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Born to Run – Bruce Springsteen

My feet and shoulders were aching, and my breath kept catching in the back of my throat, like the panic was rising up and snatching the air before it could reach my lungs. To distract myself, I repeated the same mantra, over and over.

Get to the bus station. Get on a bus. Go.

It was a comfort as I walked, the words falling into the same rhythm as my footsteps. I needed a distraction, to keep my mind focused on something other than the absolute horror I was leaving behind me.

I glanced up from the sidewalk and wondered how late it was. The sun was starting to set, bathing the city in a peach glow. It couldn’t have been that long since I’d gotten off the bus, maybe an hour at most. But in that time, everything had changed.

Night fell slowly as we edged through spring, the city on tenterhooks with winter jackets packed away and bare ankles on display. Over the past few days the famous Seattle rain had fizzled out and the last of the chilly nights seemed to be behind us.

Get to the bus station.

Get on a bus.

Go.

I had to keep going, had to keep myself distracted, because hot bile kept pushing up from my stomach and the acidity was threatening to spill out of me at any second.

I really didn’t want to spew on the city streets – partly because that would be so gross, and mostly because I didn’t want to draw attention to myself.

All this would be for nothing if someone saw me leaving.

My ear and jaw still throbbed from what had happened this morning. I’d gotten up and showered, then braided my hair so it fell to the middle of my back, keeping it out of my way for school.

Then he hit me.

After that, I unpicked the braid so I could let my hair hang loose around my face and hoped no one would notice the mark on my cheek.

Not that anyone ever looked that closely at me anyway.

All day I’d been pressing my tongue to my back tooth to see if it was still loose, and every time I’d tasted blood.

Now, my feet hurt from pounding the sidewalk, my shoulders were sore from the combined weight of a backpack and duffel bag, and I had a headache blooming behind my eyes.

Luckily, I was good at ignoring pain. I’d take a couple of Tylenol when I got to the bus station.

Get to the bus station. Get on a bus.

I forced down my self-pity, knowing it wouldn’t help me.

Go.

And then her car pulled up.

‘Mouse?’

Brooke drove a red vintage convertible Mustang.

The top was down, and she was leaning out of the window, her face etched with concern.

I focused on the car for just a moment too long and my whole body violently contracted – blood red, dark and shiny, like the way blood pools on polished tile …

I forced myself to look at Brooke instead.

‘Hey,’ I tried to say nonchalantly.

Brooke Summer was the most beautiful girl in our whole school.

It wasn’t just me who thought it, either – it was a widely agreed-upon opinion.

She had deep, dark-brown eyes with tiny gold flecks in the irises and defined cheekbones that made her look elegant and mature.

She was still wearing our St. Catherine’s uniform, so her lush, dark hair fell in effortless waves over the crisp white shirt she’d unbuttoned at her throat.

In school, she always said hello to me, even though she was one of the popular girls and I was me.

She didn’t have to be nice, but she was, offering me small smiles when we passed in the hallway or inviting me to sit next to her in Chemistry lab.

We were in the school choir together, too, so every week for an hour I got to stand two rows behind her and look at the back of her head.

I liked to admire her from afar.

‘Do you need a lift anywhere?’ Brooke asked, tapping her fingers on the steering wheel in a distracted pattern.

I hesitated for a moment, because my plan was a good one. But it was going to take me another hour to get to the bus station on foot, and time was against me. I needed to go, now .

‘Could you take me to the –’ I couldn’t say the bus station , that was too obvious. ‘To Chinatown?’

To her credit, she didn’t ask me why I was going there with a shoulder full of bags, but it was the closest place to the bus station I could think of under pressure.

‘Sure. Get in.’

My duffel bag fit in between my feet and I placed my backpack on my lap, which now felt heavier than it had when I’d been walking. I put my seatbelt on, and Brooke waited until it clicked in place before signaling to pull back out into traffic.

I carefully adjusted my plan, still needing the mantra to keep my head clear of flickering mental images that were trying to barge in.

A broken door.

A broken body.

No! I wouldn’t … I couldn’t …

Get in the Mustang. Get to the bus station. Go!

