Knox
“So who were you in high school?” Sylvie asks after about ten minutes on the road.
“What do you mean?”
“Like what was your vibe? Who did you hang out with?”
I consider lying again but remember my commitment to myself. “I want you to brace yourself for what I’m about to tell you.”
Sylvie wiggles in her seat and grips the wheel tightly. “Okay, I’m thoroughly braced.”
“I didn’t go to high school. I was homeschooled. Actually, I think the most accurate term is ‘unschooled.’”
“I’ve heard that phrase, but what is it exactly?”
“No classes, no curriculum. No textbooks. No tests. You just go where your curiosity takes you and learn. All very free and unstructured.”
“And?”
I look at Sylvie.
“Was it awesome?” she asks. “Were you living the dream?”
“Um. Was it awesome. Hmm. I . . . no. It wasn’t. There were positive aspects to it, I guess? But on the whole? No.”
“It worked. You seem super smart.”
“With massive Avatar and Princess Bride–shaped gaps.”
“Fair point.”
“So who were you in high school? Who was Sylvie?”
“The opposite, I guess. I was super scheduled. Big into piano. AP classes. Volunteering. Taking care of other people.”
“I figured out the taking-care-of-people part.”
“Yeah, I guess you might’ve.”
“Did you go to prom?”
Sylvie smiles wistfully at the road in front of us. “Briefly. We went and took pictures with our friends and left.”
“Who was your date?”
Sylvie, who wasn’t talking, somehow becomes quieter still. “My boyfriend at the time,” she says, after several seconds. What I hear coloring the edges of her voice tells me it’s best not to pry further. Am I jealous?
“I wish I got to go to prom,” I say to change the subject.
Sylvie brightens. “Really?”
“Really.”
“Why?”
“I guess you always want what you don’t have.”
“I hope that’s not true.”
“Seems to be.”
“Maybe what makes it seem true is that that unrequited wanting is a temporary state and you eventually arrive at some Zen place of contentment. I mean, we have a lot of life ahead of us to see.” She pauses. “I hope.”
“You hope a lot of life or that we eventually arrive at the Zen state?”
“Both. Hey, question.” Sylvie sounds eager to switch topics.
“Hey, ask away.”
“The first time you told me your name, you started to say something that began with M. Is Knox like an alias? Are you actually named Mickey?”
“Manson.”
“So we’re back on the serial killer jokes.”
“’Munk. It was my nickname growing up; my whole family calls me that.”
“As in brown robes? Funny haircut? Chanting?”
“As in my stuffed chipmunk from whom I was inseparable as a little boy.”
“Aw! Can I call you ’Munk for the rest of the drive?”
“I’d actually way prefer Knox honestly.”
“Yeah?”
“I made a big life change recently and I’m reverting to my birth name to symbolize that change.”
“You know what I like about you?”
“What?” I ask, weirdly nervous.
“You talk in complete sentences. And you say what you say with authority.”
“I do?”
“I’m jealous of that.”
“You don’t feel like you have authority?”
She laughs. “Not always. Really, almost never. Sometimes I think there’s, like, an imbalance of how much power you actually have and how much control you feel like you need. Like, people in charge of their own destinies don’t cry when their GPA slips. They just soldier on.”
“I think I’m maybe trying that out, honestly. Because I don’t feel like I had a lot of control either, before this.”
“Now I feel bad.”
“Don’t. Guilt does no one any good,” I say, repeating a refrain I heard often growing up.
“That’s a healthy outlook.”
“You know that phrase ‘when the Universe closes a door, it opens a window’?”
“I’ve heard it said with ‘God’ but yes,” Sylvie says.
“When God breaks an arm, he heals an outlook.”
Sylvie laughs. The sound fills me like drinking something warm. It’s a laugh I would love to spend many days hearing. I wouldn’t ever get tired of it.
“You feel like telling me about your big life change?” she asks.
“I already sort of did. I told you about buying my uncle’s truck and striking out on my own—it was because I’d decided that my mom’s way of living wasn’t for me and now that I’m eighteen, it’s time for me to live life on my own terms.”
Sylvie fakes a snore. We crack up. “No, seriously,” she says. “That’s, like, the most interesting. Big changes where you’re taking charge of your life and bending it to your will are way better than the kind where you’re just along for the ride.”
“We’re in the driver’s seat now,” I say.
“Well,” she says, “I am. I mean, if we’re being literal.”
That’s when she runs over something in the road.