Cuddle Application

20 - "Hey, Jude, Don't Make it Bad"

The phone hums three rings before Park answers.

He's laughing.

"Skylar—" someone says something in the background, and Park's laugh bubbles through the phone. He's drunk. "S-Sky, you won't believe w-what happened!"

I try to say his name, but it gets caught in my throat. I thought he'd be mad at me. I thought he'd ignore my call, but he's drunk.

"So you know when — hey," he stops. I try to say his name again. "Hey, Sky, w-when did you leave, anyway?" He hiccups. "Oh well it — yeah, it doesn't matter. Anyways—"

Snakes coil around my lungs and up through my throat.

"So the police came, and man I ran—"

"Park." I manage to get out.

"And Nicole and Jimmy came with me and you won't believe—"

I clear my throat. The events of last night get caught under my tongue like a body under the lid of a coffin.

"And man, you won't believe how far we got running down the beach. A-and then we stopped in front of this beach house and—"

"Park."

"And then the o-owners came out—" he hiccups "—and started calling the cops!"

"Park, listen—"

"And I was like, 'good one, guys, but we're already r-runnin' from — from them." He's overcome by laughter. There's a "whoop" in the background.

"Park, listen to me!" A thousand words catch in my throat with a single sob.

Park's breath hitches. "Sky?" He says softly.

"Park."

He stops, sobering. He shushes the people in the background. "Sky. Sky, what's wrong?"

My hands begins to shake, fingers dropping the pamphlet. I clutch the desk, my nails digging into the wood. Huffs of air escape my lips like heavy clouds. The snakes around my lungs entrap me.

"Sky. Skylar, are you okay?"

My mouth is frozen, my words empty. I slide to the ground, back against the hard wall as my knees tuck against my chest.

"Park," I murmur slowly. "It's Cora."

"Cora?" He asks immediately. "What happened — is... is she hurt?"

Blackness encases me as my eyes slip shut. My limbs hang limply from my body. A drum sits in my brain.

"We're at the police station."

He says nothing, and then: "Police station?"

His tone said it all. This wasn't the first time I'd been to a police station in aid of someone else. Only, usually, that someone else was Park. The time he showed up to school drunk. The time he smashed the windows of a teacher's car. The time he stole a faux gold necklace from Mindy's Jewelry shop downtown Helaci to give to Molly after she came home from the hospital. The time he first found out about —

The time he hit his dad.

"Cora—"

"Skylar, what happened?"

"Cora—"

"Sky—"

"Cora was raped, Park."

Molly was going through chemo around the time Park's family fell apart. We both had similar coping mechanisms. He was friends with my brother, and I was friends with his sister; we didn't see each other much unless we were all together. Until we met at a party.