She really was gone, like a blink, like the snap of a glowstick, suddenly the world was changed and nothing could take back the toxic chemical reaction that happened in his head. Behind his eyes where his anger slept.
It was always there behind his eyes, it only decided to blind him sometimes.
It wasn’t fair. She wasn’t perfect and she wasn’t his but he needed her. He needed her like he needed someone, anyone. His life was an endless walk down a road that never ended and he couldn’t rest anywhere for very long, it seemed. It wasn’t fair, and it didn’t get better.
He couldn’t see through his eyelids as the red from the sun showed behind them, but this time the anger wasn’t as urgent. It wasn’t as all-encompassing as the grief was. The unignorable pain of having someone again after so long for them to just disappear too. He felt the grief in his anger more vividly, in a way that he couldn’t just convert the entire feeling into a pure rage, but it blinded him nonetheless. When he could see again, the girl wasn’t the only thing that had gone out the window. Most of the things in the living room had gone as well, the television and the table lamp and her skates…and he heaved his breath heavy and heartbroken as Alison sprayed him with the fire extinguisher. He got to remember the anger that made him try to grab it from her, and he got to remember the smashing of his vision with white light and pain that finally blocked out the anger when she threw it at him.
Sam helped him as he cleaned himself up in the driveway. She got him an ice pack and a towel for the sluggish trickle of blood that ran down from his temple. She offered to drive him to the hospital but he refused. He was fine, even if his vision was a little blurred in one eye. She spoke to him too. She told him what little she knew, but it didn’t clarify the story. She told him she was sorry and she didn’t know what could’ve been done, but she wished she could’ve done something. She told him about how Locust’s mom had planned a funeral. He remembered the place but didn’t bother to remember the date. How would he show up to something like that? Who would he say he was to her?
No one.
“Where will you go?” Sam asked him when he got in his car, and he said the answer before he even knew what it was.
“East.”
“To find her?” Sam was smart, she already knew what he meant. Albert would miss her, she was a good person.
“Yeah,”
“Albert?” She held her hand over the window as he tried to roll it up, and he stopped. “What if she’s not there?” She asked. Albert shrugged, he’d obviously considered that before.
“Then I’ll keep looking.”
“No, I mean…” She hesitated, cringing at the ground in thought. “What if she’s not there like that?” She clarified clumsily, still not satisfied with her own question. Albert considered this for a while. He actually hadn’t thought of that. What if Locust was too different? He couldn’t imagine a world where he found something he couldn’t accept. Not after so long. What if she was with someone else? What if she wasn’t available for him, like…
He’d dealt with that before, he decided.
“I’ll find her anyway.” He grumbled, and Sam huffed as if he still wasn’t understanding. He wasn’t, but he didn’t know if he wanted to. Finally, she ran her hand through her ponytail, resigning herself to trusting his judgment.
“You’re a good person, Albert,” Hadn’t he just thought that about her? “Don’t let your Locust treat you like she did.” She warned.
Albert opened his mouth but no question came out. Like she did? What was wrong with..? What did Sam think..? Why would she..?
Sam turned back to the apartment complex, the one he was banned from, and was gone before he could fabricate his confusion to even ask.
He sat in his car and he didn’t cry. He still wasn’t sure how or if he could. Surely this was something that would be ok to cry over, healthy even. He just…couldn’t. He rested his head on the back of his seat and closed his eyes. His chest constricted in the exact reverse of the feeling he remembered from so long ago, from falling in love for the first time. Instead of expanding inside him, it felt like an implosion. Like the death of a star. He couldn’t run or move or expel energy like this, and without the ability to voice it or express it, it just sat there. Unmoving like undigested fast food, it was a rock in his stomach that rolled and took up space and wouldn’t leave. All he could do was sit there until he was ok with it, unsure if he’d ever be ok with it. His Locust spoke softly in his mind, reminders of what it felt like to have someone to receive all the strange and encompassing feelings he had. Someone who could help him be ok with it. His hand hovered over the small bone still tied to a string around his neck, proof that he was lucky. Lucky enough to have so much hope in his life. To have met someone worth carrying on for. He opened his eyes and stared at the tan carpeted ceiling of the car, his car.
It wasn’t a choice.
Albert was seventeen years old. He lived on the road and slept in a car.
And he needed to work on his anger.
He was 21, according to his driver's license.
It was much faster to travel by car, but that would’ve been too easy. It would've been too lucky for someone like Albert. It was a challenge to get used to driving with the blurring in his one eye that never truly left. It had lessened considerably, but it never left. At first, his issues were small and easily solved with a stop and a few weeks' work, or a few days' hustle. Issues like the need for food, the need for gas, and the need for cigarettes. He would find some money for whatever he needed and pick up his voyage again as soon as possible. Until the issues became more complicated.
