was gone again, back at the stop sign with the convertible, imagining the scene if they’d pitched one girl out and invited me to come take her place. Finally Leah waved goodbye and turned to walk up her driveway, leaving me to make my way home alone. And that’s how I liked it—just me and my imagination.
When I reached my mailbox, I stopped. Automatically, I wrenched open the rusty lid and took the stack of mail from inside, tucking it under my arm. I turned toward the small brick house that had been home for the past fourteen months and, with a sigh, I left my daydreams on the concrete sidewalk. There was neither time nor room for them where I was going. According to my dad there was no room for “silly” in our house. And he considered daydreams—along with boys, parties and makeup—silly.
The garage door was open and I could see a pair of ratty, oil-stained tennis shoes sticking out from beneath the rear of the primer-coated 1969 Camaro that would one day be mine.
Hopefully before I turn thirty, I thought snidely.
“Hey, Dad.”
“Hey, butterfly,” came the muffled response. I smiled at the nickname, as I always did. My father had been calling me “butterfly” for as long as I could remember. It was strange in a way; he was anything but fanciful. In fact, I felt sure that the term “tough love” had originated somewhere in our household. But, tough though it often felt, my father had never let me forget how much he loved me. “How was your day?”
“Same old, same old.”
“How’d the physics test go?”
“I got a ninety-eight.” I could keep neither the pride nor the smile from my voice.
Dad let out a whoop of laughter. “That’s my girl! Never doubted you for a second.”
“Of course you didn’t. You’ve been teaching me chemistry and physics since I was eight. Aren’t you going to ask which question I missed?”
“Nope.”
“Why not?”
“Because I know which question you missed.”
“And how do you know that?”
“Because you still haven’t read In Search of Schrödinger’s Cat like I told you to. I’m sure the question you missed was about quantum entanglement.”
And he was right, which never set well with me because he seemed always to be right. I rolled my eyes, but held my tongue.
“That’s what I thought,” he said smugly.
I stuck my tongue out at his feet then silently scolded myself for the childish act. “How’s the car coming?”
“Just finishing up the exhaust. Why don’t you change and come on back down?”
“I thought I’d go for a run before I start dinner. Can it wait until after?”
There was a pause, a pause in which I knew he was considering my motives. While Dad was insistent that I learn...everything, he was equally insistent that I stay in shape for some reason. I’d never really understood why I needed to be able to run ten miles without stopping, any more than I understood why he felt like I needed to know how to rebuild an engine, explain string theory, clean a Glock, track a wounded animal, use Krav Maga and start a fire from nothing more than dry moss and a flint, but he did.
For the most part, I didn’t mind, but sometimes I just wanted to be normal. And the only time I felt like I could even get within a mile of being normal was when I ran. I could be a regular girl when I ran, a star athlete even. I could be by myself when I ran. I could daydream all I wanted when I ran. I could escape when I ran. So I ran.
“Alright, but no excuses after dinner.”
“Ok, Dad.” With that, I went inside to go through the mail then change.
Less than five minutes later, I was clothed in shorts and a tank top, hair in a pony tail, feet on the pavement. My mind drifted to all the places that it could only go when I ran. It went to another world where I had a mother and siblings, where I was popular and my biggest worry was what to wear for prom rather than how to get engine grease out from under my fingernails.
I was twirling through a slow song at my prom, in the arms of Stephen Fitchco, the best looking quarterback I’d ever seen, when I heard the horn. By the time I looked up, it was too late; the black Honda was upon me.