Garrett was instantly dropped off that following night. Chandler and Rhiannon went straight to her house. Chandler had planned on staying the night there for a while, since they went to the same school.
Chandler was having parent problems and thought it might've been time to revive their close relationship. Rhiannon knew her aunt and uncle were bigger drunks alone than her dad ever was, let alone combined. Chandler had been in multiple physical fights with his dad, coming to her house at 3 am with black eyes and the urge for a cigarette. Nobody knew he smoked, and it didn't matter which house he was in. He'd blow through a pack a day, half in the morning, half at night. He'd open a window to air out the scent of tobacco. Sometimes it stuck to his clothes so he'd change.
He made a palette for himself on Rhiannon's carpet while she showered. It felt like sleeping on a rock. His spine ached beneath the hard ground, longing for some form of support. His fingers pulled the blanket up to his chin while he squirmed to settle into a comfortable position.
She came out of the shower with beads of warm water dripping off of her collarbones, the vapor escaping off into the air behind her as she walked. The clothes she wore stuck to her moist skin. She frowned at his choice of sleeping positions, scrunching her hair dry with a towel.
"You can take the bed. I'll take the couch. I just don't want you to sleep on something that feels like hell."
"Don't we all feel like hell after today?" He joked.
She pursed her lips into an expressionless grin, lowering her eyes and bending down to sit in cross cross position on the floor next to him.
She chunked the towel across the room. They both watched it land and wrinkle into the hamper.
"So what are you going to do tomorrow?" He asked, grabbing up the blanket and covering up his washed out legs.
"What do you mean?"
"Are you ever going to talk to Austin again?"
Her chest began to hurt.
"Probably not."
She didn't tell Chandler that Austin had been blowing up her phone with calls since she got in the shower. She turned off her phone instead of blocking his number. She didn't posses the guts.
"He was really rude." Chandler rumbled in a deep voice containing no sympathy for Austin's situation.
His assumption on him was already made. He was an ill-mannered, egocentric boy who liked to nark on Rhiannon's personal life.
Rhiannon had the sympathy, hence the reason why she couldn't block him. Or yell at him any more than she already had. He got on her nerves, but she knew he meant good. He meant good today when he did that to Garrett, or at least that's what she thought when she tried to see it from his point of view.
She had rejected the kiss. That showed to Austin that she didn't want Garrett to touch her, so he protected her. But who said she needed protecting? God, why couldn't things be easy.
Her feelings for Garrett were a flame, fizzing out at one minute and burning strong another. Austin ignited the flame with the way he hurt Garrett. The way Garrett refused to fight. Or maybe he just couldn't fend for himself...
"Don't you agree? What the hell have I missed. What was his problem?" Chandler interrogated.
"I don't know Chandler." She snapped at him.
His eyes wandered around the room while he reached for cigarettes from his back pocket. He pulled out a stick and put it in between his teeth. The cigarette moved to the other side of his mouth when he pulled out his lighter. He flicked it on, cupping the flame and setting the lighter back on the ground before raising two fingers to pluck the cigarette out of his mouth and breathe out a cloud of smoke. It drifted out of his parting lips. Embers sank to the carpet and faded out into black specks.
"You smoke?" She muffled, lowering her head to watch the smoke swish past her.
He nodded.
"It's something to invest my time in."
She understood and didn't judge his choices. She had no say in them.
"I want to go over there. I want to talk to Garrett. He's had a fucking horrible night and I brought that upon him." Guilt embedded her voice. She was now beginning to realize how fucking stupid it was to invite Garrett and Austin to the same place. She didn't realize the problem had grown this bad.
"Do it tomorrow." Chandler took another long drag and blew it into the atmosphere.
"Okay. I guess I could. Go to bed, Chandler." She tossed his pillow up onto her bed and fled the room.
"Let me finish my cigarette." He grumbled.
-
She let Chandler drive them to school. They were out a few extra days for a break so they were not too excited to be back. They had forgotten all about the lesson plans and things due, so that only made Rhiannon stress more.
