by Zack Smedley
“Remember: Any time you change directions or lanes, you use this first.” He points to the blinker arm. “That’s your turn signal. An important fact to make peace with upfront is that about 10 percent of the fuckweasels on the road couldn’t find this if it were duct taped to their firstborn, okay. Don’t ask me why; I’ve given up trying to figure it out. Seven percent of the people in this country believe chocolate milk comes from brown cows. Not jumping to any conclusions about the overlap of those two groups; all I’m saying is, let’s add a chocolate milk question to the driver’s test and see if the problem doesn’t work itself out. But. Until that happens, we deal with it.”
“Steve?” Mom interjects, leaning forward. “Remember what we said this morning.”
“This mor—” Dad’s lips peel off his teeth, and he looks ready to detonate. But then all at once, his face floods with a sugary smile.
“Fine,” he says. He turns to me and says, still beaming, “Owen, I forgot to ask. How are you feeling today?”
“Uh,” I stutter. His shit-eating grin is unsettling to me, and I immediately start looking for the trap—Dad is never like this. Try watching a Pixar movie with him sometime and do a shot every time he smiles. You’ll be able to drive home afterward.
“Doing good?” he asks. “Ready to hit the road? Metaphorically, of course.”
“Are you okay?”
“Do I not sound okay?”
“You sound like you’re about to tell me my call is very important.”
“Ah, no, no no no. Your, um, mother“—he raises his eyebrows at his own lap—“had a talk with me this morning about how in order for these lessons to be productive—which we all want, obviously—I need to be more …” He searches for the word.
“You know. Perky. Upbeat … Shh, you’re doing great, don’t worry about the road, just do your best.”
His tone immediately pisses me off. It puts me at center stage of the theatrical production going on in his mind: that I need to be coddled, or given a participation trophy, or that I can’t handle someone being irritated with me. He’s putting the kid gloves on. “You don’t have to do that,” I tell him.
“I just want you to feel relaxed, and above all, know that I’m not pissed.”
“Okay, why would you be pissed? We haven’t started the car yet.”
“I said I’m not—I’m not pissed.”
“Okay, please … just, stop acting. You can be your … normal you.” I turn to Mom and say, “Tell him he can stop.”
“Hey, hey, Owen?” Dad leans close to me, his voice slipping a notch as he mutters in a melodic growl, “Let’s just try this shit, please.”
We both lean back in our seats. I catch my own reflection in the rearview mirror and adjust it so my face is out of the frame.
“Lights, camera, action,” says Dad. He knows how much I appreciate patterns, so during our early sessions, we came up with a startup routine and drilled it until I could do it in my sleep: lights on, parking brake off, shift into gear. Each time I do it, I say, “Lights, camera, action”—one word for each of the steps—under my breath. Dad rolls with it.
“We’re going to exit the neighborhood the usual way,” he says as we pull out of the driveway. “Remember not to gun it near the playground. That’s how you turn the neighbor’s idiot kid into road pizza.”
“Got it.”
“We make our turn, let the wheel come back … good. You’ve got this part down,” he says. “Next, we’re going to pull up to the intersection at the main road. I’ll give you plenty of warning.”
“Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Feeling more relaxed now, sweetie?” asks Mom.
“Let him focus, Jen!” Dad barks, his smile vanishing. Mom gives him a look, and his mask slips back into place.
My hand slips for half a second, and I squeak. This is another thing that gets me on edge about driving—the sheer amount of control in your hands. When I picture passing another car, the thought floods my head: I could jerk this wheel five inches and end three lives. That’s all it would take—half a second of motion. Less effort than it takes to lift a spoon to your mouth. The thought makes me scared of my own strength.
“Now, this is the hairier part,” Dad warns as we approach our turn. “We’re going to pull into the shopping center at the opening in front of that sign, you see it?”
“Yes,” I say. It’s approaching. Meanwhile, I look in the rearview mirror and grunt—the entire back window is full of blinding white light that hurts my eyes. “There’s something behind us.”
