Damaged

by Amy Reed

  I filled the darkness with plans. I filled in the empty spaces with details. I turned the enormity of San Francisco into items on a to-do list. Systematic. Methodical. Not scary. I would do these things and I would do them perfectly:

  1) Arrive in San Francisco

  2) Stay at a youth hostel or other inexpensive temporary housing

  3) Find a job with a flexible schedule (probably waitressing)

  4) Find a room in an apartment with (serious and responsible) students

  5) Take BA prerequisites at a community college. Get 4.0 (obviously)

  6) Establish California residency after a year so UC tuition will be cheaper

  7) Transfer to UC Berkeley (hopefully with another soccer scholarship, or possibly some kind of scholarship for abandoned children of crazy women)

  8) Start my real life

  This plan made sense. This plan made me safe. There were no holes for uncertainty to slip through.

  I don’t know how long I waited for Hunter to arrive. But when he did, after I threw my bag next to his and a bunch of camping gear, a cooler, and what appeared to be a case of liquor in the trunk, after I got in and buckled my seat belt, he looked at me strangely, like he was inspecting me, and asked if I had been sleeping out there. He said my eyes had been closed; I had been sitting completely still.

  “Maybe I was meditating,” I said.

  “Were you?”

  “No.”

  We didn’t speak after that. I never asked where we were going. He put on some kind of instrumental rock, beautiful but sad, like the sound of so many instruments crying. I snuck looks at him occasionally, but I had to look away quickly. I didn’t like what I saw. He was scared too.

  I don’t remember falling asleep. I remember looking out the window and seeing nothing but waves of dark pattern. I remember the sad sound track. I don’t remember dreaming. When I fell asleep, it’s like I disappeared. And now, I am reborn in this new, unknown place, the air somehow clearer than it ever was back home.

  I have found it—the cure, the secret for getting rid of Camille. As long as I keep moving, the ghosts cannot catch me.

  Across the parking lot, Hunter’s door swings open. He stands up and stretches as he looks around, catches my eye, and smiles. He starts walking over and some little voice inside tries to remind me that I don’t even know him, that this is crazy, but I don’t listen.

  “How are you feeling?” he says as he sits down next to me.

  “Actually, kind of great. How long was I out?”

  “About four hours until I pulled over. I wanted to go farther, but I couldn’t keep my eyes open, and I had a feeling I shouldn’t wake you. I think we’ve been here for about four hours.”

  “That’s like a full night’s sleep.”

  “Yeah,” he says, reaching over and pulling the Coke out of my hand, taking a sip. “You don’t have crazy eyes anymore.”

  “I had crazy eyes?” I say, grabbing the can back.

  “Um, yeah,” he says sarcastically. “Like psychotic crazy eyes. Like the worst I’ve ever seen. And I’ve been around some really high people in my life.”

  A minivan turns in to the parking lot. It is somehow shocking to see something suddenly moving in this stillness. We watch it as it crosses the empty lot and pulls into the parking space right in front of our picnic table. A jolly-looking old man steps out the driver’s side while his female counterpart steps out the passenger’s side. “Good morning!” they chirp in unison, breaking the magic of the quiet morning.

  “Wait five minutes,” the old man says. “We’ll be open in a jiffy.” They scuttle into the building.

  “In a jiffy,” Hunter says.

  “I need to brush my teeth.”

  As I walk back to the car to get my toothbrush, I notice how stiff my body is. My ankle is still a little sore, but not nearly as bad as it has been. Maybe this trip will be good for it, all this sitting in the car.

  Inside the building are racks full of brochures and displays of taxidermied animals. The man and woman sit behind a counter with a sign that says ASK US ANYTHING! I splash water on my face in the bathroom and brush my teeth. It’s the first good look I’ve had at myself in a mirror for a while, and I’m shocked by how gaunt I look, how skeletal. I have dark bags under my eyes and my hair is a mess. I wet it down and try to wrangle it into a tighter ponytail. Maybe I should just let myself go completely. Maybe I should let my hair turn into dreadlocks. What is the uniform for someone on the run?

  When I get out of the bathroom, Hunter is standing in front of a giant map of Michigan. I stand by him and find our tiny towns, tucked away against the lake, far from any cities. Then it hits me—I have no idea where I am. I scour the map for some clue, follow the thick line of a freeway north until it comes to a red YOU ARE HERE sticker on the other side of the Mackinac Bridge.

  “We’re in the Upper Peninsula?” I cry, much louder than necessary.

  “Yeah,” Hunter says, looking at me like I’m crazy, like it should have been obvious somehow.

  “Why are we in the UP?” I am suddenly angry. I am furious.

  “Why not?” Hunter says, obviously not understanding the severity of the situation.

  “It’s, it’s—” Nothing comes.

  “You have something against the Upper Peninsula?”

  “Yes. I mean, no. I mean, it’s ridiculous to go this way. There’s nothing up here. It’ll take way longer.”

  “I didn’t realize we were on a deadline.” He’s making fun of me.

  “It just doesn’t make sense.” The more I say, the more he seems to find me amusing.

  “I’ve never been to the UP before, have you?”

