Make Them Scream

||4||

I could convince myself I was fine.

"Any luck watching the road?" I asked.

Jake snorted a laugh and held out his arm as though to gesture this is it. "Nope, nothing yet. Haven't even seen a single car."

I nodded, and we were silent for a minute.

"I thought I heard wolves," I finally said.

"I've been hearing them, too." Jake nodded. "These woods are alive." He turned to look at me. His hood was up, and his face was drawn into a frown. A cloud passed over the moon, and the entire night dimmed like a candle being snuffed out.

"What if no one comes by?" I asked.

Jake furrowed his brow. "What?"

"I don't mean like, ever." I paused for a second. That wasn't what I meant, was it? Of course not, that was crazy. "But not for a while," I continued. "Liz said that the truck that ran us off the road was the first car she'd seen in hours. What if no one comes by for a long time?"

Jake exhaled heavily, his breath turning to mist in front of him.

"What if we miss the show?" I continued.

"Alex, let's just worry about getting out of here first. We'll figure out the situation with the gig after that."

I clenched my teeth but nodded. I didn't want to miss the gig—be that band that didn't show up. As a kid, seeing the bands I loved performed had meant everything to me. Listening to them and being a part of it made me feel okay—like I wasn't alone—even when things were falling apart.

I didn't want to let anyone down, especially not when we were just starting to get a good base with our own set of fans. We had all put so much work into this.

I couldn't let them down. If I let them down . . . what if they didn't love me anymore?

The idea sounded extremely conceited, but it was the truth. As we'd started to gain fans, I'd become addicted to the idea of being loved and adored by people I didn't know. The thought of letting them down frightened me. Fame was slippery, and if I released the teeth I'd clenched around it for even a second, it would slither away. All of our work would be for nothing. Gone in an instant.

Logically, I knew this wouldn't happen from missing one show. It was just one show, and being stranded in a ditch after an accident was as good an excuse as any. But, excuse or not, I would still be letting everyone down. I couldn't do that. I couldn't fail.

I tried to stop my mind from winding off on a tangent, but there was something compulsive and sick about the way I thought about things when confronted with the possibility of failure. I knew my thought patterns were irrational and aberrant, but that didn't mean I could stop them, and it didn't make the fear and anxiety any less real. End-of-the-world syndrome was what my mom had referred to it as when I was a child. If I pulled out one piece of the Jenga, the whole tower would come crumbling down.

I pulled my hood up over my head and put my hands into my pockets, trying to hold in as much heat as possible. There was nothing we could do, though. Nothing, other than wait. "I can take a turn watching the road if you want to get some sleep, Jake," I offered. I wouldn't be able to sleep anyway. I might as well be the one to stay up. Let everyone else rest.