Getting Somewhere
by Kylin Larsson

Prologue

There you were, 16 years old and your parents wouldn’t pay for the driver’s ed class that would permit you the mobility you needed to thrive, so you stood on the side of the road at the bus stop and simmered as the kids with cars drove out of the school parking lot. Years later, your mother - and this was about seven years after your dad died, and she’s rewriting history - thinks she offered to pay for those classes. You know you never even bothered to ask. It was $250 and they couldn’t afford new shoes or orange juice, though buying two cartons of cigarettes per week, (Camel bare-ass for him, Marlboro 100s for her), was never in question. You started smoking, and stole their cigarettes. You smoked his only when angry and felt like choking.

Enter the Soul Mate

Yeah, it’s a clichéd term that makes some people want to stick their fingers down their throats and vomit like you used to while the shower ran to hide the noise. But what else do you call it, when you’ve known each other four years and survived everything from cheating to abortion to military service and thieving blonde bitches, then come out the other side still in love, and even better, you still like to be with each other? Besides, you knew you’d be together forever from the first time he stood at your door to collect his little sister playing in the back yard with your sisters, and told you he wanted to be a parapsychologist. So, there you were, 17 years old and a senior in high school. After a year apart, he came to his senses and dumped the blonde, stalked you at work and sweet-talked his grandma into buying him a ’67 Thunderbird that was a deep red, even without the rust, for five hundred dollars. “It had alternator and battery problems since I bought it a year ago,” he told as you held hands on the side of the road, waiting for someone to give you a ride to the gas station. In the excitement of your first date together in over a year, he forgot to gas up that beautiful car. “It was another six hundred to put the engine in,” he told you later that night, in the back booth of the coffee shop you haunted more than your own house. The car was sculpted, inside and out, from the hint of fins to the slick black leather seats. The brakes were going out and he had to stand on ‘em to get all that steel to stop. After the Thunderbird’s brakes made it too dangerous to drive, you parked it in the lot of your first apartment together, leased two seconds after your high school graduation. The passenger side window stuck halfway, and your neighbor informed you that a white cat slept there at night, which apparently she thought was a bad idea, but you loved it. Eventually, the apartment complex overlords demanded you get rid of the car, after noticing the Thunderbird hadn’t moved in two months. You watched as he signed it over to the tow truck guy for free; there was nothing else you could do. Your only regret was not making like bunnies in the back seat before he got rid of it.

And Pause...

Wait, you forgot something. He bought you a ’73 white Celica and parked it with a big red bow for you to find as you exited the high school graduation ceremony. It worked for about three months, and then you left it in a parking lot with a box of poems you forgot to move into the apartment. The patient people who owned the lot waited a couple months before towing it, then sent you the bill.

For the Intermission

You were 18 years old and had your first of three crappy retail jobs. One Tuesday, you got yourself all agitated about hating to work there, then walked in and quit while wearing your Cheshire cat tee shirt. Two days later, you got a job as a receptionist for a moving company, and worked with Soul Mate’s mom, who recommended you apply because she was a manager there. You commuted the I-5 corridor in rush hour traffic, Monday through Friday. You repeated this for five years.

During the Intermission, you turned 21 and your mother decided to take you out to brunch at the Snohomish Falls Lodge, a spendy place in the woods with a rustic disguise. She’d been planning this since she was twenty-four, and you were one. The thought of your mother spending that kind of money made your stomach ache and palms sweat. You knew she could barely afford your dad’s funeral four months ago. You traveled in separate cars: your mom, sisters, and brother in her new turquoise Camry, and you and Soul Mate in your red ’87 Dodge Omni your dad gave you six months before he died. During the drive, you had a deep conversation about the meaning of life, and somehow you got on the subject of being able to yell, to really scream at the top of your lungs, and that it felt good to do it, that it was a powerful thing. Except, you couldn’t do it. He had a great time yelling about all the shitty things his parents did to him and you just cringed and stared out the window. You’d had enough yelling in your life, and didn’t see how it could be healthy. You sighed and stared out the window and waited to be twenty-two. You always liked even numbers better.