“I see them. Just stay focused.”
“What the hell is so bright?”
“They’re called LED headlights, and they’re the sole reason capital punishment should exist. Ignore them.”
“I can’t goddamn see behind me!”
The car is right on my ass. I check my speed—we’re going thirty-eight in a forty-five.
“In point-four miles, your destination is on the right,” the GPS rattles off.
“Slow down, please.” Dad’s smile is back. “We’re going to turn right up here—don’t be afraid to slow down; ignore whatever the person behind—”
“BEEEEEP!” says the car behind us. I jump.
“—we’re ignoring them, we’re ig-nor-ing them,” he chants like a mantra, his shoulders seesawing with each syllable. Steve Turner has been reduced to song and dance.
“Now they’re flipping me off,” I say.
“That motherfucker,” he says through a tight, toothy grin. “Owen, I said slow down.” “But that red car—” His face melts.
“That red car can go FRONT-FUCK THE BERLIN WALL, you understand? Now, for this turn—” “Steve!” Mom admonishes.
“Be quiet, Jen!” says Dad. “For this turn, the curb is sharp, so you need—are you listening?”
“Destination on the right!” says the GPS.
“So you need to take it slow—slow-er—Owen—THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?” Dad roars.
THUMP—the front of our car slams the curb head-on.
The front goes up.
The front crashes back down.
A deafening BLAST—like the bang of a cannon; or, as I would soon learn, the sound of a RAV4 tire blowing out.
We’re wrenched to a stop. Horns blare. An expensive-looking symbol illuminates the dashboard warning panel.
“Shit!” I say.
“Oh no,” says Mom.
“Low air pressure in front-right tire,” says a voice from the dashboard.
“TSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!” says the front-right tire. “Arrived,” says the GPS.
“MOTHER OF FUCKING CHRIST!” says Dad.
SIXTEEN
IT’S DAD’S SCREAMS THAT LET ME KNOW WE’RE ABOUT to die.
“GET OUT OF HERE! ALL OF YOU GET OUT OF HERE! GO, GO! GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE!” He yells it at the top of his lungs—smacking the dashboard, tugging at his seatbelt, thrashing like a caged animal. His voice chills my blood—he’s not angry. My father is terrified.
“Steve! Steve. SteveSteveSteve.” Mom is shouting now too. One of his fists flies back, nearly taking my head off, and she yells, “Owen, GET OUT!” When I hesitate—stuttering without moving—she says, “RIGHT NOW, GO!”
I rip my seatbelt off and throw myself out of the car, calling for my parents to follow me. Holy Christ, is the car about to explode? Why aren’t they coming? Are their seatbelts stuck? Am I about to watch my parents die?
The driver’s side door hangs open. Dad is still losing his mind, but he’s not getting out. Mom has squished herself against the backseat, as far away from his swinging arms as possible. She’s not leaving … she’s talking to him. Not yelling, not panicking, not rambling—talking. Clearly and in a controlled manner.
I hear the sound of screeching brakes from a thousand miles away, and it isn’t until I feel a hand on my shoulder that I realize someone in a white truck has pulled over and is trying to talk to me.
“—ambulan
ce? Do I need to call an ambulance? Hey, do I need to call an ambulance?”
I look to the stranger—a grizzled guy built like a lumberjack—and work my mouth without saying anything.
Snapsnapsnapsnap.
“Alright, I’m calling,” he says.
“No!” I spit out. “I mean—I don’t know. I think it was just a tire, but—I don’t know if it’s about to explode.” “Explode!”
“I don’t know! I, I—shit. I have no idea. I don’t know.”
Mom eventually extracts herself from the car and takes over. She orders me to go into the shopping center and gives me money for the food court.
An hour later, after manually installing the spare tire and driving my father home, she comes back and gets me separately.
