2 Written by Melanny Cowley

    I want to have a car accident. If I sit in a passenger seat, I want to reach over, yank the wheel so the tires tip, and feel myself roll. I don’t why. I clench my fists, sit on my hands and think to myself, “That’s not right, that’s not right…” I don’t trust myself to drive anymore. Back in Pocatello, Idaho, I had my sister Maggie drive me everywhere.
    “But why don’t you want to drive yourself?” She always asked me.
    “I just don’t like it. I’m scared.”
    “Does this have anything to do with Nana?” She asked me once.
    I couldn’t just say “No,” I had to say “No!” I had to be very clear. But I think Nana does have something to do with it, maybe. Probably.
The world can be classified into two groups of people: Those who know the horrors of insanity, and those who don’t. I was part of the first group. We all were, my brother Jess, Maggie and me.
    I still hear Nana’s voice calling me in those few moments before I’m truly awake. “Jenn-a-fur!” Three syllables, each its own name. Shrill and tart, like a pig farmer calling a sow. “Jenn-a-fur!”
    I did the only sane thing a crazy girl like me could do: I moved to New York City where almost no one drives. It is like a different country here compared to Idaho, but I think I am safer, or others are safer, maybe. I sit in my third floor apartment, in the green chair facing the window, and stare down at the street quietly ticking away with my clock, wanderers out for a stroll on their way to Central Park. I watch the cars pass, still recalling vividly the grip of the steering wheel loosely under my palms. Smooth plastic with finger grooves. Brodie, my boxer, places his head in my lap and shifts his eyebrows at me. I quietly dip a tea bag in an off-white mug and try to think about my job as a copyeditor. I’ve been getting some attention at the magazine, and it’s only a matter of time, really, before I start to make something of myself.
    My mind always wanders back to Idaho, to the little yellow house with the wood-burning stove in the front room. To the back bedroom with the bunk beds and the double crammed in, mattresses so flimsy you could feel the springs on the back of your knees. To Jesse’s striped pajamas torn in the inseams. To the four cats. To Nana’s dead-fish feet and moist, gray hair. To her voice, the only voice that existed in that house.