Red Cars Numbered Two through Five

‘87 Dodge Omni. The engine froze solid and cracked when you forgot to put antifreeze in, even though you had two jugs of the blue stuff in the hall closet of your second apartment together. This was just after had you fixed the brakes. Soul Mate lost his temp job at Nintendo because he couldn’t commute, and started working in facilities at a kids’ computer game company. One year later, he was hired as an entry-level game programmer, something he’d dreamt of since he was nine years old in summer camp tapping away on an Apple II. You were still in the Intermission, answering the phone at the moving company, writing poems in the same coffee shop, and smoking too much. The apartment complex overlords left you a notice on your door commanding you to move the car within three days. You called one of those charity places that take cars and paid $100 to get rid of it, because they told you they couldn’t take it for free since they would lose money. You did it just to get rid of the car, because you had to do something quick.

’91 Geo. You bought it from your friend Mark after you test drove it and lost your purse because you left it on top of the car. The Geo worked great for a week, and then started dying constantly if you didn’t give it gas. Again, you had no money to fix the car. You almost got hit by a delivery truck at an intersection because of this, and decided to get rid of it. You gave it to the friendly maintenance guy who made the hair stand up on your neck because you didn’t want to pay for towing to a junkyard, or a charity to take it away.

‘89 Nissan Sentra. You saw it for sale on Highway Ninety Nine and bought if for $1,200. You were happy because you talked him down from $1,400 and felt savvy. You didn’t feel so savvy after it stopped working four days later. Nor, after you learned there was a Lemon Law, but it was only enforced the first three days of the sale.

’90 Nissan Sentra. You and Soul Mate see a commercial for “the Big Ol’ Used Car Sale” at the mall and took the bus down to look at cars you couldn’t afford to buy, because you were saving up money to get married. You bought it anyway, on a payment plan of $123.45 per month, which you still remember for years because of the number order. Much to your great surprise, it ran just fine, and for a long time. You decided the red car thing really wasn’t a curse. Then, you got a tune up on the brakes and a few days later it stopped working altogether. It just sat in the parking lot, which wasn’t a problem because you no longer lived in an apartment complex run by corporate overlords, but in a big two bedroom apartment managed by a nice elderly woman. You decided that you were, in fact, superstitious and would never buy another red car.

At one point, you had two red cars sitting in the parking lot, (actually, three, including the one you gave away to the maintenance guy), and you had to take the bus. This was in the winter and you found the irony excruciating. You started to wonder if you should ever buy another car again, or maybe if you should just avoid red cars. You decided you were not superstitious.

End of Intermission

By this point, you were sick to death of shitty unreliable cars and wanted a new car, because now you were married and making good money. The Intermission was over and you answered the phone for seventeen dollars an hour at the power company to help people figure out payment plans on bills. So, you bought an almost brand new ’97 blue Saturn with a sunroof. As you commuted each day, you worried about old ladies whose heat and lights were turned off because they couldn’t pay and you could only fudge the numbers so much. You had zero travel worries for a year and a half. Then, in June of 2002, you decided you wanted to visit a park you used to picnic at with your family. Soul Mate is driving, and as you exited the freeway and turned left on the green arrow, a girl driving her uninsured new car rammed straight into you, t-boning the car between the driver’s door and the passenger door. Before she hit you, you remembered thinking, “we are going a little fast,” but didn’t worry because this was a Safe Car, not a Shitty Car. Then you thought, “oh no” as you saw his arms circle the steering wheel and a shaft of thick, golden light sparkle through the windshield.

The car spun. Stopped.

You were the only person in the world without a cell phone, so you just waited for the sirens, which arrived after a very stretched minute. For a long time afterward, you thought the light was God’s personal protection to make sure Soul Mate didn’t get hurt. There was a car-sized hole two feet deep in your Safe Car, but you were both Okay. You even drove away from the accident, but the car never started again after it made it to its own parking space at home. You didn’t have to pay a dime because of your insurance, but the credit union wouldn’t lend you money for another new car.

You wouldn’t buy another shitty car, and besides, you and Soul Mate had decided you both wanted to go to college and needed to save up money anyway, not pay a monthly car payment. You rode bikes everywhere and lost ten pounds. It never rained on you when you rode home from work, now the cable company two miles away, at one in the morning. You decided to be an artist and he decided to get a degree in Computer Science, since he had been laid of from his computer programming job. Four months later, you both move into your fifth apartment together, one hundred miles away from everything familiar but each other.

