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I LOVE YOU TRACKSTAR
The words are bold, violet and gold against the streaked white background of an overturned semi trailer on the south side of the interstate, a souvenir of someone’s very bad day in bygone years.
“That thing’s been there since before you were born,” Dad remarks, following my gaze. “The graffiti is new, though. Watch your following distance, Elliot.”
“Yeah, sorry.” I grip the steering wheel a little more tightly and tear my eyes from the graffiti and back to the road. We are cruising east toward Phoenix in Dad’s SUV, going a little slower than everyone else because I still don’t feel quite comfortable being in charge of a three-thousand pound missile.
“No worries. Just keep scanning, assume everyone else is three times dumber than average and they all want to kill you.” He grins at me reassuringly. I like Dad when Mom isn’t around, which is weird to say but it’s true. He’s kind of goofy and relaxed, which is a welcome change. I love Mom, but she can be wound a little tight sometimes, which is why I asked Dad to drive me to my group therapy session this evening.
Tha-thump. Tha-thump. Tha-thump.
The perils of traffic are not what has my heart pumping incessantly in my ears. I wonder what Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin felt like as they descended in their lunar module toward the untouched surface of the moon. Was it this? Terror of the unknown environment swirling below the haze of the landing thrusters? Or was it hope for the future, excitement and thrill at the prospect of adventure?
Group therapy doesn’t feel like much of an adventure. So, I’m left with the terror, and the rhythmic thumping continues without pause.
“So, are you excited for school to start next week? Senior year!” Dad drums his fingers rhythmically on his armrest in a way that I find very annoying. Between that and his constant fiddling with the air controls, he makes for a very distracting passenger and I can see why Mom refuses to drive with him.
“It’s school,” I say, offering the most excitement I can muster on the topic. “I’ll be more excited when it’s over.”
“You say that, but that’s because you’ve never had the privilege of attending one of my classes before,” he says with a wry smile. “Enlightenment-era European history is both fascinating and, frankly, absolutely thrilling.”
“If you say so,” I offer unenthusiastically. My lack of zeal doesn’t seem to deter him.
“Revolutions, Elliot. They shaped the world we live in today.” He is gnarly giddy, the way he always gets when he talks about anything that happened over a hundred years ago. “Peletier. Garibaldi. Bismarck. Arguably, some of the greatest human minds walked the earth during that time.”
“ Galle. Laplace. Herschel. Well, all four Herschels, I guess.”
“Astronomers, I’m guessing?”
“Yeah. Eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.” I can tell Dad is somewhat impressed with this knowledge. “There’s a bunch more, but these ones were pretty big. Especially the Herschels; Dad, Mom, and son, daughter, all astronomers. Sir William Herschel discovered Uranus.”
“I thought that was Galileo?”
I can barely suppress a snort. “No way, telescopes had just been invented. Until Herschel, everyone thought Saturn was the last planet in the solar system for, like, almost three thousand years.”
“Wow,” Dad chuckles, scratching his head. “You’d think I’d know that. I had no clue.”
“Yeah, well, you’ve got to worry about sixty kids remembering how many wives King Geroge the Tenth had.”
“King Henry the Eighth,” He corrects me, a little sternly. “Divorced, beheaded, died; divorced, beheaded, survived.”
“Is that something I’m going to need to know this year?” A yellow sports car blasts by us on the right and I grip the steering wheel tighter; I know Dad can sense my nervousness.
“Not really,” He sighs, gazing back out the window. “Henry the Eighth died in 1547, a good hundred years before the Enlightenment had truly started. We’ll brush up on the Renaissance for about a week at the beginning of the year, but it’s not nearly enough time to even scratch the surface. I’d trade every planning period of my career for a chance to teach a year-long prep on the Renaissance, believe me.” He smiles wistfully.
“Dad?”
“Hmm?” He starts drumming his fingers on the armrest again. Emerald patches have erupted from the desert on our right, thirsty crops looking horribly out of place between dusty patches of sand and rocks as they water all day from deep beneath the ground. I glance up at the little temperature display on the dashboard; it reads one hundred and two degrees. It's a wonder they even try to grow anything out here. In the distance, the mountains that surround the city have been slowly growing, looming like jagged knives on the horizon.
