Melanie was secretly relieved when her father’s pick up truck broke down in the middle of Main street, because last time it was in the shop, about three weeks ago, the mechanic had said one more break down would be the end of it. The cold December air nipped at her nose as she sat patiently on a bench, holding her five year old twin brothers, Arlo and Eli. She whispered promises of hot cocoa and Christmas movies, which were slightly beyond her powers at eleven years old, but worked to distract the hyperactive little boys tugging on her arms. Eventually, the tow truck arrived and carried them all home. Melanie listened as her parents planned to visit the car dealership the following day, and felt another wave of relief wash over her. 

For her entire life, her family had only owned a rickety red truck with questionable brakes and strained steering. The seat belts had long lacked any retractable qualities and were about as useful as noodles for keeping a person secure. On one rainy day a year ago, Melanie had clutched her limp seat belt in the back seat as the car slid into a muddy ditch, narrowly missing a tree. Other times, she had watched out the back window and waved her hands frantically at the oncoming car who couldn’t tell they were slowing down because the back brake lights were out. She’d sat on the side of the road countless times as the engine vomited smoke and her father tried for hours to find the problem. It was prime time for the family to upgrade to a nice, reliable vehicle that would be neither an embarrassment nor safety hazard. 

The next day, Melanie watched with horror from the front window as a bulky, boxy monstrosity of a car lurched into her driveway. She bolted outside, desperate to deny that her parents would blow their one chance to upgrade their lives to something responsible and normal. 

“What is that?” she demanded frantically.

“We got a great deal,” her father assured her, wrapping his arm around her mother, who looked quite pleased. 

It was unlike anything Melanie had ever seen: angular and squat with a flimsy antennae reaching to heaven above. The black paint shone free of scratches or dents, which was the only positive Melanie could glean from the exterior. The stench of motor oil was thick like a fog and was only slightly dulled within the car by the aroma of cheap leather. The ancient dashboard was complete with an analog clock and cassette player. The seat belts all seemed to function, but the narrow back seat promised a lifetime of squishing between her brothers. Melanie’s hopes of a sleek SUV or minivan faded away as her parents admired their new purchase with satisfaction. 

The family piled in their new automobile for a joyride. The brakes squealed sharply but functioned decently, even with the road being slippery with snow. Her mother tried to find a radio station, but every turn of the knob produced a steady stream of static. Arlo and Eli wiggled endlessly on either side of Melanie, eventually causing their seat belts to lock. As Melanie practiced the box breathing technique the school counselor had taught her, she began to taste leather on her tongue.

When the family home finally came into view through the windshield, Melanie was squirming almost as much as her little brothers. Just before the tires touched the driveway, a little boy appeared before the bumper. Her father didn’t seem to see him as he rolled forward, causing Melanie to scream at the top of her lungs. A horrible screech erupted as her father slammed on the brakes and everyone began shouting. Melanie climbed over Arlo and burst out of the vehicle. When her feet hit the pavement, the driveway was empty. There was no one in sight.

“Melanie, don’t ever do that!” her mother started as her parents leapt out of the car.

“What on earth were you yelling about?” her father roared. 

“There was a little boy in the driveway, didn’t you see him?” Melanie insisted, tears building in her eyes.

Her parents exchanged concerned glances and softened.

“There was no one in the driveway, honey,” her father said.

“Yes there was, I saw him!” Melanie continued.

“Were you looking at your brother, perhaps?” her mother suggested.

“No, it wasn’t anyone I had seen before,” Melanie said, realizing she was not being believed.

“Let’s go inside, maybe you are tired and need some quiet time,” her mother said.

That night, Melanie dreamed she was in the backseat of the car again, with her brother’s on either side. The car was speeding down the road, but it took a moment for her to realize there was no one driving. In a panic, she scrambled towards the front seat, which stretched farther away from her as she reached for it. Eventually she managed to land in the driver’s seat, but then her feet couldn’t reach the pedals and she could barely see over the dashboard. With oncoming traffic barreling towards her, she desperately jerked the wheel left and right, but the car refused to turn. Melanie woke up with her heart pounding and her throat tight like she’d been crying. She waited to see if someone would come check on her, but the silent house absorbed the nightmare into the darkness, like it never existed.

