Damaged (25 page)

The sun rises and paints the desert pink. Mountains grow in the distance, waiting for us to cross them. I look over at Hunter sleeping in the passenger seat and feel so many feelings all at once—warmth, yearning, gratitude, sadness, fear, hope. Just weeks ago, I never would have believed this was possible, that I would be capable of being so human, that I would welcome it. I never would have thought that it would be Camille's death to end up teaching me how to be alive.

Hunter wakes as the sun rises higher in the sky, the heat rising with it. The car is loud with wind from the open windows. We have to yell to hear each other.

“What'd I miss?” Hunter says as he stretches his long limbs.

“Some clouds. A few cars. Trucks. Quite a lot of dirt and rocks.”

“Fascinating.”

“Hunter, I have to tell you something.”

“Oh shit, are you pregnant?”

“Very funny.”

“Did you lie about being on the pill? The condom didn't break, I swear.”

“Shut up. I'm serious.”

“I know. That's why I'm trying to make things not serious.”

I close the windows with my controller so the car will be quiet. “Hey,” Hunter protests. “We're going to bake in here.”

I take a deep breath. The car is quiet, but already uncomfortably hot. “Hunter,” I say. “I'm not staying in San Francisco with you. I'm going back to Michigan to go to college.”

“I know.” He says it so casually, I think for a second he misheard me. “I never thought you were running away for good.”

“I'm sorry.”

“Don't be. You're going to love college. College is going to love you. You were born to be a college girl. Now can we open the windows?” His window buzzes down and our words fly out.

“I'm going to miss you,” I say, barely audible.

“Let's not have that conversation,” he says, looking out the window.

“What are your plans? What are you going to—”

“Let's not have that conversation either.”

“What conversation should we have?”

“Let's just be quiet for a while,” he says, his head turned so I can't see any of his face. He is only his back, his shoulders.

So we are quiet. I open the rest of the windows and the wind screams in our heads, filling up the silence.

* * *

After five hours of driving, we cross into California at the peak of the Sierra Nevada mountain range. The freeway hugs the steep side of the cliff, with only a short concrete barrier protecting us from falling to our deaths. Silver rock towers above us and alpine trees grasp on for dear life. The air is crisp and pine-scented. I suck it in and feel clean, refreshed. I have never smelled air so pure.

We scale Donner Summit and begin our descent to the Pacific Ocean. “It's all downhill from here,” Hunter says. We could coast all the way to San Francisco. We could ride there on inertia.

In the late afternoon, we stop for gas and snacks outside of Sacramento. Neither of us says it, but we both know this is our last stop before we get to San Francisco.

The restroom is a single, but there is no avoiding it. I must go in there alone. I must face whatever there is to face.

I enter and lock the door. I take stock of everything I see—the toilet, the sink, the garbage can, the hand dryer, all in their logical places. I am ultra-aware of every minuscule movement I make. I look in the mirror at my gaunt, tanned face, my sunburned nose. I adjust my ponytail. I take a deep breath.

I whisper to my reflection, “Camille.”

I feel the heavy tugging at my insides, the empty place where I store my love. I close my eyes and wait.

All I hear is the faucet dripping and the muted sound of a cash register.

“Camille,” I say again.

Nothing.

She is gone, really gone. And I am on my own.

My heart still hurts, a dull ache around the edges, and it may be that way forever—wounded, scarred by fire. But at least I know now that it is not empty. As imperfect as the filling is—Hunter, my mom and her various absences, memories of half friends, my grandmother, whatever friends and lovers the future has planned for me—I am not alone. There is a world of people yearning just like me, just as lost and lonely, just as desperate to make connections. They are living, breathing people—not ghosts, not hallucinations, not my sad, lonely brain trying to punish itself for feeling.

I splash my face with water. I take one last look in the mirror. I watch myself smile as I realize this is the first real privacy I've had in days. Peeing in a bathroom without the company of a psychopathic ghost—one of life's little pleasures.

I turn off the lights and spend a moment in the dark before opening the door.

Camille, you are gone. And it hurts. But I am going to be okay.

* * *

The 80 delivers us to Oakland at rush hour, where it's sunny and warm as we make our way along the eastern shoreline, watching sailboats fight the wind against the backdrop of Marin County's rolling hills.

“Eli has a friend who lives around here somewhere,” Hunter says. “A guy he met in rehab. He said he'd give me a place to stay until I get on my feet.”

“In Oakland?” I say. All I know about Oakland is its sports teams and reputation for crime.

“Apparently, it's way cooler than San Francisco now. But I guess you have to be cool to know that.”

