Free Nowhere Girl by A. J. Paquette Page A

through the other lane of traffic—no cars coming this time, I thank my ancestors. And then on the other side, with the cars heading in the opposite direction, I keep running, fast and hard, moving with a desperate need for survival.
    On and on and on.
    What finally makes me stop is the iron hand squeezing my chest. I’m not used to this kind of exertion. My skin is pouring sweat, so that now I am soaked from the inside and out. My whole body shakes like I have the coughing fever. But when I drop to the ground and look back the way I’ve come, there is no one.
    The pickup truck is gone. The man with the syringe no longer chases me. I am alone.
    I am safe.
    Exhilaration and relief and delayed terror course through me like an electric shock. I lean forward and wrap trembling arms around my legs, rocking myself back and forth, back and forth.
    I don’t know how long I stay like this. I only know that I never want to move again.
    And then I hear the motor, a rattling clang that can be made by only one engine in the world.
    I close my eyes in relief.
    Kiet has come for me.

18
    His car pulls onto the side of the road just ahead, and what a difference this vehicle is from the last one that stopped! Pulling myself together, I stand and move toward it on shaky legs. I pause only a second before the door. My anger at Kiet is not gone, but it feels small when placed against the danger of this outside world, at what I have just been through.
    And while I have saved myself this time, I know I might not be so lucky the next. This road is no place for a girl on her own. I need Kiet.
    Pulling on the door handle, I slide inside.
    â€œI was looking for you,” he says, voice dry and clipped. “I drove toward Bangkok. I did not expect you to be traveling backward.”
    â€œI thought to take a bus from Sukhothai. And then …” I swallow. “I had a little trouble.”
    He looks at me quickly, a flash of alarm in his eyes.
    â€œIt’s all right. I got away. That’s why I crossed over to this side of the highway. I was going to keep walking …” My words seem useless, empty. They don’t matter anymore. They don’t even seem real.
    Kiet must see that in my eyes because he nods and turns back to the road. We ride in silence for a while, but it’s not the comfortable silence of friends. This air is thick with unspoken words, prickly with things unsaid.
    He lied to me. He betrayed my trust.
    But he also came for me. In spite of my outburst, and though I shamed him in front of his family. Is there some way we can put all this behind us, start things over?
    We are picking up speed, puddles sloshing around us, the hum of rain pattering across the front window. Kiet reaches down and shifts the car into a higher gear. His jaw is tight, his fingers clamped around the gearshift.
    Jai yen . Keep a cool heart. I can put this behind me; I can take this step. But I will do it in my own way. And so I reach out my right hand and place it on top of his.
    Kiet freezes. I know it’s not polite to be too affectionate in our culture, his culture—especially for a soon-to-be monk—but I want so much for him to understand me. I am a child of Thailand, I want to say, but I am also my own person. I am also someone else, from some far-off wild country, mysterious, unknown. A country with different shades of skin and different tones of language. A country where feelings do not always flutter within the chest but sometimes claw their way out into the open. I am not proud of all these things, but it is who I am.
    In spite of everything, I want to tell him, I am becoming who I am. All the bars in the world cannot keep me closed in now that I am free.
    And more: I understand why he did what he did. I don’t agree, and it was wrong, all wrong, but I know why he did it. And I understand and almost—almost—I am grateful.
    I can’t explain these things, can’t even try to form the