Normalcy is for Losers

I remember Jonah’s red car.

The same red car that always appeared out of nowhere.

In the middle of parking lots, outside of parties.

The same red car that held everybody looking to escape.

“Escape what?” he’d ask anyone who knocked on his window. It didn’t matter if it was the middle of 5th period or 2 a.m.—he was always there.

Parents getting a divorce? Go to Jonah.

OD’d on something strong? Go to Jonah.

Bullied? Go to Jonah.

Eating disorder? Go to Jonah.

Depression? Go to Jonah.

Heartbreak? Go to Jonah.

I went to Jonah’s red car once.

I knocked on his window once, as I’d been told to do, and he rolled it down slowly, looking at me with those sage green eyes. Those eyes enchanted me.

“Problem?” He asked me, handing me a piece of mint gum. I took the gum, placed it in my mouth, not thinking if it was laced in drugs or anything.

I took a deep breath.

“Crippling anxiety.” I stated, bluntly, as if it weren’t a medical thing. As if it were something boring, or annoying, or something minor. Not something that kept me up at night, even with melatonin. Not something that has me crying in the bathroom after a mistake, or a wrong word. No, not that.

“Crippling anxiety… yeah, hop on in,” Jonah said, all calm, like he’d dealt with this before. He probably had. Multiple times.

My heart pounded inside of my head, ringing with every breath.

I walked over to the passenger door, and opened it with shaky hands.

“So, how are you feeling today?” He asked me, like a trained professional. A therapist. I swallowed the spit forming in my mouth, and wiped my sweaty palms against my dark blue jeans with an accidental hole in the right knee.

Jonah looked at me, sunlight peeking through the visors, lighting up his hair.

“I don’t know,” I said, my voice shaking a little. God, was I about to cry? No, big girls don’t cry. Even when they get hurt.

Jonah stayed silent for a little while. I thought of something somebody had said to me a little earlier, when I brought up Jonah.

Don’t be afraid of silence.

I looked at him, and then looked down, my eyes darting between the air freshener attached nimbly on the dash, and my half picked off blue nail polish.

“I… I want to feel normal.” I spoke finally, breaking the silence. He wouldn’t take ‘I don’t know’ as an answer. We all knew, we just had to find the right way to put it.

“Normalcy is for losers, but I see where your head is,” he said, and I sucked in a little breath.

“What are you here to escape?” He asked me, the question I’d been preparing myself for, but you can’t prepare for everything.

“Myself,” I whispered, barely audible. He nodded, so I know he heard.

“That’s the most often thing that I hear, believe it or not. I know,” he said, clearing his throat at the end. He wanted to go somewhere, but he didn’t. I accepted the silence. I wasn’t afraid of it. Or was I?

I stared out of the window, as if this was a common thing I did. Something that I was used to.

He started cracking his knuckles, which made my eyes twitch. He noticed, said sorry, and stopped. I smiled a little.

“So, what do you want to come out of this? Advice? Something stronger?” He asked, reaching over and pulling out a notebook out of the glove compartment.

“Advice. My parents would kill me if I did anything they didn’t want, e.g., smoking, drinking, being sad, throwing parties, gaining weight, having fun. I can’t even have sleepovers.” I said, staring out into space, losing sight of the world around me. It was just me and Jonah now.

“I see. Well, no offense, but your parents sound like asses,” he said, cracking a grin.

“They are, to be honest,” I replied. Something about the car made me feel grounded. I could confide in something other than myself.

“So, my advice is to have a mantra or something. Maybe like, daily affirmations. Tried that?”

“Yeah. A lot, actually. Even went to small group in middle school, for managing anxiety.”

“Cool, I guess. Have you tried anything else?”

“Nah, not really. I can swallow pills, but everything scares me. I’ve only ever taken one shot, and that was a dare, and I threw up five times afterwards. I’m super prone to pain, so I can’t do anything to myself,”

“Those things don’t actually help, trust me. We’ll find something else, okay?”