Burning Up

After your second quarter at Evergreen, a liberal arts school so liberal there aren’t even grades, a friend of a friend sold you her blue ’88 Chevy Reliant. You hoped it would live up to its name, but it was only $300, so you figured you had won either way. It was January and the bus in this college town took forever to get somewhere. Plus, you hated talking to the lonely people on the bus. You had the kind of face people thought they should confide in. The car ran fine, except for a little overheating problem you kept under control. You went camping on the other side of the mountains, and discovered the joy of stacking rocks on the dried up lake shore. The car worked great, there and back. You didn’t worry because it was a blue car, not a red car, and it was named Reliant. It lived up to its name; right up until you drove home and old Reliant caught fire. You watched in horror as No-Longer-Reliant caught fire in the middle of downtown Seattle, in rush hour, nonetheless. You ran the car too long and it was too hot out, and poor old Reliant couldn’t take it anymore. Stunned, you watched thick black smoke pour out from under the hood. You grabbed your backpack and jumped out of the car while Soul Mate tried to park, which was difficult because all the electrical stuff shorted out. You yelled, “the car is on fire, get the hell out!” over and over. To you, it took an excruciatingly long time for him to get the car to a safe place. You didn’t care if it blew up in the middle of the street, you just wanted him out of the burning hunk of metal. You stood on the sidewalk and waited for the fire truck. You still didn’t have a cell phone, but trusted someone else would notice the situation. A man walked by and took photos and emailed them to you later. A random guy gave you advice on where to have the car fixed, because you couldn’t think of a way to make him stop talking to you. A cop and a fire truck arrived within minutes and put out the fire. It took two fire extinguishers and one fire hose. There was one fire extinguisher in the back seat, but you forgot to use it. Much to your surprise, the car never actually exploded like it does in the movies. Also much to your surprise, a stranger gave you $20, apparently because you looked like you needed it. You were eighty miles from home with a burned out hunk of metal and all your camping gear. The next hour proved how lucky you and Soul Mate were: things always work out. The cop called a tow truck, and the tow truck guy recommended a mechanic, who just happened to be right across the street from your mother-in-law’s office. One hour later, you laughed together as you spent the $20 on beer and pizza as you waited for the bus. The insurance company sent you a hundred dollars after six months, because, for some reason, you had full coverage on old Reliant.

A Homebound Valentine’s Day

After nine months, you were tired of taking the bus and ignoring lonely people who wave, smile and talk at you, so you bought a white ’79 Volvo for $400. You ate Tofurkey for Thanksgiving at Soul Mate’s mom’s house, spent the night, then woke up and found that the gas smell you noticed yesterday wasn’t coming from your shoes. Gasoline dripped out of your car, which you’d only had for two months. Soul Mate thought it was okay to drive anyway, so you got in the car and drive home, holding your breath. If he blew up, you wanted to be there too. You put $900 worth of work into it to fix the fuel pump and brakes. Damn it, you were going to make this car work. It worked great until Valentine’s Day, when you drove home from school together with the engine sounding like it wanted to get up and leave the car. As you exited the freeway, the car started unnaturally decelerating. The light was red, and you were sure, sure the car would stall right there and you would get stuck blocking the exit. Much to your surprise, it made its way home, and performed its function as a giant paperweight in your parking lot. With a nice new fuel pump and new brakes. Not going anywhere.

Driving Home

In your senior year at Evergreen, you got a freelance writing job and you needed to get around quick to interview people. Sick of shitty cars, you wanted to try a shitty truck, or maybe a shitty minivan, just for variety. You found one, a ’92 blue Voyager. It smelled like the previous owner had a dog, but the mechanic says it’s okay, so you buy it. The next week, the brakes started squeaking. With a lurch in your stomach, you remembered the Reliant was blue, too, and the Saturn, for that matter. You thought that maybe the Voyager wasn’t such a great way to spend $1,300. You could have bought books with that money, books to read on the bus so people wouldn’t talk to you. But, you drove it anyway, because it beat taking the bus, and, you had to admit, you had been pretty lucky so far. You were not going to let superstition nip at your ankles, but that didn’t mean you would ever buy another red car.

Until, that is, the ’67 Thunderbird is available again, and you happen to have the money to reclaim it. You have the license plate number memorized, BUK532, and you keep an eye out for it when you visit the neighborhood you moved away from. You will buy it back, someday, and break the red car curse by christening the back seat. Until then, you’ll contemplate painting the minivan purple.

Kylin Larsson is a senior at The Evergreen State College. His work has previously been published in the literary journal On Uneven Ground, and will be published in the literary journal Slightly West (date forthcoming).