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The wind whistled through Clarisa’s hair as she rode on the back of Rodney’s motorcycle down the highway. Its deafening tune combined with the motorcycle’s
roar and the padded helmet that sat tight over her ears. The helmet squeezed her head so hard she could barely think.
Clarisa realized, however, that Rodney’s last girlfriend had a much smaller head than hers.
“Clary was more petite in general,” she remarked bitterly to herself.
The similarity between their names also haunted Clarisa at night. Not for too long, though, because Rodney was always quick to wrap his big arms around her and distract her. That made it easy to remind herself that she was dating him, not Clary. It brought a smirk to her face even now as she thought about Clary’s
ugly green car that she left a spray-
painted gift on after finding one of
her old t-shirts in Rodney’s house.
A quick, harsh squeeze to her thigh brought her out of her jealous thoughts.
“Are—back—ere?” Rodney
yelled back at her. Clarisa could feel the vibrations his words made underneath her hands that were tightly gripping his v-neck, but she couldn’t make out the words.
“What?” Clarisa shouted in Rodney’s ear. “N—mind.”
Clarisa shrugged, figuring that Rodney had
dismissed his earlier words; she hated when he shouted like that. It was one of her least favorite things about his motorcycle that he insisted they ride instead of taking
a regular car. He knew that she couldn’t hear him, but he would still try to talk to her just for an excuse to get angry at her at their next stop. Rodney loved to fight.
She shook herself out of those negative thoughts and shifted to admiring the sunset. It cast the perfect glow on Rodney’s tanned skin. His beautiful face marred with scars from years of refusing to wear a helmet and—
Heaving a sigh, Clarisa started to think about the wind. She didn’t want to think about Rodney anymore; she would have to deal with his nagging presence enough at the next diner.
“Why do I do this? Why do I fill my head with him! I’m much too pretty to be thinkin’ about him all the time, Mam said so! I’m smarter than him, too; I should be thinkin’ about bigger things. Things he ain’t involved in. Maybe when I get back home I’ll start goin’ to church just like Mam wants me to. Why, I could stop the smokin’ and drinkin’ and drugs and—and kick Rod to the curb!” Clarisa thought to herself and then giggled.
She knew she’d never do any of that. She pledged her loyalty to Rodney the day she let him take a tattoo gun to her thigh. He signed his name in that awful handwriting of his, but it was either that, an actual
Ride On
Alden Wiygul
Honorable Mention—Short Story Competition
brand, or leaving him, so she took the least painful of the three.
The motorcycle rumbled against Clarisa’s thighs as Rodney sped up. He was getting impatient and that meant they were close to their next stop. She cleared her mind, closed
her eyes, and let her head fall to rest on Rodney’s
back. Riding like this made her sick, but she needed
a distraction from the knot in her stomach tying itself up into the shape of the cold gun that was tucked in between her jeans and her oversized leather jacket that once belonged to Clary—and before her who knows how many girls. All she knew was that it once belonged to Rodney. She told herself that was all that mattered.
Clarisa felt her hair settle as the motorcycle slowed to a jerky stop. Rodney always insisted that he knew how to ride a “hog” like it was a bicycle; it came easy and natural to him. She had told him one time that if that was the case then he did not know how to ride a bike. That was back in the early days of their love when Clarisa could still tease him. Of course, that remark
still earned her a small silvery scar on her left thigh, marring the smooth freckled constellation above her knee; however, it did not have the effect it would have
“Riding like this made her sick, but she needed a distraction.”
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