Janna Tierney
engine still on. Something held them back. The mother’s hand was on
the key in the ignition. The parking brake was set. She wasn’t moving.
“Mom, look! What’s that?”
A half-dozen suspicious-looking young gentlemen in oversized
t-shirts and drooping pants were running between the parked cars,
shouting at each other, hitting the cars with their fists as they passed.
It could have been thunder Abby heard when a loud bang resounded
across the slick pavement.
Every fear, every imagined threat materialized in her mother’s mind.
Not my child—not my baby. Never. Never.
“Abby, we’re going home. I’ll text your father to pick up the boys.”
Little Abby sat in silence. She knew better than to talk. Her mother
was visibly disturbed—not scared, parents are never scared.
As they drove across a pothole, the van jolted and the overhead television clicked on. The scene from earlier progressed where it left off: the
children descended from the clouds above a tiny island, to be instantly
confronted by screaming pirates and cannonballs and homicidal pixies.
The mother still feared them: but she dreaded the boys in the parking
lot even more—maybe that was their point. A perfect distraction from
the real world outside the six walls of the eight-seater van.
The rain stopped. Humid air stood still in the darkness, illuminated
occasionally by passing vehicles and solitary streetlights. The van’s twin
headlights gazed into the thick blackness ahead as the vehicle sped
further and further away from the hick town that was just big enough
for a Target. Swerving along lightless, forested mountain roads, further
and further, the van flew into the night, fleeing the dangers behind
and fearing the darkness ahead. And like the kiddie movie playing just
behind the mother’s ear, the darkness was comforting. It didn’t make
sense, but it was good.
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