The gas station just inside the Montana border was so typical of what she’d imagined. Hazy fluorescent lighting on the inside, just enough to make it appear safe, the white woman cashier’s nod as Shannon stepped into the store suggesting boredom, not wariness. But the vastness outside suggested the exact opposite, mountains surrounding nothingness surrounding her 2005 Mazda Protégé that she was never sure would make it this far, that she still wasn’t sure could start up in the few seconds she’d need should the cashier pull a gun or something. Was that a Montana stereotype? Guns abound?
Shannon shook her head. She’d been standing in front of the ice cream case for several seconds, and now she was afraid the cashier might find her suspicious, considering it was barely forty degrees out, and what if she was casing the joint to pull off the biggest ice cream heist that eastern Montana had ever seen? She chanced a glance toward the counter, but the cashier was still there, long dyed blonde hair covering her eyes as she paged through a magazine.
Energy drinks. That’s what Shannon had come in for. She’d been driving for nine hours already, but wasn’t tired enough to quit yet, opting to soldier on with a newly-full tank of gas and some caffeine in her veins. Besides, if she could hold on until late morning, she could find a motel room and stay in there all day and all night if she wanted.
As she headed toward the counter, a tall can in each hand, Shannon passed the ice cream case once more and peered inside. Of course there’d be malt cups in there. They were Drew’s favorite, after all; why wouldn’t middle-of-nowhere Montana be the first place she thought of him since she left that afternoon?
“Just those?” the cashier asked, eyeing Shannon for the first time.
Shannon nodded, handing her a ten and keeping her hand out for her change. She gave the cashier a final smile before grabbing her items, which seemed to take the cashier by surprise. Considering where they were, maybe the only people that ever came through were truck drivers or road trippers. Less so girls leaving everything behind. Shannon wondered if the cashier could tell which group she was part of.
She settled back into the front seat of the Mazda and put the energy drinks on the seat, then peeled back the paper cover on the malt cup. She wasn’t ready to let go of everything just yet.
#
There hadn’t been a fight, exactly. There didn’t need to be one. The two had simply grown apart, let it fester for a couple of years, and then Shannon had finally put her foot down.
Drew had acted surprised when she announced that she was leaving, but he didn’t try to stop her. For two days he could have, as Shannon got all her stuff together, packed up all her clothes and valuables in the car that was blessedly still in her name only. They’d consolidated a lot of their belongings in the five years they’d been together, Drew and Shannon, Shannon and Drew, but the big things, the bank accounts, the cars, the insurance, their legal selves, had stayed intact.
She left the television behind and the bed sheets, even the pillows, things that could be easily replaced wherever she got to wherever she was going. It barely felt like moving, maybe instead a long vacation that she’d never come back from. At the outset, anyway, that’s what it felt like. Shannon didn’t know where she’d be in a few weeks.
There hadn’t been a goodbye, either. There didn’t need to be one. It was like they’d said their goodbyes long ago, wordlessly yet contentedly, winding the relationship down and continuing to live apart but together, together but apart, stretching the goodbye to its natural conclusion.
The signs blurred past Shannon’s vision as she headed down the highway: Ashland, Billings, Big Timber. Blurred became bleared became the Mazda pulling into a Motel 6 just as the sun began to reflect off the rearview mirror into her eyes.
Shannon was almost surprised to still be surrounded by so much nothing. She was sure she’d hit the main highway by now, somewhere that would eventually show mileage markers for Boise, maybe even Seattle, though her western geography was a little rusty. Was she still heading west?
She had half a mind to ask the person at the front desk, in a small room nestled into the outdoor veranda, but he was a he, and he looked even more unfriendly than the gas station cashier, his face deeply wrinkled not from age, but from years of smoking, Shannon suspected, if the couple of full ashtrays just outside the lobby on the concrete entryway were any indication.
“Fill this out,” the man gruffed before she could get out a greeting. “Cash only.” He tapped a sign in front of him with those last words. No eye contact.
She and Drew had talked about marriage exactly once, about a year in, having just finished their junior year of college. “Maybe next year,” they’d said, “just to not freak out our parents right away,” and so nothing had happened, and then nothing did happen. But Shannon had taken to writing her name with Drew’s last name anyway, and almost did again here, crossing out the “M” in favor of Reyes, her father’s name that she’d once wanted nothing more than to abandon by any means. Now, almost any means.
