Trapped in Forever

5 ~ The Perfect Song

The hula girl on the dashboard danced, her little hips swaying from side to side, looking almost as if she were strumming the ukulele in her tan, little fingers, as I drove forward on the dusty, bumpy road. Girls on bicycles, flaunting off their bare legs in jean shorts, hair flying behind them as they pedaled onward, with vintage sunglasses placed perfectly on the bridge of their nose or above their hairline, were on either side of the road. It was only late March, but already, I could see the summer clothing and gear breaking out early this year.

The sun hung over my window, rays of bright light sparking out at me every now and then when I'd make a turn. While I stopped at a light by a cul-de-sac, I glanced at little toddlers sliding down plastic, bright yellow slides with red stairs, grinning, and then, when the ride was done, jumping up and running back over to the stairs, gripping the sides, and going again. I got a familiar pang when I got a flash of middle school girls, sitting on the steps to a front porch, drinking out of Coke cans, with a dog at their feet as they downed Coke and Sour Patches Kids.

As the orange light flicked off and the red traffic light above it lit up, I turned away, pressing my foot down on the brake pedal. Just remember, I thought to myself as I glanced up at the traffic light, waiting for it to turn and feeling like I could hear every swallow and gulp those girls did with their Cokes and candies, you're just getting takeout. It doesn't have to be difficult.

Mikayla, as my mother put it, was under strict jurisdiction, practically stabbing out the word as she clutched the whites from the dryer, wrinkling the corners of undershirts and dropping socks on the tiled floor beside her bare, pedicured feet. It didn't matter that Mikayla was almost twenty years old as my mother put it, "If she lives here, in our house, if we say she's grounded, she's grounded."

I could sense the loophole in that punishment but I wasn't sure if Mikayla could. Instead, she sulked around on couches or in chairs, slouching so far down that her legs were almost sprawled out on the ground, arms crossed over her chest, a sullen expression on her face as Dad, or even Mom, tried to engage her in something else beside her sulking.

When the light finally switched from red to green, I pressed my foot back down on the gas pedal and the cul-de-sac eventually passed, along with the middle school girls and Sour Patch Kids. The scenery changed from skeleton trees, budding flowers, play sets on front lawns and lazy dogs on porches to a seeming endless dead corn field, stalks brown and crunched, broke into pieces on the dusty ground.

Abandoned small barns, doors slanting off their hinges and windows cracked, the thin white lines spreading out to the corners of the windows, some of them even missing a couple of inches of glass in the center. The wood was darkening to a grayish color at the bottom but faded farther up the planks. On Halloween, dozens of teenagers would drive out in the dark and break off pieces of the barn since, apparently, whatever ghost haunting that particular barn would kill them on sight by stealing their breath. It was an adrenaline kind of thing, Mikayla told me once. I never knew why, though, because every person that tried never died.

In my mind, I went over the orders Mom gave me again. Two Home-Style burgers, one without pickles, and the other with extra mustard, one garden salad with Thousand Island dressing, and a ham and cheese sandwich with toasted bread and French fries. It was a mantra, playing over and over again in my head the closer I got to Mo's.

"It's an important job, you know," Dad told me, smiling, after Mom explained to me what to order as she sat at the table, going over the garden section of a J.C. Penney catalog. "It takes a genius to remember everything to order."

What this really meant was that because Mikayla was grounded, none of them could leave to get dinner themselves. Mom had to be there to make sure Dad didn't turn into a softie and loosen the reins, and he needed to be there to make sure she didn't tighten them. So that left me.