Where I Have Been
by Nikki Stinson
"I can't pick you up today, but someone is giving you a ride."
Raised by a single mom who was always gone, I was used to being the first kid dropped off, and the last picked up. When Donna couldn't make it, she asked another parent to drop me off at home with instructions for me to make dinner for us and finish my homework. The days I waited for her, I sat at the bus stop near my school, which offered some shelter and light to do my homework when it got dark.
My teacher drove by once and stopped.
"Where are you going, Mercedes?"
"Oh," I looked up from the textbook balanced on my lap, "just waiting for my mom."
"This late?"
"She'll be here soon," I reassured her. She nodded and drove off. Secretly I wished she would've offered to stay with me until my mom got there, but I would never admit that then.
That was the same year my mom dated the married dad of another girl who attended my school. I was in sixth grade, and she was in fifth.
None of the stay-at-home moms offered to take me home after that, saying Donna, the office assistant with her tight clothes and big blonde hair, was a homewrecker. So, my mom asked her boyfriend to take me home after school. I knew then that he was getting divorced because school kids talked about it. And sometime later, when I overheard my mom on the phone, she confirmed that she was the leading cause of said divorce.
I hesitated before getting into the souped-up silver pickup, and Willy looked down at me from the other side of the truck.
"Well, get in," he smiled, revealing a silver cap on his top left tooth, "I don't bite."
I studied the large man. Tattoos covered both arms and part of his neck, most of his face beneath a thick black beard and mustache, and eyes hidden behind sunglasses that mirrored everything around them.
From the corner of my eye, I saw his daughter, his then-to-be ex-wife, and a group of other mothers and girls, some from my class, huddled by the front office, whispering as they eyed us suspiciously. I hoped his daughter would come with us today so I wouldn't be alone with him, but she stayed with her mother.
I forced a smile and scrambled into the seat as tall as I was.
"You got it?" Willy laughed.
"Yes," I squeaked, embarrassed, and fastened my seatbelt.
Part of me was happy then because I wasn't allowed to sit in the front seat, and he had decent taste in music for a parent. He listened to the same radio stations as my classmates and even knew the words to popular songs. I fidgeted, tucking and untucking my short brown hair behind my ears. About halfway home, he grabbed a stack of CD cases and looked through them, slightly swerving. He inserted a disc and laid the case on the seat between us. The cover had a fingerprint, the number fifteen, and a silhouette of a naked woman in the corner. The base from the speakers vibrated my back as the song played.
Though I can't exactly remember them now, the lyrics seemed like an ordinary love ballad at first. But love turned to lust, and my chest tightened when the lead singer started describing dating a woman but beginning to want her young daughter.
The explicit lyrics made me freeze. My heart was pounding in my chest as Willy turned the music down; I thought because he realized it was inappropriate. But instead, he asked what I thought about it. He stopped smiling, not even moving as he watched me, and I hated that I couldn't see his eyes behind the sunglasses that only reflected my terrified expression back to me. My eyelashes brushed the ends of my bangs, and I said nothing as shame heated my face, and I shrunk into the door.
At a red light, I quickly glanced to see if he was still watching me, but Willy was looking the other way out the window. He had placed his huge hairy hand on the seat, his index finger stroking the woman's figure on the CD case. I wondered how he was able to do that without looking.
I was relieved when Willy asked but didn't insist on coming inside. When my mom got home, I told her what had happened.
"I'm too tired for this," she sighed and closed her eyes, "I'm sure he was just joking."
The next morning, she dropped me off at the empty school, and I stepped out of the car into the chilled gray air. My smokey exhale surrounded my face like the low clouds that kissed the mountains in the distance.
As I shut the door, Donna said, "I can't pick you up today, but I have someone giving you a ride."
I looked through my mother to the farmlands that rolled on until they met the pastel sky at the horizon. I felt its emptiness ready to envelop me, if not that day, then soon.
Nikki Stinson is an author and writing professor from Riverside, California, and "Where I Have Been" is her debut short story publication. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Drexel University (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) and a BA in English from California Baptist University (Riverside, California). Nikki currently lives in the Philadelphia suburbs with her husband and their three sons. You can find her on Instagram and Twitter under the handle @nikkistinson_ or visit her website, nstinson.com.