The Long Ride Home

by Tawni Waters

  Speaking of which. My period hasn’t started, in case you’re wondering. I know what you’re thinking. I should tell Dean, who sits behind me, holding my waist too tight as scenery rushes along beside us. There are several reasons I can’t tell him.

  1. The wind is loud.

  2. If I try to have a serious conversation while I am driving a motorcycle, we will die in a fiery crash, and there have been enough fiery deaths in my world for the time being.

  3. You want me to tell this guy I’m pregnant? Are you kidding me? You do understand that if I tell him, it’s real, right? We are no longer two kids sharing a zany trip across the United States on a Harley (as zany as a trip transporting an urn full of parental ashes can be). We are now two young adults poised on the brink of disaster. We are now a cautionary tale. We are now an after-school special. I’m already an after-school special. My mom died in a fire I accidentally started, okay? So I really don’t need the extra drama of an unplanned pregnancy. Yeah, I just said that. Unplanned pregnancy. I sound like a pamphlet you’d find in the waiting room at a doctor’s office, right?

  We pull over at a motel somewhere in the middle of nowhere. No matter how far we drive, everything feels like the middle of nowhere. In New York, if you walk ten feet without hitting a skyscraper or a Chinese deli or a theater, you have inadvertently wandered into a wasteland. But here, you can drive for miles and miles without seeing anything but cactus. So when I see this crappy, run-down motel called the TeePee Inn, complete with a cigar store Indian statue standing outside (apparently, they haven’t quite outgrown that whole racism thing here in the Southwest), it looks like an oasis. I’m tired of sleeping on the ground. I’m tired of waking up wondering if the tickle on my foot is a scorpion or a blade of grass. And let’s be real—if I’m going to get naked with Dean (which I probably am), I’d rather be in a place where we have less than a 42 percent chance of being discovered by hikers. So yeah, I spring for a motel. Most of the lights on the sign are out, so we aren’t sure if VAC means “vacancy” or “no vacancy,” but it turns out they have room. In fact, judging from the otherworldly (read “creepy”) silence, I’m pretty sure we are the only customers.

  “I bet this place is haunted,” Dean says as I fumble with the key, which is an actual old-fashioned key, not a key card.

  “I didn’t even know they still made keys like this,” I say, trying to change the subject because although I’m not sure I believe in god, I am 100 percent sure ghosts exist. Blame it on one too many episodes of Ghost Hunters.

  “Seriously.” Dean presses blithely onward, either unaware of my discomfort at his mention of ghosts or super aware and relishing it. It’s hard to tell with him. “I think this place is haunted. I read something about it online.”

  “You’re making this up,” I say. Finally, the door to the hotel room springs open, revealing the ugliest bed known to humanity, a sagging dresser, and two very questionable paintings, both of which look like they have been damaged by rain. Or fire sprinklers. Or urine.

  “I’m not making it up.” Dean tosses his backpack on a hideous orange chair in the corner and heads to the bathroom. I can hear him peeing. Is it weird that I find the sound sexy?

  “They said there was a massacre near here,” Dean continues. “The army came in and killed a bunch of Navajo women in their sleep while the men were off hunting. The ghosts of the dead haunt this area.”

  I fall back on the bed. It smells like cigarettes and dirty bodies, which makes me think of an exposé about hotel rooms I watched once. If you shine a purple light on hotel beds, there are all kinds of gross things hiding in the sheets. I wonder if this comforter has ever been washed. “What do the ghosts do?” I call, deciding I’d rather think about ghosts than filth.

  “Typical ghost stuff. Wailing. Turning lights on and off. You know the drill.”

  “Those ghosts need to up their game,” I say, displaying more courage than I feel. “La Llorona drowns people.” Overhead, the vent is covered with a thick layer of grime. I imagine ghosts slithering between the slats.

  “La Llorona who?” Dean walks out zipping up his pants. I almost forget about ghosts. Almost.

  “La Llorona is this Mexican ghost. She drowned her children to get revenge on her cheating husband, and then, she drowned herself. Now she wanders the land looking for kids to drown.”

