Penny for your Thoughts

Penny for your Thoughts 

There was the sensation of falling, but not the type of falling that was only a slight drop in your stomach before the ground came roughly up to meet parts of your body you’d have preferred to remain out of the dirt. No, this was falling that felt like flying, like there was this infinitesimal moment when you could forget that gravity applied to you. Everything seemed to be happing frame by frame. Each second dragged out into minutes, perhaps hours as my brain dashed thoughts together was no clear direction.

Falling, falling, falling.

Then there was black.

…

“The sun often shines in the morning, but rarely at night.” My dad echoed his favorite phrase and I turned my head a quarter in his direction. The trees at highway speed were more the suggestion of color than anything else, but still something I wanted to look at more than I wanted to have this conversation again. “Penny for your thoughts, Penny?”

Another favorite phrase. I squeezed my eyes shut to keep from rolling them.

“Oh leave her be.” Hanna-lie said in that voice that made me want to hit something. Preferably something that was her plastic perfect nose.

“I know you don’t like the idea of moving…” Dad continued and I turned my head away before I could see his frown in the rearview. I clenched my teeth together to keep from screaming. We had had the same conversation a dozen times. I had screamed. I had cried, I had even begged.

There was nothing that changed his mind.

…

“Tell me something weird or funny or just something with words.” Kelsey pleaded. I was laying on her rug. It was so shaggy that I thought perhaps if I laid long enough on it that I could be assimilated into the soft white faux-fur and not have to face the reality that had me running to my best friend’s house for the second time this week.

“My horoscope said I’d be facing a big move be it in my career or personal life. It said to be careful to avoid pot holes.” I muttered darkly and Kelsey pealed a snorting sort of laugh.

“And they say that stuff is nothing, but crap.”

…

The sound was the first thing to return. A rushing noise like how it sounds when you put a conch shell to your ear. It’s the ocean and your pulse at the same time. An illusion and a memory. David was crying. Pitiful, mewling sort of crying that wrenched my eyes open.

Red.

…

“I spy with my little eye…something…red!” My brother said excitedly. My eyes were red. Heavy and gritty, but surely David wouldn’t have noticed something like that.

“A truck, sweetheart?” Hanna-lie intoned.

“No!” David clapped his hands together. His booster seat creaked as he leaned towards the window, small fingers splaying out across the glass and leaving smudges from the goldfish he’d had earlier. “Do you give up?”

“Why don’t you guess Penny.” Dad ordered; his eyes meeting mine for the first time in an hour. I sighed and cast my gaze around the car for something red.

“This McDonalds’s french-fry box.” I mumbled, toeing the offending piece of garbage out of my foot well and into Davy’s.

“No.” David chastised wiping his hands on his pants. “Do you give up?”

“Yes.” I said before anyone else had a chance to say anything.

“It was a car. As red as a cherry.” He said proudly and Hanna-lie crooned. I was going to be sick.

I closed my eyes and rested my head on the back of my seat. The light of the sun baked my eyelids to red disks.

…

“Has anyone seen my golf shirt? The red one with the little whale thing on the pocket?” Dad asked. I reached behind me and pulled a wad of fabric from behind me on the couch and held it out without looking up from my phone.

“Dad. Here.” I said and he stopped to grab the shirt from my hand and shake it out. The wrinkles stayed.

“Thank you Penny. I’m going golfing with my boss today. Fantastic opportunity. Maybe even a promotion.”

“Um hu. Okay sure Dad.” I mumbled as I arranged colored gems on the screen in front of me.

The line of six red gems finished out the level.

…

I blinked. White lights were bobbing in front of me, winking in and out of focus like fireflies. There was still that whooshing sound like the ocean, but it wasn’t the ocean.

Highway.

Something was ticking. Tick. Tick. Tick. The sound metal makes as it cools. There was something heavy on my chest. My fingers fluttered. There wasn’t enough light to see.

Nighttime.

A flash of white illuminated the space outside my window. It wasn’t my window. There was a box. The pearlescent sheen of the kitchen plates catching light for a moment before winking into darkness again.

Davy was still crying, whimpering softly now. His breath hitching in his chest.

Scared.

