Storymania - Going Home by Giroux

Going Home
Giroux

My eyes snap open. I rub them as sunlight pours into them. The clock reads 3:20. Just a few minutes of rest, I had told myself. More like two hours. I feel lucky no one has found me yet. I shift myself up in my seat using my elbows and look around. To my right: woodland with an inch or two of snow covering the ground, complete with ice covering the tree branches. The sun reflecting off of the snow gives it the look of a painting my friend Adam once painted when we were in our sophomore year. What a fantastic artist he was; he could look at anything for half of a second, look away from it, and paint an exact replication of it. I found him absolutely extraordinary. He is now on his way to Harvard to become a doctor, just like his parents have always wanted. To my left: Hudson Convenience. A man treads out of the front door. His stomach hangs over his pants and he has several patches missing from what looks like was once a great mass of hair. He carries a bag of snow salt pinned between his gloved hands and coated chest. He and I are equals now, excepting his obligation to a family. That is his. But we are both out here, fending for ourselves, using only what we have in our own pockets and minds.
For a brief moment I think I am in the middle of a lucid dream. I bite my arm. Interesting that it hurts, since I have always felt I would only have the courage to do this in some outlandish dream. I once had a dream I was doing this same thing. When I woke up in the same shit hole I fell asleep in, I was angrier than I had ever been in my life. But now I am here, and everything that has happened before this is gone. The slate is nearly wiped clean, except for that one little corner. That will be clean soon anyways.
I can hear Emily�s voice now even as I am days away from when I talked to her last. Go home and do something you love, then you will feel better. I can still see her smiling face as she waves, gets into her car, and drives off. So I took both her advice and mine. I went home, packed all of the essential things I needed, wrote a note to my family hoping it would explain in full what I wanted to say, and I left. My parents keep trying to call me. I shut off my phone about an hour ago and they haven�t called since. Not from what I can see anyways.
It�s not that I don�t love my parents. It�s not that my parents don�t love me either. Quite the contrary; they are terrific parents, just as I am a terrific son, so they say. I just can�t stand what they do to me. They treat me as if I am going to fulfill all of their life long goals that they had failed to accomplish. I am going to go to Yale with my 4.163 GPA, I am going to study to become a doctor, and I am going to live the rest of my life in New England, becoming a highly valued member of society. No exceptions, ifs, ands, or buts about it. That�s their dream anyways. My dreams of becoming a writer and an actor are absolutely absurd. And going to England is even more absurd.
So England is my current destination, where I will write and act. I have been planning to leave ever since my freshman year of high school, and now in the winter of my senior year, now that I have saved twenty one thousand dollars (two jobs at once without spending a penny of it, excepting the essentials, can really rake in the cash,) and now that I have finally turned eighteen, I feel no incentive to stay in New England. Because New England spells out one thing for me: eternal damnation.
There is so much talk these days about how much things have changed with respect to children. The only thing that has really changed is that instead of being told to sit down and shut up, complete with a slap on the head, they�re told to sit down and please be quiet with a pat on the head as if they�re little dogs. None of them have a voice. The primarily used excuse is that their brains are not fully developed, that their judgment is tainted. But I�ve seen children who make some adults look as though they have been hit in the head with a shovel. But even when that happens, it is excused with a simple �They�re just at that age.� From what people tell me, I am �just at that age.� Having dreams is �just at that age.�
Yet, I stray from the subject at hand. I shift the car into drive and pull out into the road. Tom Petty plays on the radio. Running Down a Dream. I have always been a sucker for music that may apply to events happening in my life, and this is a primo example. I become more thrilled to do what I am doing. I can feel my heart beating faster and my blood pulsating through me. Runnin� down a dream that never would come to me. Workin� on a mystery, goin� wherever it leads. I�m runnin� down a dream. I find myself singing along. England has never looked clearer. I look up and catch a glimpse of a sign that I pass by. Route 93. I�ll follow the highway until I reach the airport in Berlin, New Hampshire. There are airports in Manchester and Concord, which are both closer than Berlin, but for some reason if I go to Berlin it seems less likely that I will get caught. Going to Berlin is more of a hunch than anything, but at this point my hunch is all I see fit to act upon.
Tom Petty finishes his song, and Jim Croce takes his place. Like the pine trees lining the winding road, I�ve got a name, I�ve got a name. I look up and see a big green highway sign. It says Concord in big white letters with an arrow below it pointing to the right. I can remember driving up to Concord every weekend when my girlfriend lived up there. It was a royal pain in the ass, but it sure was fun. We said we loved each other, but every day I doubt that more and more. When a girl gets more entertainment out of shooting heroine than going out with you, there are some definite problems with that relationship. Like the North wind whistling down the sky, I�ve got a song, I�ve got a song. She was nothing special anyways.