The gorgeous cream leather seat was cool against my arms as I settled in, turning away from Brooke so I didn’t have to look at her. It was rude of me, but I was on edge. I could apologize another time.

If there ever was another time.

I only started paying attention to my surroundings when Brooke pulled up outside the bus station twenty minutes later. I looked over at her, alarmed.

She shrugged and gave me a sad smile. ‘I know what someone running away looks like, Mouse.’

I stared at her for a second, taken aback and not knowing how to reply. I’d only ever looked at Brooke through the lens of my ridiculous, cringey crush, so it hadn’t occurred to me that maybe she was going through something too. I glanced around, searching for the right words to say.

Brooke had a black leather bag on the back seat, next to her school backpack and a large duffel bag. I looked over at her, now even more unsure of what to say. Her dark eyelashes flickered as she blinked a few times.

‘So,’ she said, ‘do you want to come with me?’

My heart started to beat a little faster. ‘Where are you going?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know yet. Does it matter?’

‘No, not really. But … why?’ I asked, suddenly desperate to know.

Brooke looked down and pushed her hair behind her ear. ‘Okay, here’s the deal. You don’t ask me why I’m leaving town, and I won’t ask you. How does that sound?’

She was prepared to take me with her and she wouldn’t ask for details?

This was a much better plan. I hesitated for a second, wondering if dragging Brooke into the mess I was running away from was a good idea.

Or, you know … ethical. But leaving with Brooke meant not being alone and, honestly, I wasn’t sure how long I would have lasted on my own anyway.

‘Deal,’ I said quickly. ‘Absolutely deal.’

Brooke looked up and grinned, flashing white teeth, a little shark-like.

‘Let’s go.’

The Mustang growled when she revved the engine, and I couldn’t help but run my hand over the side of the seat, letting the buttery-soft leather caress my palm.

I knew nothing about cars, but this one was seriously cool, and it was getting me the hell out of Seattle.

I was growing fonder of it by the second.

‘Do you like music?’ Brooke asked as we merged onto the I-5 and headed out of the city.

‘Sure.’

‘There are cassettes in the glove box.’

‘Cassettes?’ I replied.

She laughed brightly. ‘Yeah, Mouse, cassette tapes. The car came with a cassette deck and it still works. The radio signal is shit once I leave the city.’

I opened the glove box and, sure enough, it was stuffed with a dozen or so shiny clear cases. The first one I picked up was Born to Run and that sounded appropriate. I knew Bruce Springsteen. I wasn’t a total idiot.

The case opened with a satisfying click and I took out the cassette, turning it around to study it.

‘Side one needs to be facing up,’ Brooke said, watching me from the corner of her eye. ‘It should be right at the start.’

I stuck the cassette into the stereo, and after a second the speakers whirred to life. The car might have been old, but the speakers were clearly new. Sound burst out of them, bright and clear, and Brooke turned the volume up.

‘I love this album,’ she murmured.

I had no idea where we were going, or how long it would take to get there, but those questions all blurred into irrelevance. I was out of Seattle, and in Brooke’s car, and everything else could wait.

The city started to fade behind us, and Brooke put her foot down on the gas.

Brooke drove fast , and I wasn’t used to that.

She headed south toward the Oregon border, her fingers lightly tapping the steering wheel like it was a habit.

I closed my eyes for a while, content to listen to the music and the sound of the cool night air whizzing past, the scents changing as we moved out of the city, through the suburbs, then into more wide-open space.

As the sky deepened into inky night and Brooke continued to put more distance between me and my house, each of my muscles started to relax, releasing the tension I’d been desperately clinging to.

Sitting next to Brooke wasn’t awkward. The silence wasn’t awkward, either.

It was almost … nice … to spend time with someone without being on edge, waiting for the next barbed comment or backhanded slap.

I smothered a yawn and rubbed my fingertips over my eyelids. The mental effort not to let my thoughts wander back to earlier this afternoon was exhausting. I couldn’t let myself go there. It had cost me so much to get out.

I didn’t realize I’d fallen asleep until I woke up with a start. I glanced over at Brooke, who smiled back at me.

‘I didn’t want to disturb you,’ she said softly.

