, we sit
there in radio silence—only briefly interrupted every few minutes as she
relays directions. The grim yellow headlights wash over the road, but for all I
know, they're not working. The rest of the road is pitch black. No cars come
towards us and none come behind us. It's almost as if we're all alone out here
in the dark.
Two lost girls on a back country road with nowhere to really go back to.
For a second, I wonder what she would do if I just kept driving. Past the train
track bridge, past Plexton, and beyond. I could take us out of here, out of this
piece of shit town, this state, and somewhere far, far away. Where none of
our demons could catch up to us. Maybe then, when I sleep the world
wouldn't always sound so loud.
"Here!" Micki says quickly as we curve around a bend in the road,
interrupting my train of thought and stopping the track my brain had
suddenly gone on. Her voice brings me back down to reality, and I realize
that I'm just a child like all of my teachers say. Just like she calls me. Because
only a child would think they could outrun their past.
The headlights catch on the edge of the darkest entrance to another back
road that I've ever seen. I glance at Micki out of the corner of my eye. "You
can't see the tracks from here," I say.
She doesn't respond to my comment. Instead, she merely says, "It's further
down," as she leans forward in her seat.
She's excited, which is so odd because Micki is rarely excited about
anything these days. For the last month or so she's been such a fucking
morose cunt. She won't tell me what's wrong, but I keep catching her doing
things I don't understand. She's tossing more and more shit away that she
should probably keep. Drinking more than I've ever seen her drink before.
Smoking like she wants to ruin her lungs as quickly as possible.
I suddenly hate that I've agreed to do this. I don't feel comfortable.
Something feels off. My heart starts to pound as I turn onto the road and we
head a little ways down. There's nothing around but trees for the longest time
and then the road opens up and there it is. An old train track bridge.
It's unused, that much is clear. Even before we park the car and get out, I
can see that there's no road beyond it anymore. It's been years, if not
decades, since this thing was in use. The big metal beams are orange and red
with age and rust. The moonlight that casts down on them makes them
appear like long fingers clasped together, weaved into an almost boxlike
shape.
"Come on!" Micki hurries towards it.
"Wait!" I call out, moving after her. "How do you know it's safe?"
She stops at the edge, turning back to tilt her head at me. "Nothing is
safe, Avalon," she tells me. "Don't worry about whether or not something's
safe. Just do it. Take the rush. Give in to the adrenaline."
"I don't know," I say. This doesn't seem right. There's too much she's not
saying. I don't mind a few secrets, but this seems dangerous.
My heart kicks up another notch as she turns around and makes it onto
the track bridge. I follow behind her, thankful that I left the headlights on so
it gives us a little more light to work with. I step across the railroad ties that
have all but rotted away and keep to the side of the bridge. Down below
there's nothing but darkness. Water rushes nearby, but there's so little light
that goes that far, it's hard to tell if it's deep or not, if there are jagged rocks
at the bottom waiting to rend our flesh into shreds or not.
The pounding of my heart screams inside of my chest, wailing to get out.
It thrums in my ears even as I lift my head and watch as Micki jumps from
one impossibly thin board to the next.
"What are you fucking doing?" I scream. I'm angry. I hate my life. I hate
where I am. I want out, but I'm not fucking suicidal.
The same can't be said for her. I should've never brought her out here, I
realize. This was more than a mistake. This was just me wanting to keep the
only fucking friend I had and in order to do so, I had to placate her with
things that she wanted even if they weren't good for her.
"I'm having fun," she calls back.
"No, you're not," I scream. "Get your fucking ass back in the car. We're
leaving. This was dumb."
Micki laughs and the sound of it sends shivers down my spine. It's the
laugh of someone who's completely lost touch with reality. My head turns as
if on a pike and I catch sight of her, too far down for me to reach now. Half
of her face is illuminated in the light of the moon—the headlights too far
away to even touch her. She looks like a mixture of a trailer park princess
and a forest beauty who's lost. Her blonde hair kinks and shifts over one
shoulder as she lifts her arms above her head, standing on a single slat, and
sways to a beat that I can't hear. Her eyes are shut and her face tilted
towards the darkened sky.
