chasing cars

"If I just lay here, would you lie with me and just forget the world?"

Dylan wasn't really sure what to do next. He knew two things: it was ridiculously hot outside and his best friend was having a complete breakdown on the scorching pavement. Dylan wasn't even sure what had happened. It had been such a typical day, work and meeting up for a quick basketball game afterwards. They both had gotten off work early and the sun was still beaming down on them when they started playing. Typical game, Chris was raining threes and Dylan was struggling just to score half the points Chris was.

Dylan remembered noticing the sky. The sun was still fairly bright but a few dark clouds had definitely started to settle in. He remembered thinking how nice some rain would feel right now. It was a water break. While Dylan was guzzling water and staring at the clouds, Chris was checking his voicemail. As Dylan was capping his water bottle, trying to proactively visualize himself blocking just one of Chris's shots, he heard the sound. It was hard to describe -- human but unlike any sound he'd heard anyone make before, loud but quiet at the same time. It was the sound of knees hitting pavement and Chris's body trying to gasp for breath as his brain shut down. It was the sound of utter heart break.

So here they were. Chris kneeling on the pavement, hyperventilating. Dylan standing over him. He wasn't even sure what had happened yet, but he could put enough together. One of those voicemails was the bearer of terrible news. His daughter, his wife, his parents, his brother. Something had happened. Dylan had grown up with the family too and he wasn't even really sure wanted to know what had happened and to who. But that wasn't even an issue he had to deal with right now.

Dylan glanced around but the court was completely empty. He thought he should feel embarrassed or even worried, but he didn't. There wasn't room for that right now. There was concern for Chris, there was empathy for Chris, there was fear about what caused Chris's to react this way. Chris's gasps for breath were steadily turning into sobs and Dylan couldn't bear much more. He wanted to comfort his friend, but he didn't have much experience here. There were words he should probably say, or some comforting gesture. Or maybe this was one of the situations he was supposed to take charge and hustle Chris into some less public place.

Yet all of that was beyond Dylan's know how. He thought of his family, how he would feel if something horrible happened to them. Dylan understood that breathing would be hard, that any higher level of functioning would be nearly impossible. That no words would be soothing. So he did the only thing that did feel right. He knelt down on the pavement right beside his friend, ignoring the pain of the hot, rough pavement on his knees. Dylan knelt by Chris, close enough for their shoulders to touch. And he waited. He would be right there beside him when Chris was ready. Everything else could wait.

i won't give up

"Cause even the stars, they burn. Some even fall to the Earth."

Dana wasn't sure which way to go. Maybe the best thing would have been to say still, to stay hidden. These Scavengers would never find her, especially at night. But she didn't have the time to wait. She had promised to be back in Eden in a few hours, she had promised her little brother and sister that she would bring them food. And Dana wasn't one to leave her promises unfulfilled.

The Scavengers made another pass in the room, almost as if they knew she was there. She barely thought of them as human at this point despite the fact they looked the same as everyone else. But in these times, people fell into two groups, Scavengers and everyone else. Dana remembered the world before. Before an errant asteroid fell and set the entire planet off kilter. Dana remembered gangs and would laugh at the thought now. She remembered growing up in a rough neighborhood in Philly. That was a joke. Philly didn't exist anymore. Sure the land was still there. That big cracked bell was still there. But Philly was gone. In its place was a no man's land. The edge of civilization. Philly was the southernmost point now of what was left of the U.S. The oceans had shifted and there was beach now. But the biggest change was the complete failure of what was left of the government. D.C. was felled by the asteroid and the federal government completely fell apart. The states became so focused on defending their territories that they left their citizens to fend for themselves. Two years later, the citizens overtook the government and brought in the current era of lawlessness.

Then the Scavengers came. People that were little more than animal. They took whatever they wanted and killed anything that moved. Dana had even seen them turn on each other out of sheer boredom. Technically, Dana was a Scavenger. Her parents had joined with the group, thinking it was the only way to ensure protection and food in this post-apocalyptic world. Within two weeks, her father had been killed and her mother was being passed around with as much courtesy as a cigarette. They ignored Dana because she looked so young, younger than she actually was. And while they were busy ignoring her, she had escaped with her two siblings. She had never been more appalled at humans and never been more determined to keep her younger siblings away from them.

Now here she was. Trapped inside a wall in the remains of the children's hospital. The place that she and her siblings had been born. The hospital was the first building her father's architecture firm had ever designed and he had framed the blueprints. Blueprints she had memorized before she could even read. This wall was her father's secret spot, a gap in the walls in one specific place that he put in all his buildings. The problem was the gap didn't go anywhere. It was an excellent hiding place but what Dana needed was an escape route.

