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June 8,
2001
I've been
shuffling around like some listless senior citizen in scuffed-up bedroom
slippers. Takes me two
seconds longer to process everything.
I'm in some fog, some funk.
I don't know. Ethan
said we were going on vacation, and I thought he meant in the future,
when we both have money and vacation time.
But apparently he meant right now.
What? He's taking
control for once? Well.
Okay. He even helped
me pack, because I'm such a good-for-nothing blob right now and it takes
me something like a half hour to figure out what socks I wanna wear.
For once, he's taking the lead.
And he drives
up the PCH, and all I can do is stare out the window.
At one point I move to the back seat behind him so I can watch
the ocean out the window. And
he doesn't freak, he just smiles reassuringly from the rearview mirror.
Somewhere over that ocean is Ashley.
Herding sheep. Aussie
Bob is probably nuzzling her ear, and that blasted rock is winking on
her finger. Goodbye,
blasted rock, goodbye. |
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I watch
the waves crash for miles and miles, Ethan's got old school Cure
blasting, and I realize that I don't care what's happening.
He could be taking me to some abandoned beach to slit my
throat, and I don't care. I
don't even care that I'm thinking he could be capable of doing
that. He's not.
But I don't care that I'm thinking he could.
"What's
going on?" he asks me, and I don't even care that he's
talking. Everything
feels like it's trudging through sand.
It's too much effort to care about things. "I don't know,"
I manage to get out.
Why bother caring about anything anymore.
Why bother having friends, they just get engaged and
leave you for the wilds of Australia. Why bother combing the
world over for The One? The
one you find won't talk. Oh
wait. He is talking.
"You're
gonna be fine, you know."
I see his reassuring eyes in the rearview mirror. "I
know," I say. But
I don't know. I'll
tell other people I know, but I don't.
I just don't know what comes next, and it didn't used to
be so important to know. But
now it is.
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