“Okay,”

He smiled at me, and I smiled back. I picked at a loose hangnail, wincing when I pulled it out. My breathing became shallower as the silence progressed.

Nobody really knew Jonah. It was all vague when it came to his story. He never missed an actual day of school, but if you ever needed any help, he was there. It didn’t add up. His eyes would shine, but they looked tired. He wore the same superman shirt everyday, and had the same eager, but worn out, smile on his face, that highlighted the dimples on his cheeks.

“Jonah, why do you do what you do?” I asked him. I mustered up all of my courage to ask him that, and it was met with silence. Silence for a little, then a sigh.

“I just want to help, okay? Help as much as I possibly can,” he said, smiling a little.

I looked at him, looked into his sage green eyes. They were hungry eyes.

He writhed his hands together, a trick I used. To stop my hands from shaking.

This boy was beautiful. Could he not see it himself?

Suddenly, the bell rang. Shit, I thought, had I really been in this car for two whole periods?

Jonah’s face drooped a little, and then he looked back into the backseat, and let out a sigh of relief. I looked at him funny, and he smiled.

“So, uh, do you want me to go?” I asked him, wiggling around in my seat a little.

“Nah, you’re all good. Wanna talk more? Go somewhere else?” he asked, turning the keys into ignition.

“Sure. But like, no offense, but I don’t wanna hookup or anything,” I said. He tensed, but kept calm as always.

“Heard that before. I wasn’t planning on it,”

“Okay. Sorry, I sounded really stuck up when I said that. Disregard.”

“Don’t be sorry. It’s okay, really.”

“O-okay. Don’t you have like, somewhere to be? Home?” I asked. His face made me regret ever asking. “Sorry,” I said, silently pinching myself for saying sorry again, “I shouldn’t have asked,”

He stayed quiet for a little bit, and then turned on the radio. R.E.M’s “Everybody Hurts”.

I winced at the song, and so did he, turning it to a different station, with some sort of pop song on. It was better than depressing music.

Music that we both knew the names of.

After a little while, he turned off the radio, which was really starting to piss me off, with all the fake good vibes and happy love songs. Now was not the time for “Lover” by Taylor Swift.

“You ever wonder why I drive around all day?” Jonah asked me, and for a second, my mind flashed to a scenario. Kids, piling up around his car, trapping him in. What was it like? You could always reach him, right? How did it work?

“Everybody does, man,” I replied.

“Figured. Anyway, I drive because I don’t have anything else to do. I could go home, but my mom is the equivalent of all Disney stereotypical evil stepmothers mashed together into a giant homewrecker, and my stepdad, well, I don’t wanna go into him. I won’t waste another breath with his name.”

I didn’t know what to say. Jonah was confiding in me, now. I sighed, and then he started tapping furiously on the wheel. My eye twitched, he noticed it, said sorry, and stopped.

“Sorry. I don’t know why I kinda said that, sorry. So, anyway, let’s talk about you, now, okay?”

“Okay. You’re good, by the way. I can listen if you need me to,”

“Nah, it’s alright. I’m good.”

He said he was good, but he gripped the steering wheel like it was the only thing keeping him from floating away.

We stayed quiet for a little while, not daring to turn on the radio again. I pulled down the visor, and noticed the backseat. There weren’t blankets or fast food trash or anything like that. I expected that, for some reason, but the seat was clean. He cleared his throat, and then I turned up the visor, the dim lit sun peeking into the car.

“Remember when I said normalcy is for losers?” He asked me, breaking the silence.

“Yeah…” I said, as he started making more turns. Like he wanted to go somewhere now.

“I had a sister. Her name was Kay. She would’ve loved being a loser. She would’ve loved being boring.” I looked at Jonah. The red car almost began to fall apart, but somehow, it stayed together.

Suddenly, I recognized where we were. The cemetery.

He looked around, making sure nobody else was there, and then he yanked the keys out of the ignition. He was silent as he opened his door, and I followed him.

