“Bitch!” he screams. “You goddamned bitch!”
He raises his fist like he might try to smash it through the window. I throw the car in reverse. Feel a bump. I hear a crack. He screams, like maybe I ran over his foot. He’s doubled over on the ground. I have to keep going. I back down the driveway to the road. My tires screech as I speed away. I don’t know which way to go, but it doesn’t matter as much as getting distance. I make turns on gut feelings, and eventually I’m out at the highway and I have no problem keeping my eyes open.
I drive until daylight, until I can’t stay awake for another second. I sleep in my car in a playground parking lot. There are kids playing and moms waiting with juice boxes and the sounds of all of it make me feel safe enough to close my eyes.
* * *
When I wake up, everything feels too bright and too loud. Like another world, totally different from the one I was in last night. I wish this one felt real and that one didn’t, but it’s the other way around. These moms in the park, their kids, they aren’t even close to being a part of my reality. I don’t know them. I don’t remember anyone ever sitting on a bench with snacks and band-aids in their purse while I played on the swings. I could never be like those women. I wouldn’t know how. I sit in my car, watching them all. I feel like an alien.
Scribbling with a broken golf pencil, scraping back the wood with my fingernail when the lead gets too low, I write on the back of one of the flyers from the show. I write it all down. Everything. I always do.
At night, when it’s dark, when I’m in a strange motel room or parked at a rest stop, when there’s enough light to see by—a streetlight, the TV flicker—I write. When I have a pen and the back of an envelope, a receipt from the gas station, or a motel postcard, I write lyrics, thoughts, flashes of things I could use in a song.
Mostly I write to Carly. I’ve been doing it for years. Since I left. Vows and proclamations have evolved into confessions. Sometimes you need to feel like you could tell someone everything if you wanted to. That there’s someone to tell.
I, April,
have loneliness so large it’s like a frostbitten explorer
I have to drag down the mountain.
I, April,
ate an entire plate of chili cheese fries at a diner
on Rt. 9 at three in the morning.
It’s the first thing I’ve eaten in days.
This will not end well.
I, April,
think red maple leaves against grey skies are some kind of sweet magic.
You should go to Vermont, Carly.
You’d love it.
I never send my confessions. Almost never. After I write one, I keep it in my pocket, thinking when I round up an envelope and a stamp I’ll tuck it in the mail. But the next time I do laundry I add the note to the mess of napkins and receipts hidden under the lining of my guitar case. As long as I keep writing to Carly, I get to believe that maybe someday I’ll see her again. Maybe I’ll really tell her everything. She was my first true friend, and I haven’t met anyone like her since. You don’t get over someone like that.
This time my confession starts:
I, April,
am so stupid.
* * *
Even though it’s safe and bright and shiny at the park, it still takes everything I have to open the car door, to not feel like someone will attack me the moment my feet hit the pavement, to not look at my tires and think about bones cracking.
The pay phone has that same rubbery plastic smell from last night. I worry that maybe it’s stuck in my nose, that it’s the only thing I’ll ever smell now.
I call Cole to tell him I can’t go to Red Bank this time. I don’t tell him why, just that something came up.
“I’ll miss you, sweet stuff,” he says, his voice carrying the weight of too many cigarettes and late nights.
“Miss you too,” I say, and there’s a sharp sadness in my chest for the missed chance to walk through Marine Park with Cole after the gig I was supposed to play. He always hums riffs at me like a challenge and I make up words to go along. We watch the sunrise over the Navesink River and then we get breakfast sandwiches from the deli on Broad Street and record songs in his basement until we can’t stay awake anymore. It’s one of my favorite ways to spend time. I know it’s a long shot that Ray will follow me, that he even could, but I feel like I have a target on my back. I told him where I was going. I broke a rule. I broke so many rules.
I make more phone calls and drive to New York City instead.
— Chapter 33 —
I scan the restaurant. He isn’t here yet. I try to sneak out before anyone notices me, but the host comes over and hustles me to a table by the window.