“Why do you teach at Sunview?” I take my eyes off the road long enough to see that he appears to be deep in thought, staring sightlessly out across the checkered landscape.
“What do you mean?” He seems surprised.
“You’re… obsessed with history. You know pretty much everything that happened in the last five hundred years and why.” I struggle to find the words to properly convey what I’m thinking. “Why not college? Why not teach kids that care as much as you do?”
“I taught at the University for a few semesters, oh, twenty years ago,” He answers after a short pause. “Back when we lived in the city, after your mom and I finished our post-graduate degrees.”
“Why’d you leave?”
Dad purses his lips and I can tell he’s searching for exactly the right words. “It just wasn’t right for us, I guess. Too busy. Too loud. Too expensive,” He adds with a chuckle. “Two broke kids with six years of college debt, mediocre salaries and a one-bedroom apartment north of downtown that ate our money like a ravenous wolf. No, we had to go. So we tossed a dart at a map and ended up in Sunview - at least the houses were cheap.”
“Would you go back?”
“To the city? Never.” Dad shakes his head and peers at the smudgy gray stain rising out of the desert in front of us.
“I meant to the University,” I reply.
“Oh, maybe someday. I don’t know, there’s something… rewarding about teaching high school. It’s less about how much knowledge you can cram into your heads and more about what kind of wisdom you can impart.” He nods to himself, as if satisfied with his own answer. “Plus, high school kids are a little more erratic but far less smug. Less jaded. More hopeful”
“I beg to differ,” I mutter, thinking of most of my classmates that I’d happily avoid if possible.
“You shouldn’t try to be an exception,” Dad sighs, and I can feel his surveying gaze on my cheek but I avoid his returning his look. “Maybe this whole group therapy thing will help you to connect to some people your own age.”
“I’ve got Sean,” I retort defensively.
“Sean is a good kid, but he’s got his hands full. If he makes it through senior year without getting suspended for a fight or some ridiculous revenge prank, I’ll be shocked.”
“Is this you trying to tell me he’s a bad influence or something?”
Dad laughs but it doesn't make me feel any more at ease. “No, not at all. But, the way he talks, he’ll be hightailing it out of Sunview the minute you boys graduate, probably destined for some Ivy League school on the other side of the county, God knows he’s more than smart enough.” He pauses and his tone becomes more reserved. “I just don’t want you to feel like you’re getting left behind.”
“I won’t,” I counter through gritted teeth. “I’ll be up at Mesa Grande categorizing new nebulae or looking at black holes, and he’ll do… whatever. He’ll come back in the summer, and things will be the same.”
My words float in the air and suddenly the car seems far too small, like the walls are squeezing in on me. It’s always the same with Mom and Dad: everything seems normal, and then suddenly they’re fretting over me like a newborn fawn. It’s stifling. Suffocating. Like being sucked out of an airlock and having the breath sucked from my lungs by the cold, uncaring vacuum of space.
Tha-thump. Tha-thump. Tha-thump.
I hope you’re right, Elliot,” Dad says finally. We sit in silence for a little while. “Our exit is in two miles,” He says finally, looking down at his phone over the top of his glasses. “It’ll be a right, you can start getting over whenever you want, now.”
“One-thirty-one,” I confirm, and start checking my right mirror like my life depends on it, which it very well could. When Dad offered to let me drive I immediately looked up the Lutheran Church where Dr. Rodruiguez held his group therapy sessions. It was in the southwestern suburbs rather than Phoenix itself, one of those places where houses and yoga studios and frozen yogurt places sprout like artificial turf on the threshold of identical buildings that somehow accidentally become a city.
It isn’t just my compulsive need for planning; I need to make sure we wouldn’t be passing anywhere near the place. Sixth Avenue where it crosses I-10. I’ve never been back, but I can see it in my mind’s eye in far more detail than I care for. The light, the way it blinded me after emerging from the Deck Tunnel. The palm trees. The endless concrete.
Nine-point-eight-zero-seven meters per second squared.
