cold stations

when yoongi's truck pulls up, i realize that the cab is already almost full: jungkook opens a door and hops out, waving at us. “hey! i’m gonna ride in the back, so one of you can have my seat if you want it.” he sounds harder than usual, like he’s angry about something. hoseok slides out after him and climbs up into the bed of the truck, grinning at me like we never met this afternoon. like he was never in the hospital. like nothing’s wrong. (it makes my stomach feel funny, like the taste left from licking a stamp.) taehyung climbs into the cab, but i don’t follow; instead jungkook and i hop up after hoseok, settling down on a few rough woolen blankets.

“how are you?” i ask, mostly directed at hoseok but glancing at jungkook again as i try to pinpoint what’s off.

“great! i’m starving,” hoseok answers, stretching out his arms to the wind as the truck gets going again.

“sit down properly!” jungkook demands. “we’re gonna get pulled over because of you, and then we’ll be sitting in a cold police station with no dinner and a citation or something on our records! i swear, you're stupid for a hyung.” that’s what it is. he’s frowning. i don’t think i’ve seen him frown for longer than a few seconds.  

yoongi drives faster than he should. or maybe it’s that the air feels faster out here, and harder. hoseok’s laugh is loud and it makes me feel afraid for him. when we pull to a stop, the others spill out of the truck, running into what looks like a half-dead subway station, and hoseok vaults over the side of the truck to join them. jungkook and i follow, but i think he looks almost grim as we run to catch up. they order fries― two or three huge baskets of them― and soda, and coffee for namjoon and a steamed sweet potato for hobi, who says he won’t be filled up easily. it’s hilarious, watching them laugh and ducking the handful of fries thrown my way, here with the fluorescent lights and the scattered food and taehyung, standing up on the table amidst the chaos to try and rap as fluently as his hyungs. i’m almost caught up in the wild freedom of it all.

(but not quite.)

hoseok’s laugh still frightens me; taehyung is avoiding my eyes. yoongi is swearing more and more frequently, and something about jungkook’s biting comments towards him makes me think they’ve fought. namjoon’s words seem reckless, not at all like his usual kind, thoughtful self. jimin laughs at their jokes but he seems shallow. the whole thing feels just a little wrong. jin is gone and they're ignoring it. or trying to.

but i don’t know them as well as they know each other. they’ll be fine.

we jam into a picture booth together and make crazy faces, and laugh when the machine doesn’t spit out our photos. out in the station, we clamber into and over the train cars, jumping the gaps in the dim light. jungkook says it’s stupid, and secretly i agree, but we follow right along with them until i’m laughing out of sheer tiredness.  

yoongi drives even faster on the way back. this time i sit in the cab with jungkook and jimin, while hoseok and namjoon and tae yell at the cars we pass and splash half-empty cups over hoods. the bad taste in my stomach is back. namjoon and taehyung get off together, carrying tae’s bag of stained clothes and a paper bag full of what sounds like cans that they pull from under the seat. i wonder if they’re really planning to stay up drinking, but i don’t want to think about it anymore, so instead i lean my forehead against the window and try to process why everything feels so wrong. they feel like bad company and i’m wondering how they changed. or maybe i’m changed.

jungkook asks to be let off with me. “i want to walk,” he says in the truck, and suga shrugs and doesn’t protest even though we all know that jungkook has a long walk to get back to the dorm. we watch them drive off, and jungkook makes a tired attempt at a smile that never reaches his eyes.

“will you be okay walking?” i ask, and he nods fast.

“actually― yeah, no. i’m taking the bus.” he admits, looking sheepish and upset at the same time. “i just didn’t want to sit in there with them right now, and i don’t want to ride in the back.”

“okay.” i nod, understanding. “stay safe.”

“goodnight.” he waves to me, and crosses the street to the bus stop, while i take off my sandals under the porch and walk up the stairs barefooted, ignoring the darkness of the house and the empty bowl on the floor of my bedroom. i leave my jacket on and curl up on top of the covers and cry into the pillow for everyone and for no reason at all.

my phone rings in my pocket at 7:02 in the morning. i answer it half dazed but wake up immediately, because it is not taehyung like the number says. this is a police officer, and he’s calling on behalf of kim taehyung, who was caught vandalizing with kim namjoon last night, but is being detained longer for reasons he won’t explain. he’s asking me to drop by the station, and i’m already changing, pressing the phone to my bleary cheek with my shoulder as i drag on jeans and an old flannel shirt that doesn’t smell like last night’s fries.

walking out of the warming-up syrup of the early light into the cold station is one of the scariest things i’ve ever done. it feels like standing on the sidewalk after seokjin flipped his truck over the edge, except i can’t see what the accident was. all i can see is the twisted metal guard rails and the rubber burnt onto the concrete.

i know i look small and unshowered and probably depressed to the officer at the front desk who asks me to take a seat for just a moment. i fiddle with my phone in my hands until a man in uniform pokes his head out from a hallway and beckons me up and back to a small room. before he lets me in, he explains: taehyung was caught spray painting a warehouse door with namjoon, and the two were detained after attempting to evade the police. the penalty isn’t so serious for that, but a bag of bloody clothes was left behind; they were already investigating something else and taehyung promised to explain, but only if i came. me, the the new contact saved from namjoon’s phone as barefoot. he shut down after that and hasn’t said anything since. if i could go in and listen to him, the officer will be just behind me, watching and recording.

when he opens the door, taehyung’s head swivels up. i walk in and slide into the single seat across from him as the door closes lightly behind me, cringing at the cold metal against my thighs.

“taehyung?” i ask, trying not to see spots. he meets my eyes, or tries to, and starts crying. mostly it’s the way his shoulders tremor, but his fingers twitch and a few tears drip onto the metal table. my own hands feel very cold and distant, and i reach out to his, wrapping numb fingers around tear-wet ones.

“i did something really bad,” he says, his deep voice cracking down one side. “i promised i would tell you.”

i remember the half-joking promise made on the street corner last night, and realize that what he needs is just someone to be here with him, as he confesses. he closes his bandaged hand over mine.

“i think my dad’s like deokhye’s father, except;” his voice falters; his grip does not. “he hits with his hands, not his words. i have a younger sister, too, and it’s worse for her. i’m not usually home.” i stroke my thumb over his knuckles and feel myself crying, taking the tears for him. pretending the officer isn’t there.

“after jin’s accident, i went home to see her.”

“i remember.”

“he pushes her around too much, and there was yelling upstairs before i even walked in, and there were bottles on the table outside the door. there always are.” his rushing words are checked by hatred and fear in his voice and then he starts again. “so i hit him, and there was glass everywhere, and i stabbed him with the bottle because i didn’t want him to hit me. no,” he corrects. “i wanted him to stop hitting her, more than that.”

he doesn’t say that he killed his father, because that’s too awful for him, even having lived through what he did. he is no longer crying; he reaches up and wipes my tears with his thumb, biting his lip. his face is almost blank again, but not quite.

“you made a deal,” he reminds me, looking at my tears on his shaking fingers. “why were you crying?”

“you want to hear it right now?” i choke, and his eyes say yes. anything else right now. anything.

you are standing on the sidewalk overlooking the bay, amidst the wrecked guard rails and the tire smoke and the wailing sirens and their lights. you can see the tragedy now, and it is more than death. the body is not a just a boy: it is the decisions he made. death, the end result, smells like burnt rubber and broken glass and bloody shirts. it has pushed you beyond what you thought was possible to bear.

“i just don't want to live anymore.”

time does a backflip and breaks its neck before it even hits the ground.

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