Trade Me (Cyclone #1)

I’d seen the rest of the day in one long rush. I’d go into the hospital with him. In a few hours, his staff would converge on him, and I’d be there—holding his hand while they coached him through the altered launch, offering him the comfort he so badly needed. I’d be there when he was at his most vulnerable, his most hurting. I’d be there in the audience when everything was broadcasted to millions around the world, translated into seven simultaneous languages. I would be there, and when it was over—when press from the entire world converged on him to ask about the future of Cyclone, he’d make his way to me.

It’s one thing for us to comfort one another in private, but in public, I’m the daughter of a Wal-Mart baker and a janitor. I don’t know how to be with him—him and his media training and his SEC regulations and his private jokes with his father, born from corporate sensitivity training.

I don’t want to love Blake. Loving him will never be safe.

The road I’m on narrows from two lanes to one. Sidewalks give way to rough gravel roadsides. I turn right just before the street peters out in a residential neighborhood nestled against foothills.

After a few minutes of winding hither and thither, the new road I’m on begins to climb the hills in earnest, hairpinning up slopes that I can’t see in the darkness. My headlights illuminate only in flashes: a house, huge, hidden behind an ornate gate; the glimpse of orange rock where the road has been carved into a steep incline. Eucalyptus branches stretch overhead as the road continues twisting up and up.

It’s a road that finally matches my speed, a road where my thirty miles an hour seems safe. I keep going, glimpsing the scenery only long enough to leave it all behind: grassy banks covered with oak leaves shift into moss-covered fallen logs. A private gate comes up on the right and then disappears in dark fog.

Eventually, the private homes I catch sight of turn into farmland. I glimpse a stile to the right, the arched sign of a ranch home on the left. The road takes on a meditative quality, something quiet and unending. It fits what I need right now.

I can go slowly. I have to, here. One flubbed turn and I’d be careening off the hillside. This is my life: I have to play it safe.

I have to play it safe.

My eyes are stinging and for a moment, I have the strange impression that the windshield wipers aren’t working properly. But of course it isn’t the car. Blake would never own a vehicle that would dare malfunction. I’m the thing that has broken down, my vision blurring with tears that I refuse to acknowledge.

I always play it safe. What choice have I had?

That’s what dries my tears. Not words of wisdom or comfort, but a deep-seated anger.

I always play it safe. I have to. I’ve chosen my future as if it were a blown-glass artifact, whorls and loops that needed to be packed away in tissue paper, put up high to keep it safe. I don’t go out. I don’t take risks. I never know when my parents will need an extra ten dollars. It’s an illusion that Blake and I could trade lives. Because he’s always known that he’ll get back to his—and I’ve always known I’ll fall back into mine.

He’s always had someone to catch him. And me? Unless I’m careful, I can lose everything.

The higher I go, the wilder the landscape becomes. I pass through a spooky forest. Wizened, wizard trees reach many-fingered branches to the sky. Moss drips from their branches like tattered scarves, and they look down on me like judgmental aunties.

Look at that girl there. Can’t even drive a car safely, let alone manage her life.

Fuck them. Fuck them all.

My tears come back, blurring the forest. I pass a cluster of buildings that are labeled as some kind of observatory. Only fitting; here the stars are out in force, burning down on me, letting me know exactly where I belong.

I start on the descent.

The road lies before me like a skein of snarled yarn. I untangle it the way I untangle everything else: at thirty miles an hour.

When I first started on this road, its contortions felt comforting—a reminder that it was okay for me to go slowly when the conditions demand it. As it goes on and on and on, it begins to feel like a cage.

Maybe that’s why, as I descend past pinyon pines, as the land flattens out into wide meadows, I let myself accelerate.

Thirty gives way to thirty-five; thirty-five slides into forty. The car is utterly silent; only the tires make noise as we move forward. It’s shockingly easy to get used to speed. So easy I can’t believe I’ve never done it before.

It feels like an act of defiance to watch the speedometer go up, like I’m flipping off the entire universe. Maybe I can’t have Blake—but just for a little bit, I don’t have to play it safe.

It’s still dark, but the brights on the car illumine the road on the way down. The car grips the road, turning without a single squeak of complaint.

I don’t have to play it safe.

There’s something powerful about going fast in a car that’s built for speed. Instead of feeling out of control, I feel like I’m finally in charge. The car whips around a turn, and then another. Gravel spits up on the side of the road, but I don’t care. The turns are getting broader as we head down. The foothills give way to long lazy curves, barely even descending, and then, finally, the road spits me out onto an empty highway, a long, straight shot heading into the dark.