  “Well, that’s decidedly horrifying.” Dean falls beside me. I totally forget about ghosts. “Hey, you.” He touches my cheek. “Nice to see your face again.”

  “Not like we’ve been apart,” I say.

  “Yeah, but I spend most of my time looking at the back of your head. Which reminds me. Are you ever going to let me drive?”

  “Nope.” I touch his cheek too.

  He kisses me. It tastes like mint, which means he brushed his teeth in the bathroom, which means he cares about impressing me, which is so damn sweet. I kiss him back, hard. We make out for a few minutes, and I can’t believe how soft his mouth is and how much I love the hard line of his shoulders under my hands. Then the vent makes a clanking noise. I open my eyes. It has to be a ghost.

  Apparently unaware our make-out session has been infiltrated by undead spirits, Dean presses blithely on, his eyes still closed. I’m afraid to close my eyes again, so I watch him, seeing mostly the little wrinkles in his forehead. And it occurs to me that I’m utterly in love with his hairline. This should probably make me get all romance-novel sweet, but it doesn’t. Instead, a cold knot of dread forms in my belly, as if I’m about to step off a cliff. And I am desperate to pull myself back from the edge. I remember the way I felt in the campground and that unnamed urge to dump Dean and run. Looking up at Dean now, that seems like a really good idea. That rat inside me starts gnawing at its cage. “Set me free,” it screams. Part of me hates that rat. Part of me knows Dean is the best thing that has happened to me in a long time. But another part of me, the part that is still an open wound after Mom’s death, thinks the rat has a point.

  Suddenly, Dean’s lips don’t taste sweet at all. My heart pounds in an impending panic attack. I pull away.

  “Something wrong?” asks Dean.

  I sit up, reaching for the remote control, and turn on the TV. I don’t want to tell him what I feel. My pulse races. Mentally, I run through all the heart attack symptoms I have read on the internet. My right arm does hurt a little. I’m short of breath.

  It’s only a panic attack.

  “Um, okay, I guess we’ll watch Scooby-Doo,” Dean says. “I wasn’t enjoying kissing you anyway.”

  “That makes two of us,” I snap. My head feels spinny. I think about Mom, how she was here one day, dead the next. It could happen to anyone.

  Dean laughs. I fucking hate it when people think I’m joking when I’m not. That tearing sound overwhelms me. I hear Mom screaming. I hear Mercy saying, “Honey, your mom died.” Shit. My heart races so fast; my chest hurts.

  It’s only a panic attack! I think again.

  It doesn’t help. I try counting physical objects. A bed. A dresser. A—shit, I’m dying. My lungs are collapsing. I can’t breathe.

  IT’S ONLY A PANIC ATTACK.

  Inside my head, I scream the mantra. It sounds like an assault. I struggle to hold my body normally, staring at the screen as Scooby and friends unmask a balding villain.

  Shit. Shit. Shit. I don’t want Dean to know what’s happening inside me. I don’t want him to know how broken I really am. The thought of him knowing is scarier than the thought of dying. I will not scream, I think, which may sound crazy, unless you’ve ever had a panic attack. Then you know where I’m coming from. Again, I try to slow my breathing. I let my gaze dart around the room, looking for something, anything, safe to latch onto. Everything looks blurry. Scary. Even the clock is terrifying with its flashing red numbers, reminding me I only have so long to live, counting the minutes until my death. Shaggy laughs in that weird wa
y that makes everyone over the age of nine believe he is a chronic pothead.

  Someone knocks on the door. Dean sits bolt upright, his hair mussed. I yank my shirt down. I hadn’t even realized my shirt was up until now.

  “Yeah?” Dean calls.

  “Pizza,” says a muffled voice from the other side of the door.

  “Did you order pizza?” Dean asks me.

  I shake my head.

  “We didn’t order pizza,” Dean says.

  “It says you did. Room 118.”

  “Well, we didn’t,” Dean says.

  My chest feels like a bomb went off in it. I don’t care what that quack doctor said. I’m dying.

  “Do you want it anyway?” asks the voice outside the door. “I don’t know what else I’m going to do with it.”

