The Letter

When that final letter came in the mail, I originally didn’t want to open it. My mom had hid it behind her back, but I was already suspicious by the way she was grinning so brightly when I entered the living room.

“It’s OSU,” she says, thrusting it out in front of me. I just nod, not even wanting to touch it – stain it with my curse. There’d been four others before. And they’d all said the same thing: no, no, no, and no.

My mom seems to notice my hesitation and just nods. “We can open it when your brother gets back.” She meant tonight at dinner in front of Dad. I doubt I’d be hungry.

But I’m not a patient person. So when my mom leaves the house to run errands, I sit with my legs crossed on the cool tile floor, one hand with fingers crossed, the other hand ripping through the soft paper.

It doesn’t take long to read it through. No. Ohio State University wouldn’t even wait-list me. No. They want nothing to do with me, just like the other schools. What the hell was I supposed to do?

I leave the papers there on the floor, and dash out to the garage. I didn’t even want to consider showing my mom the letter when she got back. Couldn’t think of what my dad would say without feeling a little light-headed.

I pull out of the driveway, foot hitting the gas and hoping if I pass my mom I’d only be a blur. I feel like a blur right then. I don’t know where I should go. I just know I need to get out of there as fast as possible and wait it out. Because there is simply nothing else I could do.

As I drive through town I roll down the windows, not caring as my hair whips in front of my face. I’d grown up in a small town in the middle of nowhere – Ohio. I knew everyone I was graduating with, and I knew where they were all going. But me? I wasn’t going anywhere.

I pass the small playground my mom had taken me and my brother to when we were little. She’d sat on the side and chatted with the other moms while he’d run around and thrown mulch with the other little kids. I was too short and couldn’t reach the monkey bars like the other kids my age could. I thought about the way it would strain my arms as I hung on the first rung, my legs dangling. I worried my arms would snap off, and the ground seemed much too far away to just let go. The other girls moved across the rungs quickly, skipping up the platforms to the slide, and I just watched, absorbing the screams and shrieks of joy from my brother and his friends as they dropped the mulch and ran to the sandbox.

When I’d gotten older and it didn’t matter so much if I was short, two other friends and I snuck out to the playground after dark and wrote all of the dirty words we knew on the plastic slides and bright yellow tunnels. We did it again when we learned more swear words and thought we were cool because we were thirteen. That was the night we found the cigarette.

I try to gun it at a yellow light but it turns red before I even get to the white line. I shove my foot against the brake, the old car sputtering in pain from the stop. I look around the intersection. It’s like it’s already cleared out for summer, even though it’s only late February. It was an early spring this year, and I didn’t mind – I’d never liked winter. After the first letter though, I took it as a sign and worried, because I’d always blossomed late.

The light changes, and I speed off, wanting to leave this town far behind me for a while. I pass the “Come Again Soon!” sign, and sigh deeply. Relief doesn’t wash over me the way I hoped it would.

It had been Casey who’d found the cigarette.

“Ew!” She’d cried, picking it up, but dropped it quickly.

“What?” I asked, Jessica close by my side.

“It’s a cigarette,” Jessica murmured. She looked down at her feet. “My dad keeps a big pack in the garage. My mom doesn’t know he still smokes.”

Casey grew a weird smile on her face, “We should try some.” She looked at us for approval, but Casey had always been our ringleader. Jessica was even quieter than me, but I was still small so I followed Casey willingly. I shrugged my shoulders, and Casey looked to Jessica to lead the way. Jessica mumbled about this not being a good idea, but Casey and I both pretended not to hear her.

I’m not far down a back dusty road when the car starts to sputter again.

“Damn it!” I shout, slamming my palm against the steering wheel. The car stops sputtering and spitting for a moment, but then squeals and suddenly stops altogether.

I unleash a string of swear words on the car, but nothing gets it to start again. The movement reminds me of when I first learned the “f-word” and stubbed my toe in the kitchen, unleashing it in my own home. My mother had covered her mouth, using my full name when she cried,

“Where did you learn such awful language?”

I’d shrugged my shoulders, heat starting to crawl up my neck into my cheeks. I’d never liked being scolded. My toe was still throbbing, but it had become a dull pain because I was too full of embarrassment that was turning to anger for my mom just not understanding me.

“We do not speak like that in this house, young lady!”

I think I’d given her the finger and ran upstairs before she could punish me. I spent most of my time up in my room after that, and I think she was perfectly okay with that.

