Gemma was asleep before we ever made it out of Arizona. Must have been nice not to have crippling anxiety coming back home to Tennessee. In her defense, she wasn’t coming home for her mama’s funeral either.
“You gonna get your lazy ass up? You’ve been asleep nearly six hours,” I asked, shoving Gemma in the arm to get her attention.
“You know it takes dedication to look this good,” she haphazardly replied, straightening her unruly auburn waves from where they stuck to the side of her face.
All the hours spent behind this wheel had started to take their toll about half a state back. I rested my chin on the steering wheel to keep my head from nodding when I asked, “Can you find us a good coffee place? If I don’t get caffeine in my system, and soon, I might turn into the mountain monster of Hamilton county.”
Gemma giggled at the reference to our childhood boogie man while the GPS on the dashboard displayed an ETA of just under two hours. My nerves told me I was going to need as much caffeine and sugar this place was willing to sell if I was going to have any chance of dealing with the shit back at mama’s.
After Gemma and I stopped to switch seats, I settled in and glanced out at the moon. Tennessee had the most beautiful skies. Amber and mahogany treescapes broke apart to a cloudless night sky full of stars. I wondered as a child if anyone was up there to hear the wishes I casted on backyard dandelions or the prayers I sent on birthdays, asking for something better for mama and me.
Time stalled and everything slowed to where my heartbeat bled out the Travis Barker drum solo that blared over the radio. Yet, it all happened so quickly.
The Jeep landed on its side, crunching like the metal of a Great Value tuna can. Once we stopped from sliding topside-down on Interstate-40, I accessed my situation, which just so happened to be upside down.
I couldn’t move my body, or worse yet, feel my legs. I was going to die here. Alone and helpless. In the middle of the Appalachian mountains alongside the backwoods wildlife and crazy mountain people. I laid my head back, closing my eyes, to be taken silently with the wind.
“Hannah.” Gemma nudged. “Hannah, are you okay?”
I returned to the nauseating cologne and black-dressed clergymen of St. Paul’s Refinery school for Girls, facing Gemma’s worried azure eyes as she looked me over.
“Huh?”
“Brother Emeril dismissed class early. You ready to head back to the dorm?” Gemma stood, preparing to leave when she stopped short, “what is that?”
I followed her finger to the notepad lain open on the pencil gouged tabletop. Thin, college-ruled paper had begun to fray under the constant back and forth of my ball tipped pen.
“Oh, it’s nothing. Just this story I've been working on.”