The funny thing is, I imagined that I would meet him dancing. Not him exactly, but the whole drive, I kept picturing that Jen would drag me to a concert or block party, and some guy would catch my eye and we would know. He would take me in his arms, and in that moment, everything from before would be erased. 

I told him this once, when we were sprawled out on his basement couch and he was the only thing that wasn’t spinning. He laughed, and it cut through the haze in front of my eyes enough that, for an instant, I felt sober enough to regret saying anything. It sounded so naive to say aloud. I had no idea that I was still that young. 

In reality, we met at a gas station. It was just within walking distance from Jen’s house, and I would go there to escape her concerned eye the summer I stayed in my cousin’s old bedroom. The walk was three miles each way, much longer than I was used to in the city. But the road was flat and there were hardly any cars, and if I walked slowly, I could pass a whole day without having to think of anything. 

My memory is not what it was before what happened in New York, but I know this: he saw me first. I have developed a good sixth sense for stares like his, and I could tell his eyes had caught my body as soon as I felt a weight in my stomach. I gave him a moment to look away, but when I turned to him, he did not break my gaze. He was tall, with dark curls covered by a maroon baseball cap. He smiled.  

I paid for my slushie and stepped into the parking lot. He followed. “Are you Jen’s niece?” His voice was clearer than I expected. 

“Uh… Yeah. You know her?” 

He laughed. “Sorry if that sounds a little creepy. There are like 50 people in this town. I know everybody, except you. So I assumed you were the summer guest. I’m Cam.” He put out his hand, and I took it. 

The conversation is blurry from there. I remember that he is eighteen, that he wishes he were from a city, and that I must hate being stuck out here so if I ever wanted someone to smoke with, I should give him a call. 405-246-3453. I repeated it to myself the whole walk home.

I called him that night. I told Jen I wanted to go on a walk, and she was thrilled that I was finally leaving the house after sundown, so she told me to watch out for coyotes and didn’t ask any questions. I have since wondered if she would have done anything differently if I told her that I was hanging out with a boy three years older than me. I doubt it. My family wanted me back to normal, and I never used to be scared of the dark. 

He picked me up just out of sight from Jen’s house and made small talk until he stopped by a field a few streets away. 

“I guess this doesn’t compare much to the skyscrapers.” We sat down by the side of the road. 

“Maybe not, but it’s pretty.” The setting sun turned the asphalt orange and cast the shadow of his car across the grass. 

“So, what did you do to be sent out here?” The moment he asked the question, I felt every inch of the pavement sticking to my thighs. I had practiced my answers for when Jen’s friends asked me why I was spending my summer here. I love nature and I wanted to see more of the country. I’ve missed my family. I just wanted a change of scene. I didn’t think Cam would smile and nod the way the others did, even when they knew it was a lie.

“You don’t want to know.” I tried to keep my voice light and playful.

“Oh come on. Nothing shocks me, I promise.” He smiled and shifted closer to me.

“I didn’t do anything. Something happened.” 

He nodded. I prayed for him to stop asking questions and he did. I knew at that moment that I wanted to see him again.

“You smoke?” 

“All the time.” I was lying. I grabbed the joint from his outstretched hand. My lungs felt like they had ripped in two, but I stifled my coughs as best I could and took another hit, and three more after that. I watched him watch me, and tried to catch a glimpse of my reflection on his face as I exhaled. It suited me, I decided. He must have agreed because he rubbed my back as I choked on the smoke and then let his hand slide down to rest at my waist.  His skin met mine and I felt the warmth of my own flesh for the first time. 

For a while, he didn’t go any further. We talked mostly about him, which we both seemed to prefer. He was saving money for college by working odd jobs and living with his parents. His mom worried too much, but it was only because her mom probably had bipolar disorder, which they called something else back then.  

“She has this idea in her head that if I would get diagnosed, it would prove that her mom was crazy the whole time. She’s fucking obsessed, with my friends, with what I drink, my plans for the future or whatever.”

I nodded, trying to keep my balance. My body was moving faster than my brain, and it made me dizzy.  “That’s bullshit.” 

“She gets it!” He yelled to the field. “Finally someone gets it!” Our voices had gotten louder and slower as the sun disappeared. 