This Scavenger group consisted of two women and one bury looking man. He looked like he ate children for dinner, which was all too entirely possible for Dana to be comfortable with. Three Scavengers, at least as far as she had seen. There were no food or supplies left, but they seemed interested in breaking down some of the equipment. It was impossible to tell if they were just bored and engaging in destruction for fun. Or if they had plans to use the equipment for something. It seemed ominous if they were breaking down medical equipment for a good reason but Dana didn't have time to worry about that. The three had left the room but she could here them banging around in the room next door. She closed her eyes and visualized the framed blueprints in her dad's office. Dana choked up for a moment, remembering the constant, nagging smell of Newports in her dad's office, the way the smell stuck to the corner chair she used to snuggle into while her father worked.

Dana shook her head, trying to literally clear the memories from her mind. The memories haunted her every night in her dreams. She didn't need them interfering with her mind in the daytime too. Specifically not when she was trying to escape from a group of Scavengers in an abandoned hospital. Dana tried again, closing her eyes and trying to remember exactly what was in the room next to her. She was in the wall of a random office on the third floor. And the rooms on all sides of her were offices too. Then she saw it, saw the blueprints as clear as if she were standing in her father's office. The elevators were two offices away. And where there used to be elevators, there should be an elevator shaft. For anyone else, this might not be a viable option but Dana was not just anyone. She was the girl that had been living in the bottom of elevator shafts with her siblings for the past year. She was the girl whose father had built those elevator shafts and this one, the girl who knew how to open this elevator shaft in 30 seconds.

Dana opened her eyes. The Scavengers sounded like they had moved on down to the next office, thankfully moving in the opposite direction from the elevator shaft. She realized this might be her only chance. She would have preferred to find something to use as a weapon, to take just a moment to calculate exactly how much time she needed, but the last few years had taught her take her moments whenever she got them. Dana took this moment. She raced out of the room, barely glancing to her left before turning right to the elevators. She hadn't seen anyone when she glanced but it was so quick she couldn't be sure. She got to the elevator quickly, jerking out the large magnet from her backpack while she ran. This was the secret, some sort of magnetized system inside the elevator doors. A large enough magnet and Dana could guide the doors open fairly easily. Once inside, Dana knew there would be an iron ladder stairwell that went directly down. Down to freedom.

Dana had opened the doors just wide enough to slip into the empty shaft when a hand suddenly grasped her shoulder. Times had been rough and Dana had been in plenty of altercations before with Scavengers. She was strong and tougher than they ever expected. She should have spun around and clocked the owner of that hand in the face. Except this hand was certainly not human. It was kind of human, with human skin and five fingers. But the fingers were warped, longer and thinner than any human hand should be. The skin was more orange than even any tanning bed could produce. Dana was frozen staring at that hand on her shoulder, terrified to see who that hand belonged to. Not that she had much choice for long. A second hand clamped down on her and tossed her back into the wall. Tossed would be a nice version, a human version of the force used.

It was just a wall, about six feet behind the elevator but it felt the same as the day she had fallen off the second floor balcony at her old house. The air was pushed out of her lungs and she was struggling to drag some new air back in. Her head bounced against the wall violently once causing her vision to blur. But she could see that the magnet was still stuck to the elevator door and the elevator was still open just wide enough for Dana to slip through. She tried to shake off the blurred vision and the realization that something other than human was shoving her around. It didn't really matter if Planet of the Apes had come to be, what mattered was her getting out of that building.

The orangey human thing came towards Dana again. A scary enough to sight to clear her mind and vision instantly. Adrenaline is good for that. Dana pretended to scoot away from the creature, carefully angling herself in a direct line with the gap in the elevator door. She knew jumping into the shaft would be a freefall, but she was only on the second floor and she was hoping the elevator was on the first. Just a one story fall really. Once again, she took advantage of her moment. The creature tired of chasing her around and lunged for her. Dana dove around him, basically sliding the ten feet she had created right into the elevator shaft. The fall was steeper than she realized, about two stories down before she hit the top of the elevator car. She vaguely cursed herself for forgetting the hospital had a basement. But there was no time to lament. She pulled open the elevator safety latch and once again thanked her father for his insight. Elevators with a manual door open in the event of an electrical outage. As Dana jumped out of the elevator and sprinted for the doors of the hospital, she saw three creatures emerge from the stairwell. Two with breasts and one burly looking one. Dana froze for the second time in the last ten minutes as realization washed over her. The three Scavengers. It was almost funny, all the times she had thought of Scavengers as barely human and the proof was standing in front of her that they were not.

