Gage's POV

I couldn't sleep. Not that it was in any way startling. I've always been somewhat of an insomniac, twisting and turning for hours in bed for no apparent reason.

However, this time was different. I lay completely still, staring upwards, limbs heavy but mind alert. I couldn't stop replaying the anger management counsellor's reaction after I had spent the better part of the hour ranting about, well, the reason why I had ended there in the first place. The way I couldn't control my anger, the way I lashed out and acted out and simply acted so profoundly idiotic. How I'd hit her. And yes, how I almost chocked her to death. And after I had poured my heart out to him, his only response was, in a tone as calm and soothing as I'd ever heard, "So how does that make you feel?"

Don't get me wrong, I do feel like this will do me good. I know that. He even told me to dedicate a journal to my "little problem", making an entry every time I felt angry and writing down why. He even gave me a blank journal himself, all black except for a cheery smiley face sticker on the right-hand side corner.

From the practiced way he had taken it out of his desk and handed it over with a smile that didn't quite reach his eyes, I knew I wasn't the first one to come in with a similar script. In fact, the pity in his eyes said he'd seen many more like me, or worse. And yes, it was pity that shone through the poker face he'd had up until I stared listless at the hand outstretched, holding the damned journal, at which point he'd grabbed my forearm and said, "It's going to be alright." Robert "Rob" Blaircliff is many things, but indifferent isn't one of them.

Me: I've started anger management classes.

The clock on my nightstand read shy of 1 AM, but I suspected Kaylah would be awake. Ari always said she was more of a night owl. Sure enough, my phone blinked once, twice, indicating two new texts.

Kaylah: So? Are you expecting a "congrats" or something?

Kaylah: Too little, too late I believe.

I hadn't even had time to think up a response before my phone vibrated again.

Kaylah: Look I've got school tomorrow. Next time, text me at a more reasonable hour, will you?

Me: Does that mean you'll consider hearing me out? Please.

I waited five minutes, then five more to make sure she really wasn't going to text back. I reread her last message, and I realised I wasn't going to get any sleep tonight. Because tomorrow Ari was starting her senior year of high school, and I wouldn't be there with her. Just like I would most likely never pick her up and watch her face light up as she talked about whatever silly thing had gone down that day.

xxx

Somehow, not even ten minutes later I was in my car and pulling out of the quiet parking lot. I hadn't bothered to change, and I certainly didn't care much that my t-shirt was stained with mustard from yesterday or that my joggers were ripped at my right knee.

For a while, I drove around aimlessly, driving at precisely the speed limit, heading to the Seaview shopping centre and circling back around to the old town centre. Frankly I had hoped the drive would help clear my head, but the further I drove, the more my mind drifted deeper and deeper into that corner of my mind reserved for all the good memories I had with her. Because there had been a time when I would've considered myself a decent human being, or at the very least, not a bully.

I was waiting out one of the longer red lights on the east side of town ( one of the old ones that still had countdowns; I still had a good 70 seconds left) when another car braked violently beside mine, screeching tires giving way to laughter intertwined with slobbery kissing drowning out the radio playing lowly in my own car.

I stared at them, watching the girl ( a skinny brunet who seemed to be spilling out of her tight dress) playfully nipping at the guys' jaw and neck, pushing him against the driver's side door. Since I was driving a Crossover that easily towered over the second hand ( or even third hand, you couldn't even tell anymore these days) Mercedes convertible, I had no trouble making out the muscles jumping in the guy's jaw, or need to strain my ears to make out his groan. He seemed to be in his late teens, acne scars still doting his cheeks and forehead.

They say that since our ancestors were used to being on high alert at all times in case some top tier predator decided they looked especially tasty, people are still usually able to tell when someone stares at them for prolonged periods of time. That would explain why the guy's face contorted from ecstasy to confusion and his eyes sprang wide open. "What the hell are you staring at, you pervert?" and then he was pushing the insistent brunet back into her seat, which squeaked under the sudden weight, flipped me off and sped off, in precisely that order.

