C H A P T E R   17:  The Beetle and the Pothole

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It was early in the morning. It couldn't have been any more than 7:30, and it was raining. Hard. To Skylar, the lightening shot across the sky like the wires in a light bulb, and the thunder sounded like glass exploding into the atmosphere.

Skylar was sitting on the steps to the office of V&L's Motel. His elbows were propped on is knees, and his chin rested heavy in his hands. He was safe and dry beneath the awning, until he stuck a hand out and the muggy rain pelted his palm. He watched as the bigger droplets exploded into smaller particles against his palm, and within a moment he felt like he was having a breakdown.

This is wrong. Everything is wrong. I can't do this, he thought.

He wasn't supposed to stay anywhere this long, or have dinners with families, and take girls out to restaurants, or confide in them with anything that even remotely reminded him of his old life. He could feel the ghosts he believed lived in the air crawling beneath his eyelids and into his head, where they pulled all of those memories to the front of his mind. He thought of Matt and the twins and Leah. He thought of how disappointed they were when he left, and the guilt that strangled his heart was almost enough to make him walk the thousands of miles back to them. But then he thought of how many times he had almost ruined their lives, and how much more damage he would've caused if he had stayed. He would have probably overdosed, and he couldn't bear putting them through that. He couldn't bear the people who once loved him the most having to bury him like he buried Jackie. The thought of Jackie still burned his throat and the back of his eyes to this day, and, my god, if he had stayed, they probably would've ended up running like he was now, and this was no way to live. This wasn't even living. This was a suicide as slow as a pack of cigarettes a day.

"Hey, kid," Violet grunted through the screen door of the office.

Skylar signed heavily. He couldn't handle any social interaction, especially with someone as difficult to handle as Violet. She was the last person he wanted to see. He just wanted these people to leave him be and stop making everything harder than it had to be.

"Oh-ho-ho," she snickered. "Don't sigh like I'm inconveniencin' you."

Skylar's back was to the door, but he already knew she looked annoyed.

The hinges screamed as she pushed her way through the screen door. Her stained, blue slippers that she wore more often outside than in scuffed across the porch until she was standing beside him. She couldn't see his face. His head hung low, staring at the black, horned beetle drowning in a pothole flooded with rainwater.

Violet's hips popped as she bent over, placing a long, silver chain over Skylar's head. She dropped it around his neck and it made a quiet slap against his chest.

"Found this in the bottom of the washin' machine from the last time I did ya laundry."

Skylar looked down at his chest, his eyes following the tarnished silver to where it hung the heaviest in the middle of his chest. The chain wasn't exactly silver anymore. It was a shade of penitence in brass, suggesting it had led a life more unfortunate than Skylar. But no thing could feel as unforunate as Skylar, not as he sat there a thousand days into this pursuit of nowhere, watching his reflection in the pothole of the drowning beetle.

Hanging around his neck was the silver five-point star an old friend, Jake, had given him the Christmas a few days after Jackie's death. He hadn't seen that necklace since March of 2008... and he never wanted to see it again.

Jake's face was appearing in flashes behind Skylar's eyelids. All of Jake's smiles, and his laughs, and the way his brows furrowed when he was upset or confused, and every time he cried, and the way his eyes became glossy when he saw Skylar, and that hopeful look on his face when all he wanted was to be forgiven for rambling too much about a starry-eyed, doped up boy who could never love him back.

The ghosts were working their way through Skylar's bloodstream. His inner elbows burned and itched and he wanted to peel back the skin and rip them out. He felt sick. Like he needed to retch everything inside of him.

"Are you alright?" Violet asked, and for once she looked genuinely concerned.

Skylar stood up too quickly, swaying dangerously on his heels. "Here," he croaked, pulling a wad of bills out of his pocket.

"Wha-"

"Take it!" he hollered, his voice breaking as he tossed the money at her. "I'm done with the room!"

There was a throbbing in his head, and everything was too bright. He wanted to shut it all off; Violet's shocked expression, the memories, the rain, the beetle still thrashing around in the pothole. All of it.

