We would have been fine if we hadn’t stopped to pick up the stranger. But then again, he wasn’t a stranger… not really. We knew him, went to school with him. He was Kaily’s AP Chemistry partner last year. He was Jay… but he wasn’t. He had changed, something wasn’t right.
People have this thing- a light in their eyes, a look about their face, a way they carry themselves- that makes that person who they are. It defines them, sets one person apart from everyone else. Only my best friend can look at me with that gleam in her eyes telling me she knows I’m lying. Only my brother can pitch his voice the right way when he’s saying “I’m sorry,” to make me truly believe he knows what I’m going through. In that same way, only Jay could look at us with those pleading blue eyes and convince us every time to hand over our homework.
Then again, I noticed, that is what was wrong. Jay had lost those tiny discerning factors that made him who he was. He wasn’t Jay… but we picked him up. He got in our car without a word, he didn’t look at us. So, just as wordlessly, we kept driving. There was a long way to go, when you’re in the middle of Kansas there’s really nothing to see except farm after farm. We were out because we had just stayed the night with Kaily’s ill grandmother, and were now on our way to the unimpressive town we live in. But that brought up the question, what was Jay doing out here, out in the middle of nowhere with no transportation?
I turned around to ask him this, as well as simply ask him what was going on, but was brought up short. He was staring out the window-regarding the scenery we grew up with all our lives-with unseeing eyes. Looking closer, I also noticed he was mumbling something. His words were incoherent, but the lack of color in the eyes, and how he was concentrating so hard on nothing at all, it made me feel like something bad was going on in his mind. This, if nothing else, was very disheartening.
Kaily heard the slight mumbling and looked at me. I just shook my head and shrugged, I had no idea what was going on. At first I wanted to ask him what he was doing, what was wrong, but then I found that I really didn’t want to know. Just then, Jay started talking, a whisper at first, but then it got louder, coherent.
“No. You can’t get me here. You got what you wanted,” his voice broke. He sounded scared out of his mind, and as he talked he started sliding across the backseat. When I looked back at him, he was sitting with his knees squeezed up to his chest, staring at the seat behind me: but no one was there. He then turned to face me, and I hated the cornered-animal look that was in his eyes and that possessed his face. Sadly, it was the most alive he had looked all night… alive with fear.
“No, please! You’ve already taken everything! What more do you want?!” He was screaming at this point, causing Kaily to pull off the road. We both stared at him, watching him plead with a demon that was never there. We felt helpless: I felt helpless. I wanted nothing more than to comfort him, tell him that everything would be okay; but the look of rapt concentration on his face stopped me. He was communicating with something I couldn’t hear, something beyond me.
“No! No, you can’t! I… you… you can’t!” Jay was on the verge of tears. Somewhere between that and insanity. “No, please, please, not here. Not now. Please,” he begged, “not them. Please.” He stopped again, as if listening to someone talk. While listening, I felt a cold rush, something sweeping over my entire body, something sinister. As I watched, Jay’s face melted from its look of shock, to one of total indifference. Then he slowly turned his head to look at me and Kaily. He looked at us with glowing white-green eyes, and said,
“You’re Dead.”