“For real?” Jovie asks, her eyes wide as we sit in the school’s empty parking lot, the dim glow of the dashboard lights painting her face in soft shadows. She clutches her school bag on her lap, her favorite one with frayed straps and a doodle of a sunflower she’d drawn in Sharpie last summer. “Like for real, for real?”
She’s skeptical as hell, but she wouldn’t be my kid if she wasn’t.
I’ve tried to protect Jovie from the walking liar that is my mother, but she’s unfortunately faced a lot of disappointments during her short life, and it’s hard for both of us to see the light at the end of what always seems like a very long, very dark tunnel.
I swallow tightly and try to force a smile.
“For real,” I say, and my shoulders relax as if even I needed to hear the words out loud. “We’re done with this place. Done with the bull—” My throat closes up as the words tangle in a knot of anger and exhaustion. “We’re starting over, kid. Just you and me. No more looking over our shoulders. No more waiting for things to change.”
All we have is a bag with a few clean clothes and a few hundred dollars that will hopefully pay for enough gas and food to get us across the country.
“So we’re going to Atlantic City?” Jovie asks, her voice soft, as if saying it too loud might shatter the fragile dream.
“Yup,” I confirm, finally feeling a smile on my face.
“Right now?”
“Aunt Scarlett’s waiting for us,” I tell her, though the truth is, I haven’t called Scarlett yet to confirm. But I can already see the elation on her face. “It’s gonna be better there, I promise.”
Jovie bites her lip, glancing out the window, and for a second, I’m worried she’s about to tell me she doesn’t want to go. That she’ll miss her school and her friends—this tiny corner of her world that has thankfully always been pretty stable compared to the chaos she deals with at home.
But then she looks back at me and nods, her eyes filling with a quiet determination that makes my chest burst with pride.
“Okay.” She starts tugging at her long blonde hair, pulling it back into a ponytail and wrapping a holder around it. Once it’s securely in business mode, she nods again. “Let’s go.”
A relieved laugh bursts from inside me, and I throw the car into drive, pulling out of the parking lot and taking the shortest route toward the highway before I can change my mind.
The silence in the car is thick, and it’s barely ten minutes before Jovie finally shares what’s on her mind.
“Did you and Nan have a fight?” she asks, scrunching her nose. “She was drunk, right?”
“Jo…”
She scoffs loudly, shaking her head. “Did she fall over this time?”
“It doesn’t matter now,” I answer, my tone a little sterner, indicating the end of this conversation. “You don’t need to worry about any of that.”
It’s always been hard for me to decide where the line is between openness and honesty, and protecting Jovie from problems she doesn’t need to be making her own.
I know I’m not perfect.
But I have no regrets about the relationship her and I have built.
“I guess we better call Aunt Scarlett, right?” I tell Jovie, reaching for my phone that sat on the passenger's seat and holding it over my shoulder. “You want to be the one to give her the news?”
“Yes!” Jovie grins, eagerly taking my phone and hitting call on Scar’s number—like she’s done a million times. Scarlett and I grew up together, the both of us coming from shitty homes with shitty parents—hers being a controlling ex-military father who was trained in torture techniques, and believed in using them as punishments.
We were both fucked up.
And it just so happens that trauma builds strong bonds, so while our lives took different roads, we still spoke weekly and visited when possible.
My thoughts are still running wild as Jovie dials Scarlett’s number, but with every mile we put between us and my mother, I’m finding it a little easier to breathe.
Jovie strums her fingers on the seat beside her as she waits impatiently, the dial tone echoing in the car. “Hey! You’re calling late?—”
“Aunt Scarlett! We’re coming to Atlantic City!”
There’s silence for a few seconds, and I almost burst out laughing, practically able to see my best friend’s mind ticking over, processing the little information she’s been given, and attempting not to jump to conclusions.