In the piles of sheets she had to sort through and invest her time into, she still couldn't stop focusing on talking to Garrett. Turning on her phone only gave her anxiety so she left it off for the day. She didn't want to run into Austin, and she needed to run into Garrett.
She and Chandler parted ways for first hour. She wasn't ready to have to sit through one whole class, but she was willing to blow through the 2 weeks they had before graduation. College and testing had her overwhelmed already, drama on top of it almost made her brain implode.
She sat on her knees inside of the plastic blue chair, fidgeting every two seconds with unsteady veins full of pumping anxiety. The clock could never be slower. Taking its time to turn numbers slowly by what seemed like 10 minutes each.
All focus had drained out of her. Lectures of teachers sounded like one long, never ending word spoken in a foreign language.
The bell emitted her to crawl out of her seat and pace out of the classroom to Garrett's locker. She saw Austin's face in the crowd and pushed into the middle of a group of taller people to hide herself. She watched him knock shoulders with other kids. His lips were shut into a basic frown. He looked pissed off.
She spotted Garrett's head deep into his locker. His arms thumbed through stacks of papers for a certain one.
She slipped out of the sea and grabbed a hold of his shoulder. He turned to face her. A violet-blue toned bruise airbrushed his eye and swelled his skin. A few sharp cuts coated his lips and nose.
"Oh god, you look like shit." She shakily blurted out.
"I know. Thanks for informing me."
"I-I'm sorry. Do you want to hang out later tonight and talk?"
He kept his attention on his papers and continued flipping through them, barely invested in what she had to say.
"Dunno. Is your boyfriend going to bash my face in yet again? Or are you going to actually stop him?"
"What the hell? I did stop him. What were you doing? Nothing-"
Dean stopped and pushed her out of the way, stepping up in front of her to talk to him. Garrett smiled at as Dean began to let out a story about something that had just happened.
"And she was totally all over me-"
"Excuse me?"
Garrett and Dean turned to her with the same facial expressions. Dean seemed to have a grip of what was going on.
"Why are you here?" Dean bent down to meet up with her face. She felt like he was talking to her like she was a child.
She pushed him aside like he did her and proceeded to talk to Garrett.
"Why was everything okay last night but it's not now?"
"Because you're an idiot. It's all settled into my brain now. You did that on purpose. You love him and you hate me. You wanted this to happen to me."
His finger shot up to point at his tattered face.
"I wanted that to happen to you because I didn't feel comfortable with you kissing me?"
"You seemed pretty comfortable with it the other night." He shouted. Dean laughed in the back.
"Fuck you."
She drifted out of the hallway slowly. Her pride had been robbed by a couple of assholes. Garrett wasn't who she thought. Why was he acting a completely different version of himself?
Chandler emerged and ran up to her.
"Are you okay?"
She knew she was visibly angry. Her face was practically burning red.
"No."
She left him lingering around the spot she was standing. He watched her march off into a classroom.
-
School flew by quickly after that incident. Because like Chandler to his cigarettes, she too had something to invest her time in. Focusing on how pissed she was that Garrett said that to her to get laughs out of his asshole friends. He was shallow. That was a shallow move.
Now the person she needed the most was just as pissed at her. She wouldn't even attempt to talk to Austin for a while. She assumed he wanted to just forget about her after what happened.
After 8th hour she wandered around the parking lot looking for Chandler's car. It wasn't in the spot they parked in before school started. She felt like an idiot, making clueless circles like she did to find Garrett's house. People talked in clusters and ignored her. She felt like a loser, but at least she was too invisible for others to gawk at. Of course she exaggerated herself.
Chandlers green truck was pulled up in front of the sidewalk the whole time. Their eyes met and they both sighed in relief. She got in and immediately pleaded guilty.
"I'm sorry about storming away earlier. It's just that a lot happened with Garrett and it pissed me smooth off."
He smiled and patted her shoulder before returning his hands to the wheel and beginning to turn out of the parking lot.
"You're fine dude. We all have our days."
He turned up the radio and popped in his Front Bottoms CD.
His leather brown seats singed her body. She put her knees up to her body and watched him drive.
