Fireworks

Autofiction by Emily Burditt

I have never been someone who enjoys the impracticality of driving with the windows down. Frankly, it’s ridiculous. Unlike in the movies, where my hair would be glistening and graceful in the breeze, it is currently deep in my mouth and stuck in the glittery lip balm coating my lips. I would roll up the window, but the radio is turned up loud, and Charlie’s singing a country song I forgot I loved. “Hey, hey, what can I say?” He doesn’t have the most graceful voice, but he does have great taste in music, which is just another bullet point on the long list of reasons why I admire him.

I can’t say I love him because it’s only been recently that Charlie and I have struck an unspoken agreement on what we “are.” We are “friends who met in childhood who now occupy the liminal space between lovers and acquaintances.” Considering that now is one of the glorious times when Charlie and I are talking again, I don’t care about the lengthy and complicated definition of our “friendship.” We’re friends. It’s easy enough for me.

The car turns off from a concrete highway onto a partially paved gravel road. It reminds me of the windy country lane where his grandparents used to live, complete with a similarly jarring breakneck turn that makes me reach for the handle above my seat. Before his grandma died and before his grandpa had to sell the horse I first learned to ride on, Charlie and I traipsed around country roads like these, two homebodies forced outside for summer sunshine. I took to riding horses and driving four-wheelers far better than he did; he was a city kid whose dad shipped him off to the middle of nowhere each summer, and I was a girl who soaked up the outdoors like cold milk through a cereal straw. But being three years older than me and brimming with intelligence, Charlie was everything I wanted to be. It didn’t matter that he always took twenty minutes to mount his horse. If nine-year-old Emily could see this grown version of Charlie in my company, who now had stubble and wore hair gel and had learned to play guitar just like he said he would so long ago, she might have fallen over and died.

I’m shaken out of my nostalgia when we hit a divot in the road and my arm smacks into the car door. I’m thinking about asking Charlie if we can meet his mom someplace in town next time. There are just some roads you shouldn’t take, and the way Charlie’s Toyota rattles and jerks on the gravel path is giving me goosebumps and whiplash.

Soon enough, we see the large wooden scaffolds of his mom’s lakefront paradise-in-progress, the exposed rafters looking more like Noah’s Ark than a future home. His mom Karen stands in front of her trailer, arms outstretched. Her long gray hair has always made her look like a hippie, and I can’t wait to smell her Camel cigarettes when we embrace. I shut the door and lean against the hot car.

“Em,” she says, smiling and tilting her head reverently. “You look so grown.”

“Thank you, Kare.” I grab her around the shoulders and pull her into a smoky hug.

“Well, what are we waiting for? I have a full schedule of 4th of July fun planned for y’all!” Karen claps and gestures to a tiny golf cart. There’s a box of fireworks and a case of Miller Lite in the back. The two boxes together scream “Woohoo, America!”, and I smile at Karen’s enthusiasm.

As Karen and Charlie sit in the front seat of the cart, Charlie looks towards the back. “Mom, there’s no room for Emily.”

She smiles mischievously. “Well, it looks like you’ll have to be her seat then,” she says, tapping Charlie’s knee and eyeing me playfully.

Charlie frowns. “We don’t need fireworks this early, Mom. She can sit in the back.” He grabs the box by the flimsy cardboard handle and sets it on the ground with a smack.

Warning: Explosive.

I grab the armrest of the back booster seat, avoiding the embarrassment prickling at my skin. Charlie’s comment made the box of beers next to me surprisingly appealing, so I trace a finger down a can, leaving behind lines of condensation. As Karen puts the cart in reverse, I hear her mutter under the loud roar of the engine.

“God forbid I want grandchildren one day.”

***

“I mean seriously, what is his problem?” Karen gripes, stomping out a cigarette. I’m sitting with his mom on her future porch, the sun setting just over the canopy of the trees. Charlie hardly talked to me all day, and his mom was very observant of it.

I shrug at her and attempt a smile, choosing to stay silent and watch the fireworks pop and sizzle on the other side of the lake. Trying to explain my arrangement with Charlie will make me seem crazy (or worse, unsure). I’ve always accepted that our relationship never had to make sense to anyone besides me and him, but as I sit here inhaling Karen’s cigarette smoke, I see the cracks in my logic. If our relationship confuses Charlie’s own mother, then how can I continue to make any sense of it?

Charlie calls out to us that he’s ready to leave. Once I get in his car, he’ll drop me off at my parent’s house and he’ll be back on his way to college. Things will change. Summer will end. The other end of the phone will inevitably grow quiet, just like it has before. I stand up and stare at the sparkling red, white, and blue sky from his mom’s porch, not ready to say goodnight.

Karen looks at me, her eyes narrowed shrewdly. I feel transparent; she looks at me as if she could see the strings of thoughts bouncing around in my head. She pulls me into a tight hug. “Don’t cry, honey. He’ll wise up one day, and when he does, I hope he does it for you.”

*** 

There are roads in Calloway County I’ll never drive again. Not because they’re bumpy, or because they coat my car in a fine layer of dust, but because sometimes they make me see visions. If the time is right and the weather is perfect—muggy and warm and right before dusk—I imagine a little girl in the dried creek beds of the backcountry. She’s still wearing her riding boots and glasses obscure her wide, curious eyes. She’s behind the wheel of a muddy four-wheeler, and there’s a thin, pale boy in the passenger seat beside her. I see the way she looks at him: she thinks he hangs the moon, that there’s no one in the universe more worthy of her attention than him. I wish I could launch myself out of the car and scream at her to run.