Losing Everything

Chapter 1.3

Lucy had been driving around thinking for most of the night, ever since the board meeting had ended. She hadn’t been home, because she couldn’t face home. She had been driving instead.

She had started off driving aimlessly, driving just to drive, driving because she was sick of being at home on her own, and because she was scared of staying still. It had been a bad night, a lonely angry night, and she had ended up with vodka and weed and a plastic jar of pills without quite knowing why she needed them.

Actually, she knew why. She completely knew why.

She was miserable and anxious. That was part of why. She had money. That was part of why, too.

She had money because, while aimlessly driving, she had seen a cash machine and stopped and withdrawn a thousand dollars, a little surprised her card still worked. It had, though, so she had tried it again, but this time the bank’s computer had realized it was making a mistake, and had kept the card. It was the only one Lucy had left, but by then losing one more thing didn’t especially bother her. She actually felt a little happier, even without her card. She felt like her luck might be turning. Then, because she had money, she had gone to exactly the wrong kind of bar, a familiar kind of bar, and had bought a bag of weed and a plastic bottle of pills from the friend of a man she met there. She didn’t know what the pills were, and didn’t really care.

She left, and bought a bottle of vodka from the liquor store next door, and cigarette papers and a lighter too. She had given the guy at the register two hundred dollars and told him to keep the change. She still wasn’t completely sure why. Because she probably didn’t need money any more, and it wasn’t really hers anyway, and so he might as well have it, and enjoy it, and be happy. It had made sense to her at the time.

He had seemed surprised, but she walked out before he could argue, and had gone back to her car. She’d got in, and then sat there, looking at the vodka bottle, thinking. She had almost opened it. She almost did.

Then she had decided to drive instead.

She drove. She had ended up on the freeway, heading south, and had left Sydney without quite knowing where she was going. She had headed south because she had seen signs pointing that way, and because of some half-remembered idea that Erica lived in that direction. She didn’t know why it mattered where Erica was, and she didn’t know why she thought Erica would care, but Erica was about the only person who hadn’t betrayed her in the past week, and for some reason that mattered right then.

It wasn’t really about Erica, though. Mostly, she just needed to be moving, to be going somewhere, anywhere, rather than feeling helpless and lost and still. So she had driven, with her vodka and pills and weed, driven south, away from the city, away from everything she’d lost, along an empty orange-lit highway that bent and swooped through half-familiar hills.

She had driven south for a long time, and then stopped when it seemed right. She had got out of the car and walked down the beach and then sat on the cool gritty sand and watched the sea.