I don’t ask her what happened on the ride home, but she brings it up on her own. It’s important, she says. It’s important to tell me what I’d already suspected—that this was the same thing as what happened when I was little. That the sound of the tire blowing out sent my father to somewhere other than the inside of the car. That when he was yelling to get out, the reason he said “all of you” instead of “both of you” is because he wasn’t talking to us at all. She tells me the same thing she’s told me since I was ten: “The only people who completely understand PTSD are the ones who have it.”
The words tumble around in my head as I go to sleep that night: GET OUT OF HERE. The urgency—the terror. It makes me understand why he never told me what shit he saw overseas, and I realize how much scarier it is that I’m left to imagine.
I remember this picture Dad took with me: eight-year-old me dressed as Buzz Lightyear for Halloween, sitting on his lap as he wears the helmet on his head. It was the first time his smile looked different. Strained. Impatient.
I think about how my father has buried these awful things that happened to him—the war that lives in his head and his heart—instead of talking to someone about it. I think about how desperate I am to erase what happened to me, just as he’s desperate to erase whatever happened to him. Two men carrying ourselves as though we’re okay—concealing our scars from the world. And my heart aches for how much my dad and I have in common … how much we would have to talk about, if ever we talked about anything at all.
Owen,
Here is the spec sheet of the tire that needed replacing. No need to reimburse us—it was an easy mistake to make. Your mother is going to handle driving lessons from now on.
I apologize for raising my voice.
-Dad
SEVENTEEN
January 25th—Senior Year
Journal:
Came out to Lily today. Not intentionally—I think I really screwed it up.
We were down at the playground putting the finishing touches on the snowman we built. My face was frozen and my nose had started to drip, but I was having a blast. Lily and I have been starved for some one-on-one time for the past month, and when she hit me up this afternoon, I put off all my homework to say yes.
“Can I say something mean?” she asked me. Then, before I could answer: “I love Austin. But how the hell did he get into UVA?”
“His parents, probably. They both went there.”
“Maybe.” She brushed a bit of snow off my jacket. “Apparently he’s officially going there. Like, for sure, definite, signed-the-paperwork official. Which is neat, but now he and Beth are starting to have that conversation—do they do the distance thing or not—and—”
“They have different opinions?” I guessed.
“No, it’s not even that! He won’t even have the conversation.” “Ah.”
“That’s the issue, yeah.” She nodded at me knowingly. “And then he’s all, Chill out, babe, why do you want to plan our breakup, blah, blah.”
“Flawless Austin voice, by the way.”
I tried to keep it light, because I knew college was an especially rough topic for Lily at the moment. I got into Lanham early decision right before winter break, which of course was great—Mom started crying when I read it, and Dad showed his support by buying me professional screenwriting software for Christmas. But Lily wound up on the waiting list, despite her gold-plated resume. I felt so bad that I didn’t even tell her I’d already accepted my enrollment to the English program.
“I think this is done. What do you think?” She pointed to our snowman—a misshapen lump with two rocks for eyes and a baby carrot for a nose.
“He looks cold.”
Lily stuck her tongue out at me, pecked me on the cheek, then took off her hat and tugged it over the head. We took a few selfies in front of it, then snuggled at our old picnic table under the pavilion.
“Hoo,” she said, shivering and rubbing her hands together.
“Cold?” I asked, then yelped as she pressed her hands to my neck. (She knows I hate that, but she loves hearing my noises, so sometimes she can’t resist. I deal with it.)
“We should go somewhere warm. Maybe a coffee shop?” she suggested, pulling my arms around her. “I can drive.”
Lily’s car—an old Passat that she got used this past summer—was a game changer as far as being able to spend time together outside the neighborhood. It also meant she’d become our group chauffeur.
“It’s polite for taxi drivers to ask how you’re doing first,” I quipped.
“I will smack you.”
“No you won’t. Okay, stop!” I laughed out another, “Ow!” as she slapped me on the shoulder and said, “Fucker. Let’s find a place.”
We huddled around my phone.