In the morning, Melanie refused to get in the car for school. Her parents allowed her to walk to school since it was only a mile away and that’s what she did in the warmer months anyway. As the stinky black clunker barreled past her, Arlo and Eli stuck their tongues out at her through the window. She stuck out her tongue back at them, but they were already gone. The cold air devoured the car’s odor, and Melanie felt triumphant as she navigated the icy sidewalk. 

Glittering snow clinging to the bare tree branches dazzled against the bright blue sky. It always made her think of a coral reef when the trees were like that, and since she was alone, she pretended she was a fish in an aquarium. Like a freestyle swimmer, Melanie rotated her arms through the air. She pushed off one foot and flew through the air for a moment, before landing on a piece of ice, twisting her ankle, hitting her head and losing consciousness.

Before she opened her eyes, she could smell the pungent leather and wanted to cry. Heavy pain throbbed in her foot and head. Melanie slowly opened her eyes as she realized she was laying down in the backseat. Her father must have dropped her brothers off at school and saw her on his way back. She felt incredibly sad, until she focused her eyes towards the roof of the car and saw the little boy who had been in the driveway staring at her. 

He floated up against the roof, bobbing along with the movements of the car. He was slightly transparent and sepia toned, wearing brown overalls and a white shirt, no shoes. Melanie guessed he was about seven or eight. A strange feeling of comfort settled over her, washing away the anxiety that stuck to her always like dirt. When was the last time she had been truly relaxed? The little boy stayed with her for the whole drive to the hospital. 

Her ankle was x-rayed and deemed a hairline fracture. The doctor advised that she rest and use crutches if she needed to walk. The little boy was not in the car on the way home from the hospital. Melanie spent the rest of the day in a dreamless sleep. 

Her parents decided to keep her out of school for the rest of the week. Melanie didn’t mind. She wanted to like school, but had difficulty making friends. The school counselor told her that kids would like her more if she didn’t try to boss them around all the time, but who would keep them from acting like total barbarians if not for her? 

During the day, as her father worked from home in his office, Melanie played on her iPad until her eyes hurt. It wasn’t even time for lunch yet. She practiced walking with her crutches up and down the hallway. Eventually, she flopped on the couch and gazed out the window facing the street. The bright winter sun bounced off the snow, illuminating it to a blinding shine. Suddenly, two figures on the sidewalk appeared out of nowhere, snapping Melanie’s attention back to focus. 

They appeared to be a mother and daughter pair, both wearing old fashioned dresses, walking with purpose down the sidewalk. Melanie gawked as they approached her family’s car in the driveway, and then leapt up, forgetting her injury completely. Like a watchdog, she ran out the front door to defend her home.

“Hey! What are you doing?” Melanie shouted as the mother’s hand reached for the car door.

The mother and daughter stared blankly at her as the pain in her ankle caught up to her and Melanie crumbled to the ground. She winced and clutched her foot, breathing hard through her teeth. The duo silently waited for her to be done. After a minute the piercing pain receded and Melanie looked up to notice that the woman and child were slightly transparent, like the little boy. 

“Why are you here?” she gasped, struggling to her feet. She grabbed the rim of the car to pull herself up, surprised by the warmth of it. 

The mother cocked her head, seemingly amused. 

“Is it the car? You want to go in the car?” Melanie asked.

The mother and daughter turned away from Melanie towards the car, as if waiting patiently. Melanie hobbled over and opened the door to the backseat. Without hesitation, they climbed in. Melanie shut the door behind them and climbed in the driver’s seat.

“Who are you?” she asked, twisting around to look at her passengers. 

When they continued staring at her blankly, Melanie said  “I can’t actually drive.” 

The mother glanced at her pocketwatch. Melanie noticed it wasn’t ticking.

“Alright, well, let’s see here,” Melanie sighed, facing forward and putting her hands on the steering wheel. “Mother and daughter, I’m guessing? I have a mother too, obviously, everyone has a mother. I don’t think my mother meant to be one, at least not for me. My parents had just graduated high school when I was born. They got lucky with me, though, I’m a good daughter to them. Last month, my mom was trying to make us pizza for dinner, and my little brothers would not stop screaming at her. I think they wanted to watch TV or something. I don’t even remember now.”