The man eyed the form once Shannon handed it over with three twenty-dollar bills. He chanced a glance up at her, about to ask about her last name, she was sure, trying to extract brown-ness from her mostly white features, was unsatisfied, then handed her a key and her change.
“Room 107,” he said, pointing lazily to his left. “Checkout is at noon.”
#
Shannon didn’t need to feel bad that she’d made a fake Facebook account, because her lingering fear was confirmed as soon as Mandy Laredo accepted her friend request and she saw Drew in her most recent photo, sitting a little too close to her on a couch that Shannon had never seen before. She and Drew had never bought furniture of their own, first of all, plus there was a lot of natural light in the room where the two sat, something hard to come by in their basement apartment.
Who took those photos, Shannon would wonder, who took those candid photos and gave them to Mandy to upload to her own page? And maybe it was a way for Mandy to absolve herself of the guilt, or maybe Mandy didn’t know that Drew wasn’t single, or Drew didn’t know that he was in a relationship anymore, especially as Mandy’s belly grew over the autumn and “Baby Miller” became a mainstay in her Facebook statuses.
Drew wasn’t on Facebook, but for all the fantasizing that Shannon had done of becoming Shannon Miller since the beginning, this was the nail in the coffin, the end of the line coming in the form of a December 20 post of Mandy in a hospital bed, Drew lying by her side, a newborn between them.
“So cute!” commented Shannon. “Cute man, too!”
“Thanks, Jaycee!” replied Mandy. “They’re my entire world!”
And so Mandy’s world expanded as Shannon’s narrowed, shameful yet shameless, angry yet complacent, her own words to Drew the first time they slept together, I don’t want kids, not ever, so wear a rubber, replaying in her head as she placed her hand on her own midsection, willing something to appear there for the first time, and sighing in relief when nothing did.
#
“Bozeman,” Shannon repeated.
“It’s a place, yes,” the convenience store girl snapped. “What do you need?”
So, where am I? was a stupid question, admittedly. Shannon had never been “big city”-ed in her life, but coming from Omaha, which had to be the biggest city around for a long time, the girl must have picked up on something. Maybe it was because Bozeman looked just as it sounded: weird, kind of middle-of-nowhere, drab.
She handed over the coffee and chips. No malt cup today.
“Staying here awhile?”
A snap. “Maybe.”
“Checking out Montana State?”
A flash. “Maybe.”
“My boyfriend gives tours,” she said. “Maybe you’ll meet him. Sam.”
A jolt. “Maybe.”
Boyfriends ruin everything, boyfriends ruin everything, boyfriends ruin everything. Shannon wanted to shake this girl, who was already in the escaping place, who had nowhere else to go. Where would she go when she and Sam grew apart?
“Seattle.”
“What?”
“You should head there. Not much here once you graduate.”
“Yeah?”
“I’ve seen people like you. Much better suited to Seattle.”
“Why?”
“I mean, are you ready to settle down? At this very moment?”
“I guess not.”
“Well, I’ll see you when you are. Lord knows I’ll still be here.”
“Why?”
The girl smiled. “I’ve got nothing to run away from.”
#
Shannon downed her coffee and ate the entire bag of chips during the drive toward Montana State, or maybe while on campus too, it was so sprawling it was hard to tell where it began. The concentration of students grew as the buildings did, transforming from stately pinkish-brown brick buildings, almost uncomfortably tall compared to the rest of the city, to more typically modern architecture. Like Omaha, but not. Omaha had Drew. Montana — Bozeman — didn’t. That was all she needed.
But then, lots of places didn’t have Drew. Anywhere Shannon drove past didn’t have Drew. No Drew, no Mandy, no baby. Drew and Mandy’s baby. Shannon wondered if the convenience store girl and Sam had a baby, if that’s why she was so secure in their relationship.
Or maybe she envied Shannon, when really, there was nothing to envy. It’s not the mindset, it’s the distance. All she needed was distance.
Nine hundred seventy-nine miles became more infinite as each mile was tacked on, another mile that Drew would never traverse, another mile that Shannon took without him, not just without him, but without him knowing. Freedom.
The signs blurred past Shannon’s vision as she headed down the highway: Butte, Missoula, Cœur d’Alene. Blurred became clear as the Mazda raced down the interstate toward Seattle. Someday she’d be back in Montana. Today, she wanted to trust a stranger. Try fitting in somewhere. Then, someday, she’d start over in a place that, for now, all too much reminded her of what she’d left behind.