Everything You Want Me to Be(2)

“Why don’t you mind your own business?” Outraged customer. The airport seemed like a good stage for that.

The people behind me stopped grumbling and started to watch the show.

“Look, Miss Hoffman, there are certain protocols we have to follow for a cash purchase of a same-day ticket, especially a one-way ticket. I’m going to have to ask you to come with me while we check this out.”

There was no way I was going to get locked in some Homeland Security office while he called my parents and made this day ten thousand times worse. What if he could figure out who withdrew the envelope money? Did they have ways to do that? I reached over the counter and grabbed the bills and my IDs.

“Then I’m going to have to ask you to shove your ticket up your ass.”

“Should I call security?” The woman—who had totally dropped her perky act—picked up the phone and started dialing without waiting for an answer.

“Don’t bother; I’m leaving. See me leaving?” I grabbed my bag and wiped my eyes with the back of the fist that had crumpled all the money into a sweaty ball.

“Why don’t you calm down, Miss Hoffman, and we’ll—”

“Why don’t you calm down?” I cut the guy off with a glare. “I’m not a terrorist. I’m sorry you don’t want my eight hundred dollars for your crappy seat to Boston.”

Someone in line shouted out a cheer, but most of the crowd just stared as I wheeled my bag away, probably trying to decide what kind of bomb I was going to smuggle on the plane. Takes all kinds, Velma. Nudge, nudge. You wouldn’t suspect her of anything, would you?

I ran to the parking garage and had no idea how I got to my truck or paid the attendant, it was such a blur. My heart was pounding. I checked behind me every second, paranoid that some security guard was going to chase me down. And then once I got on the freeway, the sobbing started. I almost hit a minivan, my hands were shaking so bad. It wasn’t until a half an hour later that I realized I was headed back to Pine Valley. The Twin Cities had already disappeared and unplanted fields stretched as far as I could see.

This was what happened when you let yourself need someone.

This crap heap was what you turned into when you fell in love.

I was so happy—so free and above it all—when I started senior year last fall. That Hattie was ready to take on the world and she would have, damn it, she could have done anything. And now I was a pathetic, sobbing mess. I had become the girl I’d always hated.

Suddenly the radio cut out and the lights on the dash started flickering. Shit. I panicked as other cars flew past me. Spotting a turnoff up ahead, I swerved onto a gravel road that bisected two fields, eased off the gas, and let the truck coast to a stop. When I put it into park the engine coughed and then died completely. I tried the key. Nothing. I was stranded in the middle of nowhere.

Falling across the seat, I sobbed into the scratchy fabric until I had to puke and then stumbled out of the truck into the ditch, heaving up only coffee and stomach acid.

A cool wind whipped across the fields. It dried the sweat that had broken out on my forehead and helped the sickness to pass. I crawled away from the vomit and sat on the side of the ditch, letting the soggy ground turn my pants and underwear cold.

I stayed there for a long time, long enough that I didn’t feel the chill anymore. Long enough that the tears stopped and something else started.

I was totally alone except for the cars passing on the freeway and I realized that—for the first time I could remember—I didn’t want to be anywhere else on earth. I didn’t want to be trapped in a cramped airplane seat, flying to a strange city with nowhere to go after the plane landed. I didn’t want to be onstage with the lights up and a full audience watching my every move. I didn’t want to be lying in my bed alone while Mom cooked some dinner I didn’t have the stomach to eat. There was something so comforting about the blankness of the land around me, the empty fields edged with naked trees and patches of stubborn snow.

No one knew I was here. Suddenly that fact was wonderful. I could have said it my whole life to everyone I’d ever met—No one knows I’m here—and they would have laughed and rolled their eyes and patted me on the back. Oh brother, they’d say, but it was true. I’d spent my entire life playing parts, being whatever they wanted me to be, focused on everyone around me while inside I’d always felt like I was sitting in this exact spot: curled up in the middle of a dead, endless prairie, without a soul in the world for company. Now that I was here it all made sense. Everything clicked, just like it does in the movies when the heroine realizes she’s in love with the stupid guy, or she can achieve her All-American, underdog dreams, and the music amps up and she walks, like, determinedly out of some random room. It was just like that, except without the sound track. I was still sitting in a ditch in the middle of nowhere, but everything on the inside suddenly changed.

I heard my mother’s voice again. I remembered what she said last night when I was too busy sobbing on her shoulder to listen or understand.

Get off the stage, sweetheart, she said. You can’t live your life acting for other people. Other people will just use you up. You have to know yourself and figure out what you want. I can’t do that for you. Nobody can.

I knew exactly who I was—for maybe the first time ever—and exactly what I wanted and what I had to do to get it. It was clarity. Like waking up from a dream where you thought things were real and then feeling the actual world come into focus all around you. I stood up—ready to ditch this pathetic, crying girl forever. Good effing riddance.