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chapter sixteen / salt the earth behind you
An entombed truth lied dormant in Ilyshah Tūrei, one she wasn't even saving for the memoirs, much less the burning eardrums of JJ Maybank.
Turning the memory to ashes above the clouds of Aotearoa and salting the earth behind her served as a mirage to her mind, only for every waking moment since she landed in the Outerbanks existing as a living reminder of what she lost. Bypassing that truth day by day, it was as if her mind and body belonged to a complete stranger, a ghostly vessel that would put on clothes and take her from point A to point B.
[ . . . In retrospect, she wished she had committed to the orphan story, a lie tasted better on her tongue than the hard to swallow dosage of reality and her parents were dead to her anyway . . . ]
That's why she was thankful JJ didn't bring it up the next day, instead distracting her by teaching her the wonders of driving stick through the streets of The Cut with the aftermath of last night still scattered like uncovered remains across the dashboard of Spencer Fishers' jaguar. Empty bottles, crisp packets, lolly wrappers, leftover butts of joints in the ashtray. They had burnt through four cassettes by mid-afternoon, The Cranberries among their latest to purr from the radio.
"Now remember, you take your foot off the gas and hoof it on the clutch when shifting into second," JJ instructed, sending volts down her right thigh after he tapped it lightly as the intro to Linger panned in.
She blew a ring of air as her body responded in tandem, drawling an anxious, "o-kay," before pressing on the clutch and shifting into second gear.
To tell the truth, it's not like Ilyshah never drove a manual car. Every coastie kid was thrown into the deep end of a ute so long as they could walk and talk, but when she landed herself in a ditch six years ago after only two goes at the gear behind her father's loose temper, she trusted anyone else but herself behind the wheel. Not to mention the dashboard of a jaguar may as well be an extraterrestrial object only JJ could decipher on his first try because his internet history was likely full of car video after car video.
"Cheehoo! You got it girl scout," he praised after five head-knocking stall attempts progressed into a smooth drive, the dimples on his cheek deepening.
"Fah, imagine if we just kept driving," Ilyshah serenely commented, placing half her focus on the gear shift, "I reckon it'd be neat, eh . . . where would you go?"
"Oh—Yucatan, in a heartbeat. Yeah, ever heard of it? They have these sick sinkholes and ruins—beer is cheap, surf is primo."
Ilyshah bared her pearly crooked cuspids in a lucent grin. "Sounds mean as."
"Hardcore. We could be like Thelma and Louise . . . except y'know we're not lesbians," he went agape at her deep-set frown, "I mean, I'm not—are you? Wait, maybe don't tell me."
