C H A P T E R  16: Orchids

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The thunderstorm outside was one of the greatest. It was eight o'clock in the morning, but, between the brilliant flashes of lightening that shone through the clouds, it was as almost dim as midnight. The rain pelted down on Santan Valley in skewed darts, drumming on the rooftops and sizzling on the shingles that burned in the humidity. There was no breeze. The air was stale and stagnant and partly suffocating.

Beneath one of those rooftops, Scout-Juliet Compton was swathed in bed sheets that smelled of Old Spice and gasoline and rain, wondering how long she had been in room number five of V&L's Motel by herself.

She was mildly hungover. There was a dull throbbing in the back of her head and a corresponding ache in each limb, like phantom pains of where they'd been severed. The rest of her was tingling uncomfortably. She laid still, staring at the ceiling and listening to the rhythm of the rain. She felt like she needed to puke, but there was nothing in her to eject. She had thrown up the Mexican food at some point during the night. She wanted to be upset or raging, but she was just... Just.

When Scout finally found it in herself to roll out of bed, she felt like she left herself tangled in the sheets. Her heart had dropped into her stomach, and she felt like a large part of herself was missing. She couldn't describe the feeling with a word as simple as "sad:" three miserable, self-pitying letters. It was like she was torn up about something that hadn't even happened yet, so she couldn't correlate a word to the feeling.

She sat on the edge of the bed, her fingers collecting the fitted sheet between them. Her hair was a storm all over, and she meant to clear it from her view, but she couldn't part herself from holding onto the sheets. She didn't want to leave Skylar's bed. She felt like that was the only corner of the world that wasn't corrupted by Antonio. It was the only space that wasn't saturated in hues, and scents, and memories of him, but rather a man that had no correlation to a heartbreak as terrible as her last.

She just sat there for awhile, thinking about nothing at all until she began to recall a dream she had. It was like a ghost in the air that slithered into her mind out of nowhere. She didn't know if it was a dream she had had the night before, or at some other juncture of her life, but it was a vivid dream of her dead. Although not the highest on her list of things she hated, being melodramatic definitely ranked, and so she thought that maybe it wasn't really about death; but maybe about escaping this miserable life. In her sleep, the image of herself pale and posed in a bed of orchids surrounded by mourners was the best way to convey it. The funeral was one of the best dreams she'd ever had. She wanted to go back. She wanted to be surrounded by the flowers and the rain-soaked windows of a funeral home as quiet as she was dead. And although she wasn't particuarly religious, she always thought of there being a better place somewhere beyond this life. She wanted to be there sooner rather than later.

And as she sat there still gripping the sheets of Skylar's bed like she could float away through the ceiling, up passed the telephone lines, the hawks, and the clouds, and all of the monotony of Santan Valley, Arizona, (even though that was what she wanted, heights tended to make her nauseous), the thought of that dream transitioned into something less appealing. The thought that she didn't particularly care about her own existence. She thought that, if in some freak accident gravity failed her and a satellite fell from space and landed precisely on room number five of V&L's Motel in Santan Valley, Arizona, and squashed her like a bug on a windshield, that wouldn't really bother her at all. She wasn't suicidal, exactly. She wasn't actively trying to kill herself, but she couldn't say that her purposefully not checking for traffic before crossing the road hadn't happened before. And she couldn't attest that her taking more than the recommended dosage of a medication hadn't happened with many of her prescriptions. And if someone were to hold a gun to her head right now, she couldn't say with absolute certainty that she would plead for her life. Maybe the person with the gun was doing her a favor.

Scout relinquished her hold of the sheets and rubbed her eyes. They were sore and her vision blurred at the edges, but despite that, she noticed how empty the room was. Although Skylar was not a particularly disorderly person, and the only thing that often seemed out of place in the motel room was his duffel bag by the door, that bag was missing. Its spot by the door was as vacant as his usual expression. The only thing left of his in V&L's was his scent in the sheets and a stain of sadness he seemed to leave in the atmosphere of every place he neared; a stain of sadness with the magnitude of a black-hole. She thought that that described Skylar perfectly; more than a hurricane or a car crash or choking hazards on children's toys. He was still the gasps for breath, the squealing tires and the violent tides, but the sadness he left hanging in the vacancy of room number 5 was too heavy for even the ocean to sweep away into its abyss.