  Dean looks at me, questioning.

  Shrugging, I continue to will my breathing to slow.

  Dean goes to the door. When he opens it, an Angelina Jolie look-alike stands there. Behind her, the desert sky stretches forever blue. It’s horrifying, like an ocean full of invisible monsters.

  “Hi!” Dean runs his hands through his hair. My boyfriend is hitting on some bitch, and I’m dying.

  “Hi.” She smiles. Her teeth are perfect.

  They stand awkwardly for a few seconds. I have never seen Dean at a loss for words, but apparently, he is now. In through the nose, out through the mouth.

  “So you still want the pizza?” she asks.

  “Yeah!” Dean takes it from her. “Are you sure you don’t mind giving it to us?”

  “It’s all yours,” says the girl. “I’d eat it myself, but I’ve eaten so much pizza over the last year, I’d be more tempted by rat poison.”

  Dean laughs like she’s Jim Carrey. “Let me get you a tip,” he says. “I’d hate for you to come all this way for nothing.”

  It’s getting harder and harder not to scream. Instead, I snarl, “We don’t need to give her a fucking tip.”

  Dean looks at me like I’ve announced I’m from planet Vulcan.

  “She’s right,” the girl says, seeming embarrassed. “I don’t need a tip.”

  You. Are. Not. Dying, I tell myself.

  “No, really,” Dean says. “I’ll get you a tip.”

  “I’m fine,” the girl says. Before Dean can protest, she turns and walks away.

  “Thanks for the pizza!” Dean calls after her apologetically.

  The girl half waves in acknowledgment. She doesn’t look back.

  Dean closes the door. “Harley, what was that?”

  “You tell me, Don Juan.”

  “What?”

  “Do you think I didn’t notice the way you were checking her out?” I have that feeling again, the one where I’m watching myself spin out of control and can do nothing to stop it. Did Dean really check her out? My head isn’t sure, but the hurricane in my belly says he did, and that’s all that really matters to me in this moment. In other news, I’m dying. Did I mention that?

  “I was so not checking her out,” Dean says.

  “Oh, give me a break.”

  “Harley, what the hell is going on?”

  “What were you going to do?” My volume is rising. I should turn it down, but I can’t. “Write your phone number on a ten-dollar bill and stick it in her waistband?”

  “That’s so unfair,” Deans says. “This is nuts.”

  “So now you’re saying I’m crazy?” I yell.

  “I didn’t say you’re crazy,” Dean says. “I said this situation is nuts. I didn’t do anything wrong.”

  My entire body buzzes. Rage. Terror. It’s hard to say what I feel. All I know is I have to get the hell out of here. I lurch to my feet and pick up my helmet. “I’m going for a ride!” I scream. “When I get back, I want you and your shit to be gone!”

  “What’s wrong with you?” Dean isn’t yelling, but he’s close.

  “What’s wrong with me? What’s wrong with me is I don’t want the father of my baby to be some…some whoremonger!” I shout. Did I mention I had this English teacher who was really into talking about the Bible as a work of literature? Apparently, I retained some of the archaic vocabulary he helpfully passed along. It’s fun when biblical words come out to play during a fight.

  Dean looks stunned. I think maybe he doesn’t know what “whoremonger” means until he says, “Wait? The father of your baby?”

  I gasp, realizing what I’ve done. There is no taking the information back. “My period is late,” I snap, deciding to use the news as a weapon.

  “I’m going to be a dad?” Dean asks.

  For weeks after this moment, I will look back, trying to pause the action, trying to understand what I was thinking. Right here. Right now. In the moment that could change everything. In the moment that only retrospectively will reveal itself to be a crossroads.

  Underneath the buzzing in my brain, I’m thinking about the Asshole, and also about all the shit I’ve learned about romance from books and television and songs. One of the lessons I’ve learned is that boys are the enemy. They aren’t people. They don’t have feelings. They don’t cry. They just sit around and try to have sex with girls and then don’t call the next day. Which is entirely unfair, because I was the one who didn’t call Dean the day after we had sex. And clearly, he has feelings because he’s standing in front of me, inarguably emotional. So the decent move would be to forget he’s a guy and treat him like a person. Tell him I’m sorry for being a bitch and melt into his arms weeping about our maybe-baby. But I’m not ready to melt. I’m not a glacier. I’m a volcano on the verge of explosion.

