Chapter Eleven: Burgers in the Car
Burgers
July 2002
17 ½ months.
70 weeks.
490 days.
11,760 hours.
705,600 minutes.
42,336,000 seconds.
In other words; an awfully long time.
Then again, three hours is also a long time when one is stuck in a traffic jam with nothing but the calculator in one’s crappy, game-free phone! Though in the grand scheme of things having avoided ‘the only person you’ve ever truly connected to’ for 343 days (that’s excluding the 147 days you were dead) is probably a little more important than how long it takes to drive to her once you manage to work up the courage.
She never did break out.
There’s a paper bag on the seat next to you containing two burgers that, with hindsight, you realise you should have bought closer to the prison. Still, you’ve got leftover blackmail sway with the Doublemeat Palace manager you’re not really using now you have the new job.
Oh God, Faith is going to laugh in your face when she finds out.
She’s going to do that full-on, huge, loud chortling thing she does that oddly goes up at the end in an almost girlie ‘hu-huh!’ giggle. Then there’ll be some kind of joke about you guiding teenagers when all you’ve got is blank paper for a map… or maybe that’s a little too specific.
Maybe she’ll just cry when she sees you.
Or beat her way through the glass and strangle you with the phone cord. And then go on a murderous rampage brought about by pent up grief during which she’ll inadvertently kill Dawn thus making two of your three deaths completely pointless.
Not to be mistaken; you like her. You do. OK, so occasionally you may flirt with the idea that Faith is seriously insane and were she not already in an institution you’d probably have to drag her to one… but you like her.
Bit more than ‘like’ actually.
Maybe ‘liked’, maybe ‘loved’. It’s a little unclear as to whether it should be in the past or present tense. Do you feel anything at all?
Other than guilt.
It’s been a whole year since they dragged you out of heaven and this is the first time you’ve taken this drive since.
Maybe that’s not so true. You drove here to see Angel. You drove here to go shopping with that old friend of yours. You drove here to… give that box of things to… Tara’s…
You were here. You’ve been here.
But not on past LA and out to the prison. Not that far in this whole year.
The traffic inches forward as you drum your fingers against the steering wheel, trying to think of all the reasons you haven’t been to see her. It’s a new thing of yours; lists. Apparently gone are the long dreamy hours of staring out the window imagining a thousand different scenarios involving you and Faith. It got to the point where you started imagining her in every moment of your past and visualising the ways in which her presence could have changed (and bettered things). Since you ‘reawakened’, the imagination that once distracted you from schoolwork seems to have stayed buried.
Now there are only lists. Lists of things you should be doing. Lists of things you need to do. List of things you shouldn’t be doing… ‘Caring for Dawn’ being in the first two, ‘Spike’ being in the second two and ‘Talking to Faith’ being in all three.
Life seems different without her. This past year it almost seemed like there was something inside of you, dragging you down- as if your limbs were made of lead and your bones might buckle under the strain.
If before it had seemed as if you were cold and emotionless this year- … this year taught you a new meaning of the word ‘alone’.
Yet you never are, are you? There is someone else in the world like you. Perhaps that is why you’ve shunned her so long… to know that the connection is there is one thing, to feel its absence for definite is another. Angel told you when you saw him that she’d taken your absence particularly hard.
Then again, she sent you a letter while you were dead. Which sort of gives the impression that she knew it wouldn’t be a very permanent thing. She even wrote ‘write back’ at the end- an odd thing to say to someone who’d been dead for two months. It wasn’t a letter of much substance. You’d sat on your bed for hours, after you’d found it shoved in the back of Willow’s sock draw, building yourself up for a huge weep-fest. The letter was light and conversational despite her mention of your death.
So no, it’s not the ‘death’ that draws you apart but what happened after. Or rather… didn’t. Almost as soon as you came back you rushed off to see Angel. She did of course cross your mind once or twice but you relied on the bond between you to comfort her until you could find the time.
Perhaps that’s just a feeble excuse. Angel was your buffer, your test pad your... practice trial? Way to talk up your first real love. The point is that when you went to see him it wasn’t just to… see him. You wanted to know how she’d react to you.
Of course an eternally stoic Vampire and a more-than-marginally insane Vampire Slayer really don’t have that much in common when it comes to expressing their emotions…
The phone vibrates in your hands; Dawn. Again.
Is there some special button to block annoying people from your phone? “Hi, Dawnie! You want something… else?”
“If you frown like that you’ll get more wrinkles.”
You take the phone away from your ear to glare at it. “Thank you Dr. Dawn but I don’t have wrinkles.”
“Still checking in your fold-down mirror though aren’t you?” The phone answers smugly.
“No. Shut up.” You pop the mirror back up. “And the reason for this call?”
“Just wondering if you’ve got to the prison yet.”
The sweat on your back goes cold. “P-prison?” A meter’s gap opens up in front of you, the car behind beeps when you don’t immediately move. “I’m going t- to see Angel. Angel. Not the prison. Angel.”
She chuckles, “aw, you thought you had secrets? Not with a little sister you didn’t! I’ve got letters…” Paper rustling comes over the phone- you just know she’s holding Faith’s letters up and crinkling them.
“You put those down! I swear if you-!”
“Hurt them?” Her sarcasm almost bites you through the phone, “Buffy, I’ve been reading them for years now and you haven’t noticed, I think they’re ok.” The steering wheel creaks as it bends under your hand. “Though… I checked, there isn’t one for this month.”
