Cruel Summer | ✓

chapter twenty-nine

I don't feel refreshed when we leave at seven in the morning. I slept terribly, stressed and nauseated and tossing and turning all night long, and now I'm groggy and out of sorts and really fucking glad Lou stopped me from getting in my car last night. I don't know what I was thinking. There's no way I could've driven more than a third of the way without needing to stop for the night.

The drive to Boise is smooth, traffic easy. We're at the airport in plenty of time and instead of taking me to the drop-off zone, Lou parks up and walks with me to the departures lounge, her hand a reassuring pressure in mine. I don't want to leave her. I want to go back to her cabin and get back into her bed and fall asleep with her arms around me. I want my mom to be fine. I want my parents to get back together. But I can't have any of that right now, so I settle for a tight hug from Lou. I hold on for way longer than necessary.

"Let me know how it's going, every step, okay?"

"I will," I promise. "I'm sorry for all this drama."

"You don't need to be. I'm serious, Charlie, it's okay. I'd be the same if my mom was in this position. Let me know how she is."

I have to leave her eventually, and I kiss her like I don't know when I'll be back. Saturday, I tell myself. It's only three days away. I am not so codependent that I can't manage three days away from my girlfriend. I can't be. I cannot be that pathetic.

I feel like I'm sleepwalking. Lou handled online check-in for me last night so all I have to do is get through security and find my gate, but it feels like a blur, like I find myself standing in the waiting area for the flight to Denver with no recollection of getting there. I don't even look at my ticket properly until boarding starts, and only then do I see that I'm in first class. I refresh the boarding pass in case it's a mistake but it's right there in black and white.

are you aware you bought a first class ticket?!!?! I text Lou, though she won't even be halfway back to Fisher yet. When the flight attendant scans my ticket I wait for it to flash up red, for there to be some mistake, but there isn't. When I get to my seat, it's spacious and padded and there's no middle seat, an extra-wide arm rest between me in 3C and the guy in 3D. It's been years since I flew and it was nothing like this. I ended up crammed into a middle seat because I forgot to do the online check-in until a couple hours before the flight, and the guy in the window seat must've got up to pee twenty times in the time it took us to get from Austin to New York. Zahra and I laughed about it afterwards but in the moment, it was hell.

This is luxury. Sure, it's only a two hour flight, but this takes the sting off of the morning. I send a selfie to Lou and a picture of the runway out of my window. you're amazing thank you so much, I say. lmk when you're home. I'll be in Denver in a couple hours.

I go back to my emails to find the e-ticket to double check the time of my flight from Denver to Rapid City but I accidentally open the payment confirmation and my eyes bug out when I see the total. Eleven hundred dollars. Lou dropped over a thousand dollars, like it was nothing, for me to see my mom. Just to check up on her, to assuage my guilt. Fucking hell. It's so much more than I thought it would be and I laugh at myself for thinking that what's left of my refund money, after yesterday's lunch and shopping, would cover it. I couldn't afford half a ticket.

What am I doing with my life? If it wasn't for Lou I would've had to have driven because I haven't worked in more than a month and my savings were shit to start with. I can't stay in this Fisher haze sponging off Lou forever because it won't be long before my bank starts charging me overdraft fees and then what? I need to find a job. My standards were already on the floor but I'm going to have to lower them.

*

Everything goes as smoothly as it can when it comes to air travel, no issues with my connection in Denver, and I'm flooded with relief when I get into a taxi outside of Rapid City Regional Airport. I let Lou know that I've landed and I let Mom know that I'm fifteen minutes away. The taxi driver isn't interested in small talk, thank god. He turns up the radio, some regional channel filled with commercials for local businesses, and I spend the entire ride staring out of the window. Mom sends a heart in response so I at least know she's alive, that she hasn't drunk herself into alcohol poisoning or choked on her own vomit. Turns out being in the air for three hours, cut off from the internet and cell service, is a great incubator for my growing anxiety.