"Micki?" I take a step towards her, but she doesn't respond. Not right
away.
"It's quiet out here," she says finally. I stop to listen. She's right. It is
quiet. There's always some noise—even at the trailer park. Even if there's no
drunkard outside, yelling and singing old show tunes, there's still the sound
of the refrigerator or the electricity that shivers along the walls when a light
is on. Everything has sound. And though it's not completely silent—there are
still the sounds of small animals hiding in the underbrush yards away
scurrying this way and that—it's quieter than I've heard it in a long time.
My heartbeat finally begins to slow. I move along the slats towards her.
Her eyes open and she meets my gaze for a brief moment before holding out a
hand. I don't know why I take it. It seems risky to do so, but I do it anyway.
The risk, I'm finding, isn't something I'm all too scared of.
"It's not dangerous," she tells me. "Not as long as you're in control."
Am I in control? I wonder silently, almost absently. I turn my face up
towards the moon and take in the sight. What is she seeing that I can't?
It doesn't feel like I'm in control. If anything, it feels like my whole life is
spinning out of my control. What can I grab onto? What can I do that will
keep me feeling like I'm on stable ground? Micki lets go of my hand as a wind
blows through the metal beams above and around us. The cold air slaps me
in the face, shoving my hair back from my face as I squint into the darkness.
Everything around me looks like a cage but feels so open, and I realize
I'm not scared anymore. I don't know where the fear went, but it's gone. I'm
on this bridge because I want to be. Not because Micki forced me. No one
forces me to do shit. I do what I want.
I take another step, my eyes centered past her on the end of the bridge.
It's several yards away with several dozen slats in between where I am now
and where it opens up into a dark forest. An old gravel road moves beyond it
where once, I assume, there had been more tracks, but in the time since this
place has become irrelevant to society, nature had retaken that road.
Greenery eats into the grav
el and even up that side of the bridge.
My feet carry me towards it. I jump towards the next slat and the next and
the next, until there's no wind in my face, just the air moving around me the
faster I go. Micki calls out to me from behind, the sound growing further and
further away as I open my mouth and swallow a fresh breath of air.
I start to run. The faster I go, the more I feel invincible. My feet don't
hesitate. I hit slat after slat. The wood shakes underneath me, but I just don't
give a fuck. I laugh aloud, spinning as I hit the end and take a look back.
Micki stands there, watching me, a frown on her face.
Why the fuck is she frowning? She started this. She led me here.
How the hell had I thought she was so far across when really she's still so
close to that other end and I'm standing right on the precipice of nothing. Of
the woods. Of completely and utterly erasing my existence to my past. My
thoughts come back, full circle. Dying is not the goal. Getting away is. Away
from Patricia. Away from that musty old trailer of hers. Away from the
feelings of inferiority.
A sinister thought grips me tight. Hate is a powerful emotion. It slips
through my veins and curdles in my blood. It's hot and cold in the same
instance. My breath slips in and out of my chest, scorching through my lungs.
I hate this place. I hate the way it makes me feel—dirty and grimy. As if I'm
less than everyone else. As if I'm worthless.
I want to cut it all away. Rip it out of my skin as if it's branded inside of
me. Even if I do that, though, I still find myself wondering … will it really
change anything. Can I completely leave this place, or will it always travel
with me?
"Avalon?" Micki's voice carries across the space between us and I glance
at her. "You coming back?" she asks as if she's not sure. The girl who was so
vocal about wanting to come here is gone and it's like her normal self is back.
I snort. How can she expect me to just go back to normal when she's the one
who brought about this change in me? I laugh, and the sound of it carries
into the air, echoing off the beams, but Micki is my friend and so, I'll go back.
For now, I'll return. Tomorrow, though, is a different story.
"Yeah," I call out to her. "I'm coming."
13