The buildup of pressure faded off of her brain and chest. The music was beginning to put some life into her. She was calming down. Everything would be okay, it's going to work itself out. Chandler reassured her of that. He smiled and laughed and tried to make her laugh. He succeeded a few times, getting a grin from her at most. He knew not to back off so quickly on her. It took time for her to crack, she just needed someone to cheer her up.
Her phone vibrated in her bag. She pulled it out and turned down the radio to slide it and answer. Chandler kept looking at her from the wheel to see who she was on the phone with.
"Hello? Hello?" Austin coughed and screamed. He started to let out disheartening sobs and screams of bloody murder. He started to sob so loud he began to hyperventilate.
"Austin what's wrong?!"
She barely could talk over his loud cries.
"There'sawreck. There'sawreckandhe'sinit. He'sinitRhiannonhe'sinit." He howled out. The phone was set down against his dashboard. He was pulled over on the side of the road. Tears poured from his cheeks and he trembled. His bottom lip quivered brutally.
"Austin slow down. Who is in what? Please are you okay?" She raised her voice loud enough to overcome his sobs. She sounded like a mother.
"Garrettisinthewreck. He'sdead. He'sdead. Isweartogodhe'sfuckingdead."
Austin's body rattled from his knobby knees to his puffy red cheeks. He continued wailing.
"Austin where are you?!" She started to cry with him. A giant lump in her throat began to push out. It felt like her throat was going to crack open and she was going to die of shock.
She was trying to be the bigger person- the adult. She was just as much of a child as he was.
"He'sfuckingdead. Isawhisbody. His body was being draggedout and he wasputinafuckingbAG. HisbodyisinafuckingBAG." He gurgled and spat out his words in complete dismay. Sweaty hair matted to his hot face. Drool slipped out of his lips. He was crying so hard he was drooling.
"Where are YOU?" She yelled. He winced at her loud alarming voice. It frightened him.
"Please don't yellatme. Pleasedon'tbemadatme. Pleasestop. Stop. Stop-p-please." He whined and shuttered and stared and spat. The sirens were everywhere. Red and blue. Red and blue. Red and blue. Red and blue.
They were everywhere, blinking on and off and on and off and on and off. Dean's car was crumbled upon the back of another one. Dean's red mustang that he was so proud of. Dean's red mustang that Austin got to ride in once because he was friends with Garrett but never got to again because he left a candy wrapper in the backseat. Dean's pride and identity was completely slaughtered into a bigger truck. It was an unrecognizable heap of metal. It looked like a crumbled can.
Dean. Big, cocky Dean. Asshole jock Dean. Standing next to a police officer with a notepad out. Dean stumbling and tripping over his words. Dean choking and stopping mid-sentence to vomit. Officers huddled around him all with notepads. Writing, scribbling, whispering. The man who owned the truck doing the same. Both shocked, both spooked. The man was angry. Burning angry.
Austin pulled over to the opposite side of the road crying because his best friend since childhood was in a body bag. Strapped to a gurney and being rolled away by paramedics. One of the paramedics handed Garrett's phone to a police officer. He immediately tapped on it and held it up against his ear. Austin knew it was Garrett's parents. Garrett's rich, lucky parents. Preppy parents who adored their son. Their only child. Their pride and joy and identity. A hunk of blood and dismembered bones. Unrecognizable.
Dark red stains on the blue rubber gloves of paramedics that handled his body caught his eye. They peeled off their gloves and disposed of them in the back of the emergency truck. The road was being blocked off by other officers. Other cars swerved around and paused once to stare. Invested one thought. Poor person. Forget and drive off and tell others and move on.
"Austin, no I'm not mad. I'm not mad please answer me. Where are you?" She gave up on acting the adult in the situation and was now full on crying. Chandler panicked and pulled over.
"What's going on???" He mouthed.
"ComeonI-40please. IneedyouIneedyouthey'retakinghimawayIneedyou."
"I-40. Chandler now, please. Please."
Chandler made a vicious U-turn, making them lean violently before bobbing back and forth. He sped to I-40 to get to Austin.