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‘You don’t want to go at all?’ I asked gently.

She sighed heavily and stretched her arms over her head, exposing her flat belly. Her shirt lifted up, too, far enough that I could see the outline of the gun in her back pocket. I hesitated, not knowing if I wanted to call her out on it. I had no idea if Illinois had open carry laws, but I’d watched her take the bullet out of it last night, so I knew it was safe. I decided that if it made her feel better, I could handle it. We fell back into step alongside each other.

‘No. So you know I worked on the car with Tony, my uncle?’ I nodded, remembering. ‘We put together a business plan. I want to go to trade school, learn how to fix up cars for real. Tony says I’ve got a talent for it, and, honestly … it’s the only thing I’ve ever done that’s felt right. Do you know what I mean?’

‘Not really.’ I looked over at Brooke. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever felt like that about anything.’

‘I hadn’t either. I was just prepared to go along with whatever my parents wanted because it made life easier.’

‘Have you always done that?’

Brooke shook her head. ‘You don’t understand.’

‘So tell me,’ I insisted.

She sighed and pushed her hands through her hair. ‘My parents mapped out my life before I was even born. They picked all my friends from when I was in kindergarten. If I met someone who wasn’t the “right” kind of person, I wasn’t allowed to be friends with them.’

I knew some parents were controlling, but it was so far from my own experience that it seemed totally alien. I squeezed her hand, encouraging her to go on.

‘My parents would do, like, a background search on anyone I got close to. A few times, when I was younger, I refused to give up my friends.’ She gave me a sad smile. ‘That didn’t make any difference. They cut those friends out for me. I wasn’t allowed to go to their houses, they weren’t allowed to come to mine, I couldn’t be anywhere those friends were going to be. It was bullshit. It still is.’

‘So you just went along with it?’ I couldn’t imagine Brooke being willing to let go of anything that easily.

‘In the end, yeah.’

I wasn’t expecting her to be so honest.

We turned another corner and I spotted a sign for the stables, telling me we were on the right track.

‘It was easier,’ she murmured, ‘to do what they said, rather than fight them on it. It wasn’t like I had much time, anyway. I had extracurricular activities most days, and when I wasn’t doing something at school, I had a tutor at home. On weekends they got me involved with dance and gymnastics, so I was always at presentations or performances or meets, and then when I said I wanted to join the cheerleading team to, you know, put all thoseskills to use, they said no. It wasn’t therightkind of extracurricular activity.’ She sighed loudly. ‘I don’t know if you know what it’s like, Jessie, to have every last minute of your life programmed.’

‘No, not really. My mom doesn’t care about me. Not like that.’

Brooke looked at me. ‘Well, I couldn’t do it anymore,’ she said, and I could hear the tears catching at the back of her throat. ‘For seventeen years they’ve been in control of everything. I’m not allowed an opinion unless they endorse it. They decide what dentist I go to, my doctor … my fucking gynecologist is one my mom picked for me. I’m not allowed to choose where I go to college or what career I’ll end up having, and to tell them no?’ She shook her head. ‘It’s fucking impossible.’

‘So you ran away,’ I said, finally understanding.

I didn’t know what it was like to live under that kind of pressure, but I could understand why it had driven Brooke to run away. Finally escaping her parents’ control must have felt like sweet freedom. I was surprised that she was willing to share her secret with me after making me promise not to ask her why she was leaving Seattle, but I was touched that she clearly trusted me now.

‘I had a plan,’ Brooke said. ‘Tony and I worked out how many years I’d need to be at trade school. How I’d take business management classes, too, so when I was done with school, I’d be able to open my own garage. You know, a female-owned garage, one where women feel like they’re not going to be ripped off or talked down tobecause they don’t know what’s wrong with their car. I’d set up a training program to have other women come and apprentice with me. Uncle Tony was going to back me financially for the first five years, and after that I would’ve hopefully paid him off.’

‘Your parents said no.’

‘They didn’t say no, Jessie. They laughed at me.’

I took her hand and led her over to the stable block. It looked to me like most of the horses were out, and a small crew was cleaning out the stalls and tending to the tack. I stepped up onto the bottom rung of a fence and draped my arms over the top. Next to me, Brooke did the same.

‘They fucking laughed at me,’ she murmured. ‘Said I was being a silly little girl. That I don’t know what the real world is like, and, anyway, they weren’t having a daughter of theirs doing a manual job. Like I was a working-class stain on their upper-class sensibilities.’

‘That’s … gross,’ I said, not able to find a better word. I was from the sort of family that Brooke’s parents wouldn’t approve of, and, though I’d never met them, I felt a sudden burst of deep, visceral hatred for them.

‘I want to make my own choices.’ Brooke breathed deeply. ‘Not just because cars are really interesting to me, not just because it’s something that I could see myself making a really fucking amazing career out of. I want to make choices for myself, foronce. For the first time in my freaking life.’

‘I get it,’ I said.

‘They threw my plan in the trash. And it was thatmoment that I realized I was totally, completely trapped by them. They frame everything as if they’re doing the “best thing” for me, but what that really means is that I will never be able to set a toe outside of their boundaries, or else I’ll be punished, for the rest of my life. I’ll never be able to get married unless they approve the person … they’ll control my social life, even my kids, if I ever have them. Could you live like that?’

‘No,’ I said plainly.