It's been a week and I'm still on the road. Dean taught me to run credit card scams so money hasn't been an issue.
Dad calls every few hours. Sometimes I give him two minutes and sometimes I let it ring. I know they're on my trail, following me from town to town and showing a picture of me with the impala to anyone who'll stand still.
I turned north three days ago when I hit the Pacific Coast Highway. It's a beautiful thing.
I've only ever seen pictures of the ocean but they never do it justice. The ocean isn't a blank stretch of blue. It's a rolling, pitching, churning, living creature of one million shades of blue. It hits the sky in such a way that you have no clue where one ends and the other begins.
I spent an hour on a stretch of quiet beach. The impala parked in the sand and the sun burning down. I waded in the waves and lay on the sand. It was a beautiful moment and a beautiful day.
The sun made everything seem surreal and dreamy and I felt very tired. The air felt light and warm and exotic to my Midwestern lungs and memories of suburbia. I felt like Schrödinger's cat. I wasn't alive but I was more alive than I'd ever been. I wasn't dead and yet I felt like time had stopped and I wasn't moving through the world anymore. Like it was spinning and I wasn't a part of it anymore.
It's a strange feeling.
I reach Seattle on a Wednesday. I check in to a motel for a night because I need a bed instead of the impala's back seat. It's eleven o'clock so I flop down on the bed and fall asleep in my jeans and jacket. I'm too tired to even kick off my shoes.
Someone knocks on the door and I lift my head. 3:43am the little alarm clocks tells me in it's annoying red lines. Whoever it is knocks again and I groan.
"Coming, coming. Do you know what time it is?" I get up and stagger to the door. I fumble with the locks and wrench it open. Dad and Dean glare down at me. Dean's through the door before I can slam it shut and Sam is holding me and telling me never to do that again.
I throw Dad off but he forces me to sit on the edge of the bed as he crouches in front of me. I glare at my hands, one of which has a bandana tied around its palm. Dad pulls it off revealing an angry red cut that's only just started healing.
"What happened?"
"I sliced my hand on some glass that was in the road. I didn't want to blow a tire running over it." Dean nods proudly in the corner but Dad doesn't see.
Dad stands up and leans against the wall, running a hand through his long brown hair.
"Dean, go check on your car."
"What?"
"Now, please." Dad snaps, Dean slips out and gives me a "good luck" look before shutting the door. There's a moment of silence. Like the calm before the storm.
"Do you realize how terrified we were? Do realize how much you scared Lisa and Mary? Dean? Ben? Me? You were selfish, Harley. Stupid and selfish!" The words are just more straws, straws on a camel's back. I thought that running away would clean the slate but it didn't. Getting caught put everything where it was except worse. Straws, straws, straws. Heavier, heavier, heavier.
"I was selfish?" I ask quietly, still looking at my hands. "I was selfish? A bit like the pot calling the kettle black."
"What?"
"Every year, on my birthday, for fifteen years, you sat on the couch and felt sorry for yourself. You ignored me for fifteen years and I'm the selfish one. I didn't miss a single one of your birthdays. I never forgot anything. I worked so hard so that I could make you proud of me. But you didn't care."
"I cared, Harley."
"Stop lying!" I snap. "You never came to any of my soccer games. You never came to any of the award ceremonies or class plays. Dean, Lisa, Ben, and Mary came but you didn't. You barely even looked at me unless it was to get angry." Dad doesn't deny this. He just stands there.
"It's not your fault." He says. "I don't blame you for what happened to your mom and brother. I just look at you and I see her and I see him and I remember that they're dead."
"I hate you." I hiss. It isn't the first time I've said it, it won't be the last, but this time I mean it. I hate him. My mind, heart, soul, stomach, and guts hate him. Every bone in my body hates him. Every molecule in every cell of my body hates him with a burning passion. And he can feel the heat of my hatred burning his skin. He knows I really mean it and he looks hurt.
"Okay. We're going home. You can ride the first stretch in the impala with Dean. Get your stuff."
Fifteen minutes later, I'm sitting in the passenger's seat of the impala on my way out Seattle. I lean my forehead against the cool glass and shut my eyes.
"I'm proud of you, Harley." Dean says, I look at him. His eyes are fixed on the road. "You did something that he needed you to do. He needed to see that you aren't some little kid he can ignore all the time. You took care of yourself and Baby for a week. But you know what's out there. You know how dangerous it is to be out on your own."
"You and Dad were on your own once."
"But we had each other."
"Not all the time."
"But mostly. We hunted together and we stuck together. You can't go out on your own yet."
"It's not like I was hunting. I was running."
"Why?"
"You know why."
"But if it was just being ignored, you would have run away a long time ago. What was the straw that broke your back?" I'm quiet for a moment. No one knows I can get onto the roof much less hear conversations from up there.
"I heard you and Dad talking." Dean is quiet too. He doesn't ask how I heard. Maybe he assumes I was behind the door, maybe he already knows about the roof and the birthday ritual. But probably not.
"So… I gave you the idea…"
"No, it's always been in the back of my head. But then you said it and it seemed like such a good idea. It was a much better idea in theory than in reality, I guess." I lean back against the cold window and watch Dad's headlights reflected in the mirror.
