Chapter 3. Kit
“If they do not pick a lane right this second, I am legally allowed to run them down,” I say, leaning closer to Allie as we walk through the mall. Her dark wavy hair is loose today, and she put on some makeup. She looks stunning.
Allie adjusts the crisp paper bag hanging from her wrist, offering me a completely unimpressed side-eye. “You are not a vehicle, Kit. And we are currently indoors, in a shopping center.”
“Still!”
“Brat.” She rolls her eyes.
Directly in front of us, teenagers are occupying almost the entire width of the walkway. They are drifting aimlessly, entirely absorbed in their phones, an oblivious roadblock.
“Do not tackle the teenagers,” Allie instructs. She sidesteps a woman pushing a double stroller.
“You never let me do anything fun!” I complain.
She rolls her eyes. I dip my shoulder aggressively, cutting through a tiny gap between the wandering teenagers and a massive potted plant that looks decidedly fake.
I spin around, walking backward for two steps just to face Allie and offer a sharp, victorious nod.
“Flawless execution,” I declare. “No contact made. The paint remains pristine.”
Allie laughs and hits my arm. It’s good to be distracted for an afternoon. She shares my exact brand of grief. She knows what it means to be a Little left by the Caregiver who made the world feel manageable. Her Mommy also left her suddenly. She knows exactly how I feel.
“Very impressive,” she says, matching my pace easily. “I suppose your track days are finally paying dividends.”
“Vroom! I am a highly tuned machine,” I confirm, spinning back around to face forward. My boots hit the tile. I am completely fine. I am silly and dorky. I am moving through a Tuesday afternoon with my friend, I am cracking jokes, I am successfully occupying a public space without breaking down.
Yes. Fine.
We drift further down. I am mid-sentence, talking about a horrible jacket displayed in a nearby window, when my eyes track forward to a small kiosk in the center of the walkway. The shelves are packed tight with teddy bears.
My voice falters, the words dying instantly on my tongue. I stop walking. My hands, which have been securely anchored in my jacket pockets for the last hour, suddenly lose their programming. My right hand slides out of the pocket.
I’m looking at a small, incredibly round plush bear. The fur is a muted, pale cream color. It doesn’t look cheap. It looks dense, heavy, and soft. It looks exactly like the kind of thing someone would buy to weigh down a Little’s chest when the anxiety spikes too high.
I reach out. I press my fingertips directly against the pale cream fur of the bear’s head.
It is exactly as soft as it looks. A devastating ache rips straight through the center of my chest. My Little side, the deeply buried, starving, fragile part of my identity that I cannot access without Charles, violently throws itself against the back of my ribs.
The demand for comfort, for a large hand resting heavily on the back of my neck, for a voice dropping into a low register of absolute authority, crashes over me.
The harsh lights of the mall blur out of focus. A hot, stinging wetness floods the corners of my eyes, burning violently.
I pull my hand back like the fur is actively on fire.
I turn my face away, completely abandoning the kiosk. I drag the heel of my right hand aggressively across my face, pressing my palm hard against the corner of my eye under the desperate pretense of pushing my hair out of my face.
Allie is standing two feet away. She sees everything. I know she sees it.
I stare intensely at a brightly lit pretzel stand fifty feet away, fighting a desperate, losing battle against the tears. My lungs refuse to properly expand. Allie doesn’t ask me what just happened. She doesn’t reach out to touch my arm. She doesn’t look at the pale cream bear.
“Did you want to check out that new athletic store?” Allie asks. Her voice is steady. “The one down by the east entrance. I heard they carry the compression gear you were talking about last week.”
I swallow hard.
“Yeah,” I say. My voice comes out slightly roughened. I clear my throat. “Yeah, we can check it out. I need new base layers anyway. The ones I have are starting to fray at the cuffs.”
“Perfect,” Allie says. She doesn’t rush me. She’s perfect. My ride or die.
I shove my right hand aggressively back into the pocket of my leather jacket. I dig my fingernails fiercely into the denim fabric covering my thigh, using the sharp physical pressure to ground the panicked spike of my pulse. We walk in total silence for twenty yards.