The three creatures took one step towards Dana and her sense of self preservation kicked back in. She sprinted out the doors of the hospital, taking her preplanned evasive route until she was absolutely sure nothing was following her. She slowed to a cautious walk, checking her well hidden food traps as she did. Her mind wandered as she did. To all the times she had seen Scavengers, and she realized that usually she saw them in buildings her father had built. It occurred to her that she had more confrontations with Scavengers than other people that she interacted with, that maybe that was because they were both drawn to her father's buildings. It seemed preposterous at first but the more she thought back, the surer she was that it was true. The way her father made her watch pretty much every alien movie ever made. The way her father designed his buildings full of hiding places, secret passages, and escape hatches. The way he had made her memorize every plan. Now it seemed that maybe he knew something was coming and was trying to teach her how to protect herself.

Dana returned to her current hideout, a small room behind a false door in a supply closet in her old elementary school. Obviously one of her father's designs as well. Her little brother and sister were happy to see her and even happier to the carrots she had pulled up from one of her hidden gardens. But all Dana could think of was her father's favorite TV show, the one he used to watch over and over again. She had found the show interesting and fun and funny, but she never had even once believed that aliens were real. Until today. Today she found they were real and she was now facing the very real possibility her father was expecting them to come. And if they were searching her father's buildings for something, then it was very very possible they were searching for her and her siblings. Dana took a deep breath and realized she would have to fight this one alone. No fathers or Doctors here.

"We've got a lot to learn. God knows we're worth it."

love the way you lie

"I can't tell you what it really is..."

The kids sat in a quiet circle, all six of them. Uncomfortable and looking to the woman for instruction. A woman that really wasn't much older than them and vividly remembered the teen phase of her life. This was the first session of a new group, a day she both loathed and found thrilling. Each group was different and according to the files back on her desk, this might be the most difficult and diverse group yet. Usually there was overlap, kids that had been through similar or at least comparable things. Kids that could find a way to relate to each other. But her clientele had been expanding and these kids all had distinctly different demons plaguing them.

After a few sessions, the woman knew she was losing them. They remained mostly quiet when someone talked, with the occasional clearing of throat or exaggerated sigh. Those sounds, along with the eye rolling and thumb twiddling, spoke volumes. The kids were disinterested, judgmental, and just generally bored with these sessions. They spoke in generalities when it was their turn, each one of them so focused on trying to say the right thing that they weren't really saying anything at all. In short, they weren't relating to each other. Which was the sole reason she put the kids in group sessions. The woman took the loners and tried desperately to show them they weren't alone. She didn't know what to do next but she was determined to keep trying, posing new questions and implementing new exercises at each session.

"...I can only tell you what it feels like."

When the breakthrough finally happened, it was so unplanned and unexpected that the woman nearly missed the moment. Lauryn was talking. She was a girl that didn't speak often, probably because of the incessant bullying she suffered. Based on her file, the woman figured Lauryn tried to be invisible as much as possible. But today something had happened. Lauryn was the first one to raise her hand. She volunteered to speak and when she did, she was surprisingly and refreshingly honest. Lauryn was actually sharing and the other kids were listening.

The woman never thought Lauryn wold be the spark for this group. She was a plain girl, with no outstanding features, good or bad. Not too tall or too short. Not too fat or skinny. Strictly middle class. She dressed in a general nondescript, teenage manor. Nothing about her stood out. Yet she still was picked on mercilessly by her classmates all because she was new. It had happened quickly, thanks to one freak incident in the lunchroom with one of the "cool kids". And it was months before the school even cared enough to tell her parents what was going. Months of ugly notes in her locker, trash being tossed at her when she walked down the hallways, anonymous shoves in the locker room and lunchroom and classroom. Months of soul-crushing behaviors before she snapped and drove her car into a tree at full speed. That tree happened to be on the school campus and that was the day the school called her parents.

Yes, the woman wasn't sure what happened today, but Lauryn was obviously feeling brave and open. And her words were having a visible effect on the other kids.

Lauryn talked about becoming a target for unreasonable reasons. And Sean, who had been attacked and beaten by six boys at his school because of his sexual orientation, stopped fiddling with his shoelaces and looked up.

Lauryn talked about how the fear and the desperation outweighed the anger. And Alicia, who had repeatedly been molested by her foster brother, took her feet out her chair and leaned forward.

