Chapter 13 #3
“They called Bas the Ferryman,” I spit, an inescapable challenge.
Mom sucks in air like I hit her. Her eyes dart, only half seeing the road, searching for some lie she can piece together on the fly, but I don’t give her the chance.
I bulldoze forward. “They were desperate. Suffering. He helped them somehow, took payment. They…”
Words fail me. I grind my knuckles into my breastbone, searching for the right words, some way to force her to see what I saw—the nickel turning to gold between Bas’s fingers, the rush of a river, the taste in my mouth and the hungry silence in my empty chest, knowledge bone-deep and raw, exposed.
But Mom knows how to ruin anything. She ruins it before I figure out the words, forcing a scoff. Head shaking, she pulls into the driveway.
“The boy was attacked by ghosts, and he takes the time to pick their pockets? That’s exactly what I’d expect from Cain’s parenting. He always was a calculating bastard.”
The image of that sunlit obol flakes away in my mind’s eye.
Tarnished and decayed, the reality of the day oozes away from me.
My world turned upside down, my chest split open and welcomed ghosts home, the impossible happened—but one little smirk and my mother makes it ugly, petty and small and ordinary. A fantasy. A mistake.
I can’t breathe. My muscles vibrate with the urge to shake her. I stare across the driveway at the RV and every cell in my body howls at me to steal the keys and run—drive and drive until it runs out of gas and I run out of money and I leave it behind to walk into the sunset.
It’s only a little felony.
And only if my mom reports it stolen.
“It wasn’t like that,” I whisper, but Mom’s done listening. Her eyes catch on the RV, and for a hot second, I almost hope she’s wishing I would steal it too.
Honestly, wouldn’t it be better? She doesn’t want me here, not really, not me—the hard, broken reality of me.
She wants the daughter in her head, the easy one, the perfect one, the kid I never was.
So wouldn’t it be better for us both if I left, if I put enough space between us so she could finally rest?
In my absence, she could paint me in her memory however she wanted.
She could drop all her frustrated expectations and disappointed hopes.
Wouldn’t it be a kinder, gentler end—infinities cracked open, two welcoming hands and a kiss on the forehead—if we both just… let this stunted attempt at familial obligation die?
“Everything is such a mess. We’re constantly at each other’s throats,” Mom murmurs and turns, forcing a smile. “Why don’t I take tomorrow off, and we steal a long weekend, just get away, go for a drive?”
My stomach rots. A cold weight clamps its jaws around my head.
“So we’re moving,” I deadpan, ripping off my seat belt.
“What? No, just a little weekend trip,” she protests, catching my hand before I can kick my way out of the car.
I try to pull away, but Mom clamps her fingers down, holding tight. I stare at her, face burning, my skin too small and seams straining, tears stinging in the corners of my eyes.
“You really do think I’m stupid.” I force a laugh, voice thick. “You think I don’t notice you do this? Every time we move, you drag me around the country for a week, like a couple dumb roadside attractions can apologize for what you keep doing to me.”
Mom squeezes my hand, an apology in her face she’ll never admit out loud.
“If you don’t want to go, say so. But it’ll be fun. Isn’t it always fun?” She smiles, hopeful, but her voice sounds too close to pleading. “We could head East this time, hit Hershey before it gets too cold. It’s Halloween themed—you love that, and the roller coasters.”
I love the corners, the stomach-dropping sensation of a body left behind as the roller car snaps around, that breathtaking moment of weightless inertia, the growing assurance that this time the car will slip the track, this time, this time.
I never feel so close to alive than when I’m anticipating mechanical failure, flight, and an endless blue sky.
Fighting not to cry, I squeeze my eyes shut, inhale hard through my nose.
Maybe I should have connected the dots sooner.
I’ve spent my entire teenage life flirting with the void, trading pickup lines with razor blades and batting my eyelashes at car accidents.
Maybe that’s a clue too—evidence or absence; my head’s such a mess, I can’t tell which.
I thought I was damaged but maybe nothing’s wrong with me.
Maybe I’m just a feral dead kid, homesick and not house-trained.
Staring past my mother at the RV in the driveway, I turn the day over in my head.
Ferryman, they called Bas. Pet Sematary bullshit, Cain called me.
I need to google something. This argument has no answers the internet can’t give me.
“Fine,” I mutter.
“Fine? Yeah?” Mom’s eyebrows arch. The tension eases from her shoulders. Given what she wanted, she lets go of my hand. “To Hershey, then? I hear the gift shop sells Hershey’s Kisses as big as your head.”
I don’t bother telling her I prefer sour straws, blue-stained lips laughing in the rain.
I say, “Sounds great.”