“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.” She closes her computer with a neat snap and looks at me very carefully, eyes intent on something. “Is everything all right with you, Parker? You’ve seemed very distracted lately, like you’re all of a sudden losing focus.” She pauses. “Now is not the time to lose focus.” She’s quiet again, and I know she’s winding up to ask the big question I don’t want to have to answer. I try desperately to think of a way to change the subject before she can do it, but I’m not quick enough.
“I’d like to see your speech. Is it finished?”
“It’s—almost. But I’m not ready for you to look at it yet. I need the weekend to go over it.”
She eyes me, weighing my words. I’ve never given her any reason not to trust me, but I can see she’s not convinced, and I realize why. I probably sound like my dad to her right now.
“I just want to fix a few things before I show you,” I say. “I’m going to work on it all weekend, and I promise you can see it when I’m done.”
A few seconds that feel like an eternity pass before she answers. “Okay. But you’re not going anywhere until I have your speech. Finished. Got it?” Her eyes go big while she waits for an answer.
“Got it,” I say, because that’s what she expects me to do. I swallow hard. Nervousness at what I have planned flutters in my stomach, but today something is different. Today I have a reason that’s worth enough to step out from under her thumb and take a chance. I just need to write that speech.
I wait a moment to see if there’s anything else, but she seems satisfied. I take a step back. “Okay, then. I’m gonna head up and get to work.”
“Good,” she says. “Good girl.” And then she opens up her laptop again as if it’s all settled, and I’m glad, because I’m sure that if she actually looked at my face she’d see everything I am about to do.
I don’t actually breathe again until I’m up in my room with my door closed. It’s a funny thing, my almost morbid fear of my mom. She’s never intentionally mean, and she doesn’t yell. And she’s always been supportive of whatever I’ve done. But I’ve always done what she wanted. I haven’t ever disappointed her. That’s what it is. That’s what I’m afraid of doing. Because that’s what my dad did over and over, and I saw what happened then.
When he tried and failed, again and again, to write his second book, she saw things in black and white—he needed to suck it up and move on. Support his family. Be a grownup. Stop chasing something that eluded him, no matter how much it meant. She wanted a life of stability and practicality, one she could depend on. He wanted a life of creativity and inspiration, one he could find his voice in. And neither one could understand how what they wanted wasn’t enough for the other.
So he left, and I became careful about what I said I wanted. Grades and awards and teacher recommendations became my way to ensure my mom’s approval. AP classes, extra credit, and concrete accomplishments. They’re the things she values, as opposed to the things she associates with my dreamer of a father. I’ve worked at it and worked at it, and now I’m at the end of high school and I have all of those things, including her approval. But right now, what I really want is something that means something to me. Something that I believe in, and that I do because I want to, not because I think it’ll prove something to my mom.
I don’t know how to begin to write my speech, or if I even want to if it’s just another attempt to prove myself to her. But I do know that, come Monday, I’ll be on the road, somewhere between who I’ve always been and who I want to be.
20.
“The Courage to Be New”
—1947
The girl I want to be tries to look casual standing in front of Carl’s Jr. at six a.m., wearing a huge backpack and irrationally scanning the parking lot for any sign of my mom brandishing the speech I’d pieced together from a Google search of “inspirational speeches” and left on the kitchen table for her approval. It was a Hail Mary. I’d spent the entire weekend shut away in my room, trying to come up with words I believe in, that the scholarship committee would believe in too, but I kept coming up blank. Instead of writing my speech, I went back to other words—Julianna’s, and Robert Frost’s, and even my dad’s. So when Sunday evening rolled around, I did what I had to do in the hopes that somewhere on the road ahead of me, I’d find what I really wanted to say.
I check my phone again, hoping for a We’re on our way text from Kat, but no such luck.
The girl I actually am is a nervous wreck who is totally unsure about the trip, hesitant to really hope we’ll find Julianna, all mixed up about what may or may not be going on with Trevor, and petrified of how much trouble I’m guaranteed to be in when I get home. I try not to think about all that, though. I lean my back against the building and look out over the ring of mountains that surrounds our little town, hoping to channel some of the calm of the morning. The air is a touch cooler than is comfortable in the cutoffs and tank top I threw on in a hurry, so I pull a sweatshirt out of my bag and slip it over my head.
Though it’s still shadowed where I’m standing, the peaks of the mountains are washed golden by the rising sun, and cloudless blue sky stretches out in every direction. Spring is undeniably here, and with it that feeling of newness and possibility and freedom. A fresh start, which is exactly what I want. I want this day to be my fresh start. I want this to be the day I step out of my comfort zone and go somewhere new. I’ve got the small amount of cash I’ve saved up, my MapQuest printouts, the journal, and my dad’s signed copy of Robert Frost’s collected poems tucked into my bag. Somehow the combination of those things feels right. I have no idea what I will do or even say if we actually find Julianna, but I’m ready. Ready for whatever happens.