Down and Out

After an hour or two of driving, the broken girl in the passenger seat, he eventually came to a stop in front of a local grocery store, the slight squeak of his brakes seeming earsplitting in the settled silence. He was fairly sure she was awake, but he didn’t want to scare her by speaking to abruptly. He cleared his throat in a way that usually would have made a situation awkward, but in this case, it just shook her from whatever it was that she had been thinking about as she stared out the window, her sunken blue eyes moving as if they were searching. She startled slightly, and moved her head in his direction. Her eyes refused to meet his, but she nodded almost imperceptibly, acknowledging him.

“Are y-” He stopped himself and cleared his throat, as it felt almost like he had forgotten to speak in the long lapse of silence, “Are you hungry or anything?” He almost slapped himself for the stupidity of his question, but was shocked when she nodded her head slowly, reluctantly.

“What do you want?”

She paused, and looked back out the window. After about thirty seconds, he started to think that she had forgotten him or was now ignoring him, but she opened her pale, chapped lips and immediately restored his faith.

“J-just Oreos. O-Oreos and milk.” She said in a voice that sounded like it should belong to a child. No, not a child, he corrected himself, a voice with that much weight couldn’t belong to a child. He almost smiled at her simple request, but her bruises caught the light of the sallow streetlamp above his parked car, and the smile quickly disappeared before it even began.

“Okay, I’ll be right back. Or do you want to come in, too?” He trailed off, not sure what to do. She shook her head quickly and her eyes grew wide.

“No, n-no” She kept shaking her head, and started curling into a tighter circle of herself.

“It’s okay, it’s okay, you don’t have to come. I’ll just lock the door and you can stay here, okay?” He backtracked quickly, watching as she nodded in agreement and backing out of the car slowly.

He walked briskly through the parking lot, trying not to look back and check on her too many times. He almost felt guilty just leaving her there, like he shouldn’t leave her alone, but he just told himself that he would move quicker to make up for it. He dashed through the Wal-Mart, grabbing the food she asked for quickly and starting towards the aisle. He jumped from foot to foot anxiously as the woman checking out and the cashier started in on a conversation about the durability of various scrunchies. When they finally finished, he practically shoved the cash into the woman’s hand and walked away quickly, not leaving time for the bagger touch the items, and mumbling something about “keeping the change”.

The walk back to the car was almost torturous; every shadow around his car turned into the mysterious girl’s previous captor, every noise was the return of the screaming man from the apartment stairwell. He almost lunged into the car, but controlled himself for fear of startling her. Once he climbed in, he handed her the Oreos and milk, and started the car again. He really didn’t know where they were going from here.

“Um.. wh-where do you want me to take you?”

The way she looked at him after she said that was a look he would never forget. Her face was mottled with purplish bruises that caught the light in such a way that she looked like a painting. The curve of her cracked, full lips turned down in confusion. And her eyes. Their faint blue color washed out in the warring lights from the moon and the streetlamps overhead. The epitome of tragedy.

His breath caught in his throat and he kept staring at her, those colorless, tortured eyes staring back, until he removed his gaze from hers and put the car in gear.

“I don’t know.” She said simply.

He didn’t know, either.