Sweetside Motel

Chapter One

Drive. Drive as fast as you can, as far away as you can.

Drive until horses and hay bales wink by on the side of the road instead of industrial plazas and big box malls.

Drive until the only radio station you can reach on the dial crackles in French.

Drive until you can’t feel your fingers wrapped around the steering wheel, and when you wash your hands in the rest stop bathroom, you trace the faux-leather stitches branded into your palms. Drive until the blood on your hooded sweatshirt dries, and you can pretend it was only a nosebleed.

Drive even though it’s started to snow, and you never did put on your winter tires. Because skidding across two lanes of highway at a hundred kilometers an hour into the exposed bedrock of the Canadian Shield is better than anything waiting for you back in Toronto.

Just drive, until you can’t anymore.