  “No.”

  “We’ve lived a few hours away from it our whole lives, but we’ve never gone. Isn’t that unfortunate? There’s like this big wild world just a few hours away, but we’ve never explored it.”

  I don’t say anything. I know whatever comes out of my mouth will sound stupid.

  “We’re on an adventure, Kinsey. Now’s as good a time as any to discover what our great state has to offer. Look at all these marvelous brochures!” He fans out the stack of glossy pamphlets in his hand.

  “But it’s not efficient!” I cry, cringing immediately at the whine in my voice.

  “Who said we were trying to be efficient?”

  “I . . . it just seems . . . it would make more sense if . . .”

  “For fuck’s sake, Kinsey, you just ran away from home. This seems like an opportune time for you to practice making less sense.”

  I don’t say anything. It takes me a while to absorb “you just ran away from home.”

  Hunter’s laugh sounds like a chain saw. “Camille told me all about your love of efficiency.”

  “What?” My stomach drops at the sound of her name. “She talked about me? What did she say?”

  “Just that you had an incredible . . . enthusiasm for order.”

  “She said that? What else did she say?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” he says, not laughing anymore.

  “It does matter. Tell me! What was the context of her saying that? Was she talking about something in particular?” I know my voice is rising but I don’t care. Bells jingle welcome as a loud, multi-kid family enters. It is suddenly too crowded in here. I need air. I hurry toward the door, vaguely aware of the info desk couple calling, “Have a nice trip!” in unison.

  Hunter follows me out the door. “Jesus, calm down,” he says. “It’s not that big of a deal.”

  “It is a big deal!” I scream, then spin around and, before I have a chance to know what I’m doing, punch him hard in the shoulder.

  Time stops. His eyes narrow. The birds stop chirping. “Did you just hit me?” he says slowly, his voice low, snarling.

  “Oh my god, I’m sorry. I di
dn’t mean to. I just . . . I don’t know what happened.”

  “Dude, it is not okay to hit people.” I can tell by the way he looks at me that this is about way more than us, way more than here. He’s looking at me like I’m someone else, someone worse. No one’s ever looked at me like this, not even close. Even Mom in all her cruelty never looked at me with so much hate, so much pain. Hunter is not looking at me. He sees someone else. Someone who broke his heart bad.

  “I’m sorry,” I whisper. I know it means nothing.

  He looks away, toward a break in the trees that opens up to blue sky. When he looks back, it’s me again in front of him.

  “Want to see the bridge?” he says, tired.

  “The Mackinac? Is it close?”

  “It’s right over there.”

  We walk in silence across the parking lot, behind a building, and through another smaller parking lot. The trees open on our right to reveal Interstate 75 and toll booths. We walk a little farther to where the concrete stops and Lake Huron begins, the great bridge spread out in front of us like a postcard picture, connecting this wild and forgotten part of Michigan to the place we’ve come from.

  “So it’s settled then.”

  “What is?”

  “We’re going through the UP.”

  The punch has lost me my right to argue for a while. “I guess we are.”

  “Are you okay to drive for a while?”

  The question makes me shudder. I haven’t driven a car since the night of the accident. I don’t tell him this. I don’t tell him how scared I am. I don’t tell him how afraid I am of killing him too.

  “We can get off the highway a couple miles up,” he says, as if he’s read my mind, sensed my fear. “Drive on back roads. It’s more scenic,” he says. He doesn’t have to say they’re safer, too.

  “Okay,” I say.

  We walk in silence back to the car. The sun has risen and the air is no longer crisp and cool. It is growing stagnant. Heavy. It is time to start moving.

  I get in the driver’s seat and take a long time to adjust everything. I double- and triple-check the side mirrors. “Okay,” I say, and turn the key. The car purrs to life. I check my seat belt.

  “Maybe you can test drive it a few times around the parking lot,” Hunter offers.

  I nod, shift into drive, but don’t take my foot off the brake. My heart beats hard and fast in my chest, threatening to break through. We sit there for what seems like several minutes until Hunter sighs and says, “Why don’t I drive a little longer?” I nod again because I can’t speak. I’m afraid if I open my mouth, I’ll start crying. If I start, I don’t know if I will ever stop. Ever since I cried yesterday morning in my mom’s arms, it’s like the floodgates were opened and now there’s only a thin, fragile wall protecting me from drowning.

  I put the car in park again and we change sides. Hunter adjusts the seat and mirrors back to match his body. “I’m sorry,” I finally say.

  “I can’t drive the whole way, you know.”

  “I know.”

  “You have to get over this.”

  “I know.”

  We sit in silence for a few moments. Another car enters the parking lot, another family gathering information for their vacation.

  Hunter pulls the stack of tourist brochures out of his back pocket and throws them on my lap.

  “Here,” he says. “Make yourself useful. Find us something fun to do.”

  What have I gotten myself into?

