Terry Owens was up before even the witching hour of 3am, his faculties were nowhere near in order. He had several bad days before this, but it is repetition that makes a habit that makes it routine. Awful had become Terry’s personal habit.
It had really been an awful month, or a couple months for Terry. It all started when his girlfriend broke up with him. Four years with the same person and she just up and leaves because “he was too boring”, as Claire had put it. Of course, Kyle, his roommate, was not too boring. She ran off with him after all was said and done. Terry found out only a week later, a week after graduation.
Since then, his friends had been trying to set him up on blind dates. He only had a few of those friends left. Several of them sided with her on the boring argument and decided to just ghost him or write him off. The friends that he did keep were nice and helpful or at least they thought they were helping, but these blind dates were getting worse and worse each time.
When a long term couple breaks up It often follows with the burden for the friends to choose which side they want to be on. Terry knew they'd choose Claire over him. For the most part they were originally her friends. That always seemed to happen to Terry, he never made his own friends, he always had other people who were in his life and their friends just included him.
The people who were his “friends” over hers, and had been setting up these blind dates, were acquaintances, tutors and other people that he was forced to spend time with and did not like to see him unhappy. This was not out of overall kindness, but because it made their work with him more awkward if he was unhappy or distracted. He had never been great at keeping up with people outside of school obligations or work obligations to see them. Terry could talk well with others when it was forced or required, but when he was left to his own devices for conversation and companionship. He was very much lacking.
The dates had been really bad, he had gone out on 4 dates with partners he almost considered pranks for their absurdness. One was a devout Christian who spent the whole movie, she had picked to go see with him, explaining the possible future he could have in the church with her father and brother. They worked as custodial staff at the church and more hands were always welcome for praise and cleansing. He had declined dinner after the show complaining about a stomach ache. He did not contact her again.
The next was a woman who drank 4 drinks before he even showed up at the bar and when he got there she had four more. At one point, he thought the date was going well, but he came back from the bathroom to find her making out with the bartender over the bar. He went to leave and as he was walking by, she came out of the kiss and screamed ,almost apologetically “I thought he was you” to Terry. He shook his head at the train wreck and left her with the bill.
Blind dates 3 and 4 were both late and even though they were seemingly normal he offended one by referring to a show she liked as okay and the other had just ghosted him for the past 3 days after their date.
He never had a problem with being single. It was other people who seemed to have a problem with him being single. He'd never dated through high school or middle school. Claire was really just a fluke, he had accidentally hit her car with his bike. While they were talking about how he could pay for any damages. He mentioned taking her out to eat and eventually they just went on a date. He hadn't even really been sure how they became a couple. It was just like three or four dates in which they just decided it worked and he had been happy.Terry didn't even really feel like it was his decision to be with her. She just kept him around and then dropped him one day. Terry didn’t really even feel that bad about it, if he was being honest.
Terry was not sure about relationships entirely, even familiar ones like his mom, Terri. She entered into relationships and even got married from time to time.. Her most recent relationship was to Ron. A standoffish widower, his wife had died of cancer two years before he met Terri. He had two kids, Caleb and Sarah who were both grown and out of the house. So Ron was not happy to have another child under his roof. It was he who convinced Terri to send her son to boarding school.
“It’s good for the boy to learn some independence and meet more people his own age” Ron said one night.
Terri replied, “he has never been away from me for that long. It's always been him and I since his father left.” Terry overheard this all from his room down the hall from theirs, he was 12 at the time. Ron's house was smaller than the ones he had lived in before. Terry had his own room, but the 2 bedroom condo was slightly cramped for three.
“He can’t stay by your side forever, Terri. The school board around here is full of asses and he would get a better chance away from that.” Ron seemed to always have an answer to his mom's objections. The conversation was not as long as Terry would have thought, his mom almost easily folding to the cold logic of Ron's arguments. They told him the next morning and he was there a month later, two states away in a boarding school near the mountains. The change in setting was jarring and Terry stayed there most of the year only coming back for 2 weeks in winter and a month in the summer. This was only if his family could afford the plane ticket for him. There were half a dozen instances where he went over a year without seeing his mother at all.
All this time without the reassurance of his family, left him behaving more formally and less intimate with classmates. The resentment that he felt to others was obvious to anyone who paid attention, and he did nothing to hide it from peers who bragged about going home to see loved ones and going on holidays. As a result he got labeled as a rude and somewhat cold individual. Terry was however liked well enough by teachers, having a thirst for knowledge and a mind for events and history.
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Terry occasionally wrote letters to his mom, but these were impersonal and focused on what he was learning or was doing at the school. The letters and calls were more frequent in college, but often they were mean and fighting over the treatment and lack of relationship between the mother and son. Then the worst happened between the Graduation break-up and the landslides of the dates.
Before the ghosting of the 4th and final blind catastrophe, Terry received a message from his stepdad, Ron. iIt read “There was an accident and Terri’s been hurt. You should try and come over if you can, she wants to see you.”
