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Spoke is five miles down the interstate when his phone starts ringing.
All the windows are down and the radio is blaring some nameless pop song and his nail polish is still drying— and fuck it, Spoke is in a good mood. So he grabs his phone out of the cup holder, squinting at the cracked screen to read the caller ID: BIRDIE.
It’s Parrot, because of course it is. Who else would it be! It’s Parrot!
The wind rushing outside is almost as loud as the blood thumping in his ears. The car behind him honks— loud and annoying, annoying, annoying— but Spoke doesn’t care because Parrot is calling him, Parrot wants to talk to him, Parrot gives a shit about him, Parrot—Parrot—Parrot.
He accepts the call. There’s the crackle of static for a moment, before one of them finally speaks.
“Spoke,” Parrot says.
“Parrot,” Spoke all but sings. “Parrot! Parrot, Parrot, Parrot. What can I do for you?”
There’s a split second of silence before Parrot laughs, disbelieving. The sound is fuzzy.
“What can you do for me—? Spoke, it’s been 3 days, and none of us have heard from you! Do you know how worried Planet was? Waking up in the middle of the night to you gone and the driveway empty? How worried I was? You can’t keep doing this, Spoke. I’m serious. You know Planet has finals soon, he’s meant to be studying. But instead, he’s running around trying to find you. Did you even think about either of us? Do you ever, when you pull stuff like this? God, we thought you— Just— Come home. Now.”
With every sentence his voice grows louder and more unsteady. By the time he’s finished, Spoke is bored. Maybe disappointed. He really, really thought Parrot would have something interesting to say this time, something fun, not the same canned bullshit everybody’s been spouting to him.
We’re worried, you’re scaring us, have you taken your meds, when did you last sleep? Are you normal yet? Are you normal now? Can we fix you? How can we help? How can we get you to stop?
The more he thinks about it, the more he can feel the euphoric kick he’s been on starting to slip away. He can’t have that! That would suck!
A car honks behind him. He cranks the radio up higher, higher, higher. It’s almost enough to drown out Parrot, who’s returned to his scheduled intervention.
Almost!
Parrot’s voice is tinny through the cellphone speaker, clearly strained with frustration and what might be worry. But then, there’s nothing to be worried about! But then, Parrot is always worried. Parrot and his fretting. Spoke is used to it by now. It’s almost endearing to him— Parrot is always worried.
Today, it pisses Spoke off.
Parrot is still talking, talking, talking, and oh, he sounds angry now!
“Spoke, listen to yourself for a second,” he’s saying, “What’s more likely? That you’re right, and— and it’s everyone else who’s being unreasonable about this whole thing? Or that we’re all just concerned, and you’re the one having a psychotic fucking break?”
Spoke pretends to consider it for a moment.
“The first one, I think.” He hangs up before Parrot can reply. Spoke knows he can’t help it. It’s just the way Parrot is. He’s fragile, really, Spoke knows; he just can’t understand it. Can’t understand Parrot.
It doesn’t stop him from wanting to, though.
Sometimes he wonders how he and Parrot ever became friends— why they’re even still friends at all; now, more than ever, when Spoke is the best he’s ever been and all Parrot wants to do is drag him back to the way he was before, so fucking miserable and boring.
He just wants to have fun. Is that really so bad?
He wants to shake the other man by the shoulders, wants to make him get it, this is just how he is, he’s full of this restless and electric energy, he has ultraviolence running through his bloodstream, like he’s been tased, like he’s about to burst, and he has to get it out.
He wants to pop Parrot’s pretty head right off his shoulders. He wants to rip himself open, fingers pinching skin, wants to show Parrot everything inside of him. This is who I am, he wants to scream. Get with it or get out of my fucking way. He wants, he wants, he wants.
Can’t you just be happy for me? Why do my good days make you so concerned? Are you jealous? Are you scared? Don’t you wish you could feel this way all the time, too? Do you want to?
Spoke doesn’t bother asking Parrot, doesn’t bother asking anyone at all. He has better things to do.
