Free Story Girl by Katherine Carlson

metaphor.”
    “For?”
    “Escape.”
    “From what?” he asked.
    “I’m still trying to figure that out. I thought it was escape from the known. Escape from conditioning, escape from the well-laid path – but now I’m really not so sure. Maybe it’s really about an escape from any sort of ambition.”
    He looked at me with his usual sad intensity. His blue eyes were dancing with all the light they’d caught from the window.
    “Actually, that’s not true,” I reconsidered. “I do know what I mean. Escape from anything that would deny
freedom
– even the freedom to be stuck. Even the freedom to be an absolute nothing.”
    He smiled at me like I might be a genius, and I was amazed that we hadn’t kissed yet.
    “Yes,” he said. “You should continue with it.”
    “It’s too hard,” I said, surprised that I could so readily admit the truth about such a painful subject. “I let the gap get too big. And besides, what does the freedom to be a nothing have to do with space?”
    “Everything.”
    “But I can’t stay focused.”
    “Why not?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “I bet you do.”
    “Maybe because I’m running. I’ve been running away for a very long time. So it’s too hard to go back. And I haven’t even escaped yet – I still care what everybody thinks. I can’t write about something I haven’t yet experienced.”
    He nodded intently as if I made some really profound sense rather than just rambling on in my nut-hound sort of way.
    “So write about the process of trying to escape,” he said.
    “What?”
    “The process.”
    “Right.”
    “Maybe you’re a blocked creative – Julia Cameron writes about them.”
    “Maybe it’s just not meant to be.”
    “I think you’re blocked.”
    “I don’t know.”
    James pulled up his socks and then rolled them back down.
    “And I break out in hives. My parents called the other day, on my thirtieth birthday. They’re worried that I have no family, no direction, no nothing.”
    “Is that how you feel?”
    “I don’t know. I think maybe I do agree with them and then I feel like maybe I’m just supposed to
think
I feel that way. And I’m going home for their anniversary.”
    “For how long?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Take the script with you.”
    “No.”
    “Hash it out for fun, turn it into something else.”
    “That’s like saying, stick a poker up your nose – for laughs.”
    He shook his head at me like I was a bad puppy, and I could feel the squiggles in my solar plexus.
    “Just let me be lost, James. Will you?”
    He didn’t answer.
    “Will you just let me be lost?”
    “Get lost, Tracy. If that’s what you really want.”
    “It is.”
    “Okay then, but you’ll be wandering for a while.”
    “That’s fine – that’s what I want. Just let me wander. Please don’t project your shit onto me. If you wanna write, go and write.”
    “That’s all we do, Tracy – project shit onto each other. So why stop now?”
    I didn’t answer.
    “I just don’t want to see you give up.”
    I wanted to grab him by the shoulders and shake him and admit that I hadn’t given up – that despite dredging up my soul time and again to a chorus of boos, giving up was the one thing I just couldn’t get right. I wanted to tell him all this, but I couldn’t. It was easier to let him think that my failure was something I still had some control over.
    I let out a huge sigh, “I’m gonna go make us some tea – take an intermission from the intellectual jacking off. Is vanilla herbal okay?”
    “Yes.”
    I stood up and walked across the room to the kitchen.
    “Are you still mad about Spago?” he asked.
    “No.”
    “Good. Because my parents are coming into town tomorrow and I want you to have dinner with us.”
    “Why are they coming into town?” I asked. “Is it about the money?”
    “Of course not – forget about the money.”
    “Thank God.”
    “I think they just miss me.”
    “This is all very last minute.”
    “There’s no