The Bad Place

The scratch on my jaw finally started to bleed as I rolled down the window of my beat-up 1968 Civic. The crisp rural night air made my hair dance and the open wounds sting coolly. The speedometer raced up to 95 as my anticipation grew to get out of this town. I desperately needed to rid myself of bad memories and bad people- this bad place. At that moment my frustration for this hick town went beyond frustration. It became hate. Fierce, unadulterated, monstrous hate. And you can point the finger at Steven Grayson.
When he returned to our school after a two-month absence, it was like the savior himself had come back to earth. Every piece of gossip lining the hallways of the York High School hallways were about Steven. They ranged from the two months he spent locked up in juvie, innocent although accused of burglary and murder to living in Montana in two months where he saved two little girls drowning in a river. The truth was that his parents had divorced and he was caught in the middle of a custody war. But nobody would buy that because they needed a good reason why Steven was gone- not that his father was a drunk who beat his wife and kid, and that there was a huge chance that little Stevie was going to end up just like him. And I’ll admit it, I was also caught under the spell of The Amazing Steven Grayson. But it’s impossible for you to understand how much I regret that, and how much I despise him now, watching the pine trees now blackened by the darkness race past my car as I escape down Highway 86.
My retrospective thoughts were cut off by the bitter ring of my cell phone, the sound comparable to a two-hundred-person symphony among the mystifying silence produced by the vapid expanse surrounding me. I looked at the glowing screen and saw who it was. Of course, it was Steven. His usual after-fight pitiful apologetic call. “Don’t pick it up, Jessica,” I told myself. “He hurt you again. You told him. If he ever hurt you again, you would leave. And you left. Be strong, Jessica.”
Vacillating thoughts made me pull my car over. I glared at the phone, happy melodies resonating in the night air, making me frustrated with my phone’s stupidity. But the phone was ringing for the third time, and time to decide was running out. Already regretting my poor judgment, a shaking hand reached down to the phone and I answered.
“Hello?”
“Hey,” he replied, waiting for me to make the first statement.
“What do you want, scumbag?”
“Baby, you know I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“Really? Because usually the words ‘I want you to go to Hell, you deserve to die a horrible death,” aren’t accompanied by an accident, Stevie.”
“I was angry, okay? How do you expect me to react when I find out I’ve been laid off of my factory job?”
“Not beating your girlfriend and taking drugs after you swore to he on your relationship that you were done with them.”
“Jessie, please don’t bring that up. I told you I quit, and I quit. This was just a tiny relapse. I promise, I’m through. Please come back home.”
“Not after what you did to me, Steven! I’m not going to go back to a place where I’m going to get hurt, and waste away the rest of my life knowing I had my chance to get out of it!” I was screaming loudly now, extremely grateful that the highway was empty except for me.
“I’m so sorry, baby. I’m so sorry. Please forgive me, I messed up.”
“You’re so pitiful, Steven. I’m not coming back to you. I’m taking my chance to leave and I’m leaving.”
“But what about your clothes, your money. You’re going to leave it all here? Please just come back, and we can figure it all out. I love you, baby. Come back.” I was so confused at his statement that I hung up the phone. And I sat there for half and hour, letting the silence and darkness envelope me until I finally started the car. Every scar started to sting with anger as the tears started to come. I found the nearest opportunity to turn around, and I head back the bad place.