The Left Turn

I gripped the faux-leather steering wheel, shifting in my seat while staring out into the night view. Beneath the black sky was a bustling street of bright traffic lights, cars flowing through a McDonald’s drive-thru, the children with trick-or-treat bags and witch hats long replaced by drunk college students with beers and raucous laughter, stumbling off to who knows where. Anyone out this late had something exciting planned.

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Like me.

 

I think.

 

I rolled down my window to hear the whoosh and honks of cars speeding by, a siren petering out. As I waited outside Morrigan’s house, sleep tickled my eyelids, tempting me to ring her doorbell and propose another scary movie sleepover instead. But I couldn’t back out. Not again.

 

Thud.

 

Morrigan banged on the window, dressed in basic black, glittery eyeshadow smudged on her nose, and weighed down by a clunky grocery bag. As she got in the car, it clanked cacophonously between her feet. “Oops.”

 

I frowned. “Why’d you buy so many?”

 

She shrugged. “I didn’t know how much would get us drunk.”

 

I merged into the road with a jolt. The bottles clinked together. “You can’t even bring drinks into the club.”

 

“Oh. I forgot. We should start.” She fished out two cans.

 

“Wait. I’m driving back. I can’t drink.”

 

At the red light, we stared at each other, two sober but naive college students, our collective foolishness screaming amateur in the air.

 

She popped her can open and took a sip. “Aren’t your parents worried about you taking the car out so late?”

 

I bristled at the reminder that this was my parents’ car, fueled with their gas money, who—like myself—doubted my driving skills because despite getting my license four years ago, I hadn’t driven in months for anything from dates to groceries.

 

“Well, they’re not going clubbing on Halloween.”

 

Morrigan was silent. I wondered if I overdid the defensive bite in my tone, but when I swiveled to shoulder check, she was staring at my chest.

 

“Why are you checking me out?”

 

“Because half your boobs are out. When did you buy that top?”

 

“Yesterday.”

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“It looks like lingerie.”

 

“That’s the goal.”

 

“Are you hoping to… sleep with someone?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Really?”

 

“No. Kind of. Just—I’m gonna kiss someone tonight. And so are you.”

 

Morrigan’s expression looked like it was drawn by a cartoonist. “Sorry, I didn’t see that on my to-do list.”

 

“Look, what’s the best thing you’ve done in college?”

 

She scrunched her face. “The best thing?”

 

“See? I don’t know either, and I think it’s because we didn’t do anything. This term is our last chance to have a story we can tell. So drink your beer.”

 

“Beer is disgusting.”

 

“Drink your Palm Bay.”

 

She did, after the shadows of three streetlights. “So we’re gonna kiss a guy.”

 

“Yeah. I mean, we could do more.”

 

“Like what?”

 

“Like… you know.”

 

“I don’t know.”

 

Against my better judgement, I threw out a phrase from the internet. “Let someone butter our muffins.”

 

The blinker ticked in the silence.

 

“What does that mean?”

 

“I don’t know.”

 

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We cranked up explicit pop radio to prepare for the club and tried to memorize the lyrics but following the navigation through the labyrinth of streets commanded all of my attention. I approached a busy intersection, dozens of bright headlights zipping by, swallowing back dread when the navigation monotoned Turn left. I inched into the intersection. Morrigan, on her second Palm Bay, bobbed off-beat.

 

“What are you going to do after graduation?” she asked.

 

Anxiety shot through my legs and I resisted the urge to bounce my knee up and down. I didn’t answer. The stream of glammed-up pedestrians offered no opening for a left turn. My palms sweat into the steering wheel and I wondered if I should risk wiping them on my tiny shorts or if the pedestrians would clear up the instant my hands left the wheel. It was the same battle before every left turn, convinced the tick of the blinker was a countdown to catastrophe—I’d miscalculate the speed of an oncoming car, turn too late, and collide in a mechanical, crimson mess, or I’d hesitate even at the yellow light and stay rooted mid-intersection, as firmly as I always stayed under my covers instead of going out or beelined away from a cute classmate. The green light would flash for the opposite cars. They’d crash straight into me and I’d be found draped over the steering wheel. Red highways trickling down my skin.

 

I turned left.

 

Nobody died.

 

“Graduation?” prompted Morrigan.

 

“Um…” I scrambled to conjure up an impressive way to nothing, my almost-finished English degree failing me, when I turned right and slammed on the brakes. Something massive dangling from above blocked our path—long, swaying branches like skinny fingers with gnarled knuckles, connected to a crooked tree on the sidewalk. A sidewalk that stretched into an eerie residential street, houses unnaturally far from the curb, the road disappearing into darkness over a hill.

 

Morrigan froze mid-bob. “Maybe we should take a detour.”

 

Instead of admitting I was so sheltered that after twenty-one years, I couldn’t make it to a club without getting lost, I hit the gas.

Morrigan whipped toward me. “Um. You realize this looks like a street where girls get murdered, right?”

 

The tree’s branches scraped the roof of my car unevenly like drunken footsteps. “I trust Google Maps.” More than I trusted myself, really. If only it knew a direct route from English degree at a mediocre college to my future.

