Page 40 of The Next Person You Meet in Heaven
“We’ll find someplace.”
“Oh, God, Mom! GOD!”
Annie dropped on the couch. She pulled a pillow over her face.
Later that week, she transferred, and when she didn’t like that school, she transferred to another. The matter of the accident was not spoken about again.
But just because you have silenced a memory does not mean you are free of it.
***
The change in schools made Annie more determined to escape Lorraine’s restrictions. By senior year, she found a way to circumvent them altogether.
A boyfriend with a car.
His name was Walt, a year older than Annie, with a lanky frame, a sharp nose, and triangular sideburns. Annie spent most of her evenings and weekends with him. He smoked hand-rolled cigarettes and liked grunge music. He found Annie curious (“You’re weird, but in a good way,” he said), which pleased her because it meant attention, including physical attention, the first she’d had from a boy.
Annie, by this point, had bloomed into her tall, shapely frame, with a wayward mop of long, curling hair and, aseveryone seemed to point out, nice, straight teeth. She dressed in modest clothes, favoring leggings and beat-up sneakers. She finished high school with a grade point average of four and a friend count of two: Judy, who wore horn-rimmed glasses and vintage 1950s clothing, and Brian, a math whiz with a thin mustache that he was constantly fingering.
Annie didn’t see either one of them after the graduation ceremony. She stayed only long enough to get her diploma and a handshake from the school’s principal, who whispered, “Good luck, Annie. You can go places.”
Annie did. She walked off the stage and went straight to the parking lot, where Walt was waiting by his green Nissan coupe.
“Yay, you’re done,” he deadpanned.
“Thank God,” Annie said.
“Where do you want to go?”
“Anywhere.”
“You need to call your mom?”
“I told her not to come. She probably came anyhow.”
“She’s still in the audience?”
“I guess.”
Walt looked over her shoulder. “Guess again.”
Annie turned to see her mother, in a turquoise skirtand blazer, a cloche hat on her head, wobbling across the school’s front lawn, her high heels catching in the grass. She waved her arms and yelled, “Annie! What are you doing?” The wind was blowing and she grabbed her hat to hold it down.
“Let’s go,” Annie mumbled.
“You don’t want to wait?”
“I said, let’s go.”
She got in the car and slammed the door shut. Walt started the engine. They drove off, leaving Lorraine, hand on her hat, watching them zoom past a sign that readCONGRATULATIONS, GRADUATES!
Annie didn’t speak to her for a year.
***
During that time, Annie moved in with Walt, sharing the basement of his father’s house, a small Craftsman bungalow an hour from the trailer park. Annie knew, being so far away, there was no chance of running into her mother, and she enjoyed the freedom that feeling provided. She chopped her hair in the front and dyed it purple. Walt gave her a T-shirt that readI OWE YOU NOTHING. She wore it often.
Walt’s father worked nights at a creamery. Walt fixedcars at a nearby auto shop. Annie’s grades got her a scholarship at a local community college, and she took English literature and photography classes, fancying herself one day taking pictures for a travel magazine. Maybe she would go to Italy and find where Paulo lived, show up with a camera and say,“Oh, hey, what a coincidence.”
