Creative Writing - Scene of Tension assignment

     "I looked over at my mother sitting in the driver’s seat of our decrepit ’98 Accord, but she would not look back at me. She stared blankly off into the distance as we sat stagnant at the red light. All of the sound had been sucked out of the car. The otherwise noisy squealing of the heater and clink-clanking of the engine were inaudible today.

I reached my hand toward the radio dial apprehensively, eager to break up the cloudy thoughts in my mind with some mainstream pop. A few notes from a song which I immediately recognized as “Say Something” by A Great Big World came meekly through the speakers. I love this song.

      As I turn my hand to increase the volume, my mother reaches over, pushes my hand away, and turns off the radio.

     “No.” she said.

     “Bu-”

     “I said no.”

     I lacked the energy to be firmer with my protestations. Typically this same scenario would have resulted in a verbal bloodbath, with me hurling the most creatively violent phrases my 15-year-old vocabulary could summon. But the brief but sharp exchange of syllables cut through my brain and reverberated in my head among the cloudy thoughts. I was already defeated. So was she. Asking either of us to arm ourselves for battle against each other was like trying to engage a wounded animal – mostly they just lie there consumed by their own pain, defending themselves only with brief outbursts of truly deadly aggression before they eventually collapse.

So … not today.

Green light.

The car didn’t move, though. I looked over at my mother again, her knuckles white on the steering wheel and her eyes glassy with tears of anger and disappointment … but mostly anger. She still will not look at me. I open my mouth and the intake of breath before I speak sounds like a scream in my head, but my mother responds by slamming on the gas before I say a single word. My head jerks back against the seat.

“Ow!”

I had said it before I even meant to. I wasn’t actually hurt, just surprised. My mother now has a funny look on her face; as if she’s holding something back? I watch her intently as her scowl turns to a smirk.

Her face finally breaks and she lets out a loud and intense laugh.

“Haha, wow … you should have seen the look on your face!”

She continues laughing until the tears fall down her cheeks. I don’t know whether to laugh along with her or fear for my life at this point. She wipes away the tears and finally looks at me. Her smile fades, and her face goes somber again.

She lets out a long sigh.

“I’m sorry, mom.” I say, once again before thinking.

She does not respond.

She pulls into a parking space and stops the car, pushing the gear shift all the way up to “park” and turning the key toward her to kill the engine. I hear her release the brake and we wobble a bit as she does.

A small black sign sits just outside my passenger-side window and reads “Preterm”. The building is huge, with several stories and walls of glass. I could see our car, my mother, and myself, in a reflection on the side of the building. It both disturbed and made sense to me … because in this moment I was Alice and this building my looking glass.

The clouds in my head started to dissipate as rain fell from my eyes, and now something rose from the pit of my stomach; tight and burning.

I opened the door and vomited on the pavement."