Finch.

I’m driving pretty fast back down towards Norah’s.
Maria said I couldn’t go back. I am anyways.
Imagine if I got pulled over. That would be pretty ironic. I could write a song about that.
There aren’t any lights on inside the house.
Not a scratch or stain on me. More irony.
It’s four a.m.
I can’t wake anyone except Birdie. My beautiful Birdie.
She is already sitting up in the dark, yellow falling over her shoulders.
“What are you doing awake?” I ask.
Eleanor smiles at me, this really big smile, but I can’t really see it in the dark. I know it’s there.
“What are you doing awake?”
“Birdie, we have to go.”
“Why?”
“Matthew is dead.”
She is looking at me, and she continues to do so for a few moments.
“Dead as in…?” And with these words she brings her finger across her neck.
“Yes.”
“You killed him with that double barrel didn’t you?”
She knows me so well.
“Yeah,” I whisper.
“Well then we’d better go, huh?”
Birdie stands up and turns on the lamp at the bedside table.
I can see her now, what she really looks like.
Her smile is so real, it touches her eyes.
That’s when I realized how evil we both are.
She takes my hand, and then she acts really surprisingly. Something I hope for, but not nearly as much as the smile.
Birdie kisses my mouth, just slowly, and just a little, or maybe more, I can’t tell anymore.
She smiles at me more, then turns off the light, and walks out the bedroom door.
We’re in the van.
“You got a cigarette?” Ellie asks, rummaging around the van in the passenger seat.
She hasn’t smoked in ten years.
I hand her one, with a lighter.
It’s as if she never quit.
She blows out the ringlets just like she used to.
“Where are we headed?”
“Mexico,” I answer, and I realize I’m crying.
“Don’t cry Nikki,” Eleanor says, just like she was sixteen. “We’ve got our whole lives ahead of us.”