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I’m melting.
I’m too hot, sweating when the rain just keeps falling. My father’s on the phone and now I can hear the ambulance, which just makes me want to curl up and ...well, not die, exactly, because I’ve already been there done that today. More like sink into an abyss of exhausting existential despair because I wish everyone would let me be.
Let me live.
“You okay?” Max asks. “Rubes?”
In answer, I push away from the car and lie down on the wet cement. I spread my arms out. A pebble grinds itself into my shoulder while the May rain seeps through my dress, chilling my bones.
I place two fingers on my throat. I’ve lived with SVT long enough that I can monitor my heartbeat. I track the rapid tick of my pulse, and it sounds like—
More time. More time. I still have more time.
“Fuck.” Max hovers over me, hands in his shaggy blond hair like he’s ready to tear it all out. I can see the soft blue of his eyes, matching mine, matching our mothers. “Where does it hurt?”
I stare at the squirrel, now squeaking in a tree above me. The sun is brighter. Intense. My brother’s panicked voice rattles in my head. Out of the corner of my eye, my hair, a bright strawberry blonde, mixes with the rainwater, and slowly turns a muddy red-brown.
My heart speeds up its beat.
I rest a palm over my chest and sigh. “Everywhere.”
ONE MONTH LATER
Time to call my brother and give him proof of life.
I park my new Buick Skylark, a behemoth of a car, at the gas pump and crunch across the dusty parking lot of the Gas ‘N Go to find the one pay phone that’s been around since the seventies. Although I have a cell phone, there’s something about using a pay phone that feels very road trip.
I’ve finished my last part-time shift at Rita’s, a sleepy mom-and-pop Mexican restaurant in downtown Winslow, Arizona. It was a relaxed waitressing job, but the tips were good and the exertion minimal. I’ve kept my remote job at the travel agency, managing their social media account, but I like the boots on the ground style of working locally. Everyone needs a helping hand and if I can be that person, I’ll step in. Diners and bars are easy part-time gigs that let me move on when I want to.
And trust me, I’ve been moving on.
A week after my near-death-hit-and-run-squirrel experience, I went to my cardiologist one last time, then left Indiana. The last month I’ve seen and done things I’ve never experienced. I got a tiny tattoo of an EKG line on the inside of my ring finger in Charleston. Danced in the second line in New Orleans. I’ve seen houses on stilts in Galveston and had the best pie of my life in Key West.
For the first time in my twenty-six years on this earth, I feel alive.
Like I’ve fixed a hole inside of me I didn’t know was leaking.
I am greedy and feral and in love with this life. And I want to see more. See it all. Take risks.
Sometimes—and I can never tell this to Max—I don’t want to go back home.
I want to keep running and never stop.
As I drop a coin in the slot, a man in ripped Wranglers tips the brim of his dusty cowboy hat to me as he passes by. Rugged and weathered lines crease his tan face, giving him a wise and magnetic appeal.
Fascinated, I beam at him and wave. Then I tuck the map I purchased at the gas station under my arm, pick up the sticky receiver and dial numbers I know by heart.
Max answers with a curt, “Come back.”
I gasp, smiling at the sweet way he tries so damn hard to charm me. “Never.”
“Where are you?”
“You know I can’t tell you that. Super-secret sister business.”
Not that my father or brother have any legal pull if they track me down. I’m an adult of sound mind and body, but they have the powerful ability to make me feel guilty until I come home, which is why I’ll keep my whereabouts off-limits.
If I’m gone, it means my father and brother can get back to their lives. No more worrying about me, no more obsessively hovering. They’re well-meaning and want to protect me, but being away from them is like a heavy weight lifted. I can live.