  * * *

  Trees. Miles and miles of trees and not much else. The world saturated with deep greens and browns. An occasional boarded-up old house. An abandoned barn. Mossy ghost towns held together with cobwebs. We pick up greasy breakfast burritos at a run-down gas station and eat in the car. All I want is to hurry through this nothing place, get this part of the journey over with so we can arrive at a real destination. I don’t understand why Hunter would want to take his time here, would want to wallow in somewhere so empty and sad, why he wouldn’t rather drive through as fast as we can and not stop until we reach something nice. But I figure I owe it to him to at least try to be agreeable while he’s doing all the driving. Maybe when I get my shit together enough to drive, I can start making some decisions.

  We stop for gas and groceries in an Indian reservation. It’s not even a town, just a gravelly stretch on the side of the road with a couple of gas pumps, a little store, a mechanics shop that may or may not be in business, and a couple of beat-up old trucks with FOR SALE signs in the windows that look like they’ve been parked there for years. A girl my age works the register and is very pregnant. Something in her eyes is so much older than me, so worn down. I wonder what she does for fun, if there’s anywhere for her to go besides this roadside store. She rings up our groceries like a robot, like she’s only barely alive, her heart beating just enough to perform the necessary movements, like the rest of her is sleeping, hibernating, not bothering to wake for this half-life.

  “I’ll pay,” Hunter says, offering the girl his card.

  I shove my debit card in front of his, maybe a little too forcefully. “No,” I say. “We’ll split it.”

  “It’s okay,” he says. “I can cover it. I know you don’t—”

  He stops talking just in time. He can tell by the look on my face that I do not want his charity. The checkout girl sighs and looks out the window at the view of the gas pumps she’ll see every day for who knows how long.

  “I will pay my own way,” I say firmly, and that is that.

  It’s barely afternoon, but Hunter’s already been driving for five hours. “Unless you’re ready to take a shift,” he says, “we should probably start thinking about where we’re going to stay tonight. The map shows a few campgrounds coming up and a waterfall. That’d be cool. We could go swimming maybe, go for a hike.”

  I don’t say anything. I’ve been watching trees go by since eight this morning. I can’t remember why I thought this was a good idea. I can’t remember who I was when I made that decision.

  “Hello?” Hunter says.

  “What are we doing?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What are we doing, Hunter?”

  “We’re driving to San Francisco,” he says slowly, unsurely. “Like we talked about.”

  “But we’re going to be, like, tourists on the way there? Stopping at every roadside attraction we pass? Going hiking?”

  “I thought you’d like hiking. You’re into all those sports and shit, aren’t you?”

  “I’m not talking about hiking!”

  Hunter doesn’t say anything. His face clouds over and for a split second I catch a glimpse of him years younger, a heartbroken boy hiding behind this brooding almost-man. Then it hits me how hard he’s been trying to be cheerful for both of us, and I immediately feel sorry.

  “So what, you’re in a hurry?” he says, the little boy gone, his face a sudden wall of anger. “You want to get there as fast as possible and not have any fun? Because, what, fun is inconvenient? Fun is inefficient? Stopping and pulling that stick out of your ass for one minute is going to make you fall apart, it’s going to ruin everything?”

  “No,” I say. “I—”

  “If you’re not uptight and in control at all times, then what? You’re already miserable, Kinsey. It can’t get much worse. What the fuck are you afraid of?”

  I don’t have an answer.

  “Your life sucks. My life sucks. How could your precious speed and efficiency make our shitty lives any better? No one gives a shit where we are or what we’re doing. We might as well enjoy it before we have to fucking give up like we know we’re going to have to.”

  “Why do you say that?” I say. “Why do we have to give up?”

  “That’s what people do. That’s what everyone does.”

  “Even you?”

&nb
sp; “Especially me.”

  I want to ask more. I want to know how the conversation veered this way so suddenly. I want to know why Hunter of all people, this heavy-drinking, skateboard-riding, indie-music-listening rebel who doesn’t seem to follow anyone’s rules, is saying all this. But before I have a chance to say anything, he swerves suddenly to the left, into a dirt road I hadn’t noticed.

  “What are you doing?” I shriek as the side of my head thuds dully on the window.

  “The sign said camping.”

  “What sign? I didn’t see a sign.”

  “It was tiny. This place isn’t on the map.”

  “Camping?”

  “Yes, camping,” he says definitively. “We are camping. Right here.”

  My instincts tell me to object, the part of me that wants to be in control, that needs to be the one making decisions. But the tunnel of dense trees opens to a small, almost-empty campground, a handful of quaint, private sites lining the shore of a small, still lake sparkling with sun.

  “Fine,” I say. “We’re camping.”

  It’s hot when we get out of the car. The air is heavy with the scent of pine. My mind immediately goes to setting up camp. Did Hunter bring everything we need? Did we buy enough food? What about sleeping arrangements? But before I have the chance to say anything, Hunter yells, “Swimming!” tears off his pants but leaves his boxers and long-sleeved shirt on, and runs into the lake just a few steps away.

  “Shouldn’t we set up the tent or something?” I yell over to him, but he just keeps splashing around, and I’m pretty sure he’s pretending not to hear me. The thick summer air is suddenly oppressive, and I notice how my clothes are sticking to my skin. In my haste packing, I didn’t bring a swimsuit; I didn’t think it was going to be that kind of a trip.