Flat tires, worn brakes, tickets written thanks to missing tail lights and missing inspection stickers. His car took him as far as it possibly could, but it was old, and worn out. The van had been older, but it was better tended, it was made for such trips. His car wasn’t ready to take him across the country and he eventually asked too much of it. He had to come up with more substantial money to get it back on the road. His chosen career path of peddling backpack goods to the underprivileged and naive was a valid option, but his actual wares were subpar for the money he needed, so he took another direction.
Locust was there, in his resolve, as he spoke to people much better equipped than him about things he didn’t understand. His willingness to become useful to people who no longer aligned with his needs. People who no longer were safe to be used by. He wasn’t afraid, no longer brave after so much, just unafraid. He sold things. What things? Nothing too terrible. Medications both legal and not, items used for things that couldn’t be mentioned in traditional stores. He sold things that people who were lost and seeking something they never truly had would buy. People like him, he supposed.
It wasn’t the worst. People were nice to him, even if it was only because he carried an illegal product and the risks that came with it. Albert had always liked people and people found it easy to like him. He met different types of people than he did before when he was a teenager selling roman candles and loosies. He met lots of different people with lots of different reasons and minds, some of which were frightening and more delusional than even Albert was. Some of which could fold his thoughts into impossible shapes like paper cranes on the classroom desks of a Sunday School. Albert had always liked people.
He was 21 years old, and the girls he’d just met looked to be about 17.
On the sidewalk, outside a nightclub, in St. Louis, MO.
He took their money and offered them stuff to make the night more fun, in this particular instance it was ecstasy. Everyone liked ecstasy. The girls were giggly and clearly already impaired, but that didn’t bother Albert. He’d met lots of people and he found that deep down where it counted, people were the same whether they were impaired or not. It was the way they saw everything else that changed. He moved to leave, unwilling to stand still for too long in the night which always made him restless, but he was stopped when one of the girls asked him the question he always hated answering.
“What’s your name?” She asked it loudly to be heard over the crowd that was still trying to get inside the building. Her friend nodded enthusiastically for him to respond. He knew better than to give his real name, but he didn’t like turning people down either, especially in his most recent line of work. People who bought these things from him didn’t like being turned down.
“Can’t say.” He grinned, trying to make it sound more like a joke and less like a refusal.
“You’re really tall…” The second girl remarked, without prompting. They both completely forgot their initial question. Compliments from girls used to fluster him, and they still did, but girls who bought things from his backpack gave out compliments like parking tickets. Besides, Albert wasn’t actually tall, the girl was just half leaning on her friend.
“Thank you.” He responded regardless, it was best to be nice after all.
“You wanna come inside?” She asked, nodding to the entrance to the club. He hesitated at the invitation. He’d gotten invitations like that before, but the nightclub wasn’t his scene. It was too loud, and too bright, for Albert who still liked the dark and silence of the night outside. Before he could answer the first girl had him by the hand, pulling him through the crowd and completely ignoring the line. He didn’t really want to follow her, but he’d never been good at challenging people, and the bouncer probably wouldn’t let them inside anyway without some form of fake ID. They pushed through with Albert in tow and one of the girls piped up loudly.
“Hey, James! Can we go inside? It's so cold out here.” In perfect sober pronunciation.
Oh, dear.
The bouncer seemed thrilled to help the two girls who were clearly friends of his, and after a few minutes of friendly chit-chat between ‘James’ and Albert’s captors, he was inside the club.
It was loud, so loud he couldn’t actually hear what the music sounded like. He could just feel the base through the floorboards, rattling up his legs and through his skull. He didn’t know why the girls had wanted to bring him inside, and frankly, he wasn’t thrilled. He wasn’t a good-looking guy, he’d had that explained to him quite often and quite vividly. He hadn’t said anything particularly interesting to them, was it because he was nice? Surely cute girls were used to people being nice to them. He didn’t think he’d like the club and the noise and the people and the smell and the constant stimulation was becoming too much very quickly. The girls pointed excitedly to someone across the crowd, shouting something that couldn’t be heard over the music. They left Albert where he was, and he wondered again why they’d bothered to drag him inside in the first place. Why didn’t he fight them when they did? Why didn’t he just refuse?
He sought Locust like he always did, but he didn’t want her to see him like this.
He needed to sit down, somewhere familiar and safe from the constant moving. His first thought was a bathroom until at the edge of the floor he spotted a long counter with several people seated at it, a man with an eyebrow ring and a heather-gray band shirt served them drinks.
Oh, thank god, a bar.
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