Free Crash Into You by Kels Barnholdt

down. The problem was that I didn’t know how to get him to listen to me, I didn’t know how I could possibly explain how I felt the whole time I was in there. It felt like he already had his mind up, like nothing I said mattered.
    “He’s just so angry.” I’m trying to make sense of all the fuzz and drama that’s playing back and forth inside my head. “He has no idea what it was like in there, he thinks he was just an after thought, when he was one of my only thoughts.”
    “Well,” Eric says, looking a little guilty, “I might be able to help with that.”
    “Thanks,” I sigh, “but you’re the last person that should be talking to him, he probably wouldn’t believe anything you said to him, and would end up kicking your ass, or something.”
    Eric drops his hand from where it was just resting a second ago on my back, and looks at me like I’ve lost my mind. “First of all, no one would be kicking my ass, like, come on, don’t make me laugh.”
    I shoot Angelina a look, and catch a smile creeping over her face.
    “Second of all,” he continues, “that’s not what I meant at all.” He gets up, and strides easily back to the car, swinging the front door open, and disappearing inside.
    I lean my head on Angelina’s tiny shoulder, inhaling her scent deeply, trying to stay in this moment with her, this moment where all that matters is here and now, with my best friend.
      “I don’t know what I’m going to do,” I whisper.
    “You’re going to do what you always do, Tor, what you have to.”
    Before I have a chance to answer her, Eric’s standing in front of us again, with my secret journal in his hand.
    “Here you go,” Eric says, holding it out proudly.
    “Where did you get that?” I exclaim. It comes out as more of a scream than a real question. I jump up from my place on the small sidewalk and grab it out of his hand as fast as I can, like if I wait a second longer it would vanish forever.
    “Your room,” he tells me. He says it like it’s completely normal for him to be looking around in my room, trying to find things like secret journals. “When Angelina told me you called freaking out, I figured it had something to do with the wellness center, so I went and got it for you, in case it could be of help. Which, it is, cause I’m always right.”
    “That’s impossible. I hid it.” I flip through the pages, like maybe it’s just a journal that looks like the one I had in the wellness center, but it’s really something different, something pretending to be my journal. They're all there though, every single horrible page, every single awful detail from those three months.
    “Oh, please, like I don’t know your hiding spots. I mean, under your mattress is the first place I looked.”
    “That’s why you made us stop back at the hotel!” Angelina says, jumping up from where she was just sitting a second earlier.
    “But how did you manage to get in?” I ask suspiciously.
    Eric smirks, “like I would ever reveal my secrets, although that dog of yours almost blew my cover, barking in every which direction.” He rolls his eyes, like it’s Moe’s fault he has social anxiety!
    “What’s in this thing anyway?” Angelina asks, grabbing the notebook out of my hand and started to flip through it.
    I make a quick grab for it, but she moves it out of my reach before I can get a good grip on it.
    “That,” Eric says, pulling me further away from Angelina and my journal, “is her journal from the time she was in the wellness center. Every single detail of how she felt is in that thing, which I can only assume means it’s almost completely all about Nathan.”
    I shoot him a look, but he raises his eyebrows at me, and I stay silent. Mostly because I know he’s right, and he knows he’s right, no sense in getting in an argument I’ll lose. I had enough to deal with at the moment.
    “So what! What does that matter at all?”
    “Um,” Angelina stops flipping through the pages now