Free Steal the North: A Novel by Heather B Bergstrom

spacious and almost sophisticated, like airports in movies. Then again everything was still a bit blurry from Connor’s Vicodin pill, which I’d taken early in the flight to calm myself down after the aromatherapy smelling salts (bought in the shop below our apartment) had quit working and I nearly hyperventilated. For about thirty glorious minutes the drug had calmed me down. It had also made me feel overly tender toward the old couple sitting beside me with their creased pants and spotted hands. When the plane hit some turbulence, I almost asked them if I could call them Grandma and Grandpa, but then I passed out cold. I now had an hour layover in Spokane and then a twenty-minute “hop, skip, and jump,” the stewardess said, to the airport in Moses Lake.
    Home felt so far away. I needed the courage of a Brontë heroine to complete this journey alone. My stomach fell when I noticed two college-age girls wearing maroon WSU T-shirts. That was the university my dad had gone to instead of taking care of my mom. I’d looked up WSU in the counseling office at school during finals and copied down the phone number for the records office—in case I actually got up the nerve to search for my dad. Instead of finding him, I’d rather be back in my bedroom with the purple felt SACRAMENTO KINGS pennant that Spencer bought for me. If only I could rewind time, a few days even. I wasn’t strong. I was wimpy. I could never board a bus as Mom had and leave everything behind. One day I hoped to travel overseas, but for now even the thought of moving away to college at the end of next summer terrified me. I loved my bedroom too much, our apartment, the shop downstairs, Connor, his TV, the way he’d often watch me instead of the screen, my mom.
    Mom should’ve been here with me, despite her busy work schedule and our lack of funds for an additional plane ticket. The fact that she wasn’t seemed more unimaginable than my cruelty toward her in the last week or so. Not only had I started referring to her sister as “that born-again lady,” which I could tell hurt Mom’s feelings, but I also told her bluntly that Jamie was related to me, not her, and I’d look for him over the summer if I wanted to. Swearing to help, she begged me to wait until next summer, after I graduated from high school. I didn’t need her help or consent. I did, however, wish she were here to introduce me to my aunt and uncle and then to stick around for a few days, at least, to make sure I behaved correctly. I’d never been around a relative. Mom was better with people than I was. She was reserved, even with her wit, but not shy. She didn’t blush. She could be blunt as heck but was always polite to service workers and clerks. With her students, for the most part, she had a great rapport. I’d seen her in action. Even with her least favorite types—snotty rich girls, potheads, young boys who wanted mothering, and flirty male students of all ages—she handled herself in a professional manner.
    To give Mom even more credit (why?), she’d been trying desperately to provide me instructional information—“travel tips for my summer vacation”—and with the umph of her wit. I hadn’t been impressed. After twice warning, “It’s a whole other world up there, honey,” she went off: “The high school color is camouflage; cars, trucks, and cheese are American; county fairs and rodeos are considered highly cultural events; crockpots full of wild game and cream of mushroom soup is as culinary as it gets; Grand Coulee Dam is their mecca.” She claimed men up north went to the slopes and the coulees (what was a coulee? who cared?) hunting and fishing on the weekends while their wives stayed home slowly going insane trying to keep the dust from settling on their assembled furniture. I rolled my eyes. She said she wanted my stay with her sister to be as comfortable as possible. “Survivable.” All I had to do was survive the summer, and then everything would