Passenger | Unedited Version

chapter twenty seven | you're not sorry

chapter twenty seven | you're not sorry

"What's that supposed to mean?"

Mama gives me a look like I've just lost my mind, which isn't too far off from the truth of the situation. I've been losing more and more of myself the longer I've been away from Indie and hearing that she just left without a comment might just be the last marble that would cause my whole mind to flop. I just can't believe that she would do that to me. I know that we broke up and that can't be good on her, but to betray me in such a sharp way that she knew would sting worse than anything else? Unbelievable.

"She can't be gone. Mama, that's just not possible." If I kept repeating the sentence over and over again, then the words will have to turn into the truth. That's how the world works, right? You can convince yourself of anything in the world and if you believe it, it's true.

Mama doesn't have the same philosophy on what's real and what's fake, however, as she shakes her head again and expands on her knowledge of how Indie left Franklin for God knows where. "Miss Mariam saw her a few hours ago, right before she headed out. Apparently Indie had been coming over to Miss Mariam's house a lot in the past week that you've been broken up and that's probably because of the fact that she's all that she has left in this town. She spent so much time with you that she never really had the opportunity to make friends, you realize that, right? I am not saying this to make it seem like it is all your fault that she left. I am just saying that you were the reason for her to stay in the first place and now that you broke up, why would she have stayed?"

I know that Mama has a point, but I do not want to hear it. What I wanted her to say is that she was really just pulling a late April Fools joke on me or that I was picked to be on the newest episode of Punk'd and after she got to the punchline, Indie would jump out of the side and it would be like we had never broke up in the first place. I know that the chances of that being the reality were slim to none, but it was so much better than knowing that there is now no way of fixing our problems.

"She can't be gone." The words come out of my mouth, but I don't mean them.

Mama picks up on the hopeless tone in my voice and gently tugs me back down to the couch, trying her best to comfort me in the only way possible. When I was younger and was a lot more emotional unstable that I am right now, I would always turn to Mama first without a second of a hesitation. I would rant to her for hours and hours on end. The reasoning for me needed to have the rant session were always changing, ranging from the girl that I had a crush on was talking to someone else in math class or it would be about how I didn't like the kind of people my friends were. But no matter what the topic of the conversation would be, Mama would comfort me in the same way each time; we would sit on the couch for as long as it would take for me to stop crying and after that had been accomplished, Mama would pop in the DVD of Legally Blonde: The Musical and that usually made everything feel a little bit better for a short amount of time. If the musical didn't work, then we would go out to get some ice cream or something to distract me for being able to think for a while. It was a safe approach to deal with my problems, as I wouldn't have to deal with them in the first place.

But that wouldn't work this time.

The ranting was never about how the girl I love has left town and how there is a large possibility that I wouldn't ever be able to see her face again and tell her how stupid I had been for breaking up with her.

Mama has to know that the same ritual we used back then will not work now, but I think she's in the same boat as me. She doesn't want to admit out loud that I'm growing up and maturing in ways that are making everything seem totally different from the way they were when I graduated high school. It's scary to say such a thing out loud, as you can never be too sure if change is a good thing or a bad thing. Change is one of the many things in life that will always fall into the gray area of the spectrum, as it all depends on the point of view of the onlooker and the same exact instance of change can affect two different people and have totally different results. Mama doesn't like change and must be where I got it from.