You wince. “She… she doesn’t know I’m coming.” How are you explaining this to your little sister? Isn’t privacy some kind of basic human right?
“Because you’re going so you can tell her it’s over, right? Your- your friendship or- whatever…” A snotty sniffle comes down the phone from the germ bag that is your little sister. “Now you’re alive again you’re not going to be messing around with… anyone, right? Just a nice new boyfriend… possibly one who can affect my grades?”
Dawn is your world, your life, and the only reason you didn’t try harder to get back to heaven. A pain in your ass she might be but a good life is what she deserves. The tall walls of the prison come up on your left and you sigh to see them. “There’s nothing going on between us, nothing like that.” You’re lying through your teeth but then the word ‘serious’ has only ever applied in the bad way when it comes to the two of you.
“It just sounds… from the letters… like you like her too. You don’t do you? I mean, everyone knew she kind of… but you don’t like her, right?”
The various gods must not be very interesting if monks have the time to create such elaborate fake memories for a fourteen year old based on friendship, betrayal and how an immensely cool person can suddenly seem not so cool when they’re in love with your sister. And then hold you hostage.
“Not that it’s not cool you’re totally gay-”
You break hard. “I’m not gay!” The irate fat man in the car behind smacks his horn.
“Whatever, I just wish you’d fall for someone nice like… uh… a nice lesbian who hasn’t tried to kill you.”
Unfortunately that’s a very small group of women… who you’ve never met. There’s probably a level of hell reserved specifically for your exes… Does Spike count as an ex? Because he should have a level all to himself, new soul be damned. But back to the lesbians, “Because those are so easy to meet? Exactly how many non-homicidal lesbians do you know?”
“Tara.”
There really isn’t an answer to that.
“Sorry, I shouldn’t have-” Dawn cuts herself off. “Just, go see Faith and come home quickly, ok?”
She hangs up before you can reply. Switching the indicator to signal left, now you’re finally at the turn off, you inch the car forward. Xander made you swear not to hurt his precious baby and you’re only marginally more scared of seeing Faith than you are hurting the stupid car.
Stupid car.
He almost made you write a contract to swear not to hurt it. No matter what he asked it had seemed somehow easier than the few short steps to the car that still smelt of honeysuckle and powder and ‘mother’. It’s a preserved bubble of normality that you just can’t bear to destroy.
Though ‘normal’ is a strange term.
Normal is killing the un-dead. Normal is… your mother yelling at you for getting annoyed with your fake little sister. Normal is knowing that no matter how crap your love life might be there’s a girl in LA who thinks you’re the bomb baby!
So you’re not exactly up on the lingo… You were dead! And, intend to use that excuse for at least the next decade and a bit… or your next death, which ever comes first.
Still, there is a slight bit of normality; the steep drive up to the prison, finding a space in the oddly crowded car-park, checks to get in, checks against the register, checks for the food, checks to get into the waiting room, random checks for no apparent reason, sitting in that room, picking up that phone and staring that girl in the face.
This is your normal. The thing that never changes.
But maybe that means you have to let go of this too. Your whole life revolves around everything breaking down and yet you’ve never gotten used to it… so perhaps to move on you have to do it completely.
You have to say Goodbye.
Or not. There’s always a not.
She’s too thin again and her wrists are wrapped in medical gauze. Her face when she sees you lights up the entire room and turns the ember in your heart to a tiny flame.
‘Better’, your mind tells you, ‘We’re getting better.’
But is she the one to help you get there?
It seems like all your past is tied up in this one girl. You can’t remember your life before her properly, without the spectre of her missing presence. Every battle is measured against the times you fought her. Each enemy found lacking, each friend marginally less. You can’t even think of being dead without seeing big brown eyes. She was your guide, or- at least, she was the face your guide wore or… maybe it was that she… uh… ok, so you don’t remember much about heaven but you do know Faith was there. It was perfect.
Yet seeing her here, in the harsh strip lighting, in this room full of grating sounds, with split ends and bitten nails makes real life look so… shitty.
“Hey B.” She smiles at you, simple and easy.
For a moment you’re stumped, “Um… hi.” You smile softly back. And it isn’t even forced.
“Guess what… this morning I got a new room mate and she taught me this cool card trick…” So she shows you a playing card, rips it up, puts the pieces in her mouth and then pulls a folded (but whole) card back out. She tells you it’s the same one but the truth of the matter is you were too busy staring at her lips to notice. “Cool, huh?”
“Very cool.” You answer in a slight wave of disbelief.
“Oh, and thanks for the burger.” She takes a huge bite, starts to talk and then remembers that you have a ‘thing’ for manners so chews and swallows. “I swear the food in here is getting worse. Might have to go into another coma soon just so I can get some proper sustenance.” It almost makes you giggle when she winks, “Looked that one up in a book- becoming a proper prison cliché and all, getting my GED.”
You tell her you’re proud and that you now work in a school. She makes a joke about you guiding kids with a map that’s out of date. It’s calm and fun and you even laugh once or twice. When the hour’s up you promise to come back next month. No one mentions dead girls or the fact you both look like crap or even that you’ll never touch skin-to-skin for the next twenty-five to life. Those things just don’t seem important anymore.
Screw the ‘if’s and ‘but’s; if you’re going to be coping with real life in all it’s shittyness you need a break sometimes. And if that means sitting on a hard plastic chair watching a skinny psycho stuff her face with greasy food then so be it.
It might not be many people’s idea of heaven but it’s a slice of yours.