“Are you nervous right now?” His words moved in circles around my head. His mouth was right next to my ear, and his hand was still touching my waist. 

“I don’t think so. Should I be?” I slid closer to him. It didn’t feel like nerves. Mostly I was relieved that he seemed to really like me. He was older, stronger, but he mirrored my movements and waited after making a joke to see if I would laugh. This is something I can control. In exchange, I would have given him anything. 

He kissed me; I let him. He tasted of Pepsi and weed, and at once I decided that, before him, I had never truly desired anything in my life.

I saw him almost every night after that, usually to drink, sometimes to smoke. Every once in a while I would bring the pills that I was meant to save for emergencies and let Cam crush them with the side of his key. I wouldn’t think much of it until I was high. Only then did I graze his cheek and whisper, “I don’t know if I’m trying to self-destruct or set myself free.” But as soon as I said it, the words faded away and I was numb again and so perfectly happy. I said a thousand times over that I wanted to stay as I was forever. 

For the numbness, I rewarded him. He was eighteen and he wanted things and I had no objections. He let me get high first, so as to separate my body from my head. If I didn’t like it, I wouldn’t have noticed. Sometimes, I forgot where I was altogether. My memory is not what it was before New York, but as far as I know, I never said no to him. I don’t think it even occurred to me that I could.

He never asked me to talk about my past, and I didn’t tell him. Sometimes I would stare into the distance and not even blink, but even then he would just hold my hand and offer me a drink. He must have known, though. He was always gentle when he put his hands on me. 

Before what happened in New York, I took a women’s self-defense class. We were given pink boxing gloves and practiced punches and kicks for what the blonde lady called “the worst-case scenario.” Of course, when my time came, I could not move an inch. All I could do was imagine her sequences over and over in my head, trying to forget that I was frozen in place. 

The morning after, I wished he had held a knife to my throat or something, so that I would have an excuse for just lying there for god knows how long. He wasn’t that much stronger than me. I could have pushed him off if I tried. I hated myself for the time that I wasted, sharpening my teeth. 

If Cam’s mom was right to worry about him, I chose not to think about it. Some days, he would kiss me a hundred times and talk to me for hours about the plans he had for us, “away from all this shit.” But the next week, he would be empty, barely aware of where he was. He would brighten up, most of the time, if I let him touch me, but as soon as he collapsed onto my chest, he would fade out again.

“It’s just that there’s no way out,” he said once.  “I used to be so scared that I’d end up here. Now I’m just slipping away. The worst part is I don’t even mind.” He told me, a few weeks in, that he hadn’t gotten out of bed sober since he was fifteen. He laughed as he said it. I didn’t laugh with him, but he continued talking as if he didn’t notice. 

“Should I be scared for you?” I asked him once. We were in the backseat of his car, using his sweatshirt as a blanket. His heartbeat was so slow that if he hadn’t said anything, I would have assumed he was asleep.

“I have enough people in my life who are scared for me.”

“I know, I know. But you told me about your grandma, and I’ve read about these things. You’re at the age when people have symptoms, and sometimes you seem so depressed and I get worried you’re going to hurt—”

“Stop. Please.” His voice was tight. I fell silent. Once he was sure I was done talking, he let out a long sigh and pulled me closer to him. “I don’t expect you to understand it. But this is just how it is. Nothing good ever comes from trying to claw your way back.” I wanted to ask him what he meant, but I couldn’t bring myself to speak. Instead, I burrowed my head in his ribs and dragged myself into shallow sleep. Outside the back window, the farmland stretched to the edge of the Earth. 

He called me one night, later than usual. “Can I see you?” He sounded breathless. “My mom’s being a bitch again. I just need to get out of here.”

“Of course.” I was waiting outside by the time he skidded to a halt by the driveway. I could tell something was off the moment he stepped on the gas. “Where are we going?” 

“I don’t know. I just need to get away.” He went fast, faster than I’ve ever seen anyone drive on our street. We zipped past the fields where we usually hung out, and into the backroads behind the grain silo. Next to him was a bottle of gin, half-empty. 

“Do you want me to drive?”

“You’re fifteen. You don’t even have your license.”

“I’m sober.”

