“Depending on traffic,” I interjected.
Flynn frowned but otherwise ignored my comment.
“We will stop in one hour and fifty-one minutes in Lexington, Virginia to get something to eat,” Flynn continued.
“Okay, sounds good. Let’s do this!” I clapped my hands together and Flynn finally smiled.
“Okay. Let’s go,” he said and started driving down the hill toward the road. Flynn loved to drive. He was a horrible passenger so it was easier letting him behind the wheel. Sure, he drove like he was a seventy year old granddad, but it was a small price to pay to see his smile.
He would listen to his music over and over again. Even though it drove me a little nuts listening to The Cure on repeat, he enjoyed it so I never said anything. It kept him calm. So I’d suck up my Cure aversion and deal with it.
Murphy laid happily on the back seat as Flynn navigated us through town and toward the highway. He had planned our route down to the smallest detail. He knew exactly how many miles until we hit different points on our journey. He also gave me an expected weather report for Sandbridge Beach. Apparently it was going to be sunny in in the low fifties both days. Not exactly suitable beach weather, but nothing could dampen my excitement.
“We’re going to the beach,” Flynn said happily after he had gotten onto the highway, albeit slowly. I had never seen him drive on the interstate before and I was more than a little worried at how he would handle the chaotic drivers and loud tractor-trailers. But he handled it better than I did. By this point I would have flipped off the driver behind me and yelled obscenities at the biker who had screamed passed us.
I grinned. “We’re going to the beach,” I repeated, hardly able to believe it.
We passed the time alternating between comfortable silence and random conversation. We discussed the many alternating story lines on Aqua Teen Hunger Force, which he still watched obsessively, until we drove into Virginia.
My stomach did a backflip. My entire life had been spent within the boundaries of West Virginia. I had only traveled outside the Wellsburg city limits when I had been taken to Mt. Hope after being remanded to the juvenile detention facility there.
I held my breath until we drove passed the Welcome to Virginia sign as though any moment I’d wake up and this would all have been a dream. I was terrified that I’d find myself shivering under my thin blankets in my crappy apartment. Flynn, the beach, college, everything, would be an elaborate fantasy created in my delusional subconscious.
“Why are you making that noise?” Flynn asked me, interrupting my mildly insane thoughts.
I laughed. “I wasn’t aware I was making a noise,” I said.
“Yeah, it sounds like humming.”
I looked out the window as cars and trees and farms flashed in and out of view. Virginia didn’t look a whole lot different than West Virginia so far. Which was both comforting and disappointing.
“I guess I do that sometimes,” I answered.
“You used to do that in English class. I hated it,” Flynn informed me.
If anyone else had said something like that to me, I would have been insulted. I would have gotten angry. I would have made sure that they regretted saying anything at all.
But Flynn didn’t mean to be rude. He didn’t think twice before voicing a thought after it entered his head. He had absolutely no filter. He didn’t know how to. It was exhilarating to be around someone who had no trouble saying what everyone else thought but was too scared to say.
“I won’t do it then,” I said.
“I don’t mind you doing it now. It doesn’t bother me. It bothered me then. But you weren’t very nice a lot of the time,” Flynn responded. I looked over at him, sitting rigid in his seat, his hands curled tightly around the steering wheel, his eyes trained on the road ahead of him.
I sighed. “No I wasn’t. I was pretty awful,” I agreed.
“Why were you like that? You were my friend. You would come to my house and watch television and eat my mom’s banana bread. You said you liked me. Then you would call me names at school. You let your friends hit me. You watched them when they pushed me in the stream. It sucked.” His voice was deceptively flat. I knew that those particular memories had to make him angry.
Hell, they made me angry. Angry with the person I had been and the things I had done and allowed to be done to him.
“I was an ignorant, selfish, and shallow person, Flynn. I hated myself so much that I didn’t know how to be kind to anyone,” I found myself saying, not sure he could understand the truth I had just revealed.
Flynn gnawed on his bottom lip. “You weren’t stupid. You were really smart. And you were nice sometimes,” he said as though trying to make me feel better, though I knew in reality he was only stating the facts as he saw them.
“I was mean to you a lot. I’m more sorry than you could ever know. You didn’t deserve that,” I said. I thought about the ways I had hurt him that he wasn’t even aware of. The heaviness of the truth weighed down on my shoulders and I knew I should tell him what I had done. The guilt threatened to eat me alive.
But I couldn’t. Not now. I was terrified he’d tell me to leave. That he’d never talk to me again. But I was just as terrified that he’d forgive me as he had done so many times before.
I wasn’t sure I could stomach that. I knew I hadn’t earned his forgiveness and I didn’t think I ever would.
Murphy poked his head up between the seats and sniffed my face. I scratched the back of his head. “I bought another Aqua Teen Hunger Force notebook. I still have it. It has a bunch of my drawings in it. It’s my favorite one. Maybe I could show it to you when we get back,” Flynn commented.
It took me several minutes to understand why he was telling me this. What was so significant about an Aqua Teen Hunger Force notebook?
Then I remembered.
I had gotten him an Aqua Teen Hunger Force notebook for his birthday. I didn’t have a whole lot of my own money back then. I had stolen money from my foster mom’s purse to buy it. She had slapped me in the face for that later and I remember having to wear heavy makeup to cover the bruise. But it had been worth it. I had been able to buy Flynn something for his birthday that I was certain he’d love.
And then I had given it to him. After that I had told him I wouldn’t be his friend anymore.
I had always been my own worse enemy. I could never let myself be happy. So I wrecked the only thing that I had ever felt excited about. Flynn and his friendship and watching him draw.