He sailed past the hockey rink, the girls’ fields, Mr. Howells’ little house on the hill. In the mirror Mr. Mayhew was running back to the mansion, which was just a big white house, like any other place you could just drive away from.
At the intersection with the main road, Route 26, he didn’t make the left toward the gas station, toward Norsett. He turned right instead, toward the northern causeway. He was sure that the sheer unnaturalness of this turn would rouse his mother, but there was nothing but silence behind him. He pressed down on the accelerator, felt it resist a moment, then give way. The car quickly picked up speed.
On either side of him, the land, once a forest he used to trample through, had been cleared, roads had been cut, and houses — whole neighborhoods — stood in various stages of construction. It had been a long time since he’d been out this way. Signs for the mainland and the highway directed him left. He drove over the water, careful not to look at it, keeping his eyes on the space between the white lines, and soon he found himself on an entrance ramp with a brown van on his tail and a steady stream of commuters ready to sideswipe him. He tried to slow down but the van honked and he thrust himself into the fray and waited for the crash. Somehow, however, he had been accommodated, accepted into this adult workday morning as if he, too, were racing toward the city. Except that he didn’t want to go into the city, and took the next exit to the turnpike and all points west.
Driving was perhaps the most exhilarating thing he’d ever done. And he was good at it. He was a natural. So often as a child he’d pretended to be the one driving, stamping down on a pretend brake when his mother stopped. He knew how to center the car between the lines, how to pass a Sunday driver safely. “You’re doing a good job,” he whispered. It was the first time he’d ever said such a thing to himself.
Behind the wheel the world was a different place. He was nearly sixteen, and things were going to change.
By noon he needed gas. In his mother’s wallet he found several hundred dollars, more money than he’d ever seen in her wallet before, and he wondered if she’d been planning this escape all along. It bothered him that he might be doing right now exactly what she wanted, that even lumped in the backseat she was somehow pulling his strings. He filled up the tank and with the change from the twenty bought five packs of gum. She hated gum. He stuffed several pieces in his mouth at once.
The woman at the drive-through across the street was the first person to look at him quizzically. He hadn’t pulled up close enough and had to get out and walk to the window for his food. Gum bulged out his cheek.
“How long you had your license — a couple hours?”
“Yeah,” Peter said, his voice full of the defensive sarcasm he used when he had no comeback — which was all the time.
“Whatcha got in the back there?”
“My mother,” he called before he shut himself safely in the car again. The woman’s mouth broke into a laugh she didn’t expect. Peter felt his throat tighten as if he might cry for the pleasure of making a lady in a drive-through window laugh. He forgot to release the key in the ignition and the engine made a long terrible racket. He didn’t look at the lady again.
He held his breath and merged back onto the highway without a collision. He didn’t recognize the names of towns on the signs. He wasn’t sure what state he was in anymore, though it all looked the same — same food and gas logos, same plateglass office parks with their big half-empty lots. He tossed the gum out the window, peeled the foil from his hamburger, and ate quickly, ravenously. When the highway forked he alternated between west and south; he liked the sound of both. He drank from the Coke wedged between his knees. He began to shiver and realized he didn’t have a coat. He turned the heat on full blast. He drove and drove. He would never tire of driving.
A sign read Pennsylvania — The Keystone State. He whooped quietly. Pennsylvania. He looked at the clock on the dash. His entire grade would be in study hall right now, but he’d driven to Pennsylvania. Kristina would be in the back left corner of the library. He realized how hard he’d been trying not to think of her. All he’d wanted to do was help her. That’s all he’d ever wanted to do for her. When she came to Fayer in sixth grade in the wrong clothes with the wrong accent he’d felt sorry for her and chose her as his science partner. The braid down her back. The way she said Poter. Things like that hollowed out his insides, even in Pennsylvania, even after what she’d said he’d done.
At the Exxon station a kid Peter’s age filled up the tank and didn’t even notice a body in the back. But through the doorway of the mini-mart, eating a pink coconut cupcake, a cop was staring right at him. As imperceptibly as he could, Peter tried to lift up his rib cage and harden his expression. He did not catch the cop’s eye again, but looked straight ahead with preoccupation, as if while waiting for his tank to fill he had many adult thoughts to untangle.
Behind him, his mother was stirring. A long swish.
Not now Mom not now he was thinking but didn’t dare move his lips. Peter checked the digits on the pump; it wasn’t even half full. The cop pushed through the door. When he paused to hike up his trousers he left pink sugar fingertip marks on either side. Then he headed directly toward Peter. He put a hand on the roof and bent his head down at the window. Peter fumbled to unroll it.
“I suppose you’ve got your driver’s permit.” He said permit.
“Yes, sir.”
The cop leaned in farther and addressed the back. “I assume you’re over eighteen and in possession of a valid driver’s license, ma’am.”
In the mirror Peter found his mother upright, open-eyed and nodding.
The cop patted the roof of the car. “Hope you folks enjoy your visit here.”
The kid, who’d been waiting behind the cop, took his place at the window to collect his money. Peter could barely remove the bills from his mother’s purse, his hands were trembling so wildly. The police cruiser pulled out of the parking lot and headed away from the highway. The kid didn’t have enough ones in his pocket and said he’d be right back, but Peter got his hands around the key and took off.
He waited for his mother to speak, to holler at him, and when she didn’t he glanced and saw she’d shut her eyes again, her face clenched as if sleeping hurt.
It took a long time for the shaking to stop, but when it did he felt good. He felt great. He remembered the radio and turned it on. A sign read You Are Leaving Pennsylvania but there was no sign to tell him which state was next.
The sun, which had been flickering through the trees, disappeared. He was hungry again but didn’t want to risk a stop. He sang along to the music and tried not to think about food. All at once the earth seemed to open out and he could see in the dusk long swathes of land and a farmhouse miles and miles away, with a light on. It was like looking across an ocean. He could see the curve of the earth. In that one glimpse of distance he understood so much more about everything he’d ever studied in schooclass="underline" Western expansion, cyclones, O Pioneers! Instead of shutting you up in classrooms for twelve years, why didn’t schools just put you on a bus and show you the world? He’d never known how cramped and ugly New England was until now.
At the risk of waking his mother, Peter rolled down the window to let in this new air. It was much warmer than he’d expected and he stuck out his whole left arm and let his fingers rattle in the wind. There were no other cars on the road and even though it was paved and occasionally signposted, it was easy to pretend he was the first person to travel across it. The exhilaration of freedom coursed through him like a drug. He remembered similar moments, like the time Jason’s sister Carla, before she went to college, picked them up at the movie theater with a hitchhiker in the front seat. They’d driven the guy to an intersection a few miles up the road where he could catch a lift to Canada, he said. He had no bag and no shoes, and when he got out a wave of envy and wanderlust had passed through Peter. That his mother would eventually rouse herself fully and demand he turn around, that he had a geometry exam tomorrow and a history paper due on Friday was information this swell of freedom could not contain. This was his life now; he was a driver heading for parts unknown.