Wanderlust (2 page)

Mama had dated a few men when I was
very young, when she still left the house. The last man she dated
was Allen. He had been so very understanding of her desire to spend
nights at home instead of going out for dates, even if it meant her
young daughter was in the way. My mother would take her pills and
go to sleep and he would slip into my room.

One night, she caught him in the act.
She’d kicked him out of the house the next day, and that fall, I’d
stayed home to be homeschooled instead of going to ninth
grade.

She had stopped dating altogether. She
stopped going outside too. The world was too scary. Well, I was a
little scared too, but I was even more terrified of rotting here.
At least her isolation had led to me getting my driver’s license
and the rust bucket I used to get groceries each week. It was a
pumpkin turned into a carriage, ready to take me away from
here.

I softened my voice. “I’m not mad at
you for what happened. It wasn’t your fault.”

Her nostrils flared. “You ungrateful
bitch. I picked you over him. Is this how you pay me back? By
leaving?”

I steeled myself. “I’m going now. I’ll
call in a few days to let you know I’m settled.”

A plate landed at my feet like a
Frisbee, clattering harmlessly to the floor, shatter-resistant. I
slung my backpack over my shoulder and walked to the door. A bowl
of oranges spilled around my ankles. A mug thudded against my
leg.

She screamed at me, and I kept
walking. I wanted to be smug. I was finally getting what I wanted.
I had done it. It was a victory. But I couldn’t shake the feeling I
had left something important behind.

Not all those who wander are lost. I
knew that, I believed it, but just now, with my mother sobbing
obscenities while I drove away in my ten-year-old Honda, I felt
very alone and a little bit lost.

CHAPTER TWO

The Niagara Falls mark the
border of Ontario, Canada and New York, USA.

By late afternoon, I knew I’d taken a
wrong turn. I’d only driven two hundred miles away from home. The
three-lane highway had narrowed to one lane on either side, flanked
by deep ditches and wide fields.

I’d only run occasional weekly errands
in my car, and now I was driving across Texas—which felt as broad
and wide as the world. The signs changed as soon as I left our
small city. Different colors, different markings than the maps, and
I soon found myself turned around and twisted.

I considered going back but I’d been
driving this way for two hours. By the time I got back to the main
freeway, it would be dark. I might miss it again and make
everything worse. Besides, I was tired, hungry, and I really had to
use the bathroom.

An exit sign had little pictographs
for food, gas, and lodging. I pulled onto a smaller road, also
devoid of cars or buildings. The pavement was smooth enough. The
little reflective lights in the middle were comforting, like maybe
I couldn’t be too far from civilization if they’d bothered with
safety features.

Eventually I saw a complex up ahead,
several buildings clumped together with a row of semi-trucks parked
by the gas pumps. It looked like an all-in-one business, with hot
food specials listed next to the gas prices and a vacancy sign for
rooms to let.

Inside the tiny gas station building,
a large balding man sat behind the counter while a tiny fan blew
directly at his face. He looked me up and down in a way that made
my skin crawl.

“
How much?”

“
I’m sorry?” I
stammered.

Somehow, my mind had made a leap to
something inappropriate, as if he were asking how much I would
charge to have sex with him.

Crazy thought.

“
How much gas?” He nodded
toward my car at the pump.

I exhaled, feeling silly. Why had I
even thought such a dirty thing? I felt bad for doubting him. That
was the anxiety talking, secondhand anxiety leftover from all the
lectures my mother had ever given me. Brushing off the embarrassing
dust of fear, I paid for my gas and rented a room for the
night.

Forty dollars made a sizable dent in
my small pocket of cash, but the musty bed and aging particle board
furniture would be more comfortable than the back seat of my car.
Even better, the door had a thick, shiny lock that looked like it
had been replaced recently, as well as a latch that only opened
from the inside. After examining all the entry points, I berated
myself for paranoia again.

My stomach growled. The soda I had
bought wouldn’t tide me over all night. Maybe I’d pick up some
chips to go with it. My jeans and a T-shirt seemed stale and a
little constricting after the long car ride.

I put on a loose-fitting sundress that
fell below my knees. It was white and airy, darkening to baby blue
at the hem. I had bought it on impulse from the Walmart about a
month ago but never worn it before today. My mother would have said
it invited men to sin with me. I thought it was pretty and normal,
and hopefully it would help me fake my way to confidence. Slipping
twenty bucks into my coin purse along with the room key, I set
out.

My car cooled in the night air right
outside my door, but there was no point driving such a short
distance. The buildings of the gas station, the diner, and the
motel rooms were nestled together amid a wide expanse of concrete
in an even larger plain of empty farmland. The other motel rooms I
passed seemed vacant, their windows dark and parking spaces
empty.

I felt tiny out here. Would it always
be this way now that I was free? Our seclusion at home had provided
more than security. An inflated sense of pride, diminishing the
grand scheme of things to raise our own importance. On this
deserted sidewalk in the middle of nowhere, it was clear how very
insignificant I was. No one even knew I was here. No one would
care.

When I rounded the corner, I saw that
the lights in the gas station were off. Frowning, I tried the door,
but it was locked. It seemed surreal for a moment, as if maybe it
had never been open at all, as if this were all a dream.

Unease trickled through me, but then I
turned and caught site of the sunset. It glowed in a symphony of
colors, the purples and oranges and blues all blending together in
a gorgeous tableau. There was no beauty like this in the small but
smoggy city where I had come from, the skyline barely visible from
the tree in our backyard. This sky didn’t even look real, so
vibrant, almost blinding, as if I had lived my whole life in black
and white and suddenly found color.

I put my hand to my forehead, just
staring in awe.

My God, was this what I’d been
missing? What else was out there, unimagined?