I slam the door as I get out of the car, trying to lift the hood. The moment I touch it, I can’t help but cry out, backing away. My dumb car is cheap, and old, and rusty, and I hate it. But I’m broke and my parents weren’t going to give me anything else.

They’d given it to me as my Christmas present my junior year. My dad smiled at me as he handed me the keys, and I’d screamed and jumped, and then ran outside to see it. Part of my heart sunk when I saw what it looked like, but it was freedom on wheels, even if it was crappy freedom.

They’d told me it was because I’d been so good this year. They didn’t know what I did between the time school ended and when I got home, but they also didn’t ask, so it didn’t matter. I’d gotten more Bs, my other grades were C’s and I wasn’t failing like I had the year before. Maybe this year they wouldn’t have to pay for summer school. They didn’t, and I spent the summer hidden away in my room or out of the house. They still never asked what I was doing.

I glare at my car, but then try again. The hot metal singes my fingers, but the feeling is terrifyingly familiar. I get the hood propped up, and stare at the steamy engine with all of its parts and wires. The urge to swear again returns.

The last time I’d burned my fingers was two weeks back, as I stood in a circle with my friends, behind one of their houses. I’d forgotten to drop the joint because I was so far gone, and it had burned up to my fingers. I screamed and swore, but it was like they didn’t even hear me. They just stared and opened their mouths, then closed them. Maybe it was me who couldn’t hear them.

“Dumb. Stupid. Car.” I mumble as I grit my teeth and start grabbing wires. Some are still hot and burn in my hand, so I throw them behind me onto the pavement.

“C’mon!” I scream then, as steam starts to rise out of the engine. “Is that all you got?” I taunt. The last time I said those words, I was whimpering.

“Is that all you got?” I’d whimpered, voice shaking with desperation. He’d shook his head.

“Sorry kid.”

He’d never liked doing business with me. He told me I was a baby but he was a senior who’d failed a few grades in high school so he was nearly twenty, and I was a sophomore. I told him my money was as good as anyone’s.

“Where are you getting this kind of dough?” He asked, seeming startled the second and third time I came to him.

“Does it matter?” I’d asked.

“Hell yeah,” he grunted, “if Mommy and Daddy come after me-”

“It’s not theirs.” I interrupted.

He didn’t really ask a lot of questions after that, and he graduated that year. I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to be glad that someone else was able to get out of here, or worried about what that meant for me and my ever-growing after school activity.

“You piece of crap!” I scream, pulling out the battery and everything else I can get my hands on. Deeper down, the hotter it got and I yelp and pull my hands back several times. “You never do anything right!”

When I’d met Matthew, my “after school activity” was an addiction I didn’t want to admit to. It had been an addiction for a while. And I felt lucky when I met him.

Thinking of him makes me sick and I open the doors of the car up, pulling everything from the front seat, dumping it onto the road. Lipsticks crack and smear the dark pavement. Old wrappers crinkle and pencils click as they fall.

It hadn’t been with Jessica and Casey that first night. It had been the second night when Casey and I had found Jessica’s older brother’s collection during a game of hide and seek. I followed Casey, and when Jessica had asked us why we were acting so funny, Casey snapped that it was none of her business. When we got to high school Casey quit, ‘cause everything she did was casual, and the last time I’d seen them was early sophomore year when they called me a stoner and I flicked them off.

When I get to the second door, I use one arm to just shovel it all out. A needle pokes my finger and I yelp, angry rather than in pain. I kick the car and yell.

Matthew had his own ways of getting things. It made everything easy, I just spent the afternoons with him, not worried about money, not worried about anything. He was charming too, and my mom seemed glad to see me with him. I was glad to be with him. He made my life feel fuller.

But that meant the more and more time we spent together, the more addicted I became. The farther down the rabbit’s hole I fell. And one day, Matthew was charged with sexual assault, and told me he had to leave. I didn’t see him again, but I cried more at the thought he’d cheated on me than anything else.

When the car’s completely empty, I squat down on the road and cry. Grease covers my hands and lower arms, up to my elbows. I wonder if it’s all over my face, but I don’t care, knowing my hair has settled in knots.  

One day I didn’t care, and I’d screwed up my entire life. And now I’m sitting in the middle of the road with a car past repair, no point in going home, and nothing else to go to.

I have no future it feels like, and I hate my past. So I sit and cry next to my gutted car.