Free Two Rivers by T. Greenwood

for her mother. But for tonight, I let her rest. The kitchen still smelled like jambalaya, and when I opened the window it seemed the heat had finally broken. And, if I wasn’t mistaken, the air smelled like rain.

The Road Less Traveled
    W hen Betsy said she was running away, I knew I had no choice but to go with her. She needed me. Besides which, I would have followed Betsy Parker anywhere.
    On the last day of eighth grade, as Miss Bean said her tearful farewells to us, Betsy leaned over across the aisle that separated us and whispered, “Today.” I ignored her, staring straight ahead as Miss Bean wiped at her nose with a tissue she plucked from a box on her desk. Truth be told, I was moved by Miss Bean’s heartfelt speech. I even felt a small lump swell in my throat as she spoke. She was the youngest teacher that Two Rivers Graded School had ever had—fresh out of college and still in love with the idea of teaching. Miss Bean, unlike our other teachers, believed in us; she believed that we would not only go on to graduate from Two Rivers High, but that we might even eventually find a way to change the world in some significant way. And perhaps it was Miss Bean’s enthusiasm, her thrilling naiveté that got into my gut that early June afternoon as flies slapped sluggishly at the windowpanes in our basement classroom. It was Miss Bean, wearing a soft pink sweater and a matching scarf knotted at her throat, and her promises that the road less traveled would, indeed, make all the difference that made me consent to Betsy’s wildest scheme yet.
    Betsy and I had had endless conversations about leaving Two Rivers. I participated in these discussions mainly because I loved Betsy Parker. It had everything to do with the way she smelled like lilacs, even in the winter, and nothing to do with actually wanting to leave our hometown. I loved Two Rivers. The way I figured it, I was probably about the only person who wasn’t trying to get away. But I cherished this nothing place. I treasured it: the way the woods smelled after rain, the thunderous sound of the train, that still place where the two rivers meet. Betsy’s machinations to flee contradicted every instinct I had. But Betsy Parker, like the giant maples that grew inexplicably in a perfect circle around the town’s library, had also grown out of Two Rivers. And I loved her more than water, so I listened as she devised her plan. And agreed when she asked me to go. I didn’t expect it to happen so soon. But now, Miss Bean was hugging me so hard I could feel the gentle cage of her ribs pressing into my cheeks, her breasts pressing into my cheeks, and Betsy Parker was giving me the signal that the time had come. Suddenly, I was thirteen years old, a graded school graduate, and the whole wide world lay before me like some sort of open road. That’s the way I saw it; I pictured the dirt road that led from the river eastward, the one that would wind and twist and branch onto other dirt roads, leading, finally, to Maine, where Betsy had deigned we might finally settle.
    Most other girls at thirteen might have pointed their starry eyes westward, fueled by too many winter nights spent curled up under covers reading about all of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s frontier adventures. Not Betsy though. Betsy Parker was an adventurer of the truest sort. She knew her limitations, could differentiate between fantasy and potentiality. When she set out to do something, she did it. This was what made me both adore Betsy and fear her. She never made idle threats, and she never made idle plans.
    Betsy chose Maine as a destination because of a photo of her mother that she had found in a box in her basement. In the picture, Mrs. Parker was perched on top of a large rock, the wind blowing her hair across her face, the ocean crashing against the shore below. It was taken on the coast of Maine, back when Mrs. Parker was an aspiring model, long before she married Mr. Parker. Betsy told me that one time