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Chapter Seven
When Lissa opened her eyes the following morning she wasn’t sure if she was relieved or disappointed. She’d found herself looking forward to seeing Aspen even if it meant it would be enormously difficult to retrieve her things. Hey Tyler, you mind shipping my stuff out to Aspen for me? She snorted as she imagined the various colorful responses to such an inquiry. She frowned and sat up, looking around the room she’d been sleeping in for two years. What exactly did she care about leaving behind? Sure she’d bought most of the furniture but she’d never intended to try and take any of that with her, as if Tyler would let her anyway….so her clothes? They could be replaced. In fact everything she had could be replaced.
She thought about her goal, three grand and she was out, and suddenly it seemed ridiculous. How much difference did just over a hundred bucks make? During her hours on the bus she’d intended to think in depth about what she was going to do next with her life, but instead she’d spent the time pondering life and death, trying to determine what she was supposed to learn from this experience if it were in fact some sort of purgatory. The only conclusion she’d come to was that she wanted to make amends…with Caleb. Except she had no idea where to find him these days. Her mother and his father had broken up five years ago and she hadn’t spoken to her mom in the past three of them. Not since the woman had basically disowned her.
To be fair she’d been a full-on druggie at the time and had lifted money from her on several occasions in order to feed her habits. But she knew that wasn’t really the problem, it was more that her mom had been seeing someone new and she was afraid of the potential embarrassment Lissa posed. Also understandable.
But her mother had never been very maternal, in fact she could count on one hand the number of times Pamela had told her that she loved her and they were all before the age of seven. She had never had a relationship with her, to Pamela she’d been a burden to bear, of no more consequence than an electric bill but more irritating because Lissa made demands on her that an electric bill wouldn’t. Selfish. No depth or substance. A distinct lack of empathy, sympathy and especially love. A description that applied in many ways to herself, she had to admit, especially when she’d been a teenager. When she’d ripped out Caleb’s heart and spit on it before crushing it.
She liked to think she’d grown since then…certainly she would do things differently if given the chance…but in all reality telling Tyler off and then smashing him in the nose had been the first brave thing she’d ever done in her life. And she couldn’t even say that he deserved it, not completely. Not when she was beginning to realize she was as much at fault for their shitty relationship as he was. Maybe even more so.
Well that’s a start at least, she thought, taking responsibility for my actions and choices. So what now? The bus idea was out, not when she’d probably never make it to a destination. Maybe she’d take today to find out what there was to do within a couple hours radius…and find Caleb. Well not find him, just find out where he was. She wasn’t quite ready to see him or talk to him, but maybe she could prepare herself to do that. She could start by writing a letter…echhh, one thing at a time. Find somewhere to spend her never-ending day that she would actually enjoy. Of course that would require the use of Tyler’s car which meant she was going to have to do a repeat of yesterday, lead him to believe she was going to the pharmacy…but what did it matter when the slate would be wiped clean by tomorrow?
She leaned over the bed and pulled her phone out from beneath it, tapping the browser icon, then did a search for ‘Things to do’ in Upstate NY for the month of July. She scrolled down the page of results and one activity jumped out at her. Annual Grassroots Festival. She read through it and found it was held on the Trumansburg fairgrounds, featuring a vast array of live bands playing on an assortment of different stages…no one she’d heard of, but one of the things she loved in life was watching live music. And it started today. Perfect.
Now all she had to do was get Tyler’s keys.
Caleb listened to the sound of fellow “patients” making their way to the cafeteria and knew it was time for him to get up and make his escape before Dr. Douchebag sent someone to wake him. But he couldn’t seem to will his body to move. Not because there was anything physically wrong with him, that would indicate something had changed within the parameters of this ongoing nightmare. It was his mind that was frozen. It had taken an unbelievably small amount of time to tire of the nightly foursome style debauchery. Probably because he’d made the mistake of going into it fairly sober the night before, a night that marked his ninth repeat of Thursday, July seventeenth.
Yeah sobriety had definitely been a mistake, because with his powers of observation intact he’d noticed things, like how the brunette had a vaguely unpleasant odor emanating from her lower regions and the blonde had the world’s most irritating laugh which frequently erupted out of a mouth full of rotting teeth. And the redhead? Christ, he wondered if she had a face underneath the layers upon layers of makeup. And then there was the fake orgasms…if they were hoping for a future in porn, they had better invest in some acting lessons along with cosmetic surgery.
He felt hollow, like someone had carved out his essence, and the only way he knew to rid himself of the feeling was to shuffle chemicals into his body. But some small part of him was putting up a fight against the idea. He frowned. Did that mean it was time for the soul-searching part in this play? What if he didn’t have a soul to search? What if it had been sucked out years ago? Maybe he was supposed to retrieve it.
Her face flashed across his mind and he sneered. Yeah right, it’s not as if she could give it back since she’d poured gas all over it and lit a match. Still, it might be interesting to see her, fuck with her….shoot her in the chest where her heart should have been. Hey now that was a plan he could get behind. It’s not as if he’d ever have to deal with the consequences, she’d be alive again tomorrow never even knowing what happened. He could make her beg for forgiveness like he’d told her to do the last time he’d seen her. He wondered if she was still a cracked out mess. He pictured pulling out the gun and pointing it at her, commanding her to her knees…then suddenly her face changed in his mind to the one she’d had in childhood, her green eyes wide and scared and he dispelled the daydream, feeling sick.
Bullshit, he whispered shakily. Tears sprang to his eyes and he wiped at them angrily. The Lissa he loved had died long ago, why the fuck did he still mourn her? She was gone, GONE, replaced by someone he hated with all of his being.
He jumped out of bed and threw on some clothes, grabbing his wallet and phone, and headed outdoors stabbing Jake’s number in angrily.
“Hey bro…” Jake answered.
“Come get me. Now.”
“But…
“Now.”
“Okay man, see you soon.”
He pushed end and started walking in the direction Jake would come. The part of him that was fighting the thought of getting high had just lost on a massive scale.
Maybe this time when he OD’d he’d get the job done.
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