It was the smell of pine, of the dust kicked up on the road and floating in the sunlight. That was when I knew we were drawing closer to the mansion. Back to the lotus pond and the manicured lawns and the ivy clad stone. Thinking about it all made the fear of the darkness drift from my fingertips. Within the walls lied reassurance, lied a clear sky in the midsts of all the chaos. It pulled my chest like the moon to the sea. My foot pushed onto the gas pedal.

From the corner of my eye I could see Peter's fingers fidgeting with his Walkman, wrapping and unwrapping the wire around his palm. His energy is choatically bouncing inside his ribcage.

"You okay?" I questioned, knowing he was nervous about his dad.

"Yeah. Yeah. Totally cool."

"Are you sure?"

He sighed and gave up the facade. He knows that I already know how he's feeling.

"It's just...what if he turns out to be like...a major tool or something?"

I shrugged my shoulders,

"Then we forget him, go back home, turn on some Rush and make out."

Peter's laugh calmed down his energy. It settled back down like the dust on the pavement behind us. His next question made my chest tighten,

"Would you ever want to find your dad?"

I answered immediately,

"No. He abandoned me to live with his abusive mother. And if he asked where she was..."

My voiced trailed off and I grasped onto my brain, squeezing it so it wouldn't revisit that time and space. The darkness I had forgotten. Peter realized where my mind was and placed his hand over mine on the stick shift so I could feel him.

I remembered where I was now. I desperately changed the subject.

"Okay. I got a hard question," I said, my eyes fixed on the blurring yellow dashes staining the road ahead.

"Hit me with it," Peter replied confidently as he extended his silver sneakers onto the dashboard.

"Under My Thumb. Name the artist, album, and year."

Peter scoffed and leaned forward, crossing his arms across his chest and cocking his head to the side,

"You insult me. Waaaay too easy. Rolling Stones. Aftermath. Nineteen-sixty-five."

I laughed at his reflection in the windshield,

"Guess not easy enough. Try sixty-six."

His face went flat. His eyebrows narrowed,

"No way. I swear it was sixty-five."

"Nope. Sixty-five was Out of Our Heads."

Peter's palm went slapping onto his forehead, the bubblegum he was blowing snapping into a pathetic, deflated balloon. He continued chewing and lowered his sunglasses over his eyes,

"Time is longer to me. You're just too slow."

I made Bo's old Ford Pinto come to a stop. My foot tapped the gas pedal ever-so-slightly so we crawled against the asphalt at five miles per hour. I smirked and remarked in a long, dragged out voice,

"...Me?...Slow?...Never."

"Ha. Ha. Very funny. You can speed up now."

"Okay."

A bit more gas flooded the engine. The needle in the speedometer barely embraced the little ten at the bottom of the scale.

He threw his head back against the leather passenger seat and whined as we continued to lesuirely creep down the road,

"You're killing me, Firefly."

I shrug my shoulders and laugh,

"Sorry. I guess I'm just too slow."

Peter instantly changed his sunglasses to his goggles. He opened the door with a smile.

My eyes widened,

"Where are you going?"

He bent down and shoved a Twinkie from the snack bag into his jacket pocket. He jumped out and walked alongside the car, adjusting his headphones over his ears before answering,

"I'm out running you."

"Wha―"

"Love you, slowpoke."

Peter slammed the door and disappeared into a haze of color. The surrounding trees danced at the gust of wind produced by the speed of his feet. I shook my head and smiled, driving now at a normal pacing, following the new scuff marks on the asphalt.

I'm in love with the most impatient boy in the world.

Sudden darkness. My lungs emptied of all their air.

A black mass stabbed the very center of my head. The car came screeching to a halt in the middle of the road. I grasped my temples and winced in excruciating pain. It dug like nails and thorns into my flesh. I curled into a ball unable to move. Dark, long shadows presented themselves on the floor of the car.

My head was heavy, weighted down by some ungodly force. I heaved my face up to the sky to see streaks of white extending up and up, peaked by red sparkles of light.

Only one thought was able to penetrate the pain coursing through my arteries.

I hope Peter is okay.

And I sat paralyzed as missiles fired straight up into the atmosphere. The while lines sinking in to scar the blue sky, fading into a deep, bloody red.