The teenager in the passenger seat was acutely aware of the heat of the silence, caught in the black wrath of the driver. The dark, shabby buildings raced by as the driver gripped the steering wheel tightly, driving faster than was necessary. Every few seconds, the streetlights she passed lit up her face, a waterfall of too-early wrinkles with bushy grey eyebrows, all of which was only accentuated by the firm frown that added one more drooping line to her cheeks.
She slowed down only for a night construction crew, carrying truckloads of grey, dusty gravel into the lot where a seedy set of apartments had stood only a few, cold months earlier. The passenger stared at the trucks with his head held low, avoiding any feeling of contact between him and the driver. As the trucks continued to pass by, the driver spoke in a voice wavering with sobs, yet carrying a hot brand of anger from her deepest marrow.
“What could you possibly have been thinking?” The passenger looked away, and tried to find his voice, but as if in a dream, he was unable. His angular face grew drew together tightly, giving his normally healthy-looking, chestnut-colored cheeks a skull-like appearance. His silence ignited the full ire of the driver. “How could you do this to me?” She screamed, more than questioned, her voice breaking into an accusatory sob. “You know better than this!”
The passenger finally found his voice, and it rang out in a resonant tenor, “Since when have you cared? So long as I was a perfect little kid in school and ‘brought honor to the family’ you couldn’t give a damn about what I did otherwise!”
“How dare you! You know nothing—”
Headlights. Car horns. Blackness.
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