I considered going back for my camera
but for once I didn’t want to capture this on film. Part of my
dependence on photography had been because I never knew when I’d
get to see something again, didn’t know when I’d get to go outside
again. I was a miser with each image, carefully secreting them into
my digital pockets. But now I had forever in the outside world. I
could breathe in the colors, practically smell the vibrancy in the
air.

A sort of exuberant laugh escaped me,
relief and excitement at once. Feeling joyful, I glanced toward the
neat row of semi-trucks to the side. Their engines were silent, the
night air still. The only disturbance: a man leaned against the
side of one, the wispy white smoke from his cigarette curling
upward. His face was shrouded in darkness.

My smile faded. I couldn’t see his
expression, but some warning bell inside me set off. I sensed his
alertness despite the casual stance of his body. His gaze felt hot
on my skin. While I’d been watching the sunset, he’d been watching
me.

When he suddenly straightened, I
tensed. Where a second ago I’d felt free, now my mother’s warnings
came rushing back, overwhelming me. Would he come for me? Hurt me,
attack me? It would only take a few minutes to run back to my
room—could I beat him there? But all he did was raise his hand,
waving me around the side of the building. I circled hesitantly and
found another entrance, this one to a diner.

Hesitantly, I waved my thanks. After a
moment, he nodded back.

“
Paranoid,” I chastised
myself.

The diner was wrapped with metal, a
retro look that was probably original. Uneven metal shutters shaded
the green windows, where an OPEN sign flickered.

Inside, turquoise booths and brown
tables lined the walls. A waitress behind the counter looked up
from her magazine. Her hair was a dirty blonde, darker than mine,
pulled into a knot. A thick layer of caked powder and red lipstick
were still in place, but her eyes were bloodshot, tired.

“
I heard we got a
boarder,” she said, nodding to me. “First one of the
year.”

I blinked. It was a cool April night.
If I was the first one of the year, then that was a long time to go
without boarders.

“
What about all the trucks
outside?”

“
Oh, they sleep in their
cabs. Those fancy new leather seats are probably more comfortable
than those old mattresses filled with God-knows-what.” She laughed
at her own joke, revealing a straight line of grayish
teeth.

I managed a brittle smile then ducked
into one of the booths.

She sidled over with a notepad and
pen.

“
We don’t usually see
girls as pretty as you around here. Especially alone. You don’t got
nobody to look after you?”

The words were spoken in accusation,
turning a compliment into a warning.

“
Just passing through,” I
said.

She snorted. “Aren’t we all? Okay,
darlin’, what’ll it be?”

Under her flat gaze, I turned the
sticky pages of the menu, ignoring the stale smells that wafted up
from it. Somehow the breakfast food seemed safest. I hoped it would
be easier to avoid food poisoning with pancakes than a
steak.

After the waitress took my order, I
waited, tapping my fingers on the vinyl tabletop to an erratic
beat. I was a little nervous—jittery, although there was no reason
to be. Everyone had been nice. Not exactly welcoming, but then I
was a stranger. Had I expected to make friends with the first
people I met?

Yes, I admitted to myself, somewhat
sheepishly. I had rejected my mother’s view that everyone was out
to get me, but neither was everyone out to help me. I would do well
to retain some of the wariness she’d instilled in me. A remote
truck stop wasn’t the place to meet people, to make lasting
relationships. That would be later, once I had started my job. No,
even later than that, when I’d saved up enough to reach Niagara
Falls. Then I could relax.

When my food came, I savored the
sickly sweet syrup that saturated my pancakes. It would rot my
teeth, my mother would have said. Well, she wasn’t here. A small
rebellion, but satisfying and delicious.

The bell over the door rang, and I
glanced up to see a man come in. His tan T-shirt hung loose while
jeans hugged his long legs. He was large, strong—and otherwise
unremarkable. He might have come from any one of those
eighteen-wheelers out there, but somehow I knew he’d been the one
watching me.

His face had been in the shadows then,
but now I could see he had a square jaw darkened with stubble and
lips quirked up at the side. Even those strong features paled
against the bright intensity of his eyes, both tragic and
terrifying. So brown and deep that I could fall into them. The
scary part was the way he stared—insolently. Possessively, as if he
had a right to look at me, straight in my eyes and down my neckline
to peruse my body.

I suddenly felt uncomfortable in this
dress, as if it exposed too much. I wished I hadn’t changed
clothes. More disturbing, I wished I had listened to my mother. I
looked back down at my pancakes, but my stomach felt stretched
full, clenched tight around the sticky mass I’d already
eaten.

I wanted to get up and leave, but the
waitress wasn’t here and I had to pay the bill. More than that, it
would be silly to run away just because a man looked at me. That
was exactly what my mom would do.

Back when we still left
the house, someone would just glance at her sideways in the grocery
store. Then we’d flee to the car where she’d do breathing exercises
before she could drive us home. I was trying to escape that.
I
had
escaped
that. I wouldn’t go back now just because a man with pretty eyes
checked me out.

Still, it was unnerving. When I peeked
at him from beneath my lashes, I met his steady gaze. He’d seated
himself so he had a direct line of vision to me. Shouldn’t he be
more circumspect? But then, I wouldn’t know what was normal. I was
clueless when it came to public interaction. So I bowed my head and
poked at the soggy pancakes.

Once the waitress gave me the bill,
I’d leave. Simple enough. Easy, for someone who wasn’t paranoid or
crazy. And I wasn’t—that was my mother, not me. I could do
this.

When the waitress came out, she went
straight to his table. I drew little circles in the brown syrup
just to keep my eyes off them. I couldn’t hear their conversation,
but I assumed he was ordering his meal.