Free Shattered by Elizabeth Lee Page B

I’d now created for myself was unbearable.  I’d become so used to having them around that I still couldn’t figure out how to function without them.  I thought back to how I used to let the most mundane ideas flood my brain.  
     
    I was fifteen, just a few months shy of getting my license.  I’d begged Jesse for the entire summer to teach me to drive his Jeep.  It was a stick shift and I swore that if I didn’t know how to drive one I wouldn’t be able to survive life in the country.  “What kind of farm girl doesn’t know how to drive a stick?” I’d asked him in my dramatic rants.
    “You’re not driving it,” he’d simply say as we continued our destinationless trip through the countryside. “You never listen to what I’m saying.  It would be impossible to teach you.”  He was right.  We were constantly butting heads.  Neither of us admitted when we were wrong and especially didn’t admit when the other was right.
    “Pleeeeease, Jess,” I begged, sticking out my bottom lip, letting him know just how desperate I could be.  I needed to get behind the wheel of that Jeep.  The only driving practice I’d had was the couple of hours with the school driving instructor and the soul-sucking sessions with my mother.  Her idea of teaching was constantly criticizing my every move.  The last straw was when she told me my posture was comparable to that of a “wet cornstalk.”  Being in the same house with her was hard enough, and there were two-thousand square feet there.  The close confines of a car were impossible.
       This was on one of our “Sunday Funday” trips, as Garrett liked to call them.  We’d pack a cooler, with whatever beer we could rustle up without getting caught, and road trip on the backroads.  Drinking and listening to music.  
    Garrett finally convinced him that I could do it. “She’ll be fine,” he said, “let her drive.”  Jesse  folded and pulled off the side of the road to switch seats with me.  He sulked into the backseat deciding it was better to let Garrett be the teacher and avoid any further confrontation between the two of us.
    “Great job, Lyss!” Garrett said as we cruised down the gravel lined roads.  I glanced into the rearview mirror and caught Jesse smiling as he took a drink of his beer and leaned his head back letting the summer sun shine down on his face.
    “How am I doin’ Jess?” I asked, knowing that I’d surprised him.  Hell, I’d surprised myself.  Garrett was a great teacher, never once raising his voice or attempting to grab the wheel.  He was much more patient than Jesse would have been.  I’d breezed through his tutorial and was shifting gears like Danica Patrick.  The excitement really began when Jesse told me to take the field road down to “Bridge Out,” aptly named for the fact that the bridge had literally been washed away years ago and was never replaced.  Now, all that was left was the creek bed that ran the length of the one-hundred acre field.  The empty ravine was usually just a sunken dirt path, but the thunderstorm that popped up last night had left it an off-roader’s dream.  The mud was just slick enough to make the drive down the path a whole lot of fun.  As I pulled down on to the muddy pathway, I paused before pushing down the clutch. “You sure about this?” I looked to Jesse and Garrett, wanting the confirmation to shift.
    They looked at each other and smiled.  Their daredevil nature was seriously rubbing off on me.  The two of them were constantly seeking out adrenaline rushes.  They’d mastered racing and jumping four-wheelers, could often be seen climbing the highest tree along the edge of the Reynolds’ pond to jump from, or scaling the town water tower to spray paint the now infamous graffiti on it.  It was birthday present for me.  “Happy Birthday, Princess,” was scrawled across the silver tank for the entire town to see.  The village officials were pissed.  It didn’t