“I’m making you try something new this time. Not just plain hot choc—” Lily started to say. That’s when it happened: I opened the internet browser on my phone, which started to auto-play the last tab I had open. Which, in this case, was a video of two college guys having sex with each other.
“Whoa, what the fuck?”
Time froze.
I closed out the window and stuffed my phone back in my pocket, but the damage was done.
Lily got to her feet, yanked her hand out of mine, and said, “Owen!” in an okay-dude-what-the-hell voice. For once in her life, she had no idea how to react. The girl who always had an easy retort had a hand to her mouth, her eyes wide. She shook her head and started to say, “Oh my God,” under her breath. She said it over and over again, like it was a mantra. Oh my God. Oh my God.
Finally I wrenched myself out of my stasis and said, “It’s not what you think!”
“O—”
“Please—” “Are you gay?” “No.”
“You can tell me if you are.”
“I’m bi, okay?” I blurted it out just like that … this thing I’d been contemplating telling her for over a year.
I remember she blinked at me, slowing to a halt. Then she sat back down and said, “Oh.” Then, “Wow.”
Then, nothing.
“I was about to tell you, I swear.” I tried to put a hand on her shoulder, but she wriggled away, so I backed off. “The reason I didn’t say anything is because it doesn’t matter. Honestly. Nothing here—not our dates, not our relationship, not the sex; none of it—is affected by this. It is a completely separate thing.”
Lily got to her feet, looking at me with new eyes. “I need to go home for a bit.”
“No, please stay.” I started to panic, but all she said was, “I don’t like how I feel right now,” and booked it past me.
That was five hours ago, and she’s not answering any of my texts.
Like I said. I think I really screwed this up. Sincerely,
O
January 27th—Senior Year
Journal:
I finally convinced Lily to finish our conversation from a few days ago. I was afraid it would take longer, but after giving her a letter I typed out explaining things, she agreed to meet back down at the playground.
Our snowman was half-melted.
We greeted each other with a short “hey” and sat down at the same picnic table as last time. I handed her a thermos t
hat I’d filled with her favorite coffee, which got her to smile. A tradition we recently developed whenever we sit down to resolve fights: start with coffee.
“I swear I was trying to figure out how to tell you,” I said to her, once we got into it.
Lily said, “Okay.”
“It’s not one of those things where it’s because I like you any less. That’s not how it works, I promise.” Lily said, “Okay.”
“It’d be like, if someone liked blonds and redheads. They wouldn’t find you, a blond, less attractive or anything just because you’re not a redhead, even if they sometimes watch porn at home that has redheads; say, if it’s an off day, and—”
“Hey, O? I said okay,” Lily said. My heart scooched up as I realized that she was smiling, albeit a little warily. “Learn to take yes for an answer.”
“You’re not still pissed?”
“To be clear, I was never pissed about you being bi. Who gives a shit, right? But you didn’t talk to me about it. You were covering it up.”
“In my defense, you never asked. So I didn’t technically lie.”
She gave me a come on look, and I abandoned that track. “Sorry—point taken. You’re right.”
Lily folded her hands, squishing them between her knees. I expected her to say the usual stuff you see in books and movies—“I won’t tell anyone” or “you’re still the same person to me”—but she didn’t linger on any of those platitudes. Instead she asked, “Have you told anyone else?”
(I haven’t, and said so.)
“Have you thought about it?” she asked.
“Not really.”
“You should.”
“Think about it?”
“Tell other people. If that’s something you’d be comfortable with.”
I leaned my head against hers, staring at the grungy wood of the table surface. “It’s not that I’m not comfortable; I just don’t know if there’s a point. We have, what … seven months until we all leave forever?”
“I think it would be good for you,” she pushed. “And I think you’d regret it if you don’t. I really do. You could tell the group first!”
Her gears were turning—she was in planning mode. And as much as I appreciated it, this was why I didn’t want to tell her. To me, being bi was such a non-headline. It’s not that I was ashamed, but the idea of turning it into a huge ordeal made my skin crawl. It felt cringey, disingenuous.
