10.
I ate the chips as I walked by the pine trees and along the road. I wanted to save them for later but it wasn’t happening.
I had a song in my head but I couldn’t remember what it was or who sang or when I had last heard it and the sun was burning high above me. I had food and forty dollars and a swimming head still. I could hear birds chirp high in the trees and leaves dancing and my flat footsteps echoing only a little around me. My shoes were old and I felt every crack in the pavement.
I stared at the ground as I walked and after a few minutes I could hear an engine approaching. I turned to look and the car was silver or white or gold, the sun bent color around it. The car slowed and I stepped further toward the pine trees. It came to a crawl along next to me and a window rolled down. Inside the car was darker and I had to squint to see.
“You need a ride?”
It was the girl from the store. Long brown hair. Deep eyes. Full lips.
“Sure,” I said.
The car stopped and she reached over and popped the door open. “Get in then.”
11.
I wasn’t clean and I had a back pack full of water bottles and beer and bread tied to it and we were driving to my ruined camper in the middle of the woods. I didn’t think this was the best first impression. I couldn’t think of anything to say, beside:
“Thanks for the ride.”
“No problem,” she said not looking over. She was in cutoff shorts and a black tank top and I wanted to see her naked but was fairly certain the camper wasn’t going to let that happen. “Guy at the store said you had a ways to walk, so I figured I’d help you out. You don’t look like a rapist or anything.”
“What do you rapists look like?”
“Oh. I don’t know. Good point. Are you a rapist?”
“No.”
“All right.”
“Turn here,” I said.
We turned down my road and the radio was on in the car. I didn’t recognize the song but it sounded like Zeppelin. I couldn’t tell. The car bounced along the dirt road and she slowed down a little.
“My name’s Megan, by the way,” she said.
“Oh, David.”
“Nice to meet you David.”
“You too.”
“So, what do you do David?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, like, with your life.”
“I’m a writer.”
“Yeah? Written anything I might have read?”
“Probably not. I haven’t been published. I working on a novel.”
“Oh. Well shit, this area’s a great place for peace and quiet to write, huh?”
“Yeah, it sure is.” I had no idea what the fuck I was talking about. “Turn here.”
We pulled onto my driveway and I had never realized how narrow it was until her car was barely squeezing through it. The sunlight fell between the trees and the dirt almost glowed and soon, the camper shone at the end of the driveway.
“You live here?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“Oh, like, for the summer?”
“Not really. Well, kind of. I did. I just haven’t gotten around to finding something for the winter I guess.”
“Oh. Want to give me a tour?”
I couldn’t tell if I was still stoned. She looked at me and smiled.
“Sure,” I said.
She put the car in park and shut it off.
12.
The afternoon was warmer than it had been and I realized I should have bought deodorant. I opened the camper door and remembered the smell of it. Megan stood behind me.
“It’s small in here. I don’t think I can really show you around.”
“That’s cool.” She turned and began to walk along the edge of the concrete slab to ward the back of the camper. “It’s so quiet here.”
I put my bag in the camper. “Yeah. You want a beer or, do you smoke?”
“Sure.”
“Sure…?”
“I’ll take a beer, and assume you mean pot. So, yes, sure.”
She disappeared toward the fire pit and I took the beer out of my bag. I didn’t know why I had bought them. They’d be warm and disgusting in an hour if they weren’t already. It’s why I stuck to wine. I rolled a joint and took it and the beer to the fireplace. She was sitting in one of the plastic chairs with her feet up on a rock. I handed her a beer.
“You know,” she said, “it isn’t much, but I could totally live like this.”
“It’s not great.”
“Why? You’re away from assholes and noise. You can do whatever you want. No one looking over your shoulder. Just sit around and write and get fucked up all day. Seems perfect.”
“It was nice for a while and sometimes it still can be, but I don’t have a car, so I’ feel trapped more often than not, to be honest. I think maybe if I had transportation, I’d feel a little better but, without the option, I’m just isolated.”
“Why don’t you read me some of your book?”
“My what?”
“The novel you said you were working on. Read me some.” She took a drink and set the can on the ground next to her as I handed her the joint.
“No, it isn’t ready. I’d be too embarrassed.”
“I’m going to get you to.”
“I doubt it.”
The sky over the forest was cloudless. Blue and unending and like everything else here, unreachable.
Megan took another drink and I looked at the shape of her legs. The tone of her skin. The perfect form of them. She was slouched in the chair and her hair blocked her face from mine and I thought I had never known someone as beautiful and it occurred to me that she was beautiful and new and here and suddenly I couldn’t understand.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Sure,” she said.
“Don’t take it the wrong way.”
“Not the best way to start, David, but okay.”
“Yeah. Well, why,” I swallowed, “why are you here?”
“I’m relaxing. Having a drink and smoking a joint. Looking at trees.”
“No, I mean why did you come here? Pick me up, and not just drop me off? I mean, I get the whole ‘good Samaritan’ thing, but…”
“Should I have just dropped you off?”
“Well, no, I guess.”
“I can leave if you want. I mean, if you’ve got writing to do or something.”
“No, no, I just, I was curious.”
She sat up and looked at me, handed me the joint, and smiled. “Who knows, David? I’m here and it seems good. Are you good?”
After a second I nodded. “I’m good, yeah.”
“Good,” she said. “Now smoke it or pass it.”
I took a drag and passed it to her.
13.
She left after an hour or so and I boiled some of the water and took my first shower in a few days. She had insisted she’d see me soon and I didn’t doubt her. She unnerved me and I found it both frightening and alluring and I felt like I was in a terrible movie. I got dressed and went to the camper. I opened another beer and sat at the small table with my notebook and pencil.
I flipped through the pages of drafted suicide notes and shopping lists and found a blank page. I decided to write a novel.
I didn’t know where to start so I just began to write about nothing. About me. About shit that had happened to me.
I never understood my mother, I wrote. I stared at the sentence, and true as it was, hated it. I didn’t read enough. I didn’t know how to start something like this. I decided that the next time I was in town I should see about getting a library card. I drank another beer and lit another joint and when my mind let go of worrying, I wrote:
It was easier for me to forgive my mother than to forgive myself. She didn’t have a choice, really and I think I would have made the same. For years, through foster home after foster home, I cursed her and blamed her and prayed that none of it was real. That she hadn’t died and that none of this was real. She didn’t have a choice. I was born, and that was all that was important to her and now at night, while I stare at the crumbling ceiling, it isn’t her name I accuse anymore. It isn’t her. It’s me.
I read the paragraph over and didn’t know if it was good or if it wasn’t, but I kept going. Soon the beer was gone and my joint was long gone and I couldn’t read, so I just wrote and hoped it turned out all right.
14.
I woke up at the table and it was black in the camper and a light was pouring in through the windows and I could hear an engine in the driveway. I looked around and couldn’t see anything. I stumbled over to the door and opened it and the headlights hurt my eyes and I couldn’t see past them. The car turned off but the lights stayed on. I heard a door open and I couldn’t see.
“Hey. Let’s go to a party,” Megan said.
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