Page 38 of Stops Along the Way
Declan is eager to fix the mood somehow. “Sure, what do you want to listen to?”
“Whatever.” I’m having a difficult time disguising how I’m feeling.
Mostly because I don’t knowwhatI’m feeling.
It was a funny accident. He made a joke most people would make, and have made often, and most people would probably find it funny. It’s not the first time I’ve heard this, and it won’t be the last. It’s all funny, sure. Lightly hitting the signwasunexpected and therefore sort of funny.
Right?Funny?
Okay, this is clearly grating on me. I need to get over it already.
I drive through the intersection and to the on-ramp, following my sister onto the highway, staring straight ahead, trying to keep my expression neutral. He said it as a joke, and I know it was a joke, and I’m not even that offended by it. Not really. Why would I be?
The problem is that there’s often truth hidden within a joke, and this incident has revealed that Declan would think differently about me if I also couldn’t see.
If my 25 percent odds play out.
Not only will I have to worry about readjusting to the world, I’ll have to worry about the rest of the world readjusting to me.
“Do you like this song?” Declan asks, though I don’t recognize it over the noise of the car on the highway and can’t discern the lyrics. Do I tell him that I can’t even hear the song he’s playing right now? I grit my teeth and stare at the road ahead, willing myself to keep it together.
To not make a big deal out ofnothing.
“Yeah.” I nod along to the music, which seems to placate him.
“I’ll queue up some more,” he says before singing some of the lyrics out loud to me with a goofy puppy dog look in his eyes, having no idea that right now I’m in crisis.
Declan is sweet and silly and caring. I glance over with a soft, sad smile, one that he returns tenfold, still happily bopping along to this pop hit. All this time with Declan, I’ve been thinking about the potential of him liking me. But maybe potential is all this will ever be, because, unfortunately, real life has a tendency to fall short.
Even if he likes me now, he’s just admitted he might not like methen.
.....
Afteranother song or two, Declan stops singing along, and we pass the next half hour without talking anymore. Every minute that ticks by, negative thoughts burrow deeper into my brain, while the sights outside the window remain the exact same. Cornfields stretching on for miles against the wide-open, cloudy blue sky.
Perhaps it’s soybeans, actually.
Because it’s only May, the crops have yet to grow into tall, towering stalks, and they’re hard to make out. With my incredibly limited agricultural knowledge, I have no idea what’s in those fields. A vast sea of the unknown. It makes perfect sense why that’s location fodder for horror.
It makes me picture a board game where you have to outrun a mouse through a corn maze.
Darn, I was trying my best to distract myself.
But board games take me right back to the boy sitting in the seat next to me.
“Declan?” I say, still without taking my eyes off the road.
His voice is warm and familiar, happy to be chatting again after some quiet time. “Iris?”
“There’s something I need to tell you.”
“Yeah?” he asks.
I brave a glance and discover there’s a smile curling up on his lips, but it dissipates when he notices that my knuckles are tightly gripping the steering wheel.
“Is everything okay?” he asks.
His words from earlier still echo in my mind.What are we going to do with you?
