Dad walks me into the front seat and loads my chair in the back of the station wagon. Mom and Cindy take the backseat.

“Safe journey,” Sara says.

You too, I think, safe journey. But I still can’t speak.

*   *   *

By the time the station wagon backs out, turns around, and leaves the parking lot, I am sobbing uncontrollably.

“Jean, what’s wrong?” Cindy asks.

Mom puts her arm around Cindy. “It’s okay.” She’s talking to Cindy, but I feel like she is talking to me too. In the rearview mirror, I see her stricken face. I know nothing could cause her more pain than to see me unhappy. She leans back and disappears from the mirror. Dad stares at the road.

Slowly we drive down the sandy road that laces through the pine woods and low hills to the exit of Camp Courage. From high overhead, sunlight comes through the windshield, intermittently blocked by limbs that reach across the road.

I can’t stop crying. I am howling, howling like a baby, or not really like a baby, but like the grown-up spazzo-gone-amok that I am. The sobs have a will of their own, a will that won’t submit to mine. I give up the battle and let go.

My thoughts race down the road faster than the station wagon can go. In my mind, I pass the camp sign and get on the paved road. From there it is a few miles to the highway and soon we will be in Crosstown. Back home.

Tonight, some relatives may show up for a cookout or potluck. By the time we sit down to eat, we’ll fall back into old patterns. When Mom feeds me, she always combines the different foods on the fork. Dad feeds me the way he feeds himself. He eats all the meat, and then attacks the other dishes one by one. After supper we’ll settle down and watch TV. It will be beautifully familiar. But now, part of the beauty will come from a sense that it is all so fragile.

In two weeks, I start my senior year. In a few months, I’ll pose for my yearbook picture in a cap and gown, no doubt disheveled, my cap askew despite a dozen bobby pins, with a silly grin. After the diploma, I have no idea.