I start feeling a desperate, lingering need to keep talking. If I allow the quiet to settle, the image of that plush bear will immediately return to the forefront of my mind. I need noise. I need words.
“Honestly, I barely have time to get my oil changed these days,” I say, throwing the words out casually, examining the lit storefronts as we pass them.
“Between the shop hours and riding, my schedule is totally booked. I haven’t even gone to therapy in three weeks.
Maybe four. I can’t really remember the exact date. ”
The words leave my mouth entirely without premeditation.
Out of the corner of my eye, I watch Allie’s expression shift.
She understands exactly what the blinking warning light I have just inadvertently displayed means.
Skipping therapy when your mental state is already fractured is sabotage. She knows it, I know it. Fuck it.
I brace myself. I prepare for the lecture.
Allie looks straight ahead.
“Well,” Allie says, her tone completely even. “You do have a lot going on.”
She lets it go. I don’t have a lot going on, and she knows it.
A wave of relief washes completely over my chest. I don’t have to defend myself. I don’t have to explain the crushing, paralyzing inability I have to sit in a quiet room and talk about Charles without wanting to physically tear my own skin off.
But beneath the relief, completely buried under the immediate comfort of not having to explain myself, a small, dark, heavy stone drops directly into the bottom of my stomach.
It feels exactly like disappointment.
I desperately want someone to notice that I am crashing.
I want someone to help me. I want someone to grip my shoulders and violently halt my momentum and demand that I account for my absolute failure to function.
I want an authority figure to intervene.
The Little inside me is actively starving for someone to take control, and Allie can’t.
I know she can’t. I need someone to save me. But I don’t have anyone.
I cannot blame her. It is totally unfair of me to expect her to fix it. I am the one building the wall. I cannot be angry when people refuse to climb it.
“Exactly,” I say loudly. “I have a lot going on. I’m completely swamped.”
***
The darkness out here is absolute. I am sitting on the saddle of my idling bike on a desolate two-lane stretch of county road forty minutes outside the city limits.
There are no streetlights past the very first quarter-mile marker.
There are no houses, no intersecting driveways, no glowing convenience store signs.
It is the kind of road that entirely fails to show up on tourist maps.
It’s perfect.
I am in full gear. The thick, reinforced leather of my jacket firmly grips my shoulders.
The heavy gauntlet gloves encase my hands, the carbon-fiber knuckle guards completely rigid against the joints of my fingers.
My boots rest lightly on the asphalt on either side of the chassis.
Directly beneath my chest, the heavily modified engine idles with a harsh, aggressive mechanical growl, vibrating intensely through the frame and directly into the marrow of my bones.
I sit perfectly still for three seconds. The isolation is complete.
I violently twist my right wrist backward.
The throttle snaps open. The engine note instantly ceases to be a growl and climbs rapidly into a scream.
The sheer G-force of the acceleration punches me directly in the center of the chest. The speedometer aggressively climbs.
The digital numbers blur together as they race past eighty, then ninety, then directly into triple digits.
The ride is entirely stripped of any caution.
The concept of being careful does not exist out here.
Also, fuck it.
I drop my chest completely flat against the cold metal of the fuel tank. I tuck my elbows tight against my ribs, reducing my physical profile, merging my entire body into the streamlined architecture of the bike.
A sharp, sweeping left-hand corner aggressively approaches in the cone of the headlight. I do not touch the brakes. I don’t even roll completely off the throttle.
I shift my body hard to the inside of the saddle.
I hang completely off the edge of the bike and press forward on the left handlebar.
The motorcycle banks violently to the left, leaning over so far that I’m trusting the tires’ narrow contact patches with my life.
My left knee firmly extends, the hard plastic slider skimming the rough surface of the asphalt.
A terrifying vibration travels straight up my leg as the friction violently generates heat against the road.
The bike aggressively shudders over a severely rough patch of broken pavement in the exact center of the apex. The suspension protests, the rear stepping out a harsh two inches to the right. I do not back off. The road straightens. I stand the bike up and rip the throttle open again.
The suffocating noise of my own head is completely overwritten by the immediate need to survive. No Charles, no Little side screaming inside me, no missed therapy appointments. Just me and the redline.