 

As I drove deeper into the neighbourhood, crunching on a gravel road, chills zipped up my spine. Rows of houses were engulfed in darkness, most run-down and decayed like their owners had left and never returned. One had dark, gaping mouths for windows, caged in a rusty, gateless fence and another was choked in vines criss-crossed haphazardly, revealing only a slice of the crimson door. I heard Morrigan swallow at the sight of a bungalow with cracked windows and a smashed-in roof, like a beast had taken a massive bite of shingles and wood. It was hard to imagine these houses in their prime, before something eerie happened to them.

 

I approached an intersection. No street signs. No lights.

 

None of the houses were lit.

 

I realized nothing happened to these houses. They were the result of neglect, of letting years erode away their souls, and that fact was somehow the terrifying cherry on top that skittered up my neck. I wanted to drive the hell out of here.

 

The radio cut out.

 

“Um.” Morrigan’s voice was small.

 

I tapped a trembling finger on the navigation’s frozen screen. I would’ve given up anything for blaring music and the comfort of a sweaty crowd at a club, but instead I get a warning light on the dashboard.

 

Fuck. “I’m running out of gas.”

 

Morrigan grabbed my arm, Palm Bay splashing onto the console. Her face was as pale as my knuckles on the steering wheel. “You’re joking.”

 

I forgot to check the gas before leaving. I forgot I couldn’t drink and drive. Tonight invalidated every A I’d gotten on an essay. My classmates got As and partied at clubs, stuck their tongues down a one-night-stand’s throat, and were up for paid internships the next morning. I could barely drive a car.

 

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” I shouldn’t have dragged Morrigan out tonight. I knew staying home all the time had been a blessing in disguise. I made a goddamn left turn—

 

A hazy light flickered on at the end of the street. Like a bulb in a sea of ink, presenting a shabby gas station.

 

“No.” The Palm Bay was knocked over on the floor. Both Morrigan’s hands gripped her seatbelt. “Fuck no.”

 

I wanted to press my foot into the brakes so hard it smashed a sinkhole that swallowed us up. “What choice do we have?”

 

At a snail’s crawl, we rolled toward the singular filling station. The poles were dirtier than a hiker’s shoe soles, smudged with maroon stains that I quickly glanced away from. The convenience store looked like an abandoned park pit stop with broken blinds and grimy windows. Above us, the light was weak and quivering, its plastic panels showcasing a museum of stiff bug corpses, but it felt like a spotlight. A target.

 

I parked the car but didn’t move. I didn’t have enough gas to find my way back out. I needed to stay on schedule and do whatever girls did at clubs for a memorable, wild night out.

 

“It’s just a gas station.” My voice was loud in the stillness. Morrigan wasn’t convinced, gaze flitting across the station.

 

I got out. Left the door open.

 

No breeze, no sound. It was freezing, a bite in the air harsher than the usual October chill. I felt it in every hair, every inch of exposed boob covered by flimsy lace. With cold fingers, I punched the buttons quickly and cursed myself for dressing like the hot chicks who die in slasher movies.

 

Bang.

 

“Jesus!” I whirled around.

 

Morrigan had slammed her hand against the car, having crawled over the driver’s seat and fallen out. She stumbled to her feet and grabbed me tightly, pointing a threatening bottle of soju into the darkness.

 

“I’m not letting you stand outside alone.” Her heavy breaths helped me circulate air into my lungs. “Fill the tank.”

 

I obliged. Gasoline glugged in the silence until—

 

“What was that?” Panic hammered in my chest. Morrigan’s nails dug into my arms.

 

An unearthly growl. A skittish jump.

 

Screams.

 

Piercing screams from Morrigan and I. She flung the bottle. I yanked out the nozzle and shot gasoline in front of us. We jammed into each other and screeched because this was it. This was my last defense against amounting to nothing, as shattering as a newborn’s cries, because I nearly burst with how badly I wanted to live. To have the most interesting thing about me be something other than my death at a sinister gas station beside a house from The Conjuring. So I screamed.

 

It was a terrifying catharsis.

 

The raccoon jumped, narrowly missing Morrigan’s bottle. It bolted past us, melted into the blackness, and disappeared around the block. It didn’t even scream back. We stood there, gasoline pooling between my toes, trying to comprehend our utter misjudgement. There was no vindictive ghost or murderer of college girls in revealing tops. It wasn’t our end.

 

It was absolutely nothing at all.

 

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“One Big Mac and McCrispy Burger?”

 

The drive-thru employee held our burgers hostage as he stared at us—broken nails, the perfume of gasoline, Palm Bays littering the floor—but handed over our food and waved us away.

 

Several other cars occupied the parking lot. Sandwiched between a busy street and McDonald’s, we drank in the view of colourful glowing taillights zooming past the big yellow M, the muted drones of cars accompanying our crunches of lettuce. One briefly blasted music and the whoops of college students off to a Halloween party.

 

“I’m done with college life,” Morrigan said, watching them go.

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I nodded.

 

She slurped the last of her Coke. “You prepared for the real world?”

 

Earlier, I’d thought the real world would kill me. But something about this quiet parking lot and mediocre burger gave me courage.

 

“Yeah.” I reclined back in my seat. “We’ll be fine.”