I'd Rather Burn Than Bloom: Chapter 19–Epilogue

The aspens at the mountain’s crest have yet to turn yellow.

And Elizabeth’s going to want to talk about her fight with her mom, and I’m going to have to muster sympathy when I just want to scream at her that I wish I could have my mom back for just one second, and that she could tell me to apply for all the stupid internships on earth, and I would do it.

Maybe that’s just what happens when you have a garage. You just fill the space.
I guess that’s what humanity does, doesn’t it, just creeps over the earth, filling in all the spaces with a profound amount of crap?

“Well, did you tell her how much Paul needed help?” I ask.
“I did, but she was unsympathetic to his plight.”

“Do they already have a fridge donated or do they need one? Because you have to get one that’s supposed to be outside. It’s going to get really cold soon at night, and if you use an indoor one outside, then the sensor in the freezer goes haywire and everything gets ruined—”

His voice, which is a low register, hard to hear, is barely audible.

“And that’s my daughter.”
He’s claiming me, but not out of pride—out of obligation, a heavy burden, that’s my daughter, that’s my daughter, who I’m just trying to keep out of juvie, trying to keep out of the emergency room, where I had to watch her, pale and sweat-slicked, get her stomach pumped, under those thin fluorescent lights buzzing, in that same hospital, that same damn hospital.

“I was fired,” I say.
My dad looks at me and his mouth becomes an O, as if he was shocked that I could go any lower in his estimation but yet, here I am.

“How long have you—can we afford to do that?” I ask, incredulous.

How about those Puritans? Turns out, America was basically founded by a tyrannical cult.

“Though the draconian antics of the Puritans amuse me,” she says, “I did not read that yet, because there is no fourth period today. We have the Cultural Assembly, remember?”

“Though the draconian antics of the Puritans amuse me,” she says, “I did not read that yet, because there is no fourth period today. We have the Cultural Assembly, remember?”

I will endure Yvonne Morales being an Outstanding Filipino Teen again, before slinking off into homeschooled obscurity forever.

She takes my hand, and the crowd provides sufficient cover for us to slip away, running down the steps two at a time.

Then we take off, heading north, to the edge of the city, until the concrete strip malls and parking lots give way to houses with chicken coops and corrals, and brown horses trotting in the sun.

She guides me through a series of maneuvers in the parking lot.

“Oh my God, I don’t care where she went, the issue is that she looked at me like I was a freaking street urchin.”

“I’m doing perfectly fine.”
“Well, I wouldn’t say that.”
I suck in air and glare at her, looking all smug with her quip, like she’s so goddamn smart, but what does she know?

“Elizabeth was trying to teach me, her delinquent friend, how to drive and I crashed her car,” I say.

Elizabeth is sullen, looking everywhere, at everything else but me.

He looks back at us, blinks his golden eyes, and then proceeds to lick his bloody leg, slowly. He seems to be breathing heavily, his eyes unfocused and disoriented.

When I emerge from the garage, I find Bernie attempting to coax Marty out from under the couch with a limp hot dog.

Bernie is fussing with the sugar packets, tearing them open and dumping the sugar onto his empty plate, which he has meticulously eaten everything off of in clockwise order.

A swath of light lurks behind the clouds.

The plastic eyepiece is cold on my fingertips, and I feel Jupiter’s presence, skulking just beyond the clouds.

Mom’s cold fingers fumble with the clasp at the nape of my neck.

The corner of my sketchbook peeks out from underneath a stack of haphazard papers—fake driving logs, worksheets that I’ll never finish.

As I pull away from a beige house on a beige block, the sounds of a house party recede into the distance.

“Why do you talk to me like that?” she asks.
And I hate myself.
When Dad tells her to calm down, like he always does, I kind of feel vindicated, but I also kind of resent it, because nobody asked him, and he doesn’t understand any of this, and it’s like this intrusion.

He spins the radio dial, in search of something in the static. A few snatches of words, chords, come through here and there, but every time he passes something and tries to go back, it’s gone.

“I know you were trying to help,” I say. “I think I was just really intimidated.”
“No, I was being overbearing. And I was intimidated by you. You obviously always do what you want, and you don’t care what people think and you don’t need my advice.”

My hand goes to the base of my throat, to the place that aches, where my mom’s necklace now rests, and I think about everything that I’ve been trying to tamp down.

“My wife has never died before. I’ve never been a single dad before. I don’t know the etiquette.”

Perspective is a concept in European art where the artist basically shows you how to view the painting. I learned this in art therapy. You think you’re just looking at what you want to look at, but the way the light falls and the length of the shadows and the placement of the subject are all telling you, Look at this. I want you to look at this part and only this part.

There’s the hand-painted mural splashed across the door of the community fridge, and the word gratis.