riding alone

India first drove her father’s car when she was fourteen. It was in an open field with Richard in the passenger’s seat, no surprises; Richard guiding her hand on the clutch and suffering through every careening turn with bottomless patience and toleration. She takes turns more smoothly now. There’s a time to attract attention and there’s a time to exercise finesse. India first drove her father’s car four years ago on her birthday, cutting a track through a shorn-down field while her father laughed and joked, and she hadn’t driven anyone’s car all that much in the interim.

She had driven her mother home from a party once, when Richard was out of town on business in New York and Evelyn had a terrible, terrible migraine, honey — Evelyn’s head had been floppy on her neck, her red hair had brushed the upholstery like a fanned-out brush, her eyes had fluttered open in mute liquored shock every time India had changed gears.

She drives alone now, with no one in the passenger’s seat, savoring the close bends in the road and the stomach-tickling drops. Once she stops to let a deer cross the road, but it turns out to be two deer, who knows how many more waiting back in the trees. Two pairs of peach-yellow startled eyes, with more waiting.

Her shoes lie in the pit of the passenger’s seat. Her bare feet are on the pedals, sticky and certain against the deep grooves of the brake pedal. She has bypassed New York City, and she is driving up and up from gold and scarlet into fairy tale sports-car green, into the oceanic darkness of a territory beyond her map. Black asphalt and yellow high beams spreading out in front of her wheels like a carpet.

Her rifle is snug in the footwell, flush to the passenger’s side door with the seat as far back as it will go. A few hours ago she’d switched on the radio, only to turn it off again when the nighttime DJ started shilling for donations – India wants to be alone very badly right now, alone with the curves of the road and the small sounds of the engine (grown familiar) and the paintbrush lines of the trees. Alone, no surprises. The worst thing she’ll encounter in these woods is another person. The worst thing another person might encounter out here in the pre-dawn dark is her.