“What happened?” Terry demanded calling him immediately, knowing it would be hard to make it over. He had stayed in the state of his boarding school for college, finding the mountains more calming and permanent than the windswept plains of his step-father’s state.
“It was the other driver's fault, he apparently fell asleep at the wheel or something like that. We were t-boned at an intersection and she was in the passenger seat. The doctor says it is a simple surgery, but you know your mother is always frightened by the simplest things.” Ron explained nonchalantly, and he sounded confident that she would be alright.
But the surgery had a complication, they found something inside her, a tumor, and the only flight Terry could get was a week out. This was awful and his last week of work as a cashier in the college cafeteria, had wracked with worry over his mother's situation. He had heard about the tumor and knew that there was not much time. Last night he had gotten a final call from Ron saying he was too late and his mother had died from stage 4 breast cancer.
Terry still had to go back. He had no job or place here now. He barely had a home to go back to through. Everything was already packed and many of his things were shipped to save on luggage. All he had to take back now was a backpack full of odds and ends and a duffle bag for some of his clothes and his only real companion left in the world.
Before Terry left for college, he went to his mother's house and had a month with her after not seeing her for about 2 years. He had grown an attachment to one of the science rooms' many mascot animals. Amphibians, reptiles and many other interesting critters were kept in terrariums around the room. He convinced his mom to get him a turtle he named Rosa. The painted shell turtle was a true friend for the 4 years he was away at college. She was adorable and tiny, only the size of Terry’s palm. She had red and yellow paint stripes on her face and shell almost like a painter speckled her with many drops of their brush.
She was in her travel container now. This was a gallon jar with air holes in the top and a collection of rocks and sticks to create a semblance of her larger terrarium. There was also a small bowl from a sushi place he liked for her water. He put one of the lettuce leafs he saved for her in as he put on his only clean outfit. The rest would be washed later when he went to Ron’s for what he hoped was the last time before the funeral. He had saved a bit to get his first apartment and Terry had already talked to a few locals in the town about potential jobs, he did not want to be at the mercy of Ron’s hospitality any longer then he needed to be. The only real memories he had of this step father was the lack of him during the times he came home and the fact it was his idea to send him away in the first place.
Terry had a lanky and skinny body with a peachy freckled face. He preferred simple and colorless clothes that draped more than actually fit him. His Outfit on this day was a gray hoodie over black jeans with his black Chucks. He had a thin face much like his mothers and the other trait he had from her was his unruly brown hair. It puffed and poofed in all directions like a bush or tangle of fluffy dark cloud stuff. His eyes were the only piece from his dad, who he never met. They were blue and rather his most striking feature, people often saying they were truly memorable and very handsome. He was never able to get a beard or barley stubble, he only shaved once a month.
He gathered up the last pieces of his kit and carefully carried Rosa down to his car. He was selling the crappy beat up ‘98 Civic sedan at the airport to a service center. They were towing it from a particular parking area and he would get an easy $560 for the final drive of the car.
He didn’t even bother to look back as he left the college parking lot for the last time. “Well that is over and this new chapter to begin, Rosa.” Terry often talked to the turtle, who was sitting in his front seat with a buckle drawn and secured around the jar so that it would not dump or fall over during the early morning commute. “I just want some better news. I didn’t get to say goodbye, but at least I can put some dirt on the grave and leave my lack of family and friends here to whatever they wanna be away from me.” he was rambling a bit. Terry did not like to admit his shortcomings, but really who does.
“I barely even miss her, or them now”, sorrow does weird things to people. It can allow them to see some things very clearly while clouding the overt and obvious. For instance right now, with this being his first and only break up, Terry could feel a strong amount of twisting and churning in his stomach. The feeling was uncomfortable and he had even thrown up from the queasiness earlier this week. This feeling on top of the abandonment and lack of closure from not saying goodbye to his own mother, had made him particularly moody and irritable, along with the nausea-inducing sickness from the worry and the breakup. In short, Terry was a wreck.
This was no state for a person to be driving in, as he got on the interstate heading to the airport at roughly 4:05 am. He pressed hard on the gas. Terry wanted to go fast, he was moving not only to get where he wanted to go, but for the feeling of control and power. The highway was empty thankfully, no one there to see the Civic reach 85 mph and then at 88 something else happened.
He had music on listening to whatever new rock song was on the radio, just something loud to keep him awake at the earlier hour. He was bobbing his head to the bass and drum barely noticing the lights zipping by. Wait, lights like bolts flashing around my car? It better not be the engine sparking, he thought, catching a glimpse finally. But the lights were not coming from the engine, he realized focusing on them. They were extending from a point in front of the vehicle and shooting from there along the boxy lines of the Civic. Terry was momentarily mesmerized by the streaks that danced and flashed around him and then they were in the car as well. The hair on his arm stood up like static shock off a carpet. The world felt like it slowed around him, the electric feeling buzzing inside him now and in the next second his car was gone from the interstate with a flash and a burning trail from where his tires had been.