The Glass Passenger

Rachel sighed as she tilted one of the hospital windows open. It had begun to rain steadily in the morning and now the rain was pelting to the ground with such force that it was bouncing off the pavements.

She knew how much Alex liked the smell of the rain, so she had opened the window to let the smell fill the room. She hoped that it would replace the smell of disinfectant wipes but she had little hope, it was the scent that just belonged to hospitals. She turned back from the window, not knowing that all the while the ghostly Alex had been right next to her.

It was torture for him to be so close to her and unable to touch her. He could touch Annie and he could physically pick things up, but the contact with other humans was impossible. Alex swallowed the great lump that had risen up in his throat as he tried to keep his composure. He ignored Annie’s pitying looks and instead focused on Rachel.

She had bent down to lift Sebastian out of the bag, which she had delicately placed on the ground. She had been successful in sneaking him in again and the minute that Sebastian was free he ruffled himself and trotted off around the room, sniffing and identifying the objects that came in his way.

Rachel was still rooting around inside her bag and after a while pulled out a small tape player and a mini tape. Carefully holding these objects in her hand she moved to sit with her legs curled up against her upper half, in the chair beside Alex’s bed. She pushed the mini tape into the tape player and took a deep breath in before pressing play.

“Raaachel baby! It’s me! We’re somewhere in the Midwest today, Matt says that we’re heading into Milwaukee tonight but you know me and geography. Where the Flyzik says we go: we go. No questions asked. Not much has happened since yesterday except Zack dropped a dumbbell on his toe and it’s gone blue now. If it goes black Jack said he’ll wrap an elastic band around it for Zack before he goes on stage and it’ll drop off painlessly after a while. Well that’s what Jack said… Baby Matt’s calling me back to the bus so this might be the last call until we’re up in Milwaukee, I don’t know what the signal is like up on these roads so I’ll call you as soon as I can. I miss you horribly. Can’t wait to come home. I love youuuuu.”

There were a few moments of silence in which only the pattering of the rain could be heard. Even Sebastian had stopped moving at the sound of his master’s voice.

“Rachel babe?”

Rachel turned around slowly, with tears in her eyes and saw the boys standing just a few feet behind her. They had come in halfway through Alex’s message and at the sound of Alex’s voice had frozen. It was Jack who had called out her name.

“I just…” she faltered, unsure of how to explain the situation to Jack. “I haven’t heard his voice in so long.”

Jack pulled up a chair and sat next to her, taking a hold of her hand and giving it a tight squeeze. Zack and Rian stood at the foot of Alex’s bed wearing unreadable expressions.

“He always called me everyday on tour and left those silly messages. I’d save them and record them on tape so I could listen to them whenever I missed him. I found one of the old boxes yesterday when Zack sent me home. They’re all I was listening to last night.”

This admittance of Rachel surprised Alex, who too had grown upset. He didn’t know that she had saved all the phone calls. There must be a huge stack of ikea boxes hidden somewhere inside their apartment that he had not known about.

“It’s just I haven’t heard his voice for nearly a month now I…” Rachel faltered as she clutched the tape player to her chest. She wasn’t sure if she should carry on with what she was about to say.

Jack looked at her entreatingly.

“You can tell me Rachel, it’s ok.”

She couldn’t meet his gaze as she took a shuddering breath in.

“After all these weeks of silence I was starting to forget his voice, the way he said certain words. I can still hear his laugh the whole time, but it’s the simple things that I took for granted that I can’t seem to hold on to.”

She let the tape player drop into her lap as she pressed her hands to her mouth to keep the sobs from escaping. Her tears rolled down her cheeks and over her shaking hands before Jack found a tissue in the depths of his pocket and brushed them off.

“Shh,” he said soothingly as he put a secure arm around Rachel’s shoulders. “It’s ok, I know what you mean, it’s horrible how the most talkative person we know is suddenly so silent.”

Rachel could only nod, she didn’t trust herself to speak. It would be too much to ask. Instead she stayed quiet, she didn’t want to be a further burden on Jack. He too was struggling with the situation and she couldn’t stand to add more to his worries.

Alex turned his head away from the scene in front of him. The pain in his stomach had at this point built up in him so much that it was almost crippling. It was far more painful than the collision with the car had been. To see everyone he loved hurting caused him great distress, especially at this point because there was only one charm left. So little left to do but still such a long way to go.

Today Annie did not press for Alex to tell the tale of the last charm. In some strange way she did not want this to be the last charm. It would be horribly lonely without Alex.

“So I guess I should start…’ Alex faltered as he looked up at Annie who was chewing her lip nervously.

She only nodded as Alex cleared his throat looking down at the charm bracelet that lay in his hand. The sunlight that streamed through the window hit the last charm: the little Frog Prince charm with a tiny golden crown.

It had been a long day for Rachel. She had arrived back in Baltimore from New York in the early hours of the morning and had spent the rest of the afternoon unpacking her bags, cleaning and sorting out the apartment. The gallery was on a spring break and so she could allow herself to settle in her and Alex’s apartment for longer than a weekend. She had also done all the food shopping and taken Sebastian and Diehard out on a walk.

By the time Alex had returned from band practice Rachel was spread out half asleep on the couch, one arm covering her face and the other dangling off the sofa. Alex had been tempted to jump up beside her, but this would have been a high mortality risk and so instead he perched at the edge of the sofa and woke her up with a gentle kiss.

“Mmmh hey you,” Rachel said sleepily as she rubbed her eyes and sat up straight, reaching out to take a hold of Alex’s hand.

“Long day right?” Alex asked as he traced circles on the back of Rachel’s hand.