As she spoke, Melanie’s memory filled her vision, like it was the road she was driving down. She explained how her mother’s face always crumpled like tissue paper before she started crying. The frozen pizza had crashed to the floor out of her mother’s hands, and Melanie wasn’t sure if it was on purpose or accident. Eli and Arlo had stopped screaming then, stunned and suddenly bored. Her mother left the room crying. Melanie had swept up the frozen pepperoni and shredded cheese bits before checking on her mother.

“I just gave her a big hug and offered to make macaroni and cheese,” Melanie said. “My brothers can be such jerks, but they’re only five, so what do they know?” 

Melanie glanced in the rearview mirror and saw the pair smiling at her. She’d never told anyone about that, not that she had anyone to tell in the first place. The day after it happened, her teacher had sent her to the counselor’s office because Melanie would not stop directing her classmates, and when they didn’t listen to her, she’d burst into tears. In the counselor’s office, she refused to talk about it, as if it were her secret to protect that her mother was human.

“Everyone has bad days, that’s what the counselor said,” Melanie said as she focused away from the rearview mirror. When she looked back a moment later, the passengers were gone. Only then did she realize the car didn’t reek of old leather, instead she smelled whiffs of cinnamon, like Christmas. It felt light. 

The next morning, Melanie skipped her iPad time and watched out the front window. Sure enough, a transparent sepia toned man waltzed down the sidewalk towards the car. Melanie grabbed one of her crutches and hobbled outside.

“Hello, sir,” she greeted him.

He wore dark pants with suspenders over a simple button up shirt. The man was quite large around the middle, with a friendly handle bar mustache on his round face. He nodded to her and let her open the door to the backseat. Once he was situated, Melanie climbed in the front.

“How are you today?” Melanie asked, adjusting the rearview mirror to get a full view of her passenger. 

The man smiled and nodded, but of course, said nothing.

“Did this car used to be yours? Or was it a taxi?” Melanie asked as she placed her hands on the steering wheel.

The man didn’t respond, but continued smiling pleasantly with a twinkle in his eye.

“I suppose it says something good about this car, that people are returning to it from wherever you’re from. I would never go back to the car we had before this one. It was such an awful car. I never felt safe in it,” Melanie admitted, realizing that was the first time she’d spoken it out loud.

“It was obvious though, right? I didn’t have to say it for everyone to know it was true. Kids shouldn’t be in a car like that. My dad should’ve known better,” Melanie continued, squeezing the steeringwheel until her knuckles turned white. 

She checked the rearview mirror. The man’s face softened sympathetically. 

“But I never told anyone. I just put up with it, until it was over,” Melanie sighed, relaxing against her seat. “I never saw the point in being honest about how I felt. The one time I was, it didn’t go well.

“I was seven, it was summer,” Melanie started as her memory filled the windshield. “My dad had promised to take me to the lake that day, but he got busy and forgot. I kept telling him how badly I wanted to go, but he didn’t think it was a big deal.” 

As she recounted the memory, she felt the tension build in her stomach the same as it had been that day, the powerless feeling of time passing. She’d wanted a summer like she saw in the movies, splashing in the water with friends laughing all around. Even when her father took her to the lake later in the summer, the experience didn’t live up to what Melanie had envisioned. She locked her disappointment away, embarrassed to have wanted something so unattainable.

“It sounds silly now,” Melanie said. “But I never talked about it. I just thought that no one would care how I felt, so there was no point in bringing it up ever again.”

The man met her gaze her in the mirror, his expression netural.

“You’re not going to tell me I’m wrong, are you?” Melanie asked. “You’re not going to say I’m a brat or I should get over it? I always thought if I held down my feelings, they would just go away.” 

For the first time, Melanie realized that no one had actually ever said those things to her. She had been telling it to herself all along. Letting go of the steering wheel, her hands fell heavily to her lap. Tears silently landed in her palms and the knots in her stomach melted away. When she looked in the backseat, her passenger was gone, leaving behind the smell of vanilla and tobacco. Melanie let herself cry some more. 

The next day, when Melanie checked out the front window, she saw a line of transparent visitors on the sidewalk heading towards the car. She rushed out as quickly as she could. One by one, she opened the door for them, hopped in the driver’s seat, and unloaded stories she had never told anyone. As Melanie confessed to her nonjudgemental audience, she felt safer than she ever had in her life. 

