I Swear I'll Make It Up to You by Mishka Shubaly

dirty laundry and I lay on the floor dying, my girlfriend, Riley, perched on my desk, chatting with my mom and taunting me. My mom had a pile of whites and a pile of darks, and then, before I could stop her, “These sheets will finish off the dark load.” She pulled my mattress away from thewall, unearthing a treasure trove of a million glittering silver condom wrappers. Riley went red.
    Without even looking up, my mom said, “Well, at least you’re not doing drugs,” and continued her work.
    My classmates got cars or summer vacations to Europe for graduation. My mom gave me a tent. My father didn’t call.
    I’d become close friends with Punk Rock Gabe, a misanthropic chain smoker with a green Mohawk stuck up with Elmer’s glue and a tattoo that said “HATE.” We planned to hitchhike across the country to Ellensburg, Washington, so I could see Riley, then up to Alaska to find work in the canneries for the summer.
    We partied at upperclassmen’s houses in town. I made love to Riley one final time, on the roof of the hardware store. The next day, my mother drove Gabe and me out to my art teacher’s house. My art teacher’s son Manu, a massive New Zealander with dreads down to the middle of his back, more mountain man freak than hippie, was going to give us a lift as far as Ohio. His ride was packed and ready when we got there: a Toyota pickup that had been used as a pace truck for off-road races, its battered body emblazoned with huge Miller High Life logos, Manu’s teepee poles arched over the cab like a bow, bent and lashed to the front and rear bumpers. The bed of the truck was full of his gear, including a tiny fridge that plugged into the cigarette lighter to keep his homebrewed beer cold.
    Gabe and I tucked our backpacks snugly in the back of the truck, leaving just enough space for one person to curl up into a ball. My pack had been a gift from Errol, a man my mother had befriended in Colorado. It wasn’t enough for her to work full-time answering phones in a call center in addition to looking after us kids, so she volunteered with an outreach organization that worked with recovering alcoholics and drug addicts. Errol was an aspiring writer and a recovering cokehead. He had dreamed of writing a book called “Jonesing Around Boulder” about being a ski bum with a head full of snow, but instead he just spent his lifejonesing around Boulder. He and I had become friends over the winter break, so he’d given me his old external-frame backpack. “I don’t know if I’ll ever be well enough to use it again,” he had said. A couple of months later, Errol shot himself in the face with a shotgun.
    â€œI want to say ‘be careful,’” my mom said with tears in her eyes, “but I feel like that’ll just annoy you. So . . . stay out of jail and stay out of the army and you’ll be alright. And don’t die ! Just don’t die.”
    I hugged and kissed my mother and hopped into the cab. Gabe hopped into the bed of the truck. Manu and I each ate two hits of acid, and we hit the road.

    By the time we got to Washington, Gabe and I were barely speaking. Too many days walking backward on the side of the road with our thumbs out, baking in the sun, covered in dust as cars roared by; too many hours making polite conversation with strangers who wanted us to come to Jesus or recognize the primacy of truck drivers in the American economy or sell us Amway; too many close calls. We’d covered the largest part of our journey in great time—only five days—but we knew there were still long miles ahead of us, miles made longer now that we couldn’t stand each other. We dragged our feet in Washington, gathering our courage for the big push to Alaska—doing yard work for cash, getting drunk, getting high—while I made time with Riley. That only made things worse.
    Riley was petite with violently red hair, pale