Skylar took off in the rain across the parking lot to where the Chevelle sat, reflecting the lilac sky and the lightening on her hood. He had already placed his duffel bag in the trunk when he left the room and Scout in it, sleeping without the slightest idea of the hurricane erupting inside him. He was torn about leaving, but not now. Now he wanted to leave this town as not even a distant memory. Less than that. He wanted to not remember it at all, even Scout. She was no different than any other girl he had met and knew he'd disappoint because he could never give them what they needed. She had all of the potential of a funnel cloud, but he couldn't convince himself that she was different. He told himself that Scout was as gray as every other girl, and gray was the color he couldn't live with.

Skylar gunned it down the road, and in a few minutes, he was pulling into Scott's garage.

Scott was standing in the doorway, rubbing his eye with one hand, and holding a steaming mug of coffee in the other. He had just woken. He expected his daughter to crawl out of the passenger seat, but when just Skylar appeared out of the Chevelle, his brows furrowed.

"I thought Scout was with you," Scott said. "And why are you up so early in the morning? I told you to take today off. You've been working damn-near everyday since I hired you."

Skylar spoke lowly and distantly. "I'm leaving."

Scott's mouth was slightly agape. "But-"

"Scout's at my hotel room, asleep. And it's time for me to move on. I told you I wouldn't be here long. I just need my last payment from you, and then I'm gone."

Scott sighed. This wasn't what he wanted, but he was never one to argue.

"Yeah, uh," Scout reached a hand into his pocket, pulling out a few twenties. "I was gonna drop by the motel later to give this to you."

Skylar pocketed the cash and went to climb into the Chevelle, but Scott's hand on his shoulder stopped him.

"Son, you can't keep livin' like this. Don't run away from people who care about you because of one person who didn't take care of your heart well enough."

"You don't know anything about that," Skylar muttered, brushing Scott's hand away.

Scott smiled, sadly. "But I do. I was married once."

Skylar wanted to return the expression, but he couldn't, and all he could say was, "I was never married, but I was taught that there always comes a time to leave, and when it's that time, don't fuss. Just leave quietly."

"I can respect that, I supposed," Scott said. "After all, I can't argue with a man whose mind is already made."

Scott reached out an oil-stained hand. "Just know that you always have a home in Santan Valley."

Skylar wanted to protest, to shout that he had a home nowhere, that he could never come back here, and that he wanted Scott to stop being so nice to him because he didn't deserve it. But instead, he shook Scott's hand quietly. There was no use in making a fuss. He was leaving anyway.

A hoarse, breathy voice filled the garage, and when he looked to his right, he knew leaving quietly was now out of the question.

"What's going on?" Scout had asked.

When Skylar and Scout's eyes connected, he didn't feel fireworks or warmth or the overwhelming urge not to leave her. He felt like running away because he thought that was what was best for her. The keys to the Chevelle burned in his palm, and if Scott would've just let him leave, he would've missed Scout and been halfway out of Santan. He felt like the beetle.

"Skylar is leaving," Scott said, his tone heavy.

Scout's mouth was agape. Her right hand met her lips, and a sob escaped. A sob that Skylar swore he could feel in his bones. It was like a hairline fracture; not significant enough to make him stay, but just enough to make him sorry.

"I just," Skylar sighed, his shoulder's heavier than they had ever been. "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. 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 just drown already and get it over with.

"WHY?" she hollered.

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

"DO WHAT?!" she hollered. "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?"

His eyes stung, suddenly redder and glossy. The weight of all the sadness he had carried around his whole life was baring down on his chest, constricting his rib cage until it cracked and pierced his lungs. "All of it," he whispered painfully. "I can't be what you need."

"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?"

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? 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. He was making a fuss when he didn't want too, and apart of him knew she was right anyway.

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

He almost scoffed at her. "I've had years of practice."

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. And to Skylar, her eyes... Oh, God. They were hazel and honey, and in another life they were his deliverance. Looking at her then, her eyes were like spending a decade in the arctic, and then traveling south to see sunlight on mossy stone. Just as quickly as he had admired her, he shut it off. He couldn't feel that way. He can't. There were so many girls that crossed his path who deserved to be loved, and he couldn't give them what they needed. This was no different. Scout was no different.

Skylar turned on a dime. He had never gotten into the Chevelle and started her up so fast. He needed to leave before he made another fuss, but when he looked in the rear-view, the reflection of his tail lights in Scout's eyes crushed him.

Skylar drove back to the motel, but not to stay. Something compelled him to pull the struggling beetle out of the muddy water, but by the time he had gotten to the pothole, it was floating belly-up.