Chapter 3

Kayla’s eyes grew heavy as she drove down the back-roads to her mom’s house. Given that it was three AM, the only light she saw came from her headlights or the occasional headlights of passing vehicles. She was driving in pure silence, as it was one of the rare opportunities to hear herself think. Though given the thoughts currently swilling through her mind, this was a double-edged sword.

They mostly circled around her various anxieties. She had been learning programming, but was nervous about applying for any job where she could use it, fearing rejection over her lack of a college degree. She couldn’t risk a year of unemployment while she prostrated herself before a job market that wasn’t exactly employee friendly. Then there was the looming threat of climate disaster, what with the country on the brink of war over clean water and usable farmland. She was hesitant to join protest groups out of fear that she would lose her job or spend time in jail. Her meager savings and dependency on corporate offered healthcare weighed heavily over her ability to take certain risks.

It would be better if she wasn’t always in a state of hustle. The price of her rent and healthcare meant there was very little she could afford in the way of an escape from her woes. Her mom often regaled her with stories of the times she and her dad had gone on cruises before he died, and her grandparents’ prized possession was a large map of the United States dotted with pins from their cross-country bicycling trip during their youth. She couldn’t imagine having the time or money to do anything like that.

Life had changed so much for her in the last few years. Much for the better. She glanced at the little square photo of her, Lavonna, and Jen in the photobooth at Trans Prom that she kept tucked into the sun flap, and smiled. She was growing to love the person she saw in the mirror and was starting to connect more with the queer community in the Twin Cities. The level of love and acceptance that she had found within it was something she was still learning how to accept and appreciate, though it already had a strong effect on her life. Her old community was a different story. Much of that community had not taken well to her transition, and it had been painful (though unsurprising) to learn just how bigoted some of the people in her older circles could be. The Aerosmith song from earlier intrusively replayed in her mind.

The events of the bar from earlier had been conducting her train of thought for most of the drive: Garth and Tammy’s cruelty, Craig’s disastrous and violent response, and the consequences of it. There was still a sharp ache in her thigh from where she had been slammed against a table while trying to separate Craig and Garth, and the twinge of it whenever she tapped the brakes spiked her anxiety. Karaoke was off the table now, at least until Craig inevitably found another spot.

She sighed, struggled with whether she should be furious with him or sympathetic. His stupid blustering had been in her defense, after all. It had been almost chivalrous of him, she supposed; but she still was deeply uncomfortable with Craig being violent on her behalf. Especially if it meant that he ended up in trouble. The fact that it had happened because he had been too drunk to respect her pleading against the action was the final straw for her. He needed help.

Wishing she could get a break from thinking about all of this, she was suddenly helped along by a white-tail buck making the terribly impatient decision to jump out in front of her car. Kayla’s scream was lost with her breath as she put both feet on the brakes. Her old, worn tires squelched in protest as the car skidded, turning to the left involuntarily as the tires lost, found, and then lost their traction in rapid succession.

“SHIT! SHIT! FUCK!” Kayla’s voice returned, though did little to help with the situation. The front left corner of her car connected with the deer’s hindquarters, blowing out the headlight and caving the hood on the driver’s side of the vehicle. Her seatbelt locked and the airbag deployed, blocking her vision. The car swerved through the opposing lane and plowed into the ditch, but fortunately for her it was at an angle which prevented a rollover. It came to a stop on the far side of the ditch, facing into the forest. She sat with her fists white-knuckled on the steering wheel as the airbag slowly deflated, her breath coming in short rapid gasps. Somehow, in the chaos, the radio had turned on and was blasting a commercial about a hair loss treatment.

She wasn’t aware of how long she had sat holding the wheel, her mind completely blank as the shock of what had happened washed over her. The remaining headlight casting the forest beyond the car in an ominous glow. She was broken out of the shock by the same obnoxious hair loss commercial from before, playing a second time in the same ad break on the radio station. Shaking, she fumbled slightly with the ignition and shut her car off dropping her into an eerie silence. She flicked the headlights back on for illumination.

She looked herself over. Had she hit her head? She couldn’t see any blood on her clothing, her seat, nor on the now deflating airbag. A quick inventory of her body showed that she had a soreness in her thighs, but no sharp pains. She didn’t think anything was broken, but that might have just been the shock and the adrenaline. The soreness in her chest told her she would be sporting a bruise for several days. She glanced up and down the road, but there were no signs of life. Unsurprising, as it was a back road and usually abandoned this time of night. For now, she was completely alone.

She stumbled out of the vehicle, wincing as the pain in her body intensified with the leave of shock. Turning on her phone’s flashlight; she rounded to the front of her vehicle, wincing slightly at both the pain and the damage she saw. She didn’t need to be a mechanic to know it was totaled. She begrudgingly took pictures for her insurance.

After calling for roadside assistance (who assured her that they wouldn’t reach her in less than two hours), she checked her game chat to see if any of her friends were still up. Unfortunately, none were. She texted her mom to explain what had happened and why she would not be making the visit after all, not looking forward to the lecture she was bound to receive about reckless driving. Then she finally turned to the one part of the ordeal that hurt her the most: dealing with the deer.

She approached it with trepidation, listening carefully for the sound of breathing, worried that it may leap up and charge her; however, it was quickly apparent that it had been killed on impact. This did little to relieve her.

As Kayla approached the poor creature and saw its mangled hindquarters, the full weight of her day caught up with her all at once. A lump in her throat formed as she grabbed the antlers and began pulling the way she had been taught, and subsequently forced to as a thirteen-year-old. She’d been out with her father and it was clear that if she couldn’t learn to enjoy the act of killing an animal, she would at least need to convince him that she did. His voice rang through her mind as she pulled, “Dry your tears! You don’t cry when you hunt! Don’t you have any pride? Fuck, I’m tired of you being such a goddam crybaby!” After a brief struggle, she deposited the cadaver into the ditch a few feet from her car. She stood over it for a moment, trying to hold back the sobs that were trying to choke their way out of her.

“I’m so sorry,” she said to the dead buck. Her eyes blurred and she returned to the car. She rinsed her hands off with a combination of water from her bottle and the travel sized hand sanitizer in her glove box. Once her hands were clean enough, she could finally wipe her eyes.