Obscure

seventh.

I gave him a smile, trying to show him that I was friendly and hoping that I wasn’t the only sane person in this car. When he didn’t smile back, I said hi, and he just stared at me.

“Are you not going to say anything, Chase?” Taylor asked. Chase looked at her in the rearview mirror, and then at me, and out of the window. “Sorry Kira, but you won’t be getting much out of him. Chase hasn’t said a word to anybody but Nick since May. Right Chase?” But all he did was glance her way and then back out of the window.

Maggie giggled and took off her seatbelt. Taylor looked over at her and started smiling. “Kissing him isn’t going to make it better.”

Maggie just ignored her and climbed in the back seat and fell onto Chase. He held her; wide-eyed and looking like a deer in headlights. “Hi,” she said. She leaned down to his face and pressed her lips on his.

“Don’t let it bother you too much, Akira,” Taylor said. “They’re in love with each other.”

“No we’re not,” Maggie said before kissing Chase again. Her hair fell in such a way that it created something like a curtain that covered his face; I couldn’t tell if he was kissing her back or just taking it.

After a while though, she stopped, and just climbed back in the front seat without saying a word. I looked over at Chase, who had the same expression as he did when he first got in the car with us. Only this time, he had lip gloss smudged on his lips.

When we got to the lake, Chase didn’t want to get out of the car. The three of us stood outside of the car, trying to get him out and telling him to come with us but he didn’t. He just sat in the seat with his hands in his lap and tears welling up in his eyes.

After a while Taylor gave up and pulled out her phone, saying she knew who could get him out. I wanted to suggest to just leave Chase in the car, or even call the night off and take him home, but I didn’t say anything because I didn’t know Chase or Maggie for that matter and I didn’t want to make a bad first impression on a bunch of mentally ill teenagers I barely knew.

After Taylor made her call, we all climbed in the back and sat with Chase. He now had a reddened tear streaked face that he didn’t bother to clean. He just let his pain show on his face and he looked like he had no intent to mask it.

I was sure that if he talked, and if he was asked if he was okay he would say no instead of trying to cover it up like how most people would try to do in a situation like that. He just struck me as the kind of person who would simply say tell the truth when asked a question like that.

Maggie sat in his lap, and kept trying to wipe his face while whispering to him, but he got tired of it and shoved her hands away from him. She got angry, and took a cigarette before leaving the truck.

Soon enough, a red Jeep Wrangler drove up and two people hopped out of the sides. One of them was a tall muscular white guy with long brown hair that fell loosely on his shoulders, and the other was a light skinned black guy who matched his friend’s size.

Taylor grumbled and cursed under her breath as she got out of the car and walked over to the two new boys. “Dude,” she shouted. “What the fuck? I said come alone.”

She and the white guy hugged and he kissed her cheek before letting her go. She walked over to the other guy and he hugged her, but he didn’t give her a kiss like how the white guy did, and I instantly knew that he wasn’t the Nick I had heard so much about.

It surprised me that Taylor was only an inch or two shorter than these guys, and I was probably a whole foot smaller than the three of them. She was so tall it, kind of scared me a little.