And She Made the Shape of My Heart With Her Hands

Our two days in Canada were over, and now we were heading to Poughkeepsie, New York. That’s right. Poughkeepsie. Try saying that five times fast. Anyway, after traveling to the two stops in Canada, Toronto and Montreal, we road back down to Lowell, Massachusetts.

That means that it’s been about three days since we stopped at that Canadian gas station. That means that it’s been about 72 hours that I was sent in that gross store to retrieve a few of the boys, John being one of them.

I leaned my corrupt arm against the material of the seat behind me. Upon that, I then laid my head down on it, feeling the hard purple plaster against my softer skin. I started to doze off as I looked forwards into the main windshield. The day was still extremely premature, as there were no birds in the white, cloudless sky.

I sighed, trying to keep it quiet because everyone but the driver, Trevor at the moment, was asleep. I, on the other hand, had been awake since at least 3:30 A.M.

I squinted my eyes and looked ahead, just barely making out the red digital numbers of the van. They told no lies when they read 5:16 A.M.

I rolled my conscious eyes. I wasn’t tired one bit. In fact, I was starting to develop a slight headache from trying to force myself to sleep.

Pat was next to me, sleeping like a baby. When we had fallen asleep hours and hours ago, I basically had been lying straight on top of him, but maybe slightly to the side. Unlike me, Pat had fallen unconscious quite quickly, for I had been drawing little invisible doodles with my finger on his shoulder and chest.

Kennedy and Garrett were sprawled out on the floor of the van, much like two sleeping puppies. Jared was sitting upright against the side of the van, a white pillow behind his head, sleeping. Tim was curled up against the arm of the one side of the seat, sleeping heavily.

My eyes lingered over to John. He was on his left side, arms crossed with a blue pillow behind his head. His chest rose and fell with every breath he took. Every few seconds his eyelids would flinch the tiniest bit, as if he were dreaming. His soft caramel locks were messy slightly, yet he still looked immortally divine.

I shook my head back and forth at that last thought. I kept reminding myself that I was taken now. I had a boyfriend. A lovely one, at that.

I sighed again, this time not even bothering to mute it. I slowly got up out of my seat and scooted to the extremely small walkway the van provided at the side of the seats. I carefully climbed over all the sleeping boys, each step cautious and wary. We didn’t need another person ending up in the ER from getting their finger stepped on, especially if they were in the band.

Finally, I had made my way to the very front of the white van, plopping myself in the empty passenger’s seat. I was hoping that maybe if I was in the near presence of an awake being, my thoughts and myself would enter reality and would eventually crawl away from the absurd thoughts that crossed my mind. A distraction. It would work. Well, for the moment at least…

“Good morning,” Trevor greeted, his eyes staying on the road.

“Hey,” I said back. “Where are we?”

“Uh… I’m not exactly sure, but I do know that we’re only like an hour or so outside of Poughkeepsie,” he replied.

“An hour? Ugh,” I groaned, pretending to bang my head against the dashboard.

Trevor chuckled. “It’s not that bad. Hey, it could’ve been an hour and a half.”

“Trevor, you’re so positive sometimes,” I said while smiling a little.

“Well I try,” he said in a soft laugh.

We remained quiet for the next minute. Instead of letting my thoughts drift away to where I knew they would go, I tried to focus on my surroundings.

There were only about five other cars on this highway. There was a pretty red Dodge two cars ahead of us, there was some sort of average silver Mazda exactly in front of us, and leading the line was some ugly Buick. Behind us, there was a type of Sedan, and behind that was what I thought was a brick red Chevrolet.

“This dude in front of me needs to reach the speed limit or he’s going to force me to use the deadly speed of this big white beast.”

I laughed. “Deadly…” I repeated, chuckling again and shaking my head.

Trevor chuckled, too. He sniffed a little. “Didn’t sleep too well, Cara?”

I shrugged. “I guess not. I mean I was out when I first closed my eyes, but I’ve been up for awhile now.”

Trevor sighed as he accelerated the van, steering left a bit. “I warned you about the beast,” he mumbled just as he was entering the right lane once again. The Mazda was now behind us.

I chuckled.

“Anyway, yeah. I get what you mean. You’re unconscious for the first few hours and then after that, it seems as if nothing can get you back to sleep. It’s crazy.”

I nodded my head. “For sure.”

“Is anyone else awake yet?”

“Um…” I turned around and let my eyes wander around the van, my gaze touching each and every one of their sleeping faces. But as my eyes caressed John’s sweet face, his eyes opened drowsily. I froze on the spot. John stayed still and kept his stare on me. I swallowed; trying to kept my breathing regular and my facial features blank.

It was no use, because I could feel the nervousness appearing all over my face. You might as well have written ‘holy shit’ on my forehead in black magic marker.

John blinked at me, as did I. His eyes were very layered in different emotions. The first one was fatigue. It was just a light glaze. Then if you stared a little longer, you could make out the sentiment of fierceness, or intensity. But if you looked just a little longer, just a tad deeper, you could see the true, main emotion covering his beautiful eyes’ stare. It was the soft sensation of extreme liking and fondness, maybe even loving. However it was mixed with a bitter swirl of impair and failure.

This made my breathing falter for only a second. Could I possibly still have-

John’s eyes drooped shut again in slumber. It cut off my last tainted thought.

My chest fell in a muted sigh. I turned back to Trevor. “Uh, no. Everyone’s sleeping still.”

“Hm,” he grunted lightly. “They need to get up soon. I’m hungry and I just saw a sign for IHOP.”

I chuckled lightly, yet still not forgetting what I just saw and what I just thought.