Lauryn talked about the judgment in the eyes of the teachers. And Kelly, who had a brief but violent mental breakdown after getting a batch of bad drugs, reached out to hold Lauryn's hand.

Lauryn talked about the unbearable pressure she felt to pretend like everything was okay and continue with the regular day to day. And Alison, who binged and barfed pretty much everything she ate, let a tear roll down her cheek.

Lauryn talked about the loneliness, the isolation, the feeling of being apart while the rest of the world moved on around you, without you. And Harry, whose mother had locked him in closets for days at a time for minor offenses like spilling water on the floor, crossed the circle to hug her.

The woman wanted desperately to understand but she understood the importance of this moment. She let it play out. Each kid spoke that day, each kid opened themselves to the others. There were tears and a few smiles. There was progress. The woman waited until all the other kids had left before grabbing Lauryn. She asked her why she chose today to share. Lauryn just shook her head and patted her shoulder like a child. Then Lauryn told her what she could see, what she could understand that the woman never would. Lauryn could see the telltale signs in Harry, that he was on the verge of driving full speed into that tree just like she had. And that saving him was more important than her pride and privacy.

in my life

"There are places I remember all my life."

I stood there and the view took my breath away. So cliche, I know. But so true. I had been many places and seen many things, but never anything like this.

I was pretty much standing in a postcard. One of those idyllic, sunny, sandy beach photos that I always dismissed with a grain of salt. Like I said, I've seen places and none of them had ever looked like this. I had been in big cities and dark alleys and long, winding rural roads. I had even seen beautiful things. But all of it paled in comparison. This water was bluer than any river or lake or stream I had ever seen. This sand was soft warm beneath my feet. This sky was perfect, a few bright white, fluffy clouds and a beaming sun.

All my reservations about taking this trip rushed to my head and I nearly laughed aloud. The work I was leaving in my co-worker's hands. The mail and newspapers piling up over the next few days. The general sense that my little world back home would fall apart while I was gone.  Even as I was boarding the plane, all I could think of was the cost of the ticket and of the whole vacation, and how it could have gone towards some project for my house or my car note or just anything more practical. But now that I was here I finally understood why all my friends had been insisting I take this vacation, that I come to a place like this.

It was beautiful and breathtaking and something a life shouldn't be lived without.

be like that

"And all she wants is just a little piece of this dream. Is that too much to ask?"

The other kids in the hallway were a blur. I'm sure they were looking at me. There I was the, the self-appointed queen of the hallway, ungracefully lurching down the hallway and tripping over my own feet in my rush to get to the girls' bathroom. It was just a few steps away but seemed so far down the hallway. I reached the door just before my last bit of self-preservation failed. I pushed into one of the stalls, ignoring the stares of the freshmen standing in front of the mirrors trying to make themselves look like seniors.

And I let it all out. I wasn't sure which was louder, the rancid retching or the soul-crushing sobs. I was vaguely aware of snickers from the freshmen girls and that I must have been loud enough to hear in the hallway. But the only thing I could really focus on was my own voice echoing in my head. It was like a filmstrip of the past year playing itself out. It was deafening.

There was the first time I saw Katherine. She was sitting by herself in the cafeteria and for a split second I remember thinking that she was almost pretty. I'm not sure if that's what instigated it all, if somehow I felt upset or disgusted by the fact that this girl could have been so pretty if she weren't so damn fat. The second time I saw her was when we christened her Fat Kat. But even know I remember how shocking it was to see the amount of food she consumed during the lunch period.

But the torture didn't really start until the winter semester when she had ended up in two classes with me and some of my friends. We were merciless. We would trip her in the hallways, leave mean notes on her desk, play an elaborate game of keep away with her backpack. And that was the early days, when we were still behaving on a middle school playing field of bullying. The day she finally tried to stand up to us was the day things changed. We were appalled. How dare Fat Kat fight back? We moved from idle bullying to active harassment. Vandalizing her locker. Posting candid pictures of her trying to keep up in P.E. on the internet. Throwing stones at her own the way to and from school.

It must have been hell and we laughed the whole time. In fact this morning, I had a whole new vicious attack lined up for her today. We knew she had been trying to avoid us by walking through the back parking lot onto campus and we fully intended to soak her with power water hose the maintenance staff attached to the lawn sprinklers. Pure genius that was sidetracked the moment Ms. Brown walked into the room.

