Jax Miller - Freedom’s Child

“What is school like?”

“You’ve never been to school?” She shakes her head. Suddenly, Gabriel realizes what kind of girl she is. Must be a Mormon or something like it, the sheltered kind. And now she’s running away, rebelling, naive. Those types come a dime a dozen back at the university. “You’re not missing much.” Her purity attracts him and he doesn’t want to stop staring at her. He can see that her frail bones and soft skin have never been touched in a way that they should have by her age. It’s like looking at the sands of a shore that’s never been discovered by the ocean. But he fears she will drown out there, out in the real world, away from her shielded existence. “You shouldn’t be trying to hitch rides cross-country with truckers. It’s dangerous for girls like you.”

“It’s my only way out.” She rubs the toes of her shoes on the dirt. “Do you believe in God?”

“I believe in something …” He looks away, not wanting to appear strange when he sees her shy away from his gaze. “When was the last time you ate something?”

“Yesterday, I think.” He puts his finger up and walks back to the kitchen. He returns with a burger and fries in a foam container.

“I can’t afford it.”

“Don’t worry about money.” He watches her inspect the food as if she’s never seen anything quite like it. “You need to eat.” She uses both hands at once to shovel the food into her mouth. “Why don’t you let me take you out one day? Like a proper date, before you head off to the West Coast, I mean.”

She looks at him wide-eyed. “I’m not allowed to date boys.”

“How old are you?”

“Twenty.”

“You’re old enough to make up your own mind and stop doing what your parents ask of you.”

“I do what God asks of me.” She continues to shove the food in her face. Gabriel takes his apron and goes to use it on her arm, where some ketchup spilled. But she pulls away, fearful, like an injured bird, broken in the sun and being circled by vultures.

Gabriel stares at her with wonder, and though she’s spoken only a few words, he’s fascinated by the mystery that surrounds her. He wants to know her more, he has to know her more. He could see her vulnerability from a mile away and feels the need to wrap her innocence in a blanket and keep it away from the cruelty of a world that wants to take it from her. “I’ll take you to the West Coast.” And as he says the words, he surprises himself. But she’s a reason, the excuse he’s been looking for to drop everything around him and see the world. “I know you don’t know me, but you can trust me.” For some reason, he expected more of a joyous reaction.

“Thank you,” she says, with her eyes down and half a cheeseburger in her cheek.

“Let me take you home. We can leave in the morning.” Really, his intentions are good. “You can have my bed and I’ll sleep on the couch. OK?”

“All right.” She believes this is her prayer come true, that God sent Gabriel to save her from the man who rubbed against her and wanted to take her away. She shows a glimpse of a smile as he takes his apron and throws it in the Dumpster behind him.

“Let’s go.” He leads her through the alley and toward the truck-yard. “I’m parked right over there.” He seems to almost skip in his pace. He stretches his arms over his head and looks up to the night. “Share this moment with me.”

“What?”

Gabriel paces around her and tastes what may very well be freedom for the first time in his life. “Make a memory.”

Rebekah scurries to catch up to him, her french fries shaking in the container. “What are you talking about?” The smile aches her cheeks.

He stops her in her tracks and looks into her eyes. “Aside from family, have you ever held a man’s hand?”

“No,” she says and laughs.

“Good.” He grabs her hands and intertwines his fingers with hers. “Now neither one of us will forget this. Whether we get nowhere or see everywhere, we’re making a memory.” She’s never heard anything so outrageous yet astonishing in her life. The butterflies multiply in her belly and her heart begins to pound. And all of the horrible things that have happened, if only for that moment, seem worlds away.

What happens next is fragmented. The sounds of bones cracking. Gabriel screaming her name. Tasting dirt in her mouth on the ground. Her most cogent memory is when she lands on her back in the trunk of a car, her hands zip-tied in front of her. She sees the vastness of the trunk come down, like a tidal wave crashing over her. She brings her knees to her chin and uses the soles of her feet to keep it from closing. But it works only the first time. And after that, she remembers the panic that consumes her in the trunk. And the brightness of the red taillights from the inside when the car brakes.

Lord, be with me.

Dear Mason and Rebekah, though once upon a time, you were Ethan and Layla,

To pick up where I left off last: ah, prom, yes. 1989. If you recall from my last letter, I think I was still floating on cloud nine after Mark Delaney had asked me, that bad boy of William Floyd High School I was assigned to tutor in English in the after-school program. It wasn’t that he wasn’t smart—quite the opposite, in fact—but he spent too much time smoking under the bleachers instead of actually in class. I remember my mother laughing at me because I sat, perched on the kitchen stool next to the phone, just waiting for Mark to call and cancel. I wish you guys could have known my mother; there was nothing not to love about her. Except cancer. You can’t love cancer.

Anyway. Oh, God, I’d nearly forgotten about that dress, something with pink silk and black lace; I think I was going for Madonna’s “Material Girl” meets Desperately Seeking Susan . I wish I still had that old thing. It was the last dress my mother made for me. Consider yourselves lucky, to have missed the biggest embarrassment of our generation: fashion trends of the ’80s. I still cringe at the thought.

When Mark came to my door, my mother didn’t like him right away. He wore one of those tuxedos printed on a black tee with a leather jacket, smelling like an ashtray. His naturally dirty-blond hair was dyed black. What kind of respectable man wears eyeliner? Mother would shake her head and read her Vogue magazine, Estelle Lefébure was on the cover that month, I remember. Mother’s sweet tooth was for fashion, a gene that’d skipped me, apparently. Believe me, I’ve been referred to as a lot of things, but fashionable was never one of them.

I sat in the front of the Dodge Colt, with Matthew, Luke, and John sardined in the backseat, ready to crash prom and spike the punch with Absolut. Depeche Mode’s “Never Let Me Down Again” in the cassette player. It was a big deal back then, to still be in high school and have a car, that wasn’t your mother’s, with a cassette player.

Mother would worry that Mark only wanted to ride my coattails of good grades and being valedictorian into college, and would constantly warn me that if he ever knocked me up, she’d kill me, cut off his pecker, and then kill him too. This point was made quite often.

On the way to school, the brothers passed around a joint. I declined, earning the comments of being a priss, that I was probably glued at the knees, that Mark should have stayed with that easy bitch of a cheerleader named Donna. I can’t smell marijuana or Love’s Baby Soft today without thinking of that night. From the backseat, Matthew kept pulling at my curls (reminder: huge hair was the in thing). Matthew always pulled at my curls. He had that Billy Idol thing going on, the spikes, the leather, fingerless gloves. The bleached hair. He even practiced curling his lip in the rearview mirror and faking a British accent. Ah, to be seventeen again.