I was only left to blink stupidly at the tire marks the car had left behind, the grey exhaust smoke prompting me to close the window swiftly. I coughed once, looked up to the stoplight (5 seconds to go) and suddenly thought, fuck it. I sped off similarly to Mr. Mercedes just as the light turned from red to yellow and kept going straight ahead.

Although I was staring towards the deserted road through my windshield, could feel my foot pushing the gas insistently, and kept opening and closing my hands around the steering wheel, it felt far off, as if someone had hijacked my body and I was left a passenger, with only my memories to keep me company.

It was so easy to replace the pretty stranger with the brunet that was until recently mine, absently tracing my jaw (with her fingers, not her tongue as Ms. Mercedes was) on the night of our first date. Odd as it might be, we had met at driver's ed two weeks before her eighteenth birthday, and since that seemed to be our only common ground, my brilliant idea of asking her on a date was saying, in what I thought was a nonchalant tone, "Might I take you for a ride someday?"

It was so easy to imagine us speeding off after I had double checked both ways, prating no police officer was going to stop a rookie driver with yellow driver sings still plastered on the windshield speeding down a boulevard at over 20 kilometres over the speed limit. Of course, I didn't take into account that it was the height of summer and Sunset was a common spot for thrill seeking drivers, so our little thrilling cruise was over before Ari's warning even registered.

I remember how scared I had been to be pulled over, breaking into a sweat and looking to Ariana, feeling guilty and ready to cough up some apology for getting her in trouble, only to see her face was a perfect mask of calm, shoulders squared, as if she was trying to steal herself. I was perplexed as I watched her open the window, apologize to the stern police officer, and then sweetly ask to make a phone call as the man grilled me with questions. After a few short moments, she handed him the phone, which he took warily, and after a sequence of "Yes, sir" and "No, sir" were uttered briskly, he gave us a look which I could only interpret as contemptuous, we were off with a warning.

Although I was a bit stunned to find out her uncle was chief of traffic control police, I was much more stunned by how smoothly she had handled the police officer. The girl who went cold and tongue tied every time she had to make a phone call or walk up to an information desk had talked to a total stranger without stumbling over a single word. When I had asked, she sheepishly said "Well, maybe Kaylah's confidence is rubbing off on me," and laughed.

I wasn't laughing as I continued speeding, going 20,30, 40 kilometres over the speed limit, this time on my own. As I passed the dirt road that led to the secluded beach we went only on late summer afternoons because by then there were "less people to stare and judge" and whizzed past the park next to the municipal hospital, where she'd held my hand and hugged me fiercely as I cried. That was the day my life decided to do a belly flip from which I hadn't recovered.

Theodore had always been more on the pudgy side, having inherited my dad's side. With his pudgy little hands and slightly protruding abdomen, it wasn't hard to see why one would tease him by calling him "Teddy", which was something I'd done ever since he was two and had made a habit of making a fist and shaking it my way in what he probably thought was a threatening manner whenever I took one of his toys and put it on the high shelf.

He was twelve when my parents decided they were "taking a break". In truth, they were pretty much divorced in every way that mattered, expect legally, as they didn't have neither the time nor the money to spend on some insignificant piece of paper. When they sat us down around the dining table and grimly explained it, he flew into a rage, calling it "unfair to him" and "just another thing for my friends to laugh at me for".

Although we'd grown apart since I had started junior high, I still loved him, and couldn't stand the little sobs coming from his bedroom, adjacent to my own. Sometimes, I wish I would've just ignored him, tugged my headphones over my ears, and pretended I hadn't heard him, as my parents had. Maybe then I would've never heard him say the three little words that were the last he ever spoke to me, which hurt more than any heartbreak. Maybe that way his last words to me would've been You sound way too much like mom instead of I hate you.

