Citrus | ONC 2024 ✔️

6: Hard Things

The other line trilled a symphony of noise I remember escaping. Rolling of suitcases on tile, tapping of shoes, and the slamming of doors rose to forte. There I was again, taking off from the same airport, but I wasn't the one there this time, Dad was, racing to catch a flight of fire.

"I'll get there as soon as I can, okay?" Heavy breaths bled through the speaker, his words coming in spurts and his keys jiggling wildly as he ran, the tiny metal shapes probably attached to the outside of his backpack. "Stay safe, Oren."

"Okay." I nodded. "You too. Bye."

"Bye," Dad repeated.

The constant clanging ceased, simple white noise returning. Voices drifted, reaching my ears in the silence, the waiting room a void of nearly all life. My phone read 1:41.

"We need to call him in," someone said.

Another voice answers, a more familiar tone, "Hate doing it, but go ring him."

"Got it. You're right about it being insane here when it's understaffed."

While one set of footsteps fell away, another grew in volume, ending with the creak of a door. June strode into the room, her cushioned sneaker, ones that almost looked like a cloud, padded against the floor. She adjusted her bun. Somehow the updo had loosened over the course of the thirty minute gap since I had laid my eyes on a nurse in that color of blue, galaxy.

She walked straight to me.

I tensed. Still, I ensured I was smiling, fixing the worry lines that surely met my forehead and the drawn in nature of my brows. "Do you need anything, Miss?"

"No, actually." Glancing at her wrist first, an intense flicker of panic claimed her features, but the moment she trained her eyes on me, she beamed. "I came to check on you. How do you feel?"

Pursing my lips, I found the words after grasping open air for a few seconds. "Like I just got into a car crash or something? Wouldn't know."

Her opal eyes softened. "If you feel any discomfort at all, go up to Steven over there" —she gestured to the open desk— "and he'll take care of you."

"Okay." I nodded.

June should have left then. Her eyes darted to her wrist again, and she peaked at the door from which she came. The odds should have blown her away, cleared the brown room of the silence obstruction. There shouldn't have been sound, mostly silence with the exception of background noise and sirens.

"Where's your dad?" She bit the inside of her cheek, her porcelain skin gaining a tint of pink. "I mean, are you okay?"

"Drinks... Mathew went to get drinks," I said. My eyes met my shoes, and I shuddered. I knew my features were pinned in a perfect mask, a bright facade. Though, my voice wavered. "I'm okay."

Morgan wouldn't see through it, ever.

The expression mirrored Mango's usual.

June nodded slowly, lips twitching. "Good to hear. I'll be back to check on you later, got it?"

Bun facing me, I opened my mouth, then closed it. Pressure built and the temptation grew. Something was breaking within, but I couldn't pinpoint the feeling, how this felt right. It was too easy. Nothing popped in my way or obscured my view of June's back, a mere three feet from me. Her retreat was near. I didn't need to stop anything out of the way or remember anything. There was nothing to remember, nothing to lose.

"Wait." I shot up.

June spun to face me, leveling her eyes with mine.

Hands shaking, I shoved my left hand in my front pocket. "Would you... How do you deal with hard things? I mean... I don't know what I mean."

"For me personally?" Her eyebrows drew in, and I nodded. "In stride, right then and there as stress is increasin'. I embrace it all. Speakin' of, I should get goin'. Take care."

Breath left my lips in a lisp. "Thank you."

June was gone in the blink of an eye.

Nothing to lose... No. Somehow, there was suddenly something to lose, the feeling a tinge from the ground below, a gargantuan being worming its way to the surface only to slink about the earth. The thing felt real. It was real and ready to swallow me whole, suck the life from me and recharge me in a different dash of light.

I lost. That was it.

Morgan was in whatever crisis case. I was in Georgia, of all places, who knows what town or what hospital, not anything I recognized. At least, the hospital wasn't one close to our old home. To top it all off, Mathew was in the same building, and my brain could be bothered to remember what happened during the crash.

Could Mathew be trusted? What if he lied? I wouldn't put it past him. Who would? Dad wouldn't, I'm sure, not after that organic fertilizer of a show a year ago.

That, I hadn't predicted.

This hadn't been on my invisible list of things that could go wrong, either.

But I had told Dad this was a bad idea. Multiple times, too. If only we had only ran from Mango's earshot, taken a short walk around the busy block, or anything else. Something was better than sitting at the mis-matched dining room chairs, trying to decide what to make of Mathew's email over tap water. We didn't leave, and we paid the price. Morgan heard the little talk. The blare of the Inside Out—the movie on its fourth run—wasn't enough to keep his prying ears away. It was ironic.The kid couldn't hear anything about laundry or dishes or sweeping, yet he had heard Dad say Mathew for the first time in a year.

Morgan had been too convincing.

I wish I had done something to delay our travels, hid the keys, locked our bags in a storage closet I couldn't even get into. Where would the storage closet come from? I didn't know. I had been in need of one without being aware I needed one.

Chills wracked my spine.

The soft thrum of wordless Christmas melodies drifted across the room. The blond-haired guy June had pointed to gave me a wide, toothy grin and a double thumbs up. He then jabbed his finger at a phone and then the ceiling. The guy smiled again.

Music set my heart aflame, and a buzzing sensation within my chest grew by the second, pressure in my head too. Dark and light flashed through my mind. There were flying orange cones first, then, nothing. A second ticked by, and a flicker of a pair of oaks sparred in my mind.

A large tree trunk rested upon the ground outside the old home. The other, opposite of its twin, stood firm.

Somehow, I missed where the tree fell.

Morgan told me it caught fire too, but I never saw that either.

After all, I was a buzzkill.

__________

Chapter word count:1,172
Total word count: 10,287