Colt’s mama agreed to let Bo and me take her car—but only if we paid her a hundred dollars.
“Might only be by marriage, but she is a Dickinson,” Bo said after she told me the news. “People in my family don’t give nothing for free.”
Between my leftover birthday money and her tobacco money, we’d be able to pay for the car, though. Nothing was gonna get in the way of our trip.
Nothing. Except maybe my parents.
I decided to talk to them about the trip on Saturday night. It was one of those rare dinners where Bo didn’t join us. She’d called to say she was tired after working in the fields. That was all right. I thought it might be easier to get my parents’ permission on my own.
“Gracie says cheerleading tryouts end on Friday,” Mama was saying as she handed me a bowl of spaghetti. “She says we can come pick her up in the afternoon.”
“Oh no. I’m gonna have to stay at the store that day,” Daddy said.
“That’s all right. Agnes can come with me.”
I looked up from my dinner. “Really?”
“Yeah,” Mama said. “It’ll be fun. You, me, and your sister can do a little shopping. Maybe get dinner.”
“And load all of Gracie’s junk into the car again,” Daddy said. “That’ll be really fun.”
“Oh, stop. It won’t be that bad.”
“That sounds great,” I said. And then, seeing my chance, I added, “Speaking of going somewhere … I wanna talk to y’all about something.”
“What is it, sweetheart?” Daddy asked.
“Well, it’s summer now, and without school, Bo and I have been talking about what we wanna do. And … we were thinking … about maybe going on a road trip.”
“A road trip.” The way Mama repeated it, with a low, flat voice, I knew we weren’t off to a good start.
“Not a long one,” I said. “Just over Fourth of July weekend. We wanna go see her cousin, Colt. He lives just outside Louisville. Just a couple hours from here.”
“We know where Louisville is,” Mama said.
“Well, he’s got a job and an apartment there, and we wanna go see him. And a few other places, too. We already made up a schedule, so you’d always know where I am and—”
“I don’t think so, honey,” Mama said. “You want some garlic bread?”
“Wait— Why not?”
“It’s just not a good idea. Your daddy and I wouldn’t be comfortable with it.”
“Is this because of Bo?” I asked. “Because she’s a Dickinson? You don’t want me going somewhere with her?”
“Of course not,” Daddy said. “You know we like Bo. It’s not about her.”
“Then what?”
He sighed. Like this was already making him tired. “Agnes.”
“But you let Gracie go to Florida when she was seventeen,” I argued. “And that’s a lot farther than Louisville.”
“Yes, but Gracie’s friend’s parents were with them,” Daddy said. “There were adults there.”
“Colt’s an adult.”
“He’s also a teenage boy,” Daddy said. “A teenage boy we don’t know at all.”
“Gracie rode home for Christmas with boys you didn’t know, though.”
“Gracie’s nineteen now,” Mama said. “She can make those decisions for herself.”
“Are you gonna let me make decisions when I’m nineteen?”
I didn’t mean to raise my voice. Didn’t mean to slam my fist down on the table so hard that our plates rattled. I’d been doing so good at keeping calm. At keeping my voice soft and careful. But just like that, my self-control snapped.
“Agnes.” Mama’s voice was full of warning.
“I’m serious!” I shouted.
I didn’t want to be shouting, honestly. But now that I’d started, I couldn’t seem to stop. I could feel this going downhill. Could feel the walls closing in and the hope I’d clung to starting to fade. Maybe I was doomed to suffocate here, but I wasn’t gonna go gentle.
So here I was, raging. Just like Dylan Thomas said.
“Because I have a hard time believing that when I’m nineteen, you’ll let me make the same choices Gracie does. I’m seventeen, and you won’t even let me walk home from the bus stop—right around the goddamn corner—unless Bo is with me. And even then, one of y’all is waiting for us at the door.”
“Watch your mouth, young lady,” Mama said. “You’re acting real ugly right now. We have rules for you because we want to keep you safe.”
“I can keep myself safe! I’ve been blind my whole life, not for five minutes. I know better than you what I can and can’t do!”
“Where in the world is this coming from?” Mama asked.
“Everywhere!” I screamed. “Everything is an ordeal with y’all. I can’t walk out the door without answering twenty questions. I can barely get down the road, let alone leave this stupid town! And say what you want, but you treated Gracie different. And I’m sick of it! Sick of being trapped in this fucking house!”
“Enough!”