Later on, I'd tried to convince myself he hadn't meant it, not really; that he was mad at the whole situation, and the fact that my mom decided to move two towns over and take him with her. I think I might've even been doing just that, when my mom called, exactly 9 months later, sobbing and begging me to meet her over at the Municipal, refusing to tell me what had happened. I will forever remember the number of the room and have since come to call it my unlucky number: 27.

While ever since she had left dad and I any contact, physical or otherwise, had been strained and short, she flung herself towards me, hugging me fiercely but no longer crying, face drawn and ashy. When I peaked through the small window, I could see Teddy hooked up to so many machines I couldn't even discern where my brother began and they started, tubes hanging off his limp body.

I was crying now, ugly, heaving sobs making my throat feel raw and painful, drowning out "Poker face" completely, which was playing on the radio. Eternity street was completely deserted at this time of the night, its curbs treacherous under the weak streetlights, the road narrowing to a single-track road as it neared the municipal cemetery, its gate serving as a dead end.

I used to roll my eyes when in any given movie, the family who was told their loved one hadn't made it through the night was pictured falling to their knees in slow motion, sobbing to the sky. I found those scenes extremely unrealistic and overly dramatic. But when Doctor Steinberg walked into the cramped little waiting room in the wee hours of the morning, shaking his head and saying He had just lost too much blood I suddenly didn't find it as unnecessarily dramatic when my mom fell to her knees, screaming and trashing, asking Why my Theo until she couldn't anymore.

One moment I was heading towards the sharp u bend which gave way to a straight segment of road dead ending with the cemetery gates, and the next I was braking, my 2001 Toyota that I'd gotten dirt cheap from some nobody straining under the sudden motion. I stopped into a small dune of dirt and plaster, no doubt from when they had last rehabilitated the road, and my body jerked forwards hard enough to lay me flat against the steering wheel, knocking the air right out of my lungs.

"I'm not going anywhere," Ari had said when I couldn't quite catch my breath in that pathetic excuse of a park at the entrance of the Municipal, as I held onto her for fear that I'd do something stupid if I let her go.

Devil's work. That's what Detective Montgomery had called what the Christian sect found guilty for the torture and death of my brother did. And Ari was still there, holding my hand as the detective laid out all the gruesome details that made my stomach turn, while casually munching on a chocolate croissant.

She never left my side, and never turned her back on me, despite how my kind words turned to harsh reprimands, and my gentle caresses morphing into possessive grips. Hell, she even stuck around after I'd first slapped her, a backhanded slap, and she looked up at me with so much hurt and confusion, but not a silver of anger.

I barely made it out of my car before I threw up, splattering on my sneakers. I dry heaved a couple times, spit dribbling down my chin, before I braced myself against the side of my car and made myself take in a deep breath.

xxx

The clock now blinked 2:02 AM, and I took in how symmetric it looked, 02 September blinking directly above it on my phone screen. If only it would've been February instead of September. I never had wished to turn time back so badly.

Before I knew where I was heading, I stopped in front of an imposing apartment building, part of a twin complex bridged by a parking lot. Kaylah lived in walking distance of the high school her and Ari went to, and since tomorrow (later this morning in fact) was the first day of senior high, she'd likely to use the front building entrance around 8, there's a fair chance she'd spot me and wonder what the hell I'm doing sleeping in my car in front of her building like some creeper

Although I didn't have an answer for that, I pushed my seat back, and closed my eyes, already feeling sleep heavy on my eyelids and in my limbs. I had a fleeting moment when I considered texting her and asking her to come down right now, but then I realised I would prefer to not be arrested tonight and shook my head at my own idiocy.

Ari always called Kaylah "a women of actions, not words". If she won't listen after I camped outside her house for a night, I don't think she ever will.

Just before I drifted to sleep, I had half a though that I hadn't turned the engine off. Maybe the fumes will kill me before dawn.

***Bit longer than usual but it felt right after going MIA for so long. I hope it doesn't drag too much. The next one will hopefully have much more dialogue, as it's going to feature the first day of senior year. Thanks for reading and make sure to comment if you made it this far in!***