Page 19 of Goodbye Note

Varian cut between us, wearing a scowl. “Ready to bounce?”

My brows pulled. Did he have some sort of issue with Lindsay? “Sure...”

“Sweet. I’ll catch you later, Linds.”

He half-dragged me out of there and into their van. We had a similar one with the back bench taken out to fit all our gear. Most of us drove something like it. He pulled open the sliding door and waved for me to climb in. He followed and sat next to me in the back. His brother took the driver’s seat and their bassist took the front, while their drummer took the space on the bench next to Varian.

Tightly packed in, I tried to put on my seatbelt to find it was broken.

“That one’s been fucked for a while.”

“Ah, so fitting right into the stereotype of the alternative death trap like all the midwestern housewives tell their children.” I shot finger guns at him.

Varian laughed, elbowing me in the side. “Where is the fun without the risk?”

“Aren’t we too old for this acting-out stuff? You’re letting the intrusive thoughts win.” I returned, holding back a laugh.

“Do you have dreams about driving off a bridge, too? How romantic,” Val said from the front.

“Mine are into a brick wall. Open water in a car scares me. That’s not a comfort.” I gave him a big grin in the rearview mirror.

Varian side-eyed me. “Interesting, so you are the instant death kind of intrusive thought type. That tells me a lot.”

“Wait, what? There are different types?” I asked, baffled.

“Oh, absolutely. There are all different types. Val has ‘make himself disappear’ type, like he wouldn’t even know how it happened. He just stops existing. I’m sure if we talked to a professional, the differences would put us each into a different type of fucked-up box. I bet we could classify the entire world with intrusive thoughts.” He turned to look at their drummer, Fox. “What type do you have?”

Fox looked up from his book. “What?”

“Intrusive thoughts. What type do you have? Tell me one.”

“What’s an intrusive thought?”Fox asked.

We all stared at him.

Even Val turned around when he hit a light to look at Fox. “Tell me you’re fucking kidding, man?”

Fox shook his head, peering at each of us in turn.

“They are like thoughts of dying or doing something crazy to cause yourself to die. Like every time I drive over a bridge, I think of veering into the water and dying.” Varian narrowed his eyes. “So what do you have?”

“Can you give me another example?”

“It can be anything violent or illegal or focused on something traumatic or embarrassing. They can even be sexual or fucked-up or both,” I said, trying to help.

“I don’t think I’ve ever had one of those.”

Val made a horrified face. “You’ve never gone over and over something you said in public until you wanted to kill yourself?”

Fox shook his head. “Can’t say that I have. That isn’t normal…is it?”

“You’ve never thought about how you could just kill everyone around you?” Bronx added from the front seat, picking glue out of his mohawk.

“No, never.” Fox looked at Bronx like he had three heads.

“How about, like, you’re bad at your job? Like you really suck at playing the drums.”

“Or ones like that there is just a ton of cancer growing inside you and you’re going to randomly go to the hospital for a test and get told you have three months to live?” Val pressed, turning back to the road.

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