As I Die Lying by Scott Nicholson

now, with new eyes." Mister
Milktoast loved the sly little play on words. I was the only one in
on the joke.
    She glanced at me, still giddy from the rush
of danger. She slowed further and began looking around at the
scenery. We were twenty miles from town, far from the familiar
stomping grounds of our lives, but our lives were relentless
pursuers. We had briefly escaped, but had now been tracked down and
recaptured.
    Mister Milktoast gave back my body. Maybe he
figured I’d be needing it.
    "I'll live on a farm someday," she said.
    "You don't sound so enthusiastic about
it."
    "It's so peaceful out here in the
country."
    "There's no place for a negative girl. These
hands weren't made to hang laundry and shuck corn," I said,
reaching over and touching her hand, running my fingers over the
pad of her thumb, then holding.
    We rode in silence, looking out of our steel
and glass bubble like two goldfish, gaping at a world we could
never enter. Checkerboards of farms spread out in the distance and
the sun was beginning to set, throwing mystical orange light over
the land. Silos stood in silhouette, mute witnesses to years both
fat and lean. Barns sagged, spine-weary from the constant weight of
hay. Dots of brown cattle grazed with enthusiasm, unknowingly
speeding their fate. At farmhouse dinner tables, rough-handed men
were having plates of steaming biscuits passed to them. Through
this lonely country we rolled, silent observers of a land that had
no use for the likes of us.
    This land owned people. These flat brown
fields tied people down like scarecrows. More than seed was planted
here. People were planted, too, their roots gripping the soil with
feverish, bone-worn desperation. Generations had scratched in this
dirt, facing withering drought and suffocating snow with
equanimity, reaping their harvests of pain and misery. These were
not our people.
    I realized at that moment that I had to
leave. Graduation was only six weeks away. All I had here was
Mother and her bizarre self-torture, the punishment for my past sin
that had spilled onto her, indelibly staining both our lives. And,
briefly, I had Virginia. I looked over at her.
    "What are you doing after you graduate?" she
asked, as if she had read my mind.
    Her tongue had slipped back out and then in,
like a snake poking out of its den to check the weather. Her high
cheeks were pink with joy. Her ocean-blue eyes twinkled, mermaid's
eyes, as if she knew of secret underwater places. I fell into those
eyes, swam in their crisp waters, bathed myself clean.
    "I don't know yet. Maybe go to college, but
not right away. What about you?"
    "You mean after my racing career is over?"
She laughed and snapped on the radio, music by Kansas or Boston or
one of those other bands irrevocably tied to their geography.
    "I guess that will keep you busy, but I
suspect you're going to need more than speed to be happy."
    "Well, you have family here, don't you?"
    Family. Mother, the matron saint of bourbon.
Father, long dead, but not nearly long enough. Mister Milktoast,
who would never leave me. Little Hitler, who would never let me
leave him.
    "No," I said, unable to explain. "There's
nothing for me here."
    "Are you already giving up on us, before
we've even started?"
    "I didn't know there was an 'us.' I thought
you drove me out here in the country to scare me to death, then
leave my body in a ditch by the side of the road."
    "No, that's only the guys
I don't like."
    "Which is most of them?"
    "Check the ditches."
    "Okay, I'm not giving up," I said.
    "I've given up. I surrender."
    "To me?" I knew my romantic style was lame,
but given my role models, it could have been worse.
    "Well, to everything. You know back there,
when we going a hundred and ten? I do that at least twice a week.
And you know what?"
    The mirth had left her voice, and her words
were weak with melancholy. I wasn't sure if she was trying to shock
me or impress me.
    "What?"
    "Every single time, this whole spring, I've
wanted to turn the