Sunbound

☀ The Self-Destruct Button

C H A P T E R  8: The Self-Destruct Button

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    If there was one thing Skylar Glass would avoid at all costs, it was being left alone to his own devices. He believed there were ghosts in the air, and if he gave them the chance, they would crawl in his head through his eyes and saturate his every thought with the tragedies he had been trying his whole goddamn life to forget.

    The irony of spending the majority of the past three years traveling by himself was not lost on him. But at least when he was driving he had something to focus on. Like how fast he could go before the lines on the road began to blur. Or how many cities he could drive through in a night. Or how many faces he could remember from passing cars.

    But when he was sitting alone against the door to room number five of V&L's Motel as a torrent fell from the sky, he had nothing to distract him from the ghosts...

    After Skylar was given the not-so-grand tour of Santan Valley Auto Repair by Scott, and after dedicating an hour to explaining his qualifications as a mechanic — which he was not technically qualified; he eventually had to learn how to keep the Chevelle running with all of the wear and tear that came from his three-year road trip, — and after avoiding the burning questions Bo hurled at him from her perch in the middle of the garage floor, — like, "Where are you from?", and "Do have any family?" — and after helping Scott replace the muffler on Mrs. Fern's Plymouth Fury, Skylar was relieved for the day, much to his dismay. He liked the distractions.

    When he crossed the road to retrieve the Chevelle from the parking lot of Georgia's convenience store, she insisted that the local motel owners, Violet Fern and Lily Poppy would give him a room for free for however long he decided to stay. He thought he would be spending his tenure in Santan Valley sleeping in the backseat of the Chevelle like he had many-a-nights before — not that he minded at all, — but Georgia insisted, asserting that a town with less than a thousand residents and almost non-existent tourism always had vacancies.

    The sun had melted into a thin, golden line on the horizon by the time Skylar parked the Chevelle outside of V&L's Motel. The motel was nothing but a long strip of dusty, beige siding lined with fourteen metal doors . By the looks of the tall sign illuminated by the green, neon VACANCY, all fourteen rooms were empty. They had vacancies by the dozen.

    As Skylar approached the small front office disconnected from the strip of motel rooms, he thought, considering the namesakes of the owners, that there would be at least one flower on the property. There wasn't. Not even a cactus.

    There were, however, an ample amount of bugs littering the parking lot. He stopped and watched an entire fleet of black ants emerge from one of the millions of cracks in the dirt. They milled around Skylar's tattered sneaker trying, honest-to-God, to take it apart. He found those Chuck Taylor's in a dumpster behind his old trailer park in California, and now a swarm of ants were trying to dismantle the pair and take them back to their queen in the middle of Nowhere, Arizona. Skylar found it strange to consider the possibilities of where things could end up.

    Skylar made to enter the office but found himself in a standoff with a large, horned beetle sitting on the front step before the office door. It was a shiny black, and Skylar could almost see its eyes staring right through him. He over-estimated the size of it to be in the realm of a small dog. He was tempted to step on it, but considering the current state of his sneakers, he thought its horns might pierce right through his sole.

    "Don't mind the critters, dear. They won't pester you if you don't pester them," said a silvery, brittle voice all of a sudden.

    A pale old woman with a slight hunch emerged from the office. Her hair was as white as cauliflower in loose ringlets on top of her head. She had about as many wrinkles as the ground had cracks. Her eyes were an inviting blue, and you could nearly see her smile reflecting in them.