I continue driving. I�m going eighty-five miles per hour, but I couldn�t care less. If I happen to get a ticket I�ll just pay it and be on my way, no skin off my nose. I slow down as the toll booth comes into sight. The woman standing in the booth gives me a toothless grin as I hand her my quarters. �Have a nice day,� she tells me. �You too,� I reply. All bullshit. If I died today she wouldn�t even care. The same would probably go vice versa. We say things to be polite, such as �good luck� and �I�m very sorry to hear that� and, my personal favorite, �no, I insist, I�ll pay you back for that.� But no one really means a word of any of these phrases. No one gives a damn if you do well on a test, and no one gives a damn that your family member died, unless they are another member of your family. And no one especially wants to pay anyone back for anything. It�s incredibly sad but inescapably true.
Again, I stray. Jim Croce is long gone, and commercials about cars and cell phone deals are making the car vibrate noisily. I turn down the volume as I continue to drive along. I look up and see another sign. Exit twenty-one, Belmont, New Hampshire. Belmont is probably my favorite place in America. My cousin Andrew, the best friend I have, lives in Belmont. He is the only one who has been with me for my whole life, through thick and thin. I told him before I left that I would write to him under the name Alicia Reynolds, so his parents would think he has a pen pal from England, when it is really me writing to him. He is the only one who supports any decision I make, including this little adventure. And that is what true friendship really boils down to: letting a person be who he or she feels they should be. Every one wears a certain mask for certain people at certain times. A businessman mask goes on when conducting business, a party mask goes on when one is with his �buddies,� and the lovey-dovey mask goes on when one is around the person whom they are infatuated with. But a true friend sees no problem in letting one take that mask off; to let one be who he or she really is. That�s what Andrew is to me; my personal mask burner.
I drive onward, past the Belmont exit. I have a slight reluctance to do so, and an urge to take the exit to visit Andrew. But it will be okay. We will write back and forth, and we will continue being the best of friends. The only thing that would come out of turning back is being caught, and I haven�t come all this way to be sent back to hell to rot.
On the passenger�s seat sits my passport and my UK working visa. They took a long time to retrieve, but it was easy; my parents rarely notice what I�m doing in my free time. They are lucky I am responsible, since I could potentially get away with some heavy stuff right under their noses. But I have too much respect for myself and for them to do that. Like I said, it�s not that I do not love them�I just could not take being coerced into doing something that I didn�t want to do. It may sound childish, but it is for the rest of my entire life, after all. I don�t want opportunities that I want to fulfill to pass me by.
I skim through my CD case as I drive onwards. Boy Kill Boy�s album catches my eye. I had asked for a Killers CD for Christmas one year, but the store my mother had visited was all out. The clerk said that Boy Kill Boy sounded very much like The Killers, so she bought me that instead. I didn�t like it at first, but it eventually grew on me. I put it in the CD player. The first song is Back Again. I turn it up unnecessarily loud, but I am not listening very much. I am too caught up in thought.
Death is not a very celebrated topic among people. Many would much rather talk about something fun, such as sex or drugs. But death is the most unavoidable event in every single person�s life, so why should we not talk about it? I always read stories about someone who was diagnosed with some terminal illness, and ended up living life to the fullest before dying. But, I can�t help but be somewhat depressed at those stories. What was stopping them from living their life before they knew they were about to die? Does one need to know the date of his or her death to truly begin living? Too many people die without even living to begin with, and it is mostly because they chose to wait to live, and then they found it was too late. I don�t want to die knowing that I never lived. I want to die knowing that I stood for what I believe in, regardless of the outcome.
That thought brings me to this final question: Does it matter, then, if I finish this trip? I would love to, but I unfortunately never saw the eighteen-wheeler skidding towards me while I was lost in thought. I look up, and I can see the driver�s face as he is uncontrollably sliding towards me. Fear is etched in every line of his face. He is screaming. I have no time to react as he slams into the passenger side of the car. I blow full force into the guard rail, hitting the top of it. I can hear the screeching and hissing of metal on metal as my car breaks through the guard rail. I catch a glimpse of what is below me as my car barrel rolls: water and rocks. But I fall to what will be my death in peace. I know what I am, I know my beliefs, and I know what is important in life. They say your entire life passes before your eyes before you die, and that is very true. As the millisecond movie of my life passes, I break the water�s surface, and fall into the black void.