We inch across the Bay Bridge with the windows down and our arms out, San Francisco opening up in front of us with its famous skyline, the water sparkling below us. The sky is clear and everything glows with promise. Even the old prison of Alcatraz seems welcoming on its pretty little island.

I wonder how many like us have made similar journeys, have arrived here full of hope and been welcomed by this dazzling view. I wonder how many have shown up on San Francisco's doorstep with their backpacks full of history, counting on the city to give them something they could never get where they came from. All those Midwestern kids, those Bible Belt kids, those rural and suburban kids, fleeing the lives they were born into, fleeing the fear of ending up like their parents—how many of them make it? How many of them find what they're looking for? Will Hunter? Will I?

The bridge drops us in the middle of downtown San Francisco, where we have to dodge hordes of pedestrians and kamikaze bicyclists. We leave the high-rises and weave through narrow streets on what seems like an intentionally complicated route to the Golden Gate Bridge.

“Are you sure this is the way?” Hunter says.

“I checked the map like five times.”

“There's seriously no freeway that goes through the city?”

“This is the freeway.”

“This isn't a freeway.”

“The map says it's a freeway.”

“The map is a lying sack of shit.”

The tires squeal as Hunter breaks abruptly. We barely miss a half-dressed man pushing a shopping cart across the street in the middle of traffic.

“Jesus!”

“City life already getting to you?”

A few minutes later, we barely avoid a fender bender. Hunter honks and curses the guy in front of us. “Are all these people high? These are the worst drivers I've ever seen in my life.”

“Take a deep breath,” I say. “We're almost there.”

* * *

Earth lost in a sea of fog.

We are floating above it, held suspended by blood-orange bones.

The sound of water, of waves crashing. Wind howling.

Jagged land opening to ocean.

After ten hours of driving, we are finally here, just in time to see the sunset off the Golden Gate Bridge. But we can't see anything. The perfect summer day of Oakland seems so far away—a different season, a different world. I have Terry's scarf wrapped around my neck; never did I think I would actually be grateful he gave it to me.

“It's July in California,” I moan, my teeth chattering. “And I'm going to freeze to death.”

I can make out other tourists through the fog, huddled together in their summer shorts and tank tops, wondering what to do with their cameras.

I prop Terry Junior on top of the fence separating us from the white nothingness. He can't see anything either.

“How's our love child doing?” Hunter says.

“He's a little disappointed with the view.”

We look out into the whiteness. There's a huge world out there, but we can't even see it.

“I think we need to start talking about the custody arrangement,” Hunter says.

“He should stay with you. I get the scarf, you get Terry Junior.”

“But a child needs his mother.”

“But you need supervision. Someone to keep you accountable.” I don't need to remind him that it's only Terry Junior and me who know about his promise to stay sober.

The wind changes. Fog swirls around us, the water droplets so big we can see them. They stick to our skin and our clothes until we are wet. We are drowning in a river of thick white blindness, caught in the current, suspended. The wind gusts and I have to grab onto Hunter to keep from falling. Tourists squeal and scatter.

Then one more gust. Color pushes out the white. The sky opens and gives itself to us.

The crowd utters a collective “Ahhh” as the famous view is unveiled before us. The sunset is a rainbow above the perfect cushion of white fluff that still hugs the sea, a thin strip of blue the only barrier between the fog and every hue of orange imaginable.

“We're at the end of the world,” Hunter says. “What do we do now?”

I don't know the answer. In the past, this would have filled me with panic—not knowing, not having a plan, not having a direct route from A to B. But maybe it's okay to not always know the path in advance. Maybe it's okay to allow for some wandering.

I'm eighteen years old. I've barely even lived yet. How could I possibly know what I'm going to do with the rest of my life? How could I possibly know who I'm going to be in five, ten, fifty years? Maybe that's how people get stuck in lives they don't want—assuming that their decisions must be permanent, that there are no do-overs. But what if life is really a series of lives, a series of reinventions? What if the best paths are made up of detours?

“We turn around, I guess,” I say.

“Can't you hang out for a while before school starts?”

I lean into him. “I'm not going to suffer the last two weeks driving across the country with you just to turn around as soon as I get here.”

“Good,” he says, wrapping me in his arms. His musk mixes with the smell of the sea water and I breathe it in deep. “Then I guess real life starts after that.”

“Hunter,” I say, kissing him lightly on the lips, the sun setting behind us like a postcard. “This is real life.”

Photo by Erika Hart

Amy Reed
is the author of
Beautiful
,
Clean
,
Crazy
, and
Over You
. Originally from the Seattle area, she now lives and writes in Oakland, California. To learn more, visit her at AmyReedFiction.com.

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