Sylvie
“You can’t miss me yet,” I say, “’cause I’m not gone. Speaking of missing things, I don’t want you to miss your bus because of me.”
I can tell he’s a little hurt. Not in the way where he was expecting something from me, but in the way that I just made light of his feelings.
In the van, I fish my keys out of my pocket, attached to the big gold disc of my key chain. Knox’s eyes are following the flash of it when I start the car.
“What?” I say, looking over my shoulder as I back up.
“You gotta be careful with that.”
“Wait, am I gonna hit something—”
“No, I mean”—he gestures—“your keychain. It’s heavy.”
“I’ll try not to hit you with it, then,” I say. It comes out a little bitchy. “It’s big so I don’t lose it. I can’t afford to lose my keys out here. That would be the end. Do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars.”
I can tell that doesn’t land with Knox, but he smiles, gamely. “You could get a lanyard.”
“What?”
“A lanyard. Like the kind that lets you wear your keys around your neck.”
“Like a camp counselor?”
“Is that a camp counselor thing? I’ve never been to camp.”
I’m starting to get frustrated. “Knox, I’m not, like, super invested in being cool, but I need you to know that me wearing my keys around my neck on a lanyard would be social suicide.”
“But like . . .” He trails off.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“What, Knox?”
“You’re going to mess up your steering column,” he says, finally. “All these hours of driving, that heavy key chain is going to drag it out of place, and one day you’re gonna stick your key in and go to turn the engine and the engine’s not gonna turn.”
I have never heard of this before in my life. “Okay,” I say.
“You don’t believe me.”
I do what I always do when I’m upset: I remind myself that generally people have good intentions.
I remind myself that I can and have been wrong.
I take the part of me that cannot stand being condescended to (and there she is, my mother cracking open a White Claw at 3:00 p.m., telling me not to be out too late at my study session) and I stuff it down, hard.
The feeling riots somewhere down around my solar plexus.
“I believe you,” I say sweetly.
We don’t talk for a while.
Bob Dylan is on the radio. I hate Bob Dylan. His singing sounds like someone playing the oboe through their nose.
“I get the feeling you’re mad at me,” Knox says.
“I’m not mad.”
“No?”
“Nope.”
“You’re not mad that I said your key chain is too big?”
It’s so ridiculous that I snort a little, then hate myself for it. “No. I’m not mad that you told me my key chain is too big.”
“Are you mad at me because you hit something in the road earlier?”
That feels uncomfortably true. It also feels wrong. “No.”
“And being mad is easier than crying?”
“No,” I say. “Besides, I already cried. I’m done crying. I don’t need to worry about my steering column because I’m already worried about everything else. The steering column can wait, okay?”
“Sylvie—”
“What, Knox?”
He clears his throat and points with his good arm. “That was our exit. We’re gonna have to turn around.”