She coasts through deserted streets. The dashboard is cracked, greasy, familiar. Dad’s old Buick, the one they drove up to Medicine Lake to go fishing at every opportunity; especially towards the end, when the chemo was failing. This car is all she has left of him.
Now, it reminds her of Shawn. Shawn, with the broad shoulders and glacier-blue eyes. Shawn, offering his jacket as they stumbled back to her car that night. A little rough, but still kinda cute as he pulled her panties off in the back seat. She didn’t remember the rest but, showering the next morning, she discovered too many bruises. And something else. A grating deep in her bones. A sick, relentless twisting in her guts that she could only silence by reaching down her throat and purging, loudly, desperately, in the gas station bathroom behind the school. Now, being in this car makes her skin crawl.
She’s in the rough part of town. Streetlights are few; working ones are far between. She is almost there, at her cousin’s place. Her cousin, who buys booze for everyone in high school; who can get you any drugs you want; who works nights and doesn’t ask questions.
She rounds the corner, and there it is: Monroe’s Scrapyard. The biggest hydraulic compactor in the Twin Cities area. She revs the engine until she can no longer hear the muffled screams coming from the trunk.
Breakups are never easy. She drives through the gate.