A DOOR SLAMMED SOMEWHERE. IT shook me awake, my brain and body scrambling to remember where I was. I lifted my head and looked at the old clock radio on the nightstand, its neon-green numbers blinking 12:00, 12:00, 12:00.
The room came into focus in bits and pieces. The light was different here, slanting in through the slits in the blinds. And the morning sounds—they were different too. No garbage trucks rumbling or neighbors’ dogs barking, or car alarms being set off. Just birds: a whole orchestra of whistling and whispering, knocking and tapping, the call and response of an indecipherable language.
I reached for the notebook I kept on the nightstand, the pen clipped to the cover, and I scribbled a note to myself to look up what kinds of birds live around here. Lots of the great scientists kept journals: Albert Einstein, Marie Curie, Thomas Edison, countless others. I had a whole stack of full notebooks at home, hidden in a shoe box at the back of my closet. I kept thinking maybe someday I’d look back on them and realize I had some brilliant idea, the missing piece to a problem I would be trying to solve years from now.
I wished I could’ve stayed in bed. But that would have been too much like surrendering. So I dragged myself up to my feet, opened the door, and stepped outside onto the deck. I heard voices down below, so I crept to the edge without the railing and leaned over to see. My mom stood there with her hands firmly planted on her hips, showered and dressed, as if she’d been up for hours and was ready to get this day over with. To get her time with me over with. Isobel hovered behind Dad, who was hunched under the open hood of her old station wagon. Then Dad moved around to the driver’s side and leaned in to start it. The engine choked and sputtered, and for a second I worried it wasn’t going to turn over, but then it roared to life.
They all stood there, watching for any signs of malfunction. But it stayed strong. Dad nodded in approval, then looked to Mom.
“Fine,” she said.
“You’re sure?” he asked.
“I said fine.”
Isobel glanced over her shoulder at that moment, as if she had somehow known I was watching. We exchanged a quick smile before I raced back inside to shower and get dressed.
I went downstairs and I played the game. Acted surprised when Mom and Dad told me they’d let me use the car for the summer. Acted grateful when they said I could take it for a test drive by myself. Acted like they were being reasonable when they said if I wasn’t back in five minutes, they’d change their minds about the whole thing.
Maybe I really was a flight risk. If I was, it was only because they’d kept me locked away like a prisoner for the last year. They thought they were protecting me—I got that. But what they didn’t get was that they were suffocating me in the process.
• • •
The station wagon was a total piece of shit. But it was my piece of shit now. Turning the key in the ignition that first time, feeling the car rumble to life all around me, was freedom.
The car wasn’t so much a color, as it was rust and patches of faded paint. The old leather seats were so worn and soft and holey that the foam was popping through in a million different places. I flipped the visor down, and it nearly fell off into my lap. The AC didn’t work, and all I could smell was motor oil. I rolled all the windows down by hand, adjusted the mirrors, and had to really work the sticky gear to shift it into drive. My parents and Isobel all stood and watched as I eased the car down the gravel driveway and turned out onto the road.
Once I was out of their view, I spun the dial on the radio, but all I got was static. I reached over and popped open the glove box—it was jammed full of papers and an assortment of dusty old cassette tapes that had to have been sitting there since the nineties. Their plastic cases cascaded onto the floor of the passenger side. I reached over and grabbed one of the tapes, tried to read the faded handwritten words scrawled on the paper label.
I looked up just in time to swerve.