by Rachel Laverdiere

Mom snores in the passenger seat as I squint into the black night and follow the curve of unbroken yellow leading towards a future I can’t quite make out. I’m used to arrow-straight roads and wide-open skies, but the foothills have swallowed the moon and stars and this stretch of the Trans-Canada winds and bends into the darkness.

Mom planned this trip—just me and her—to celebrate my bachelor’s degree, but I suspect she’s attempting to make up for the dead air between us—her silent treatments—since I outgrew her shadow and started questioning her let-them-walk-all-over-you tendencies. Since her tight-lipped threats of What will people say? stopped me from fighting back, from leaving. The truth is that Mom and I are merely acquaintances hurtling in the dark.

Everything behind us has vanished. I’m the panicked driver in that Stephen King story who looks in the rear-view mirror and sees everything getting gobbled up. The past is chasing me, getting closer and closer, and I’m afraid it might swallow me whole.

I grip the wheel but won’t admit I’m lost. That I have no idea where I’m heading, just that I keep getting further and further from where I began.

Darkness presses into me. I’m a teenager again, suspended in time on the Loop-de-Loop at the fairgrounds and at any moment, I’ll take off again—either rise or plummet. My heart drops into my stomach, and I wonder solid ground remains beneath us.

I pull over onto the narrow shoulder. Step outside and inhale pine, then strike a match and inhale sulfur, pungent tobacco.

Mom joins me and asks, Why did you stop?

I couldn’t see the road very well.

She squawks, Chicken! and flaps her wings as she dances around me. Scared of driving in the dark but planning to gallivant halfway across the world? Weeks from now I’ll be in a country I can hardly find on a map.

I say, You drive, and hand her the keys. She’s arm’s-length yet can’t see my tears or the ash trembling at the end of my cigarette. She can’t hear my unspoken plea to hurry home to start over again. How, this time, I’ll allow my life to slowly morph into hers because I’m only twenty-one but, man, am I tired.

She says, You’re always so dramatic! And lights up.

We are two red dots burning in the dark.

Rachel Laverdiere writes, pots and teaches in her little house on the Canadian prairies. Her work has been selected for Wigleaf’s Top 50 and nominated for Pushcart, Best of the Net and Best Microfiction. Find Rachel’s recent prose in Sundog Literary, Bending Genres, Pithead Chapel, Longridge Review and Raw Lit. For more, visit rachellaverdiere.com or find her on X at @r_laverdiere.