Sylvie
“What was that?”
“Whoa!” Knox grabs the wheel to steady it. “Pull over, pull over—easy, it’s okay—”
“What was it? Do you see it?”
“What did I hit?”
“Can you put it in park?”
It’s like I’m hovering above my own body, staring down at my hands. I don’t think I can make them work.
“Is your foot on the brake?” he’s asking, and when I don’t say anything, he pushes the gearshift to P anyway before dragging his hand over his face.
“What did we hit?” I feel the way I did the one time I smoked pot, like I’m trapped in the same thirty seconds on tight repeat, an egg timer wound and rewound. I’m hitting the thing in the road. I’m hitting the thing in the road. I’m—
Knox hops out of the car.
“It’s not safe!” I yell out the open door. I don’t know why I do that. But he’s striding right up to the shoulder, anyway, using his good hand to shade his eyes against the sky.
It felt like a bunny. A bunny? Someone’s cat, maybe. Someone’s small dog. Something meant to live a lot longer, curled up fat and happy in a patch of sun. Something I ended.
I’m going to throw up.
“Sylvie?” Knox is saying, with some hesitation, because now I’ve outed myself as the kind of person you need to think twice about. “Are you—”
I yank the door open and vomit onto the pavement. It takes a while. When I’m finally twisted-up and empty, I let myself sit back in my seat, let myself shut my eyes.
“What was it?” I ask again.
“Shredded rubber,” he says, “from an eighteen-wheeler tire.”
My head is full of static. “A tire?”
“Truckers call them ‘alligators.’” When I don’t say anything, he keeps talking.
“I used to have a CB radio. We were on the road so much. I met a guy at a truck stop who taught me some of the lingo, and he gave me his old busted radio to fix up. So I got a book from a library on how to do it. I love lingo. Any kind of specialized language. I think that’s most of the fun of learning a new hobby.
My mom taught me how to knit when I was a kid, and it felt like I was learning how to cast spells.
Cast on. Bind off. Yarn over. Decrease. That stuff. But you know that. You knit too.”
I take a breath. I haven’t been breathing, I guess, because it feels really good. I take another.
“Can I see your hand for a second?” He takes it after a moment. “You’re all clammy. Which is natural, don’t worry. But I’m going to rub your fingers for a few minutes, if that’s okay.”
“Knox?”
“What?”
“Can you keep talking?”
“Yeah,” he says. “Of course. How about I tell you about the time I knit my mom a scarf for Christmas? One of the other—kids, I guess, that I unschooled with, she had a bunch of yarn she didn’t want.
And waste not, want not, right? The colors weren’t my favorite—it was a lot of shades of purple—but my mom loves purple, so I started making a plan . . .”
His skin is warm against mine. He doesn’t ask questions, or if I’m okay. He talks and talks, about the scarf, about wrapping it up for his mom’s birthday, the way her face looked when she opened it, until finally I can open my eyes again.