Hurricane Heart

Hurricane

We got into the car and I made a deliberate point of turning sharply on the road, skidding round in a circle on the wet ground and speeding off in the exact direction we had come in last night. I drove out of the city, finding the highway we’d come in on and speeding down it in the fast lane, gathering more and more speed until we were hurtling along through the rain. What a stupid plan this was. If the Soulless didn’t kill us, we were surely going to die in a traffic collision.

Long hours drifted by and I put on my heaviest music yet, turning it up unnecessarily loud against the hammering rain. Arjan sat in the front seat beside me, but didn’t say a word all day. When it reached lunchtime, I pulled up on the hard shoulder and told him to go to the boot and get us some food, which he did without question, and returned dripping wet carrying sodden sandwiches and an open pack of apples.

We ate in silence, the car suddenly too quiet as the music had turned off along with the engine.

The rain died down a little bit during the afternoon as we hounded on through Estonia, me seeing it as a personal challenge to see how many miles I could drive before nightfall, not that we would stop anyway, but picked up again as the sky began to darken and we crossed the border into Latvia. It was a deep, smoky blue by the time Arjan spoke.

‘Where are we staying tonight?’ he asked.

I didn’t reply.

After about thirty seconds, he spoke again. It was not what I had been expecting.

‘So that’s what you do, is it?’ he demanded. ‘You don’t like a question, so you just ignore it and hope it goes away? Well I tell you now, it doesn’t.’

I saw a small junction turn off into the trees at that moment, and I sped across the three lanes, receiving several angry honks of horns floating over the pouring rain as I sped off the main road and into the trees.

I stopped the car as soon as we were on a road small enough that we were unlikely to be seen.

‘You’ve got a problem with me?’ I challenged, the bad mood of the morning never having left me.

He looked like he was debating whether to actually bring up his problems or not, which took away some of the heat and drama from the situation, but eventually he did continue.

‘Yes, yes I do actually,’ he said, fixing dark eyes on my face.

‘Well, y’know, you’re not perfect either, Arjan,’ I snapped. ‘I’d much rather not have you around, but I don’t get that choice, do I?’

‘Do you think I would choose to be here?’ he cried. ‘I could be at home, with my family and a life, but no, I’m out here, tied up every evening with some bitch who won’t give me a valid reason for doing it!’

I clenched my fists so I didn’t slap him there and then.

I threw open the car door, stepping out into the dark, soaking wet twilight, the trees not really shielding me from the thick raindrops.

Arjan copied, getting out after and slamming the door, marching purposefully round the car to stand in front of me. He towered several inches taller than me, looking down with a raging, menacing expression.

‘What are we doing?’ he demanded. ‘Where are we going?’

I turned away towards the trees, but he grabbed me by the arm, dragging me back. Instinctively, I tried to lash out, but he held me so I could not hit him.

‘This is what you do,’ he said, his voice rising in volume, saying the same thing as he said in the car. ‘When you don’t like something, you run from it, and you hide.’ He gripped my arms tighter, and anger burned like fire inside me. ‘You think you confront life full on, but you don’t. You run from it. You’re scared of it—scared of the secrets you hide, scared of getting close to anyone, scared of loving anything but yourself and your own pride! You think you’re brave, but you’re a coward, Hurricane! Whatever you find in imagination, you can’t make yourself better because of it, because you’re already afraid of emotion, which is the one thing you can’t be human without.’

I had nothing to say, but I hoped my glare was sufficient. Arjan looked at me, wary but also confident that he’d finally gotten through.

I wrenched my arms out of his grasp, which had gone limp, and turned away.

‘See!’ he retorted suddenly. ‘That’s what I’m talking about! You ignore it, and you hope it goes away.’

‘Well what do you want me to do?’ I challenged, whipping round to face him, damp hair plastered to my head from the rain, and with an expression so dangerous and wild and bitter that he actually took several steps back, down the muddy verge and towards the car. ‘We all have our demons to fight, and it’s none of your fucking business what I do with mine!’

‘Don’t you see, though,’ he cried, throwing his arms out in exasperation. ‘If you would just bloody answer me, it would make things better for both of us. Is it too much to ask that you tell me what I have a right to know? You’ve taken me away from my entire life, and you don’t even have the decency to tell me why! Do you expect me to just sit back and let you do that?’ He paused for just a moment, thinking through how best to proceed. ‘But even more than that,’ he persisted, ‘I’m trying to help you, Hurricane.’

‘I don’t need help,’ I muttered. ‘The only way to make it in this world is to leave everything else behind. I just happened to discover that before most people.’

‘But your life could be so much more if you weren’t running from it all the time,’ he begged. ‘If you only realised what was going on, and opened your eyes to emotion once again, it would be so much better. You more than anyone I’ve ever met is looking for something more; that’s why you looked to imagination and dreams and freedom at such a young age. But you’ve already closed your mind to the most important things in life—friendship, love, happiness—emotions of any kind other than bitterness and anger.’

‘Like I say,’ I replied icily, ‘you don’t live in my world. But in my world, if you become attached to anyone, it’s only a matter of time before you experience betrayal or loss or hatred or regret. And then a little part of you dies. And I can’t take that. Not anymore. It’s already happened too many times.’

I turned and walked away, deeper into the trees. I hadn’t shouted at him now my anger had waned, not really, and I wasn’t sure why. But I had to leave before I did. I could just spend a few minutes on my own, collecting my thoughts, sitting in the cool, dark rain, and then I’d go back. So what if he ran away? So what if the Soulless got their hands on him? He was just another insignificant person in this hideous, cold world.

That was the truth. I could imagine and dream and hope all I wanted, but it wouldn’t change anything. This world was ruined and broken beyond repair, and no amount of dreaming could change it. I didn’t know why I was even still fighting. What was I fighting for, but a war that we’d already lost?

What if the dream was already dead?

The thought was too dark and too terrible for me to even comprehend, and I staggered with the force of it, feeling my throat burn as tears knotted themselves so tightly inside me that I could barely choke them out, breaking into a run and stumbling half-blind through the rain.