one more troubled soul » petekey

Sixteen

Pete watched as Brendon scrambled into his own car and shook Dallon awake. Through the closed windows, Pete could hear his excited squeals. Dallon rubbed his eyes and looked wearily at his little brother, brow tensed and square. He stretched and pushed Brendon off of him like a mosquito, then reached to start his car, but not without pausing to look over at Pete and Mikey. He nodded at them, just barely grinning. Pete nodded back in solidarity. He read Dallon's face like a worn out dictionary. It was warm and familiar, as so many words were, but as complex and daring as language itself. It told so many stories and at that moment, it said goodbye.

"I hope his wedding goes well," Pete said, to no one in particular. And he did. He hoped love infested every last one of his bones until he couldn't stand. Until he could only float.

"It will," Mikey said. "I know it will."

And with that, they were off again. It was so strange. They had been stopped so long that Pete had begun to feel like he was leaving a destination rather than finally escaping a detour. Their inconvenient deviation had become its own home. Dallon had instated himself as a sort of distant and tired mayor of their traffic stop, which was starting to smell like cigarettes by his departure. Brendon, their sprightly tour guide, had given heart to a patch of pavement like he was its loving architect. The people and cars around them all became distant, ghostly faces that Pete would see in his dreams and nightmares tonight and years from now. He would wake up in a cold sweat wondering he'd seen that nose or that tailpipe or that bumper sticker. Things can't haunt you until you give them life, and for that, he was grateful.

They lost Dallon's car and their fleeting friends within ten minutes, taking the first exit that they could and disappearing into the winding roads of insignificance. Pete wasn't going to spend another minute on a highway if he could help it, even if it made their trip a bit longer. He had been so excited to drive when they'd been stopped and now was his chance.

Driving had been Pete's first love. She was so alluring, barred from him for much too long. The day he had gotten his greasy, teenage hands on his permit, he had tugged both his parents by their shirts into their dying Chevy, begging them to let him drive anywhere. He had never been a more efficient child. He drove them to the grocery store and the library, sped their dog to the vet, and attended every school function he could. From day one, he was a bleeding heart behind the wheel. His license, upon receiving it, had greeted him like a long-lost friend, and Pete tucked it tight and warm into his wallet to never let it go. It was his key to a life away from his life, to a world away from his own. It was a cure and a disease all at once. 

Pete had always refused to shake his wanderlust. It was his only hopeful quality. Nineteen years, he learned, can give and take everything from someone. He had given up on home long before he even had the privilege to, and his eyes had always been cast ahead, even if they were shaking uncontrollably in his thick skull. On some especially lonely high school evenings, he would pack his only suitcase until it threatened to explode, and he would sit on the edge of the bed and listen to the crickets and frogs and trains call for him from far outside his window. His heart yearned for all of them to know he could hear them and to know that his toes tingled with a similar restlessness. But he could never get himself to leave. He would only drink his own salty tears as he pushed the window shut and kicked his shoes off, falling asleep to the click of a whirling ceiling fan. 

It was almost strange and difficult to think of his lonely nights, especially since his bed (and backseat) was getting more and more cramped each passing day. He wasn't complaining, though. He'd never been so warm before. He looked over at Mikey, who was half-asleep against the passenger window.  "How are you doing?"

"Hm, me?" Mikey asked, lifting his head. "I could use the bathroom if that's okay with you."

"Read my mind," Pete replied. He looked in his rearview mirror at the angsty heap of limbs in the backseat. A pair of dark eyes emerged from their bottomless sockets and glared back at him. "And you?"