Page 118 of Brimstone Hollow

I hadn’t even known. I’d guessed. But I hadn’t known for sure.

“Annie,” he says, looking over at me, his expression pained. “I know you ran away from there. Annie, I…”

Pssshhhhh, I say.

And the windshield wipers goSheek! Sheek! Sheek!

And the rain slaps me in the face, mixes with my own bloody tears.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there today. When you needed me.”

My eyes close again. The rain finally stops.

I remember that summer again. That night. That road. That little Volkswagen.

My dad was there beside me. His voice had gone from laughing to pleading.

“Annie-Girl… Annie-Girl, what are you doing? Stop!”

My hands were shaking, but I pressed my foot down harder. Turned the wheel.

It wasn’t my father driving, after all. It was me.

He’d got out on the roadside, on the way home, and tossed me the keys and said, “Annie-Girl, why don’tyoudrive us home?”

But I’d known what was waiting at home. Who.

And I’d started out slow. Cautious. Timid.

“I have a surprise for you, Annie-Girl,” he’d said as I drove. “When we get home. You’re gonna be so tickled when you see.”

And I knew that it was all over. My summer with my dad. Both of uslike feral kids, running rampant, no supervision. I’d heard him on the phone and knew my mom would be at home. Waiting for us.

And it would all go back to the way it was before.

And suddenly all I wanted was to feel the wind in my hair. I wanted to feel my heart race. I wanted to feel the bottom drop out of my stomach as we crested the hill, as we went round one bend and then another, tires screeching as we veered into another lane.

I wanted the thrill. I wanted to live as much as I could in this time because this time was about to end.

We can’t choose our parents, Katie had said.Or the qualities we inherit from them.

Her voice mixes with my own.

I need to understand him. So I can understand myself.

How could I ever explain what happened that night in the car with my dad? How could I explain the impulse to put both our lives on the line? One last hurrah before we went home. One last hurrah and maybe we’d never have to go home. One last hurrah and maybe this would be the end of it all.

“Annie-Girl!” my dad’s voice screamed. “Stop! Goddamn! Stop it!”

And I laughed at him. The same way he’d laughed at me.

Scaring him. The same way he’d scared me.

Because after all we’d been through together that summer, after all my hungry nights and useless prayers and the realization that my mom being back was even worse than her being gone, I’d understood, at the end of that night, that Iwantedmy heart to hammer in my chest. I understood that you never feel more alive than when you’re close to death. I understood that it was their blood—my parents’ blood—running through my veins, a dangerous cocktail of desperate wanting and crushing powerlessness.

Katie’s voice swims in my head again. She says,All we can do is make the most of who we are. Try to turn our worst impulses into something useful.

And I remember realizing that there were tears on my face. I’d let my foot off the gas, pulled over. The car came to a stop. I left the keys in the ignition, got out, and started walking. Back down the road. Back in the direction we’d come. Away from home. Away.