“Yeah, well.”  He scoffed, and offered me the bottle. I took it. I knew as it burnt my throat that it was a bad idea. But it was a strange thing to know what I knew: he wanted me most as we collapsed into each other’s arms. 

As it hit my stomach, he pressed harder on the gas. I was thrown across the car as he rounded the corners. “Jesus Cam, are you trying to get us killed?”

“Shut up, Shut up, Shut up, Shut up. I can’t take this right now.” He was barely looking at the road.

I gulped down what was left of the gin. I felt every ounce of it in my stomach. I hoped that I would black out and not have to worry anymore, but the more I drank, the more my lungs twisted upon themselves. If I grabbed the wheel, could I safely steer us into a ditch? Would he ever forgive me if I did? I wished that we had not already taken the last of my pills.

“Please, we can talk. It will be ok. Just stop the car. Please. Cam.” If he heard me, he pretended not to. 

We rounded a corner, too fast. The world resettled and I saw the headlights catch a figure standing at the end of the road. She did not flinch. 

The whole summer passed by in a hazy instant, but that stretch of road lasted a lifetime. I knew every inch of it; each tree that we passed faster than we should have. Some leaves were already brown, wilted on the forest floor. Had July disappeared so quickly? I saw the glint of her eyelashes in the headlights, and I knew that she was not going to move. My voice reacted slower than I wanted it to. “Cam. There’s a deer.” He didn’t hear me. “Stop the fucking car.” We were twenty feet away, then ten.

“Cam!”

She flies backward and falls to the ground with a thud that seems to echo through the forest. Cam screeches to a halt six feet or so from where she lay on the asphalt. 

We sit perfectly still. Neither of us can bring ourselves to move an inch. 

“Are you ok?” he asks. His voice is completely flat. 

“I don’t think I’m hurt. Are you?” I cannot register my words, even as I say them. I do not believe that the body I am in is my own.

“No I’m not.” He doesn’t look at me. “We need to see if it’s alive. We can’t call anyone. We’ve been drinking.” As he says it aloud, the stupidity, the inevitability, of what we had done strikes me for the first time. I wonder if I am uninjured enough to sprint away into the forest. 

But maybe I am in shock because, as if I am following some screwed-up script, I reply, “I can check.” I step out of the car and walk towards her body. 

I thought I had seen a corpse before. I had a rabbit that died when I was twelve, and I was the one who found his limp body on the side of the cage. But that was bloodless. The deer is almost ripped in two at her neck. Her eyes are open, unmoving, and her legs each point in a different direction. Her heart is not beating. I cannot bring myself to move my hand from her side. 

I shouldn’t be here. The thought hits me and I start to cry, really cry, for the first time all summer. The tears burn my eyes faster than I could ever rub them away. I think of New York. I remember that it used to just be my home, and now it’s a euphemism for every reason why I’m kneeling on the pavement by a bloody carcass and I’m probably too drunk to stand. I hear a whisper, the voice is my own. “Take me dancing. Take me dancing. Take me dancing.” I hear it where I should have felt my heartbeat. 

I look up, and Cam is next to me. He looks like he is about to vomit. For a fleeting moment, I am furious. I want to ask him what the hell he thought would happen, driving like that. I want to tell him that it’s not fair, that I was meant to be doing better, that he’s hurting me too. But I catch his eye and his face is blank. If I reached out to touch him, he would shatter into a thousand pieces on the pavement.

I wish I hated him. I pray that I can remember the whites of his knuckles against the wheel, the crunch of his teeth grinding against each other, the growl of the car as he pressed harder and harder on the gas. But it was as if I was trying to reconstruct a dream from the night before. The last of my anger dissolves into the summer air and my ribs collapse into my chest. It hurts more than I knew I still could. 

Maybe this is for the best. I don’t know how to look at someone and tell them that I fear I will never be whole again. I don’t think he would understand it anyway. 

So, when I finally speak, I tell him a different story, the one that lets him go. I tell him that this is not his fault. Most animals have better survival instincts, would know to run if a three-ton hunk of metal was racing towards them. He thought she would get out of the way in time. After all, she was staring right at him as he drove towards her. It’s not as if she couldn’t see it coming.