Chapter 6: The Ride

As I look out the window the trees blend together into a mildly distracting paste

"You can't stare out there forever" Mom states blankly

"I wish I could escape out the window and never come back" I respond longingly

"We all do but, what's important is that we take it in stride, I'm going to have to punish you for beating up someone, or at least trying to, and I'm not too thrilled about it either, but I can still move forward instead of running away," Mom says

Her way of saying, she has things she has to deal with too.

Her words go in one ear and out the other most times, but right now it feels resonant, it's almost like my mind is a tuning fork

This car feels like it's going to be sucked into a single point, become a black hole and swallow my world.

"It just feels like there's this wall. It's made of bricks, like any wall, but, these bricks don't crumble to dust, so, I go away, come back when time wears the wall to but a nub and all around it an open field sprawls out" I say, frustratedly as I fiddle with the leather upholstery and wonder how it stays on in the first place to distract myself, just a little

"That wall has weaker bricks than it might first seem, you know sometimes you just have to jump into a truck and ram those bricks, I know it's hard to face things in a front-facing way but you have to try, even if they are the strongest bricks in the world, you have to try." Mom advises

I turn to look out the window again, the green blurs on the roadside give way to an open field with horses dotted about like beach-goers on a slow day. I could see myself on the back of those horses, wind blowing and messing up my hair.

Mom and I both settled in for the rest of the ride home, making light conversation and not really thinking about too much more.