  Instead, I say, “Don’t get your panties in a knot. I’m not even sure it’s yours.” He winces like I slapped him. “What? You thought you were the only guy I was fucking? Get a grip.”

  As I walk out the door, I glance over my shoulder. Dean looks like he’s trying not to cry. I should say I’m lying. I should say something. Anything.

  I don’t.

  • • •

  So what you’re probably wondering is how I came to murder my mother. Okay, maybe you’re not. Maybe you’re wondering why I treated Dean like shit when he clearly didn’t deserve it, but I’ll get around to that. Let’s talk about the murder first.

  Maybe “murder” is a harsh word. A lawyer Mercy knows told me murder implies intent, and I didn’t mean to kill my mom, obviously. I loved her, which is a silly little phrase meant to express an emotion too profound to ever be conveyed in words. You know that forever feeling you get when you look at the ocean, the way you don’t know what’s going on here on planet Earth, but you’re pretty sure that it’s bigger than anything scientists or priests have yet postulated? That’s my love for my mom. It made me feel mystery and knowing all at once. It made me understand whatever the shamans and scribes of yesteryear must have felt when they scribbled down their holy books. It was true religion.

  After she died, I went to six therapy sessions. Then I decided counseling was a load of shit. Dr. Jellum, this fat guy with severe body odor, put the psycho in psychotherapy. I tried to trust him, but even before I discovered he was a creeper, I found his comb-over unsettling. The swath of hair at the center of his bald spot always reminded me of that white, wispy stuff on corn on the cob, right under the husk. It was difficult to muster confidence in a partially peeled vegetable.

  In the days before I caught him staring at my boobs while I sobbed on his couch, he asked me to recall the time in my life I felt the safest. I couldn’t pick one moment because honestly, I always felt safe with Mom. I’d spent my entire existence in this cocoon of safety until she was gone, and I realized the world was a monster. It was like I’d been dreaming I was the star in a Disney cartoon when really I’d been bumbling around the set of Saw. Even the kittens were killers. Even the flowers had teeth.

  So suffice it to say
, my mother’s death was absolutely an accident. No sane person deliberately kills off her safe place. Granted, I may not have done a stellar job of convincing you I’m sane, but believe me when I say that before Mom died, I was pretty a-okay, mentally speaking. I mean, sure puberty was a bitch. Losing-my-virginity bit the big one. But all of my crises were run-of-the-mill. No big mental disturbances. No panic attacks. No suicidal tendencies. No alcohol problem, give or take a few nights sneaking screw top wine with Amy. Just Mom and I, chumming it up, watching Mexican soap operas, making our way through our pretty average lives together, neither of us particularly exceptional to anyone except each other.

  On the night that changed everything, I went about my routine. Before bed, I walked to the pantry for a snack. I perused my culinary options, noticing the house smelled stale. I ate something. On my way back to the bedroom, I saw the candle sitting on the hall table. I think it was vanilla scented, though I could be wrong. Maybe Hawaiian Island? There was this cool little hippie shop down the street from our house in Brooklyn. Their homemade candles were the shit, and Mom and I were determined to try every single scent they had. Anyway, I lit it, and as the wick sputtered to life, I thought maybe it was a bad idea. At least, I tell myself I did. I don’t really remember. It was one of many small, ordinary actions I took that night. I brushed my teeth. I put on my pajamas. I checked Instagram. (The Asshole’s girlfriend had posted another selfie in that low-cut top, pouting with her fish lips. Of course she did.) I went to sleep.

  Only later would I lend the action of lighting the candle any more weight than the other routine actions I took that night. Truth be told, it probably didn’t occur to me that it might be dangerous. Truth be told, I lit candles all the time. The only difference between that candle and all the others was that this one killed my mom.