Chapter Text
The road hums. The engine hums. The crickets hum. Keisha hums. I don't. My throat’s too full of the things I can't say yet.
She doesn't know she's doing it. I do. I hear everything now. The shift in her breathing when she's hurt. Her fingers tap insistently on the steering wheel, filling the silence because I'm too chicken to talk.
It's 2:41 AM. Somewhere between Albuquerque and Grants. Somewhere on Route 66. Somewhere in New Mexico, somewhere in the United States of America.
The stars aren't out.
The heat is sticky. Heavy. Heavier than the silence between us. Okay, maybe not heavier. Equally as heavy. The humidity makes it worse. You’d think it'd be less humid in the middle of the desert. Nothing makes sense in the long stretches of roads, the backwaters of America. The derelict gas stations and abandoned caravans. The humidity weighs down my neck like wet cotton balls. I feel like I’m breathing through fabric, like the truck is moving through syrup instead of air. The radio switches songs, because nothing is permanent.
In a river, the color of lead,
Immerse the baby's head,
Wrap her up in the news of the world,
Dump her on a doorstep, girl.
“This Night Has Opened My Eyes”. The Smiths. Classy.
I look at Keisha. Really look at her. Those weary eyes. They're the same ones I was drawn into all those years ago, like a five-spotted hawk moth drawn into flame. I know a lot about bugs. And also because I saw one land on the windshield a few minutes ago. Keisha’s hands grip the steering wheel. Those hands, once so soft. Used to once know them by touch, when they curled around mine and we watched crappy tv shows and fell asleep on the couch. Now I know them by how the worn leather bends uncomfortably under her fingers, how her knuckles look, lit by the faint, pale fluorescent light from the dashboard.
I smile quietly. “I liked my cashew milk vegan lattes,” I said.
Keisha doesn't look at me. She smiles too, though. Her hum dips into something gentler, almost a laugh.
The dream has gone, but the baby is real,
Oh, you did a good thing,
She could have been a poet,
Or she could have been a fool,
Oh, you did a bad thing,
And I'm not happy, and I'm not sad,
And I'm not happy, and I'm not sad,
And I'm not happy, and I'm not sad