SWIM // MITCHEL CAVE

(II) 15- Lost

Mitchel's POV

I guess sometimes in life there are thing that are preventable and things that aren't. Falling over is preventable, failing a test is preventable, the list goes on. And then there's the list of unpreventables; getting ill, natural disasters and the people you fall in love with to name a few.

But sometimes life faces you with an unpreventable; one in which you want so dearly to be preventable that you would give up everything you had just to make it so.

I didn't realise that when I picked up my phone that the words that fell through the other side would knock the air out of my chest, I wasn't ready and no one was, no one ever is. The air had never returned to my lungs after that.

Everything that happened before that phone call became obsolete and irrelevant, any arguments or rivalries had been forgotten for the time being to soothe the tragedy of the situation at hand.

Everyone was constantly talking to me, asking me questions; ones I didn't know the answer to. I just wanted them all to shut up because if she couldn't talk then I didn't want to either. They were walking on eggshells around me, worried that if they said the wrong thing I would explode, like a bomb. Maybe I would, maybe I was a ticking time bomb waiting to erupt into a mess of broken pieces, shattered and unable to form a whole being again.

I remember the phone call and the emotions that overcame me when I answered, it replayed in my mind on loop as some sort of sick joke. It had been 2 days since that call and yet it felt like a lifetime ago and nothing at all at the same time. Time was a forgotten concept and I began to question what was real anymore and what wasn't. Maybe I was in a coma, or a simulation because nothing since that call had ever felt real or remotely normal.

When I was 16 I remember when I was back in Australia and my mum had tried to teach me how to drive. My dad had tried once before but he got so impatient with me that we both gave up and so my mum took the role of learner and drove me out to the long roads not far from us to practice. I remember the first lesson, it was summer and the sun was blaring down making it even harder for me to see but she remained as patient as ever guiding me through the roads and turns and taught me how to change controls.

By the third lesson we realised that I was a terrible driver and my coordination just wasn't up to par and while she encouraged me to continue and try some more, I simply told her I didn't want to. I was never particularly interested in driving anyway, Clinton could already drive and it was rare we weren't together and so there was never really any need for me to learn.

"It's not for everyone" She said "Besides you're so good at everything else it'd be unfair for you to exceed in this too"

Clinton mocked me for a while and told me I was a quitter and that I didn't try hard enough but it didn't particularly phase me, I could instead remain being the car dj and in charge of the aux.

Now here I sat in the same car that my mum had tried teaching me in and everything was different now. The interior was cream yet along with the clouds in the sky above, it now seemed grey. Everything was grey now, colour had been sucked out my life for what I feared would be forever.

There was a light knock on the window of the passenger seat from where I sat dragging me out my thoughts and I slowly look over to see Jaz wearing the same concerned face she had wore since we arrived back in Australia. I didn't think I was going to be back here so soon and while I always looked forward to being home, this time wasn't one of them.

"Are you gonna come inside yet?" She asks when I roll the window down slightly.

"Not yet" I reply, emotion lacking in my voice.