The neighbor, Jane, picked Wildflower up in her minivan. She had no idea. Later, she would say, I had no idea. Wildflower, alone in her bedroom ten minutes earlier, had agonized over what to put in her backpack, and ended up taking things that wouldn’t help her on her travels at all. She should have stolen her mom’s jewelry. Instead, she stuffed the bag with clothes, toiletries, pens and a journal. Her journal was important to her, and taking it out of the house was also important. Her mom read all her journals.
Wildflower would say she climbed out of her bedroom window but that’s for dramatic effect. She walked out the front door— that heavy cedar front door. It always slammed, and it slammed this time, and locked behind her. When it slammed Wildflower saw the interior of the flat rambler bloom in her mind’s eye: the living-room that no one used, the other living-room with the TV and the leather couch. The liquor cabinet, locked. There was a gun in there too, or two. Her mother’s bedroom, shared with her stepdad. Their bathroom, with their two sinks and Sonicare toothbrushes and an array of orange prescription bottles scattered on the counter. Wineglasses empty except for red sediment settled into the divot where the stem connected to the bowl.
They were both assholes, but Wildflower felt guilty for leaving. Guilt was her primary emotion, bred early on and thoroughly, along with shame and fawning but also anger, which erupted randomly as hot steam and only burned her.
Jane happened to be driving by and offered her a ride. Wildflower said the library, and Jane thought she’s going to the library but really the library was only a few blocks from where Wildflower was really going. The hippie house. The yellow house across from Bigelow Park where she’d spent all her time until her parents called the cops on her again and again and she had to hide out in the woods. Every time she left home her parents called the cops, but now crossing state lines lost them. She’d left her ID at home on purpose. She thanked Jane vigorously to assuage her guilt, and pretended to go into the library, but then the library smell lured her and she actually went in, gathered a pile of books, then remembered she couldn’t check them out. Rather, she could check them out, but they were heavy. She couldn’t carry anything heavy with her. Not anything physical.
On her way to Taz’s house she listened to the Led Zeppelin CD she’d stolen from her stepdad. It was 1996 and she was into Tribe Called Quest and Britney Spears (secretly) but lately it was either Bob Marley or Led Zeppelin. No Dead, though. She hated the Dead.
It was nearing the end of summer. A month ago she’d done this and gotten all the way to Phoenix, then hitched to the White Mountains for the Rainbow Gathering. She had microdots then, a currency. She didn’t have any acid now, and barely any money. but Free was waiting for her at Taz’s house and though she barely knew him she figured he would take care of her. She hated the feeling she got when she thought of him; that sick, almost nauseous feeling. Repulsion. The feeling had started a long time ago, when she was younger, with the first guy who’d kissed her. He had pressed her up against a wall near Pike Place Market and shoved his tongue into her mouth, and she had been grossed out, but also intrigued. It wasn’t his kiss or anything about him that intrigued her— it was that he wanted her. She had never been wanted before.
Since then it had been guy after guy after guy, each guy eliciting the same string of feelings inside her with a predictable pattern: an unruly crush, the chase, the euphoria of being wanted, the intimacy of sex. If, after they had sex, he was still interested, she was repulsed. If he rejected her, she was absolutely hooked. It was enraging, either way.
Free was older, in his twenties, and just released from prison. He was quiet. A blank slate for Wildflower, who projected her own complexity onto him, and assumed there was much of interest roiling beneath his surfaces. A leather jacket with patches, a bald spot. Soft spoken. Whatever. A ticket out.
To be continued…