There was a flutter in Scout's heart, and as the seconds passed and the realization that Skylar had left her world and all she would know of him was in her sleep, the flutter in her chest turned into slamming doors, screaming, the ringing in your ears after the trigger's been pulled, and how it stings in the shower. It felt like waking up with amnesia. It was like how excitement feels in your belly, but it's not excitement when you're being told you have cancer. But, more than all of that, it felt like curling up in the corner and covering your ears because he came home drunk again and you just want it to be over. Oh, god, was it tragic.

In that moment, she was no longer sure if she had had her heart broken before. None of it felt tantamount to this. She had enjoyed her dream, the quiet funeral sprinkled with orchids of duller hues, but now it felt like she had woken up into a nightmare.

Scout didn't know at what point during her breakdown did she run out of room number five, or how long she had stood in the middle of the parking lot, soaked to the bone from the uncomfortably warm downpour, searching the parking lot over and over for the Chevelle.

The beautiful, obsidian gem that always sat gleaming in the sunlight in the same parking spot Skylar always left it in wasn't anywhere in sight. Another wave of horror and panic shot through her. She wished she wouldn't have woken up. She was having a much better time in her sleep. This was horrible. This was terrible and she didn't want to live this. She didn't want to live in a world where the most interesting person she had ever met left her drowning in the monotony of Santan Valley like her existence was nothing but a blemish to be wiped away. She didn't want to feel like this. After all the people who had left her or broke her heart, she didn't think she could handle this one. This one was much too much.

It was then that she hated Skylar. She hated him with a passion so absolute that it was everything. She hated him for when she broke her ankle running from the neighbor who tried to lure her into his garage in kindergarten. She hated him for that time she got drunk and let that high school dropout feel her up at her first high school party; she was only 13. She hated him for that time Antonio had too much to drink, got a little too rough with her and it hurt to walk for three days. But she really hated him for making her feel safe last night; for making her feel comfortable in a world where the only man she should trust is her father. Skylar didn't deserve to make her feel that way, not if he was just going to leave her like none of it mattered.

She wanted her dad; the only man who really deserved her heart. She wanted to lay her head in his lap and have him hum her to sleep like he used too. And she genuinely wished that she would never wake up.

Scout crashed through the door of her father's garage, panting and soaking wet. Bo's dress clung uncomfortably to Scout's skin. She couldn't tell if the droplets running down her face were tears or rain; they stung her skin the same. She almost called out for her father, but her mouth went dry.

Scott and Skylar stood in the middle of the garage in front of the Chevelle, their hands joined in a firm shake. Skylar's clothes were damp. His ripped jeans and white T-shirt clung to him as desperately as Scout's dress. He was a mess of disheveled hair and raw lips and sad eyes to match a sad soul.

A collection of emotions flooded Scout, but more than anything she was relieved. She wanted to kiss Skylar, shove him, and then cry for a little while. He made a disaster out of her.

"What's going on?" Scout asked, her voice hoarse.

Skylar's eyes shifted to her. They were impossibly sad. More so than usual. It wasn't like the familiar hurricane that spiraled out of control inside of him. It was a cool drizzle in a countryside of lonely oak trees on a long drive. Or the scattered drops that raced down hospital window panes. The kind of weather that suggested it was a good day for a funeral. And for the moment that Scout's eyes connected with his, all she cold think about was orchids.

When Scott spoke, it was like he was Atlas, the Greek God who carried the skies on his shoulders. "Skylar is leaving."

Scout's mouth was agape. She felt something moving through her, something hurtful and all-consuming. Her left hand met her stomach, as if it were holding up the damaged pillars of the empty home in her ribs. Her right hand met her lips, and a sob escaped. If someone had recorded that muffled cry, it could've been the soundtrack to her whole life.