There were tears running down her face and the fact that a teacher was a crying was enough to silence the entire room. I looked at Fat Kat's empty desk and knew what was coming next. I was standing up in a daze, asking for a pass to the bathroom before Ms. Brown could even finish making the announcement that this morning Katherine's parents had found her with her wrists slit in her bathroom tub. I was trying to make it to the front of the room when I head an quick comment behind me. Some kid's own joke about how she had to cut her wrists because she was too fat to hang herself. Ms. Brown was handing me the wooden pass, and I turned around to lunge at the owner of that voice. I'm not sure what I intended to do but Ms. Brown caught me around the waist before I was able to make contact. I wormed my way out of her grip and practically threw the wooden bathroom pass back at her before seeking refuge in the bathroom.

There was nothing left in me. I continued to dry heave as I sat on the floor beside the toilet. I didn't care if the stupid freshmen girls were running up and down the hallway telling everyone that I was losing it in the bathroom. I didn't care if Ms. Brown sent me to the Principal's office for leaving class without permission and attacking a student. In the grand scheme of things, what did they matter? I had lived the past year as one of the most popular girls in school and had gotten there by slowly killing another person. Nothing mattered more than that.

hometown glory

"I ain't lost, just wondering."

I guess from the outside it would look like the typical quarter-life crisis. The unanswerable questions. Who am I? What is my place in this world? What is my life's purpose? Will I ever find love? But I was no fool, I knew these questions were rhetorical at best. I knew that only God could answer these questions and I was pretty sure the clouds wouldn't be parting anytime soon to deliver his answer. So I didn't ask these questions. In fact, I didn't ask any. I knew that life was ever-changing and even if I could come up with an answer, the smallest thing could change everything. One flap of a little butterfly's wings halfway across the world....

But that didn't mean there wasn't a lot on my mind. That didn't mean I still wasn't looking to come upon some divine inspiration to steer my life in some direction. And patience was never my strongest virtue. Truth be told, I didn't really expect something to just flop into my lap anyway. Few things had ever come that easy before, and the ones that did were usually no good.

My mother called it my quest. My father seemed to understand better and just kept quiet, although I could feel him shaking his head behind my back. There were unfinished lessons in archery, piano, ballet, karate, tennis, and gymnastics. There were random courses in pottery making, computer programming, and auto mechanics. There were half-fulfilled memberships in a book club and croquet club. There was the volunteer trip to South America.

The list went on and on. So like I said, I guess from the outside it just looked like I was trying to find myself. But I think I had somewhere along the way. No, I hadn't discovered my life's purpose or something, but I had something. I had found that my curiosity was an asset that would keep my life interesting. I had found that I was fearless in the face of new experiences. And I had found an unexpected level of comfort with striking out on my own undefined path. No, I hadn't discovered my life's purpose but I had realized all the things I could bring to this life and somehow that seemed like enough for now.

born this way

"I'm on the right track. Baby, I was born to be brave."

I should have been focused on the things I was ready to be done with. The constant back pain and swollen ankles. Carrying around an extra 35 pounds while suffering through the hottest summer on record. And I shouldn't have been scared since I had done this once before. But it was unsettling how the fear remained and even intensified this time around. The first baby had been a mystery. I was sure it was going to be hard but know I knew just how difficult it would all be.

I tried to focus on other things. The small gold cross the nurse wore around her neck. Identifying the slightly off-white color of the floor tiles. Should it be called ecru? Not quite, more like pearl. The doctors and nurses seemed so calm and I guess they should be. They did this every day and right here and now I had made the decision I was never doing this again.

Truth be told, I wasn't anxious about the birth. As I said, I had been here before and come away with a healthy baby girl. It was everything that came after. The sleepless nights. The colic. The neverending diaper changes only to be followed by the complicated task of potty training. The tantrums and the food throwing and the incidental head butts. The checking the crib five times every night for the terror of SIDS. The beat my heart misses every time there's a fall or a bruise or the slightest cry of pain. The constant fear of the worst-case scenario.

And here I was doing it all over again. Bringing another innocent, defenseless human being into this world. Giving myself the task of feeding and clothing two children. Of raising two kids to be intelligent and respectful and kind and trustworthy and responsible. Of teaching two children that life is filled with just as much luck as it is brutal unfairness, that some people are just as unabashedly giving as some are senselessly cruel, and that learning from the luck and the unfairness, that identifying the giving from the cruel can make all the difference.

Then there she was. A final push and suddenly a little girl was cradled in my arms. And one look at her told me everything there was to know. I was sure things would be hard because life always is. But I was even  more sure that she would come out on top.