Work Me Up

“And that we’ll be as quick as we can, good idea,” I reply, as I’m pulling my phone back out to actually respond to the text. Duh.

I always get scatterbrained when I’m nervous. And nervous is putting this mildly, comments a nasty little voice in the back of my head. One I try my hardest to ignore. I’m getting better at it these days. It’s not nearly as loud or insistent as it used to be, right after—

Well. Right after it happened.

“I’m surprised you didn’t want to drive yourself,” Mrs. Samson comments, as she reaches over to flick on the radio. “If your mother was hassling you so much about coming on time.”

“Oh, I…” I bite my lower lip and glance out the side window. Mistake. The palm trees and rolling hills outside fly past far too quickly for comfort. Not to mention, in that direction, I can catch glimpses of the other cars on the road around us, which…

I turn back to face Mrs. Samson pointedly. “I don’t have a car,” I say.

“Really?” Mrs. Samson’s eyebrows rise. “But you…” She trails off, as if realizing her next words might be indelicate.

I can hear what she’s thinking loud and clear anyway. But your parents are rich as hell. They could buy you three cars if they wanted to.

They could, it’s true. Thanks to all the successes of the business in recent years, and the new acquisitions they keep making—much like the one they plan to celebrate tonight. But I wouldn’t have accepted cars as gifts from my parents, even if I had any use for wheels of my own. For the same reason that I refused to let them help me with the rent at my apartment, either. I want to do things on my own. To be independent.

At least, as far as that’s possible given my condition.

We lapse into a silence that, if it’s not exactly comfortable, at least feels companionable. I won’t ask about the skeletons lurking in your closet, Mrs. Samson seems to say, so long as you don’t hassle me about being late anymore.

I keep my gaze fixed firmly on the radio, on Mrs. Samson’s narrow hands with the large wedding ring, one gripping the wheel and the other occasionally reaching over to rest on the gear shift. She has a great nail polish color. Sparkly, red.

It only makes me more aware of how little I did to prepare for this event. I risk a glance at the side mirror just to check my face. At least I look all right without makeup. My skin tends toward tan naturally, so it helps hide any blemishes or blush patterns. Useful, because god knows I blush easily enough, at the slightest drop of a hat.

I take a few deep breaths as we reach the final hill up toward the towering clifftop on which my parents’ property sits. My phone buzzes a handful more times, no doubt with more messages from my mother, probably berating me for arriving late, or guilting me over how my father thinks I’ve stood him up at one of the most important moments the family company will experience all year.

I don’t know. And I won’t know until we reach their house, because we’re close now, and I can’t stand to look at anything—not my phone, not even Mrs. Samson’s delicate hands or the radio station she’s turned on in the car.

I squeeze my eyes shut and take slow, forcibly even breaths until I feel the car slow beneath me.

“Here we go,” Mrs. Samson is saying cheerily.

“Thanks again!” I practically yell, and fumble to yank off my seat belt the instant I feel the car has stopped completely. I fling open the door before the engine has even shut off, my eyes still squeezed partially shut, just so I can’t see anything triggering, just so I won’t remember when—

Crash.

I let out a loud yelp and fall back onto the car seat, which I’d been halfway out of, leaping toward pavement and the grass beyond like I was the final passenger on a sinking ship who just reached land.

Mrs. Samson gasps a little beside me, and my heart hammers in my chest, so hard that it takes an instant for my vision to clear, for me to realize what’s going on, what I just hit…

Oh.

One of my mother’s enormous potted plants had been moved to the end of the driveway, balanced carefully along each side of the path up to the house itself, which towered over the scene. Even from here, I could see guests all across the huge lawns, sipping cocktails and laughing in the setting sunlight behind them. The house itself had been festooned in streamers and lights, decked out to the nines, and music and laughter reached our ears even all the way down here at the end of the driveway.