Page 142 of Wayfarers

and Cal would end things just the way I wanted him to.

He’d turn us around. Or (this was thrilling) maybe he’d leave me

on the road outside Louisville and I’d have to call my mom for help,

say, You know Cal? The guy you like so much, sometimes I think

he should be your boyfriend? He abandoned me. Cinematic

but painless, no real consequences (after I Ubered to the airport

on my mother’s dime). Either way, I’d make him be the bad guy.

All I had to do was bide my time. But then

it was actually April and we were actually leaving

in one actual month and I was nauseous with dread, all that meanness

inside of me about to spew out as sewage and I thought,

I will give anything to make this feeling stop.

Late evening in my mom’s car, recycling all the reasons

why I needed out, needed out now: Cal’s face every time

I outscored him on an English test, Cal never asking me

if I wanted something to drink when I came over

to his house. Can you believe the pettiness

of this litany?

It was an accident, everyone said,

but that wasn’t what I remembered.

I remembered Cal’s voice crying out for his mom

in the endless maw of time after the impact

and before the paramedics arrived,

too late. My face looming over him

was the last thing he saw. At the funeral,

Cal’s dad took my shoulder to say that

none of this was my fault, and that

no one would ever forgive me.

2.

In the uncomfortable bed in the back of the van