RESEARCH ( barry berkman.. ) ✔

o18. bolivian chaser..

The sunrise was shinning into the windows of the stolen car they had yet to dispose of. Adelaide's hand were happy to hold on, tense as she was per usual while driving, to the steering wheel of a vehicle with windshield wipers, not stolen and still functional. Regardless of the sun beginning to blind her, she was driving on the border of extreme safety on a mostly empty highway, mouthing the lyrics of the playlist playing on minimum sound through the shitting sound system. Everything was kept quiet because, laid on the backseat, Barry was catching a quick nap for about three hours already.

Though she agreed to only let him sleep one hour when they changed seats due to him almost driving them asleep into the median strip, Adelaide kept checking the middle mirror, in an awe far too absolute to be so cruel as to stop the car, not even as she's been holding in the need to pee for the last thirty minutes. Out of personal habit, she learned she slept best when the engine of a car was soothingly vibrating the cushions of the seats, no matter how uncomfortable the position or overall cleanness.

It has become more obvious than ever to her these past days that Barry has remained with plenty of habits from the war and to consider him able to sleep in any circumstances was not that far of a stretch. However, the cuteness of her memories pressed her to keep driving. 

Adelaide's plugged in phone was not only conferring a gentle ambiance of underground rap songs, violently whispering as some sort of subliminal which had the power to calm her, but it also charged, face down to keep the red light from distracting her. Driving was a tense situation for her to be in, requiring her chair to be drawn uncomfortably close to the wheel, just for her to be sure she can press all pedals properly.

Apart from the need to go to the bathroom, Adelaide was starting to silently ignore the stabbing pain in her back. 

The song interrupted and she forgot herself enough to curse out loud. For a moment of absolute insanity, neither of her hands were in control of the fast car's direction: one clasped over her mouth to silence her noise and not wake Barry, while the other picked up her phone, annoyed by the interruption. 

Adelaide bit her tongue and rejoined her left hand with the wheel, keeping the right on the phone while she maintained the course on the right lane. The fright wore off easily once the ridiculous issue anchored in a far more banal reality slapped her across the face. There was a single message which interrupted her music and it was from the swimming center she had a membership for.

"Your membership will be cancelled due to late payments and long period of inactivity. To resolve this by keeping your membership, we advice you to present yourself with a valid ID to one of our affiliated buildings, closest to you."

Beating herself up about forgetting all about how much swimming helped her cope was only the beginning of the anger which made Adelaide smack her phone back down. If she pressed down the gas pedal, she could make it into her town, which would be closest were they to get off the highway at the next ramification. One quick stop seemed like a little risk, despite their obvious connection to the town.

However, the membership she forgot all about has been her anchor of control for far longer than any of her current remaining mechanisms of emotional defense. Before she even discovered rage rooms... Well, she has been forced into swimming by her father, tired of seeing her mop around. The doctors told him a sport would help her and he signed her up to the single activity which frightened her.

At first, she was afraid of water, afraid of being trapped in that small pool, afraid of dying. Now, swimming was the single metaphorical way in which she could conquer her fears. The pool was still small, she was still enclosed in a straight lane and perhaps seeing the bottom far beneath her while air did not reach her lungs never stopped being a pump of terror into her heart, but that was only the root of the reason why continuing that sport helped her.