All-American Justice, or, Requiem for Yet Another American Dream
short story (10 min read)
She wakes up early under the cover of darkness. She tiptoes down the carpeted stairway, careful not to make a sound, and leaves a note for her father on the kitchen counter:
don’t worry dad. I’ll be back in a few days.
She’s lying, but she has to lie, to keep them both safe. She creeps into the cool air of the cement garage, where her dad’s beat-up self-driving car has been charging through the night. Her best friend Sara told her to put the old-school jerry can of synthetic fuel in the back-seat, just in case. Once inside the autonomous vehicle, she orders the robot to begin the journey. Her phone vibrates in her hand as the garage door hums upwards to reveal a bruised sky. The cold whir of the AC belies the reality of the deep south’s humid, insectan air.
The vehicle rolls down the driveway without making a sound. She checks her text messages from the safety of the passenger seat. Sara has been through this before, and she’s the only one who knows:
SARA: i love u. dont use the automated drive setting. you have to manually turn off GPS in the car settings. drive slow and safe. only use cash and keep your phone off until your north
She curses herself for being so naïve. It doesn’t matter that she’s only sixteen. She tells the car to stop and runs around the vehicle to the driver’s side; she can’t afford too many of these kinds of mistakes. She follows Sara’s instructions and calibrates the car’s manual-drive settings with a shaking finger on the blue LED screen. As she takes the wheel and drives away from the only home she’s ever known, she checks her rearview mirrors for a follow and remembers to double-check her blind spots before merging onto the interstate.
Soon enough, she’s speeding past the bowling alley where her mother used to play in a league. She decides to stop at a drive-in convenience store to honor her mother’s memory by stocking up on protein bars and energy drinks; during road trips her mother was always prepared. Back before all of the local businesses closed, she used to come to this strip mall with her dad while they waited for her mother’s treatment to finish. She remembers the vanilla ice cream parfaits they used to eat at TCBY … she never cared to learn what the acronym stood for, and as she picks up speed along the freeway in this peculiarly American darkness, she remembers sitting with her dad in those cheap white plastic booths, making up names beneath the fluorescent lighting: Ted’s Cow Breast Yogurt, This Country Belongs to Yuppies, and the very last time they came here, Turner Classic Bloated Youth.
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