"I just," Skylar began. He sounded like a somber organ piece played at church. "Have too."

"I'll leave you to say your goodbyes," Scott muttered. He gave Skylar's calloused hand another shake, and disappeared upstairs with shoulder's as heavy as Skylar's.

Skylar crossed the shop, never leaving Scout's stare. It was almost like he was floating when he walked, like a phantom in the halls of a place he once loved the most. Or maybe he was floating in a cesspool of his own despair, like the wreckage after the storm. He imagined himself on his back in the middle of the sea being dragged further and further away. He couldn't handle the emotion in Scout's stare. He wished he could be dragged under the surface.

Scout was shaking, then, with something like anger, but it hurt much worse. "WHY? she hollered, her voice cracking like the spiderweb crevices racing across a smashed window.

She knew this would happen. You weren't supposed to become attached to boys like Skylar Glass. He's ugly on the inside. He's angry, and sad, and torn up. He can't cope and he runs when things get hard. He leaves people... the people who love him most. He's ugly and depressive and kind of pathetic, but goddamn Scout for finding a way around his downfalls. Goddamn Scout for seeing him as a beautiful still life in black and white. Goddamn Scout for playing his laugh from last night on a loop in her head. And goddamn Scout for being too intrigued by his chaos to let him go easily because she knew that, underneath it all, there was a field of a million sunflowers and she wanted to live in them.

"Because of this," he said without any audible emotion, gesturing between the two of them. "I can't do this. Don't you understand?"

"DO WHAT?!" she screamed, her arms spread wide on either side of her. "Have a connection with someone? Forge a friendship? Make a home out of this place because there are already so many people here who care about you?! What is it, huh?"

He looked at her with glossy eyes and a tired soul. His shoulders were drooping and his arms were limp, like all that he was was disintegrating beneath the weight of all the sadness he had carried around his whole life. "All of it," he whispered. "I can't be what you need."

Scout's voice was bitter, filled with an anger so decided that it burned her throat like last night's alcohol rotting her insides. It hurt like hell, but it felt better than Skylar leaving. "You say that like I'm trying to fall in love with you, you egotistical bastard."

"No," he said. "I say that like you care about me when we both know you shouldn't."

"What the fuck am I supposed to do, Skylar?" she asked, exasperated and partially still shouting.

He stared tiredly at her, his eyes drooping to match his shoulders, and when he spoke, if it weren't for the acoustics of the garage, she wouldn't have heard a word. "Let me leave."

"How am I supposed to do that?" she barked. "How am I supposed to let you just leave out of my life when I just scratched the surface of who you are? How am I supposed to let you leave when you're the most interesting thing that's happened to this godforsaken town? How do I let you leave when I want to know you better?"

He didn't answer her. He couldn't. What was he supposed to say to that when he felt the same way, even when everything in him screamed that he can't?

She sighed. "You're good at running away from your problems, Skylar Glass."

"I've had years of practice," he said lowly.

They stared at each other for a long time, a good ten feet between them. To Scout, his brown, sad eyes became golden rays circling an eclipse. An eclipse that she wanted to peer into for years to come, but she knew his mind was decided and nothing she could say would change that.

Skylar turned on a dime, and in the time it took for a tear to wash over the brim of Scout's eye, she was staring at Skylar's tail lights as he pulled out of the garage.

And then it hit Scout; the realization that this was the last time she would ever see him, and it killed her. She could feel him burning through her veins like poison in her bloodstream, and she could taste every time his ribs had been broken and he tried to put them back together with cigarette smoke and lips that wouldn't remember his name by morning light because he had left before they could become accustomed to the taste of him. Jesus Christ, she felt like she was dying inside. He didn't make her feel butterflies in her stomach, he made her feel hurricanes erupting at the sight of him, but now she was drowning because she couldn't see him. All she could see were two brilliant rubies on either side of the Chevelle's trunk, and then she couldn't breath. She wanted sunflowers, but all she could see were orchids, and suddenly they weren't beautiful anymore.