He has a feeling he already knows all the answers, anyway.
Spoke puts his phone on silent and tosses it into the backseat. Gone. No more squawking (ha ha ha) in his ear, sorry Parrot! Not like anyone else will call anyway.
Another fucking car horn, seriously, why is everything so insistent on ruining today for him? Jesus. The one, or three, or six cigs he’s burned through this morning are barely enough to keep him from getting too pissed off. Maybe a seventh would do the trick.
Another honk.
He sticks a hand out the window and flips off the vehicle honking incessantly behind him because fuck them, that’s why. Annoying assholes. The car swerves a little. Whoops! Both hands on the wheel, Spoke. A crash is a no-no.
He hates to admit it, but Parrot has put a serious dampener on his mood. He was doing just fine before Parrot came calling, he was feeling so good, he was excited and ready to go. And he still feels that way! He does! He does, he does, he swears on his life.
It would just be better if Parrot was here, is all. If Parrot was next to him, riding shotgun, smiling the way he does when he’s really, truly happy, when Spoke says something funny, when Spoke finally does something right for once and gets him to laugh that beautiful laugh. If Parrot’s passenger-side window was down too, and his hair was whipping wildly in the wind and he was happy because Spoke is happy, if he was grinning wide for the simple reason that they’re together. If Parrot was laughing, sticking his hand out the window as Spoke drove fast enough that all the world outside was just a blur, a smear. It would be better if Parrot was with him. With him all the time.
But mostly, he wants Parrot to call again.
And the desire is sudden and acute and it aches like a bruise he can’t stop pressing on. He wants to hear Parrot’s voice. He wants to hear Parrot speak, or cry, or even yell— he wants to keep driving as far out as possible, he never wants to see Parrot again and for it to shatter him into a million different pieces. He wants this fucking car to go faster. He wants this car to ram into the one in front of him, wants to total it until it’s unrecognizable. He wants to never go back home again, to Planet and Parrot and Mapicc and everyone else, to the meds and the psych appointments and the well-intentioned worry. He wants to turn this car around and pull back into the driveway and have Parrot there, waiting for him, wants him to open his arms and let Spoke come crawling back, wants to burrow into Parrot’s ribcage as he holds him together. He wants Parrot to come pick him up and tell him that they’re going to get him the help he needs, that he’s going to be okay, that he forgives him. He wants—
The car to stop veering, for his hands to quit trembling around the wheel, for the honking to stop, for everything to drop dead and go quiet for good, he wants to be anywhere but here—
And he wants to go home. Fuck. He really, really wants to go home.
—
Maybe, 7 hours from now, Spoke will sit on the curb outside a gas station, his rickety old car freshly damaged and parked beside him. Maybe Planet will pull into the parking lot with Parrot in the passenger, and he’ll step out of the car and he’ll see Spoke hunched over a slurpee with a face wet by tears and eyes puffy from crying. Maybe Parrot will say “Oh, Spoke,” in that soft voice of his and Spoke will start crying all over again. And Parrot will take him into his arms and Planet won’t say a word as they get into the car together, Spoke holding on to Parrot like he’ll vanish if he lets go. They’ll go home, probably, and Planet and Parrot will sit him down and they’ll talk about seeing a new psychiatrist, maybe a therapist, trying different medication. And Parrot will hold his hand tightly the entire time. Spoke will finally agree, and he’ll mean it this time. They’ll all sleep together on the pull-out in the living room and Spoke will stare at Parrot’s face in the dark. Parrot will stare right back. Maybe Spoke will finally stop running.
Maybe. But that’s in 7 hours.
For now, Spoke takes gasping and shuddering breaths as he wrangles the car back into the lane. He lifts his foot off of the gas pedal and it aches.
For now, Spoke rolls up all the windows and shuts off the radio with shaking hands.
For now, Spoke pulls into the deceleration lane. The car coasts to a stop. It’s quiet, for the first time in a long time. Everything is still for a moment. He puts his head into his hands. He cries.
In the backseat, his phone begins to ring.