Incinerate

Chapter 7 - Say Something (I'm Giving Up On You)

The two-and-a-half-hour drive feels like a crawl. The surmounting impression of doom and demise bears its weight down on me with every passing mile. Its sickness spreads throughout my stomach and infects my brain like a disease. Mom's road trip playlist is full of bright, poppy tunes spanning decades and genres, but the music is not enough to pull me from the fog and into the shining happy sunlight. She either can't tell I'm in a bad and nervous mood, or she doesn't want to make it worse by prodding me about it. Either way, I appreciate the lack of interrogation.

The late morning rolls into mid afternoon as we reach our old hometown. It almost feels like we never moved at all. Everything is right where we left it, down to the kids playing in front yards to the construction zones. To be fair, we haven't been gone long at all. Apart from sudden natural disasters and whatnot, what would have caused any drastic changes in the first place?

"Alrighty, kiddo," Mom says when we pull up to one of the mall's entrances. She wears a gleaming grin, but there's a hesitance in her eyes. I don't blame her. Our plans for later in the afternoon are not to be a happy-go-lucky affair. "Have fun, don't get in trouble, text me when you need to be picked up."

"Thanks, Mom," I offer back, doing my best to put on my mask. I shut the door behind me, pull out my phone, and make my way to the doors.

Me: hey Pey, I'm at the entrance down by JC Penney

Peyton: I'm coming in on the other end, meet in the food court?

Me: sounds good!

Whispers of pop songs play from speakers hanging high. The in-store radios play louder as I pass shops I rarely peruse, salespersons trying goad customers into buying this or that because "it totally matches your aesthetic" or whatever. In the days of yonder, when Peyton and I would traverse the mall up and down, we would pause to rubberneck on such sales pitches. As we would continue on, we'd try our hands at impression work and lowkey mock the pushy commission-driven tactics. A laugh riot then, but only silence now. Trudging onward and stepping onto the ascending escalator, every inch holds a memory. Countless rounds of checking out the random kiosks in between window shopping... we could spend hours here every weekend. And we did.

At the landing on the top of the escalator, sitting against the glass partition that looks over the lower level, is the photo booth. Noting the lack of feet in the open space at the bottom, I peek my head past the dark curtain; waiting for its next patron, it remains clean from its white hard plastic seat big enough for two to the sleeping screen. Every year, before school started, Peyton and I would pay our five dollars and hijack the photo booth for as long as we could. We would feed more cash into it if we came up with extra goofy pose ideas and whatnot. Such was tradition to end the too-short summer with the annual Mack/Woodward Modeling Extravaganza. If my gut is proven wrong, perhaps we could add another set of photographs to our collections. God, I hope so. I'd give anything to be wrong right now.

The food court lures me with the scents of fresh yet unhealthy food. While enticing, the aromas play a sick game of optimism with the dread in the pit of my stomach. Perhaps, it teases, all is well and you're simply overthinking everything. Peyton misses you just as much, if not more, than you miss her. Lower your guard, silly. It's okay.

Swallowing my doubt and taking hold of that little soothing voice, I pass the jewelry store and enter the wide open space full of tables and chairs. Four staples of mall culture take up the corners of the food court: Sbarro, Panda Express, Mrs. Fields' Cookies, and Auntie Anne's Pretzels. The two snack-oriented joints sit on the edge of the food court, the first two of the four I pass as I enter. The other two face each other at the side with doors leading outside, the sun shining through the glass doors.