“I hardly drove it, and it’s in pretty good shape.” He pops his dentures in place to tell me this, then pops them back out again. It’s tough looking and impractical since it rains so goddamn much. But I don’t mind the feel of rain on my face, and it’s better than buying a beat-up, gang-banger car from Alfie’s Car Lot. Everyone knows Alfie deals everything Mo does not. The lot is just a side business. Cars traded for drugs, cars bought to hide cash. Those cars have bad juju. I hand Mr. Fimmes the cash and drive away. I go slowly, my foot hovering nervously over the brake. I watch old Mr. Fimmes in the rearview mirror, thinking at any moment he’s going to figure out I can’t drive and call the whole thing off. I’ve only driven once before, when Sandy let me drive her car around the Rag’s parking lot after hours. I’d been good at it then, but there had been no other cars around. So this is it. I’m teaching myself. I take the back streets, slamming the brakes too hard at the stop signs, and almost knocking over someone’s mailbox when I make a turn.
I’ll be the only person on Wessex Street, besides Mo, who owns a car. This makes me a target. Judah was suspicious of me, so why wouldn’t these strangers be? Either way, I don’t want anyone to know I have it. Sandy says I can leave in in her garage for a few days. I drop it off at her house and catch the bus home. It feels good. I bought a car. I’m a total grownup.
I rent the eating house to Sandy, who finally left Luis and is seeing a new guy she met in the vitamin aisle at Wal-Mart. He’s nice enough; I met them at a bar once, but soon after arriving, I felt like the awkward third wheel and said I had to go.
I go to the library and print off a lease agreement I find online. Four hundred dollars a month, and she is responsible for the utilities. She says she is going to get a roommate and charge them six hundred dollars a month to live with her. I don’t care. I tell her so. This response seems to illicit excitement from her, and she rushes off to put an ad on Craigslist. I don’t know who Craig is, but as I toss my things into garbage bags, I pray he doesn’t send a psychopath to live in my mother’s house. Then I remember that I’m much worse than a psychopath, and that shuts up my mental fretting.
I get a driver’s license, and then I open a bank account, depositing most of my mother’s money and a stack of my paychecks. I keep five thousand dollars in a rolled up sock in my purse. On an almost sunny day in late August, when the wild blackberries hang heavy and ripe on their branches, I climb into my Jeep and leave the Bone behind forever.
HOW DO YOU JUST LEAVE the place you’ve always lived and not know where you’re going? HOW DO YOU JUST LEAVE THE PLACE YOU’VE ALWAYS LIVED AND NOT KNOW WHERE YOU’RE GOING?!
I jerk my steering wheel to the right and cross two lanes of traffic, cutting off a Subaru and a semi before the Jeep groans to a stop on the shoulder of the highway. I flick on the Jeep’s emergency lights and hop out. This is crazy. What am I doing? The gravel crunches beneath my shoes as I race to the opposite side of the car and lean against the passenger side door, bending at the waist. I just need to … breathe … without … anyone … seeing me. I try to look calm, even as my heart rages. I am nothing. I have no one. The world is big, and this is all I’ve ever known. I cover my eyes with my hands and feel fear crushing what courage I worked so hard to cultivate over the last few weeks. I’m following signs to a city I’ve never even visited. I have no idea where I’m going to sleep tonight. God, I’m stupid. Following a pipe dream that Judah laid the foundation to. Before he left me.
What makes me think I can live this fray?
And then there is a voice that comes from deep inside me; it is what I imagine the eating house sounds like: rumbly and old. “You’ve killed people. What makes you think you can’t?”
I say it out loud, with car engines roaring behind me, and suddenly I’m sober. Sober as the night I smashed Vola Fields’s head on the side of her dresser for beating her baby. Sober like the day I used Gassy the gas can to douse Lyndee Anthony in two dollars worth of premium before I tossed a match her way.
Of course I can do this. I’m deranged. I am capable of murder. I’m like my grandmother who pushed my mother’s head under the murky bathwater and tried to drown her. Surely, somewhere inside of me dwells the ability to survive in a city larger than the Bone. I survived aloneness, I fed myself, I clothed myself, I graduated high school, I read books to make myself smarter. I’ll do it all again, because that’s what I do. Right? Right.I am almost put back together when a highway patrol car pulls up behind the Jeep. Fuck. Running my hands through my hair, my mind immediately goes to the contents of my car. Is there anything in here that can get me in trouble? I think of the knife set that I took from the kitchen when I was packing up, and the pink Zippo that I never gave back to Judah. No. I can’t get in trouble for having those. But Nevaeh’s bear sits on the passenger seat. The bear from the picture that was on every news station in America. The bear I took from Lyndee Anthony’s book bag before I burned it along with her.
I straighten my spine.
“Hello,” I say. I notice that his hand rests lightly on the hilt of his gun as he walks over. Something they teach them to do in the police academy? Just so you know, I have a gun! Hey there, I can blow your head off!
“Ma’am,” he says. “Are you having car trouble?”
“It’s overheating,” I say quickly. He bends down to peer into the Jeep, even though the removable top is off. “Are you headed somewhere?”
“I’m moving,” I say flatly. “To Seattle.” I eye Bambi. Why didn’t I stuff it into one of the trash bags?
He eyes the bags stuffed into my trunk in a hurry, then opens the driver’s side door.
“Seattle,” he says. “Big ambitions. See your license and registration,” he says. I fumble in my wallet, then the glove box, and hand them over. I study him as he looks them over, carrying them back to his cruiser to run my plates. I consider putting the bear away, but if he’s already seen it, it will look suspicious.
“Start her up,” he says. “Let’s see.”
I walk past him, my hands clammy and shaking. You’re fine! I tell myself. He’s trying to help.
I slide into the driver’s side and turn the key. The Jeep grumbles to life. The officer eyes the dashboard. “Seems to be fine now,” he says. “But you might want to turn around and head back into town to get it checked out.”