Unbroken Connection (28 page)
Home is not far now.
My gas foot gets heavy.
I roll down the window and let in
the sweet smell of forest evergreens
and damp, untainted air.
On this wispy mountain ridge
next to God and His angels
far away from brick and cement,
the sorrow of the past four months
thins, wavers like the shifting clouds
cloaking our progress.
Hope, reborn and squalling, demands notice.
My heart fills. Joy whispers from around
the next bend. Michael’s love
reaches across the world
steady, unwavering, constant.
How could I miss this? Ignore
it for so long? Wallow in jealousy and pain?
Pictures don’t lie.
But neither does he.
Each mile closer to home
draws me closer and closer to him.
Could I have been totally, brutally,
hypocritically
wrong?
The crisp air wakes Phil.
“Shut the flipping window!”
He’s hungry and cramped.
I find an encouraging smile.
“We’re almost home. Just coming
up on Lookout Pass. Couple hours.”
He burps. “Drop me in Coeur d’Alene, okay?
I’ve got a date with Krystal.”
I roll up the window and my eyes
at lover boy.
He unlocks his seatbelt, stretches,
bends forward and tunes in a country
western station, cranks it.
I turn it down.
He shakes his head, “That’s the grumpy
big sister I love. I wondered
where she went.”
I squeal around a corner. He hangs
on, mock terror. We both
laugh.
He slumps back, hands behind
his head, feet up on the dashboard,
grins massive enjoyment.
“So.” Phil bites his lower lip,
makes a loud sucking sound with his spit.
“You and Jaron? I told you so.”
I can’t keep this unrelenting hope
to myself. “I don’t know, Phil.”
He beats the rhythm on his knees.
“What’s not to know?”
I hunt through my heart, mind
and soul—but Jaron isn’t there.
“I don’t think I love him.”
It feels so good to say it—
let these whirling feelings
solidify in the clean mountain air.
Phil shakes his head. “You were just
playacting back there?”
I brake for another twisty corner.
“I was trying to convince him and myself
that I do, but there’s something in the way.”
Phil sits up, stomps his feet on the floor,
and slams his hands flat on the dash—
making me quiver, but I hang on to my wispy dream.
“I can’t believe this.” He glares at me.
“You’re going to mess up things with Jaron—
this is Jaron, Leesie—because of stupid jerk butt Michael? Flip, Leese.
The guy has screwed half of Asia by now,
and you want him back?”
“Don’t—” My hope wobbles under
his full frontal onslaught.
“That girl was a prostitute, Leese—”
“Shut up.” I fight to keep pictures of Michael’s
arms around that girl, her lips enmeshed with his,
her perfect body melding with his
from swamping me again. “Just, shut up!”
I grip the steering wheel, stare straight
ahead, clench my teeth. My foot gets
heavier and the pickup roars up over Lookout.
We’re heading downhill now—
picking up speed as gravity urges us forward.
The tires jitter over thousands of cracks
in the black asphalt.
Phil grabs my arm. “You want a husband
who does hookers?” The pickup swerves.
I jerk loose. “Stop it!” I scream.
“He had his chance. He’s a slime ball
who can’t keep it in his pants. It’s over.”
Phil’s locker room harshness shatters
the delicate castle I built in these clouds.
“You sniveling little brat, shut up!!”
I glare at him with venom—anger—loathing:
all our old acrimony reborn, redoubled.
“How dare you talk like that to me.”
Phil’s face twists in disgust.
“Open your flipping eyes!”
The pickup bumps and shudders.
Crap. I’m on the shoulder.
My right front wheel slips
off the pavement into soft gravel.
I jerk the wheel back the other way.
Too far, too fast at this speed. We
zig, screaming at each other,
back and forth across
two empty lanes that aren’t big enough.
I hit the brakes too late.
We smash into a cement barrier
with a jolt that launches Phil
through the front window,
explodes my airbag,
flinging my left hand into my face,
but doesn’t stop
the pickup from tipping off the side of the mountain
and smashing a path through a swath of young
pine trees.
I scream.
And scream.
Seconds become forever.
My body is flung against the seatbelt
over and over
as the truck rolls
out of control,
bam, my head bangs,
bam,
bam,
bam.
Silence.
Tinkling glass.
Hissing fluid.
Settling carnage.
I hang upside down,
covered in beads of windshield
and decimated baby pine trees,
held up by my seatbelt.
“Phil?” I reach over
to his empty seat. “Phil!”
My head explodes when I scream.
Sticky wet flows in my hair
and down my face. My left
hand throbs and my right arm won’t move.
My right fingers seem to work,
they pull themselves
to my seatbelt latch,
can’t punch the button.
There. Yes.
I crash to the ceiling.
Pain seers my right shoulder,
makes me puke, knifing agony
through my ribcage.
Why don’t I pass out?
The pickup shifts—
slides a few more feet.
When it stops, I gather my broken body,
push it through the windshield
that became thousands of tiny pellets
when Phil hit it.
Phil? Oh, dear, dear God.
“Phil! Where are you?”
He doesn’t answer, the brat.
“Help me! Phil! Phil?”
There’s blood in my eyes.
My ankles crumple under my weight.
I sit alone on that mountain
in a violated grove
and pray,
Phil,
Phil,
Phil.
AWAKENING
MICHAEL’S DIVE LOG—VOLUME #10
D
IVE
B
UDDY
: solo
D
ATE
: 04/24
D
IVE
#:—
L
OCATION
: Los Angeles
D
IVE
S
ITE
: LAX
W
EATHER
C
ONDITION
: don’t know
W
ATER
C
ONDITION
: don’t know
D
EPTH
: don’t know
V
ISIBILITY
: don’t know
W
ATER
T
EMP
.: don’t know