PROLOGUE
On a night that’s so damn dark my eyes have to squint to find the lines on the road and the path ahead and the trees framing it, I yawn for so long that my entire face sighs in relief when my mouth eventually closes and my face un-strains. I let my foot press a little harder than it should on the pedal, and I turn up the radio with my chipped-polish fingers.
“Hands on ten and two,” Mom chimes from my memories. “Like a clock!”
“You can’t force me to drive us across state borders when I’ve never driven before!”
She flips her reddish wild hair over her shoulders. “I did this when I was your age. Same route: Montana to California. And you know what? All I needed was a map and my hands on the wheel, and all was fine, as it will be with you. Now: keep your left foot on the left side, and let your right foot do the work...”
Lil pokes my arm, looking up at me with big eyes. “Harper, Harper!” She yells so shrilly that I can’t help but jump and focus the entirety of my attention on her (this is her calling card for me, saying my name so high-pitched that every muscle in my body tenses attentively).
“What, what?”
“Police!” She screams. “Police, police!” And I realize I was so caught up in my reminiscing of the past I didn’t even hear the sirens or see the flashing lights that fire up the night in red and blue. My eyes widen so large that I feel my eyebrows reach my hairline. I swerve to the side and pull the gear down. “Oh, Jesus Christ,” I murmur under my breath.
“Bad words,” Lil murmurs worriedly under hers.
The cop approaches the side of our car. He wears glasses that seem a bit too reminiscent of the seventies and has ginger hair and an accompanying, orange-tinted mustache. “Do you know why you’ve been pulled over today?”
I clear my throat and sit up straight. Then I give my best smile. “No, sir, I don’t.”
“You’re driving awfully recklessly.”
I shrug, sigh, and then clasp my hands together. “Sorry about that. I’m just a bit tired. You know how it is on Montanan roads in the nighttime: dark as hell and tired eyes have a hard time differentiating things.”
And let me tell you, he is not in the slightest convinced by the smile I’m so dearly plastering to my apologetic face. He shifts his weight to his right hip and swings the beam of his flashlight toward the inside of our car, which is so messy it actually hurts. Then he glances back at me. “How old are you?”
“Sixteen, sir. And my sister over here is--”
Lil holds out six fingers and yells shrilly, yet again. “Six years old!”
And do you know what? He’s not even impressed by Lil’s exuding cuteness! All he says is: “Parents?”
I cock my head. “Driving without an adult in the car is not a crime, if I can remember.”
“Can I see your license?”
I pause for a long while. “I don’t--”
“Driving without a license is a crime, if I can remember.”
I swallow. “Well-- that’s just what everyone does down here. You know, country roads, small towns.”
He swings his flashlight to the back of the car instead of the front this time, spotlighting the mess that’s even worse now that we’re all paying it the attention it has yet to receive. There are piles and piles of blankets Mom would wrap Lil and I up in on the chilly Californian nights, and push into the trunk on the sweltering Californian days. There are candy wrappers and fast-food bags and schoolbooks and all of it is so random and chaotic that it’s enough to make the cop’s eyebrows furrow. His eyes focus on Lil and I once more. “I’m curious to know why a sixteen-year-old and a six-year-old are driving a car that appears to be lived in.”
“Ha ha!” I clear my throat to erase how staccato-y my voice sounds. “We aren’t living out of a car.”
“Can you tell me where you’re driving from?”
“California.” And can I tell you, I swear that saying it makes me envision the last two years in some crazy sort of montage-looking-thing, framed by California’s too-big ocean and its blistering sandy shores. I see Mom dashing and prancing and bounding across the shore in sundresses and swimsuits covered in color and I see a littler Lil following her, holding onto her hand and laugh-yelling.
The cop goes: “California’s awful far from here.”
“We’re in Montana. Not Canada. The drive wasn’t all too bad.”
“Where are your parents?”
My voice lowers. “Parent,” I correct. “My mother’s...” gone, gone, gone, my thoughts yell so loud at me I’m tempted to yell back. But in real life, obviously, I don’t say those agonizingly frank words. Instead, I do what I know how to, and I deflect by saying, “I don’t know why these questions are necessary. It’s late--” One in the morning, to be exact, “--and me and my sister need to get home. It’s a Monday night. Don’t you have actual crimes to prosecute people for?”
“You two can get on home. But these sorts of things are punishable.”
My head cocks further. “Punishable? It’s just a fine or something-- right?”
“I’m going to ticket you. You’ll have thirty days to pay it.”
“How much?”
After handing me the slip, which seems to yell out a loud $400!, he says, “Get on home safe now, alright?” And he starts walking away, ending the night and disappearing with a whoosh of air and a dramatic poof. I keep the car parked and blink confusedly-- holding the ticket and clenching it so tight in my palms the blood drains out of my fingers.
Lil grabs my leg. “He asked about Mommy.” Her voice lowers to a whisper. “We’re not supposed to talk about her.”
“If a legal officer asks, we can’t just keep our mouths zipped.”
Her entire face creases with worry. “What if he knows?”
“Lil, the fact that our mother is... Well, it isn’t some--”
She claps her hands over her ears. She hates when I bring up the mess we’ve been through and our gaping loneliness. Sometimes I forget she’s a six-year-old in need of rose-colored glasses to perceive the world, and it germinates a teeny seed of guilt in the bottom of my belly.
“I’m sorry. Let’s not talk about Mom, anymore, okay?” I put my hands on the wheels once more and then shift the car’s gear into drive. “We’re going to get home, because we’ve missed it oh-so-dearly, am I right?”
She nods her head aggressively up and down, a grin spreading across her face. “Uh-huh.”
“And do you know what the first thing we’re going to do is?”
Her smile reaches her ears. “What are we going to do?”
“I’m going to show you around. I’ll take you everywhere. Are you ready to go on wilddd adventures?”
She yells: “I’m ready!”
“Sit back. We’re going to attempt to make it back without being pulled over again.”
Lil mutters a cheerful “Mm-kay,” under her breath and I smile, even though my insides and my brain are chockfull with icky feelings and things. I keep my eyes on the road, that’s absolutely drenched in darkness, but I feel the sudden urge to squeeze my eyes shut and playback the entirety of the last two years. I just want to rewind the time so I can pinpoint the moment my mom changed and I can patch Band-Aids upon all of her inner turmoil to stop her from disappearing on us.
But I don’t close my eyes, and I don’t rewind the time and I don’t problem solve her absence. Thankfully, I have the will to keep myself from letting my thoughts land on her. The closest I’ll let myself get to thinking of Mom is imagining her sitting in the driver’s seat and me in the passenger, and even though she’s driving, she allows one of her hands to reach over to me. Sweeping my wavy/messy hair out of my eyes and tucking it behind my ear. Humming along to the song on the radio as she smooths my hair, and glancing at me with her usual sunny, slightly tilted smile.
But I remind myself that beyond this darkness-covered road, there’s you. You: Andy Madden, and beside you, the familiarity of home. And maybe the minute that I’ll put myself back in my hometown and amongst all the people I’ve known my entire life, it will be easier to fill the gaps Mom left behind.
That thought alone is enough to make me grin my worries away.