He stood in front of the gates, not going in. “I can’t bring myself to look. It just yells at me that I couldn’t save her.” he spoke, softly. I stayed still, feeling the calm rush of the wind.

“She always wore this shirt,” he said, pointing to the superman logo, “She said it made her really feel like a hero.” He smiled, laughed a little, and then sighed. I grinned.

He shoved his hands into his pockets, and then turned, facing the sunset. His eyes went all glassy for a second, and then returned to normal.

He walked back to the car, and I followed him.

He stared at the old red car for a second, and then hopped onto the hood. He patted the space next to him, offering for me to sit.

“You sure?” I asked, reluctant.

“Hell yeah,” he said, pumping his fist in the air. I smiled, laughing a little.

“I mean, I do have a reason to be resistant,” I said as I made my way towards the front of the car, “The last time I was on one of these bad boys, somebody was actually in the car and started driving. One of my psycho friends, I’m sure. So I have a reason to be scared, okay, Jonah?” I said, enunciating all of my words with a bang.

He chuckled, and then I hopped up next to him. We stared at the rusted gates together, a raven calling in the distance.

“Did you know that a group of ravens is called an unkindness?” I asked him, as the raven flew down, perching on a tree.

"No. But it fits, I guess," he said. I smiled and sighed.

"Who's been unkind to you?" I asked, and he stared off into space. He cracked his knuckles, suddenly stopping when he remembered I hated that sound. Instead, he dug his fingernails into his shoulder. I looked at him, and gently grabbed the fingers off of his shoulder, where I could see imprints of nails.

He stayed quiet for a solid five minutes, then spoke.

"A lot of people have been unkind to me. But I try to be kind to as many people as I can. You know, Jonah's red car and all of that," he said.

"Huh. Well, you've helped a whole, whole lot of people. Like, seriously. You're famous at this point, Jonah." I said.

"I don't want to be famous," he whispered, wiping under his eyes.

His walls were falling down.

"I just want to help." he said.

I took a deep breath, and picked at the loose hangnail, my eyes still focused on Jonah.

"Here. When I first started doing the whole car thing, I bought a little notebook. I keep track of all the people who come. I know, it sounds a little psychopathic, but hey, a boy's gotta do what a boy's gotta do. Wanna see it?" he asked.

"Sure, if that's okay," I said.

"It is. Here," Jonah said, reaching into his back pocket and pulling out this tattered black moleskin notebook. I took it from him, our fingers brushing together, and opened it to the first page.

01-24 (January Twenty-Fourth)

Name: Jonah

Age: 16-

Phone: haha nice one sucker no chance here.

I looked at him, and he started blushing, mumbling something about sixteen-year-old Jonah.

The rest of the notebook was basically the whole school. Even the principal, which I gasped at. He chuckled at my audible surprise.

It had their problems, advice for the problems, and then something else. A check mark, or an X mark.

"What're they for?" I asked him.

"It sounds stupid, but it meant if I struggled with it or whatever." He replied. I looked at his sage green eyes, and how they glistened in the sunset, the pink and orange hues reflecting off of his face.

I flipped through, not trying to be nosy, and then got to the last page, with only a few pages left in the notebook.

04-11 (April Eleventh)

Her name is Abby. Crippling anxiety. Oof, been there before. Maybe she's a little like me. Oh well, it's whatever. Maybe, though. But who knows? Not me, that's for sure. Note to self: get a new notebook soon. Also, maybe try to go home for once. Maybe. Who knows? Wherever the road takes me, I'll be here. ~Jonah

I looked at Jonah, and Jonah looked at me.

He hopped off the hood, getting in the car. He smirked at me.

I shrieked playfully, and got off, stumbling into the old red car.

We laughed until our stomachs hurt, and then he turned the keys in the car.

"You know, Jonah, I think it's time to go home." I said, his sage green eyes looking into mine.

"Yeah, it's time to go home."