She told one passenger about watching her grandpa fall right in front of her when she was five. Blood had poured out his face and she had no idea what to do, so she just sat there and cried until her parents found them. She told the next passenger about the only friend she’d ever had, a neighbor girl her same age. Melanie refused to cry when the girl moved away, even though she really wanted to. The girl hadn’t said goodbye, so why should Melanie be sad about someone who doesn’t say goodbye? She told the next passenger about all the things her brothers did that drove her crazy, and how she tried not to complain because she was their older sister and she was supposed to take care of them, but sometimes she thought her life would be easier without them. 

With each new guest, Melanie dug up a new story from her life. She didn’t realize how much she had buried within her. Some of the things she told didn’t sound so bad after they were said out loud, like her dislike of the brussel sprout casserole her mother always made or how she wished she were better at math but was afraid to ask for help because she didn’t want to seem dumb. These things had been shoved down out of habit. As the stories flowed out, the emotions they carried evaporated effortlessly, like the passengers passing through the seat behind her. Melanie never realized how tightly she’d been holding on to her pain until she let it all go. 

By sunset, the line on the sidewalk had dwindled to one last girl. 

“Just you? No adult?” Melanie asked. 

The girl hopped in the backseat without responding.

“You look like my age,” Melanie commented as she resumed her post in the driver’s seat. “I’ve been talking about myself all this time, and I have to admit, it’s been nice, but I should probably ask you some questions too, right?” 

Melanie turned around and leaned towards the girl, noticing her dimples like crescent moons.

“Does everyone know something I don’t?” Melanie whispered. “I’ve been afraid to ask, but I’m just pretending all the time. I really don’t know what’s going on, and I’m scared that if I tell someone, they’ll think awful things about me.”

Melanie found herself climbing into the backseat next to the girl, who watched her with a soft smile. 

“I just want people to like me,” Melanie admitted quietly. “And I want someone to protect me, so I’ve tried to be that for other people, but no one seems to appreciate it.” 

The little girl reached out her hand across the seat. Melanie slid her hand over, embracing the cool sensation as their fingers crossed. It felt like mist in the early morning, like the freshness of a new day.

Melanie woke up to her father tapping on the window. She didn’t realize she had fallen asleep in the backseat.

“Honey, I’ve been looking for you,” her father said as he opened the car door. 

“Sorry,” Melanie mumbled groggily.

“It’s ok. I’m glad you’re enjoying the car, finally,” her father said, picking her up in his arms. Melanie couldn’t remember the last time her father carried her like that, so she leaned into his chest and inhaled his comforting scent of laundry soap and pine. 

Melanie’s doctor allowed her to return to school the following week as long as her foot was in a cast and she used her crutches.

“What happened to your foot?” one boy in her class asked her. 

This classmate had never spoken to Melanie before, except to tell her to buzz off when she tried to boss him around.

“I slipped on some ice,” Melanie said.

“Cool! Can I sign your cast?” he asked.

“Sure,” Melanie agreed with pleasant surprise.

Other classmates clustered towards her curiously, asking questions about her injury. Melanie had never received so much positive attention from her peers, a stark contrast to the usual interactions of orders and refusals. They marveled at her ability to use the crutches and asked to try for themselves. Melanie allowed it, and they returned her crutches without her having to ask. A few girls complimented the royal blue color of the cast, and signed their names with hearts and smiley faces. 

At recess, Melanie was unsure what to do with herself. Usually she stalked around the playground, hunting for someone to scold. However, now her movements were limited, and she didn’t feel like yelling at anyone. 

“Hey, Melanie! Do you want to come sit in the grass with us? We’re making daisy chains,” a girl in her class offered. 

“Sure,” Melanie agreed with a smile. 

The girl helped Melanie over to where her friends were sitting in the grass. The three other girls welcomed her with big smiles as she approached. As they taught her how to tie the stems together, Melanie asked them questions about themselves. She learned that two of them liked the same iPad games that she did, and they talked and joked about it until the bell rang. On the walk back to the school building, the girls slowed their pace and linked arms so as not to leave Melanie behind.