‘That’s okay.’ I stretched my back and squinted out of the windshield. ‘Where are we?’

‘About an hour outside of the city.’

‘Where are we going tonight?’ I’d been too afraid to ask, not sure if this counted in our deal not to ask each other why we were leaving Seattle. I also wasn’t sure if I’d like her answer.

‘Where do you want to go?’

That made me laugh. ‘You’re the one driving.’

‘We’ve got the entire continental US to explore,’ Brooke replied, and it sounded like a joke and also really not like a joke at the same time. ‘Unless you brought your passport, in which case both Mexico and Canada are possibilities.’

‘I don’t have a passport.’

She didn’t comment on that. I hadn’t spent my life going on fancy vacations in other countries like she had, and I was almost baiting her – waiting to see if she would turn out to be a Mean Girl after all.

‘Have you ever been to Disney World?’ she asked, and I grimaced.

‘No. I’ve never –’ I decided not to finish that sentence. Brooke didn’t need to know I’d only ever visited two other states, and both of them shared a border with Washington. ‘I haven’t,’ I said instead, hoping she hadn’t noticed.

She smiled. ‘Awesome. That’s where we’re going, then.’

‘Brooke. That’s, like, a two-week drive,’ I said with a disbelieving laugh.

‘Nah, I figure we can do it in ten days. Maybe less.’

‘How fast do you drive?’ I asked.

‘I won’t break the speed limit,’ she said simply. ‘But we’ll get there, don’t worry about that. Do you have cash on you?’

‘Yeah. And a credit card,’ I said. Not all the money was mine. The credit card definitely wasn’t. It wouldn’t take a lot for Brooke to figure that out, but she didn’t question it. That almost made it worse. She’d want answers eventually, and I had no idea how to explain what had happened.

‘Great,’ she said. ‘I’m gonna keep going for another hour, then we should probably stop and get a motel room.’

‘Sure.’

I was so intimidated by Brooke that going along with her plan was easier than trying to suggest something of my own, something that would probably be stupid in comparison.

I never got the impression that she tried to be intimidating, but some girls had this thing about them – an aura, maybe, or an attitude – that made me cower in front of them.

Brooke was tall, which helped with her attitude, and classically beautiful, which doubled it.

I frequently got tongue-tied in front of pretty girls and usually ended up mumbling or running away …

or both. Fortunately, I did that in front of girls who I didn’t think were pretty, as well as grown women, and especially men, so when I got flustered by a girl I liked, no one knew why.

Over the years, I’d become good at hiding what I really thought. Or felt. Or wanted.

Brooke seemed lost in her own thoughts, too, or maybe she was just concentrating on driving. It was harder to see the street signs in the dark. Eventually she slowed down and pulled into the parking lot of a motel.

‘You should find a space out front,’ I said absently.

‘Oh, no way. I like to park away from the road.’

I glanced over at her. ‘It’s easier to get out in the morning if you park at the front.’

When I was younger, I’d stayed in motels with my mom, and she’d always wanted an easy escape in case the landlord she hadn’t paid was chasing us out of town. We’d only had someone catch up with us once, but that was enough for her to change her habits.

Brooke shook her head. ‘In this car? Do you know how often people try to steal it? I need to keep it out of the way somewhere.’

I opened my mouth to reply, then closed it again. ‘Okay.’

I couldn’t explain without telling her the whole messy story, and it was late, and it didn’t matter.

Brooke pulled into one of the short-stay spaces and killed the engine. ‘You want to wait here?’

‘I can do that.’

‘Great. Thanks,’ she said, already pushing the car door open. She got out and walked toward the lobby, her back straight and chin up.

I waited in the dark as the automatic doors of the motel swished open and closed. We’d been on the road for a couple of hours, long enough to get us out of Seattle and past the suburbs, too. Far enough away from home, I hoped, that no one would think to look for us here.

I watched as two businessmen walked into the motel, practically dragging their feet with tiredness. Then I spotted a woman, who could only be here for one reason, following half a step behind a seedy-looking guy.

My brain felt sluggish as I processed all my failures from today.

Get to the bus station. Failed.

Get on a bus. Failed.

But …

Go. Done.