She just nodded and leaned forward, resting her head on Alex’s shoulder. She was glad that she could be with him now for two weeks, especially during the two weeks that were leading up to another tour for the boys. She loved to see their energy during their practices and feel their enthusiasm, but most of all she loved it because during these times Alex would dote on her more so than usual. This was chiefly to do with the fact that he would not be seeing her for a long time, but also because he felt guilty that he was leaving again.

“Zack is having a party tonight and I said we’d show up, but you seem pretty tiered so I’ll just call him up and tell him we’re taking a rain check.”

“Don’t be silly, you should still go I won’t be much fun tonight anyway. I’ll go to bed early.”

It was another one of those things that he loved about Rachel; she never resented him or made him feel bad for hanging out with his friends. She knew how important his friends were to him, and so she tried to make the decisions regarding allocation of affection and time as easy as possible for Alex.

Later that night Alex gave her a goodbye kiss as he headed out the door and promised to behave and be back relatively early. She smiled as he left and once the door was shut crawled onto the sofa with her duvet, wearing an oversized t-shirt of Alex. She settled down with one of the books that he had given her for her birthday. It was a rare edition of collected fairytales by the Brother’s Grimm. It had a beautifully decorated front cover and the edges of the paper were golden.

He had known about Rachel’s affinity for children stories for a long time now. She loved the dreaminess of them and the escapism that was allowed through them.

She only just about managed to finish the story of the Frog Prince before her eyes became heavy and eventually dropped shut. She was sleeping deeply and dreamlessly when she was ripped out of her comforting black void by the continuous ringing of her doorbell. She placed the book that had fallen to the floor back on the table before she looked at the clock on the wall and saw it was just past three in the morning. She knew it would be Alex. He was probably too drunk to fit the key into the keyhole, so with a smile on her face she walked to the door barefoot and opened it.

To her surprise Alex wasn’t alone, Zack and Rian were supporting him. To her horror she realised that his nose was bleeding and he had a black eye.

“Christ what have you done to him?” she asked in horror as she pulled the door open completely and ushered them in. She pointed them in direction of the living room where they placed Alex gently on the sofa, moving the duvet to one side.

Alex’s injuries looked, if possible, even more horrifying in the bright light. His nose was bleeding profusely and it was then that Rachel realised just how red blood actually was. She legged it into the kitchen and came back with a bowl of water and a first aid kit. Zack and Rian were trying to keep Alex upright but failing miserably.

“What happened?” Rachel asked as she stood between Alex’s legs, wiping the blood off with a damp cloth.

“Well everything was going fine until literally a couple of minutes ago. Well maybe Alex had been drinking a bit too much but that’s not really the point…” Zack faded out looking at Alex skeptically.

“The point is that,” Alex shouted rather loudly slurring his words, “some stupid mother fucker wanker asshole asked me where my skanky girlfriend was. So I hit him. Ow what was that for?”

At this point Rachel had just gotten out the antiseptic wipes, and when Alex had declared the last sentence she had accidently pressed down on too much the wound over his eyebrow causing it to sting considerably.

“You punched him?” She asked incredulously as she looked down at her battered boyfriend. She wasn’t sure if she should be shocked or proud. Alex was generally quite a pacifist, but apparently not when it came to people’s negative opinions of Rachel.

“He was being a lying bastard asshole and was calling you a skank. He deserved to be punched.”

“Only that guy had a pretty mean right hook,” Rian interjected earning himself a hearty glare from Alex.

Rachel sighed as she dumped the bloody damp cloth on the coffee table. She turned to Zack and Rian with a smile on her face. There had been several incidents when the boys had come back home supporting Alex. It was thanks to them that he came home in one piece. For that she was always thankful.

“Thank you guys for bringing him back home. I’ve got it under control now.”

After having walked them to the door and given them each a goodbye hung, she walked back into the living room and sat down next to Alex cross-legged on the sofa: the first aid box in her lap. She carried on dressing the wound above his eyebrow and cleaning up the rest of the mess, whilst Alex looked at her sheepishly.

“You know you don’t have to do that every time some guy decides to be a jerk,” Rachel said softly as she put a plaster on the gash.

“I know I know,” Alex repeated, still slightly intoxicated. “But you know I was trying to be all chivalrous and noble you know defending my lady and so forth.”

Alex glanced around the door, trying to make his eyes focus again and to make the room stop spinning, when he saw the book of fairytales sitting next to a bloodied cloth on the table.

“I just wanted to be the one that got you out of crazy situations even if you weren’t in them personally like the princes in those stories do,” Alex rambled on not really caring if he made much sense. He knew Rachel was listening anyway. “You know that ever since I’ve been with you I’ve changed? It’s like I was the ugly and gross frog and you were the princess. You kissed me and I turned into the better person. It’s like that. You make me into a better person every day and so the least Prince Charmingly thing I can do is knock down those mother fuckers who are lying about you. It’s our very own fairytale.”

Rachel smiled up at him. She pushed the first aid kit aside and took his face gently in her hands so as not to add any more damage to his face.

“We don’t need a fairytale because this is real,” she said and caught his lips with her own in a kiss that would make all the fairytale princesses jealous. “But you can still be the Prince Charming frog though, if it makes you feel better.”

Alex finished telling the story with a wide smile on his face, the recollection having lifted his spirits greatly.

But then almost immediately he realized that he had told the last story. There was nothing more to do or say now. Annie seemed to have realized this too and looked up at Alex a little sadly.

“Thank you,” was all that she managed to say.

Alex knew there was a lot else she wanted to tell him but those were things that could not be put into words. He nodded his head at her and took a deep breath in.

“What happens now?”

Annie just smiled her smile at him and took the charm bracelet from him. She held it in her hands and looked at it, finally understanding it’s meaning, it’s symbolism and what it stood for.

“There is nothing to do any more Alex,” she said softly. “It’s over.”