It reminded me of a song our mother used to sing…something blue. It was a stupid song, but it always made Davy laugh.

…

“It’s getting late Dave.” Hanna-lie said. The sky had long since gone to twilight. I had my hand flat on the window as if I could catch the last of the day’s light between my spread fingers. I had given up being angry. I had given up being sad. I was just tired. So, so tired. I just wanted to close my eyes and go to sleep. David was sleeping, his head lolled into the alligator shaped seatbelt pillow he had, blonde curls falling into his face.

“It’s only another hour and a half.” Dad said quietly, his voice jarring any notion of sleep from my mind. I lazily turned my head to see an electric blue car race by us with music thumping so loud I felt it in my bones. Dad jerked the wheel.

…

“It’s charming isn’t it?” Hanna-lie said as we all stood in front of the modestly sized blue house. It had a white picket fence and a for sale sign staked into the green lawn with a red SOLD sticker across the front. It was so cliché that I resisted the urge to rub my eyes and wake up.

Dad had gotten the promotion. Three and a half hours from the only life I had ever known. Three hours from my school, my friends and Mom.

“Chin up Penny, the realtor says this is a super up-and-coming neighborhood. There are a lot of kids your age. The schools are good. There are parks and even a public swimming pool only a few miles down the road.” Dad was saying, but all I heard was that I would be the new kid, starting in the middle of the year. It would be easy for him. He already knew people at work. Davy was so extroverted that he made friends just by smiling at them. I looked at the blue house and the blue sky and felt the color settle into my heart.

…

A curtain hung in front of my eyes, worthless pale gold. All American gold. It caught the red and blue strobes, painting it garishly like some Fourth of July dye job gone wrong. David was crying. Someone was calling my name. Over and over again. Hanna-lie’s name. Over and over again. The kitchen plates were still out the window, only it wasn’t the window.

Sunroof.

Something was moving outside, the shadows shifting and coalescing into monstrous shapes. They crunched the plates, each one shattering under their weight. The sound pounded against my ears, like one more insult. Just another piece of my old life dashed.

Crashed.

Broken.

…

There was the sensation of falling. Only it wasn’t the type of falling that ended with only a second between that drop in your stomach and the ground raising up to meet you. It was the kind of falling that lingers. The kind of falling that felt like you had one moment been standing on solid ground and next found out that it had really been a rug that someone had pulled out from under you.

It was the kind of falling that promised more than a bruised knee.

There was the sensation of moving, motion out of control. It was movement that rocked into you like an ocean wave cresting over your body. One moment it was crushing, the next it was dragging.

There was the sensation of rolling. What did I do with my arms? It wasn’t like a rollercoaster where you screamed with delight as your body went up and over, around and around. That was controlled, this was chaos.

Someone was screaming.

Davy wasn’t sleeping anymore.

…

“Text me, call me, message me, alright?” Kelsey pleaded as we clung to each other.

“Of course.” I said thickly trying so very hard not to cry. My world felt like it was spinning out of control, like I was a boat come unmoored and cast to sea.

“We can still be friends.”

“The best.”

…

There was the sound of glass breaking. Davy’s crying faded. Dad was calling my name.

“Get Penny. Help Penny. Help my daughter, please.”

“Penny can you hear me?” The white light stabbed at my eyes as I turned them towards the man hanging into the car. He was half draped over David’s booster seat. Another man was reaching for Hanna-lie. She was reaching back; there was something red on her fingers.

My chest felt heavy.

“Penny can you hear me?” The voice repeated. My fingers fluttered to my chest. A grey sash hung me sideways.

Seatbelt.

The man was touching my arm. I dragged my gaze back to him.

“I’m going to unbuckle you, alright?”

I found myself nodding.

There was the sensation of falling, but this time it only lasted a second. I was reaching back up towards the man, he was dragging me out.

I was standing on my own feet. The car didn’t look right laying on its side. It’s black belly at odds with its white top. The red and blue lights reflected across the splintered glass.

There was the sensation of falling.

Arms wrapped around me and I clung to them. I was crying. “I’m sorry Dad. I’m so, so sorry.”

Dad murmured into my hair.

“Don’t worry Penny, I won’t let you go.”