"Hey, wake up," the delightfully bitchy voice of Kara says as she jams her finger inbetween two of my ribs, hoping to prod me out of a state of preconceived slumber. Preconceived, likely due to the fact that I've been largely ignoring her since I was loaded into my father's car and she hitched a ride. I'm guessing she gave some reason for that, but I was too out of it to pick up what exactly it was, on account of the pain medications that have been pumped into my system since I woke up in the hospital. Well, that's a little inaccurate: I should say since I arrived at the hospital, but at the same time, I wasn't aware of the medicine's existence until I awoken. Either way, with whatever mixture of painkillers, sleep aids, and God knows what other pharmaceutical, kidney killing wonder drugs pumped in me to offset the pain I should be feeling on behalf of the still healing bullet wound in my stomach, I tend to let myself drift off into a consciously unconscious state. An existence where I'm aware of the happenings around me, but am largely apathetic. This isn't much different from me normally, only with added levels of lethargy. In response to her incessant poking and prodding, I simply groan and scoot further away from her. Looking back at both us and the road through the rearview mirror, Jacob chuckles and returns his attention to the road ahead.

I rub my eyes, in disbelief that my father would let anyone else drive his car; his pride and joy. Then, I sigh, and grab onto my left forearm. There's no reason for this, other than scratching, clawing into it as hard as I can; hoping to draw blood. Hoping to feel something. Anything. Anything that isn't this weightless, numb nothingness that is. I dig my nails deep into my skin and rip them out, peeling flesh back and then off. All that remains from the spots where the skin used to be is blood and still, I feel little. A slight improvement from nothing but still not enough.

"What the fuck?"


"What?" I ask with just a hint of obliviousness. By a bit, I mean a lot. My eyes dart from my bloody forearm to Kara's face and I slap on a big, dorky smile.

In return, she shoots me back a glare worth three words: cut the shit. Which I respond to with silence, and smiling wider. For some reason, I felt the need to force her to believe a thinly veiled lie that she already saw right through. If I keep it up, surely it'll start making sense.

"What the fuck's up with you?"

Plenty of things.

"Nothing. Nothing at all."

"You're bleeding from four different places on your arm." The flatness in her delivery really does wonders for denoting just how concerned she is for my well being.


To humor her, and to give myself a reason to discover my own self inflicted wounds in the confines of this ruse (that isn't the obvious of feeling blood pool up over the flesh-- oh wait, I don't feel that thanks to the wonders of medicine), I look down at my arm. It's minimal; not bleeding much but it's certainly noticeable. Barely leaking out of the jagged, uneven ravines of peeled skin but still the first thing anyone would notice besides my head's tendency of lazily falling to one side. Though, that one should be fixing itself soon, whenever the drug cocktail leaves my system.

"It appears I am."

"And you're going to do nothing about it?"

"What can I do?" I ask, sounding as genuinely confused as I possibly could while trying to restrain laughter; which goes about as well as sticking a steak knife into an electrical socket. Instead of sounding confused, I burst into laughter, covering my mouth with the crook of my unscathed arm's elbow. An action that almost instantly causes Kara to cock an eyebrow and silently question my sanity.

Which almost makes me laugh harder.

Almost.

I take a few deep breaths and lower my arm down to my side, and just like that, I'm back to being stonefaced and only slightly loopy. Okay, a little more than slightly.

Kara, as confused as I wanted to come across just a minute or so ago, decides to just leave the topic alone. Her eyes break contact with mine as she looks directly in front of her, into the back of the driver's seat.

"So, how'd you guys get this car?" I ask, as my mind drifts back to the fact that this was in fact my father's car and how unwilling he is to let anyone aside from him drive it.

"Huh?" Jacob calls out from the driver's seat.

"You guys really had to twist my dad's arm to get him to give it to you even for a little bit..." I say more than that, but what comes out of my mouth past is nothing but a bunch of slurred gibberish and half finished words.

"Don't mind her," Kara interrupts without breaking whatever focus she has on the driver's seat and unbuckling her seatbelt. "She's still high off the painkillers."

"What? This is my dad's car, right?"

"No, this is my car."


Letting my head fall all the way to the right, or as far as it could before hitting the window, I stare daggers into the side of his head. That is until Kara's loosely clenched fist hits me in the thigh, and absorbs my attention. For about a second before it shifts to her as she begins to say something that I don't quite pick up. So, to act like I was listening, I smile and nod.

"Well then get out," she says, pressing the button that releases my seatbelt and sends it flying past my face and into its rest position. "We're here."

"Riiiiiiiiiiiight," I say, trying not to swallow my own tongue. Shaking my head to force out whatever distractions plagued me at the moment, and failing horribly in the attempt, I clutch onto the door handle and shove the door open. Shifting my body to face the opening, I stumble out of the car, tripping over my own feet and falling forward before astonishingly catching myself.

"You okay there klutz?" Kara asks with a laugh as she slides out of the car through the door on my side, that I failed to close when I got out.

"Never been better."

"Yeah, right."

She turns, walks over to the car again and whispers something to Jacob through the rolled down passenger's side window before returning to my side.

"What was that all about?"

"Told him to wait; I need to go to the store after I make sure you don't end up face down in the middle of the building's lobby."

"Right. You're too kind, you know that?"

"Just shut up and walk. Or, in your case, shuffle. Shuffle those feet Kendall!" She smacks me on the back, I guess to motivate me or something.

"What the fuck?" I ask through confused laughter.

"Seriously. Start walkin'. I don't have all day."

"Of course you don't."

And thus, we made our way through the apartment's parking lot to our place without anything of note happening.

Ten or so minutes later, could've been less, I'm shit at keeping time, I find myself laying on the couch directly adjacent the door leading into our humble abode, reading the newspaper. More specifically, the obituaries. That's when I run across something interesting. And by interesting, I mean odd and utterly hilarious.

In loving memory
Kendall Savannah Sawyer-Richardson
03/01/1990 - 04/25/2014

Almost instinctively, I reach for my phone and dial Kara's number. Something tells me she was behind this little prank.

We're sorry, the number you have dialed is not in service at this time.

We're sorry, the number you have dialed is not in service at this time.

We're sorry, the number you have dialed is not in service at this time.

We're sorry, the number you have dialed is not in service at this time.