Blue coat.
Red sneakers.
That horrible, horrible sound.
“Your blinker is still on, Elliot; you going to get over?” Dad’s voice drifts into my consciousness and reels me back into the car. The air conditioning is running full blast but the sweat trickles down my back. Dad is craning his neck over his shoulder, assessing my blindspot. “No car for a hundred yards, go for it.”
I nod and ease the car into the right lane just as we pass the sign that warns us exit one-thirty-one is in a mile. I want to reach down and grab the plastic water bottle in the cupholder, but I’m far more concerned about exiting the interstate to worry about the stifling, aching dryness that has settled in my throat.
“It’s another right onto Avondale, after the exit.” Dad has his phone up again but gives me a sidelong glance to assess my condition. “You alright, son?”
“I’m fine,” I manage to grind out through clenched teeth. “Just concentrating.”
“Good.” Dad nods in satisfaction. “Never let your guard down around these lunatics.” The irony of calling everyone else a lunatic while accompanying me to group therapy is not lost on me, but I keep that observation to myself as we depart the interstate and I maneuver the SUV onto Avondale so we can be welcomed by a sea of condo buildings that all look like identical LEGO sets.
“I'll stay on this for a few miles, right?” I already know the answer: three-point-one miles and then we turn left, past an elementary school and then another right and we are there.
“Correct.” Dad needs to feel like he’s navigating or he’ll just backseat drive. He glances up from his phone long enough to notice a strip-mall coming up on our left. “Hey, frozen yogurt! Want to get some after your session?”
“Sure, Dad.” Based on the way my stomach feels right now, I’m pretty sure I’ll be in no mood for “fro-yo” after I’ve been dogpiled in group therapy. Truth be told, I have absolutely no idea what goes on in group therapy, but the odds are nearly infinite-to-one that I’m not going to like it.
We cruise down Avondale in relative silence, with Dad making quips about how nice it is every three blocks. Compared to Sunview, it might as well be some oil-rich desert oasis; yet, somehow, I hate this place far more than our forgotten excuse for a truck stop. At least Sunview has character; these suburbs look like what happens when you buy neighborhoods at those Swedish furniture outlets.
“I think that’s it.” Dad points to a squat, doughy-looking adobe building with a large stained glass window facing the avenue. I ease into the turn lane and squeeze into the parking lot when a gap appears in oncoming traffic. To say that this church looks out-of-place in this plastic world would be a significant understatement; the cracked, pinkish-brown walls of the place seem older than the rest of everything by several orders of magnitude. It sits on a large lot, isolated from everything around it like an ugly toad on a gravel lilypad. There’s no mistaking the large wooden cross hanging above a wooden door tucked behind a low concrete wall on the right side of the stained glass, or the small group of teenagers milling around said wooden door, several of them with lit cigarettes in hand.
“Well, I suppose this is it, then.” Dad eyes the group of kids somewhat disapprovingly, which I suppose is dually his job as a teacher and as a father. He glances at his watch as we unbuckle our seatbelts. My hand lingers on the door latch and I wonder what would happen if I backed out now. “See you in an hour?”
Cosmic Village, I remind myself for the hundredth time. “One hour,” I nod, hoping that it doesn’t run long. The less time I spend here--in a church, no less--the better.
“I’m going to go do some lesson plans, I saw a coffee shop on the avenue a few minutes back,” he says, crossing to my side and giving me a sort of one-armed squeeze that’s meant to be encouraging. I can feel the other kids’ eyes on me and I feel some warmth rise in my cheeks. “Elliot, make sure you engage. This is supposed to help, remember that.” He looks down at me and adjusts his glasses on his nose.
“I will, I will. Thanks for letting me drive,” I add in a mumble, eyes raking the front of the building once more. I feel like I’m casing the joint, looking for the exits.
“Anytime, son. See you in an hour.” Dad gives me one last nod before closing the door and waving one last time before pulling out of the dirt parking lot.
I shove my hands in my pockets and shuffle toward the curious stares and acrid smell of tobacco wafting off my new compatriots, wishing above all else that my first group therapy session is going to involve as little of my participation as possible.
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