Stonecrop Magazine

“You got a fast car,” she said, and I guess I must’ve been flattered because it wasn’t long before we were crossing the state line with the top down, singing along to Janis Joplin on the radio. We were both running from something. Mariah’s parents had given a thousand dollars to the church to send her on a mission she didn’t believe in, and insisted on calling her by her old name, something her grandfather had worn with distinction during the war. I had no such story; I was no butterfly emerging from my chrysalis. I’d fronted a couple of pounds of pot from my biker uncle, lost it, and ran out of excuses. When I saw the motorcycles loitering in the alley behind my dorm, I decided it was time to take a break from my studies.  

We were at a motel in Nevada when I saw us on the news. Neither one of us had been completely straight with the other; not the best way to start a relationship. The cash she’d used to book the room, buy dinner, and score some weed from the kid in the Arby’s parking lot—it’d come from the safe in her father’s office. Likewise, my fast car, the baby-blue Mercedes-Benz convertible, was—along with my mom and me—my stepdad’s midlife crisis. The Shell attendant where we’d met had placed us together, and suddenly two thefts became a story they could sell.  

“What are we going to do,” I asked when Mariah emerged from the shower. The cash was one thing, but I’d put down the plate number when we rented the room.  

“We run,” she said, and kissed me. Even fresh out of the shower, she tasted like cherry cola. “We drive fast, and we don’t look back.” 

  We slept for four hours and left before dawn, headed north to what we hoped was the friendlier of the borders. She drove and I googled places where crossing would be easier, ignoring hundreds of texts and missed calls.  

We made it two days before our luck ran out at a Denny’s in Central Washington. Some stockbroker recognized the car, not from the news, but from a classic car Facebook group my stepdad belonged to. While I fed Mariah pancakes, he slipped outside and called the cops.  

“We can still get out of this,” Mariah said when the squad cars arrived, sliding her purse across the table. There was a gun nestled there, next to her oversized sunglasses and the teddy bear I’d won for her at Circus Circus. I knew what she was thinking. Some kind of terribly romantic Bonnie and Clyde bullshit. That we’d escape arrest, one way or the other.  

“No,” I said, and took her hand in mine. I kissed her forehead and, as they moved in to separate us, I closed my eyes and prayed she could see picket fences, dinner parties, and all the bright and pretty things I would give her once we were free.