Driver's License

Dripping in your Sunday best, you shift from one Mary Jane to the other as you wait in line. A puffy jacket is having its turn at the moment, but you're next. Other patrons wait behind you— ratty sneakers, red blazer, and cover-alls are the ones you can see in your periphery, but you hear others opening and closing the door and joining the queue.

The puffy jacket slouches away with sleevefuls of paperwork and a pen clenched between zipper-teeth. The attendant behind the desk shuffles themself back into a blank slate before summoning you.

You step up to the counter.

Papers?

It's a trick question. Not all of the things are paper, so you only show the papers. You flash a certificate your parents received on your behalf. They ask if it's the original. It isn't. You lie and flash another paper in quick succession.

Proof of shelter?

You push an unopened envelope addressed to you across the desk. The Post dated it two weeks ago. It promptly goes up in flames, and you receive an arch look. You dig in your pockets and find the milk teeth. They slip out of your sweat-slick fingers and scatter over the counter. You receive another arch look, but they are accepted. You get to keep one canine and a premolar.

Certificate of passing?

You respond, None issued yet. They purse their lips and swiftly issue you one. You thank them and purposefully don't comprehend the date and time printed next to your name. The font is, thankfully, tasteful.

Other?

You remove your brooch and prick your thumb. A globule of blood wells up, and you smear it across your brow. They lean in.

After considering the way the blood dries, they nod, tap away at their terminal, and direct your attention to a glass door off to the side. It's not the same door you entered in, but the outside looks the same through its frosted panes.

There, at the second door, is a kipper tie. Its fabric's pattern makes your eyes water, so you try not to look at it too intention-ally. As you approach, the kipper tie opens the door, and you enter a square, sun-warmed lot. The kipper tie directs you to the only vehicle on the lot. Its tapered nose ends in a rounded, blunt edge, and corroded lug nuts fasten the four tires to its under-carriage. Its doors have windows, but you can't see through the glare.

The kipper tie opens the front door on the vehicle's left-hand side, and you clamber into the waiting seat. Your Mary Janes collide with one another as you swing your legs into the hollow before your seat, joining the three pedals. Your hands encircle the steering wheel.

You avert your eyes when the tie slings its body into the seat next to you. Instead, you fiddle with the dangling mirror until it is angled in such a way that nothing behind your head escapes you. Additional fiddling with the small, twinned mirrors on the vehicle's sides increases visibility, but you don't want to look too closely behind you yet. The kipper tie passes you the keys. You take them, but not before you adjust the seat to your height and buckle yourself into it.

When you start the car, your eyes fly to the rearview mirror. One hand finds the gearshift. No one is coming— the lot is empty except for you and the tie in your passenger seat-but you check once, and you check again, and there is still nothing except for the lot and the building you exited. Behind you and to the side is where the lot narrows and turns into road.

The kipper tie rustles. If it had wrists, you think it'd be wearing a watch, and if it had fingers, it'd be tapping the glass clockface.

But your eyes are in the rearview mirror, and you are looking at the road behind you. The tie rustles again, and you depress the brake and put the vehicle in gear. Pulling out of the parking spot is a whisper, so softly the car runs, and gentle plumes of fog billow up from its tailpipe.

Closer now, nosing towards the lot's exit, you see the road more clearly. Like the kipper tie's patterning, it makes moisture prick at the corners of your eyes. It is plain, cracked asphalt, and it extends in a straight, unending line in either direction. Blinking away tears, you glance at the tie.

Which way?

To the test, you don't say. To the end. To the moment it is all finished, and you have either passed or failed, but most crucially, the test is over, and you will be free to go. To whence depends on the result—if you leave with a plastic square in hand or not-but the test will be done.

The tie shrugs. The action cascades in a loose ripple down its length.

Your choice, it says without speaking. You always had a choice.

You check your mirrors again. The building you exited is gone, as is the lot—and you presume the occupants are gone, too.

They have been replaced by a low cloudbank the same gray as your borrowed car's exhaust. You can't will yourself to feel sur-prised.

To the right, the road stretches to an unseen terminus. The left-hand side does, too, but the ditches along its length look more like dimples in the earth and are overgrown with weeds and willowy blades of green wild wheat. But the lines on the road look fresher, and the asphalt is less pitted. The road to the right seems the most traveled-by—and perhaps that is the trick, if there is a trick at all.

A Mary Jane pushes down on the gas, and the steering wheel turns. You steal another glance in the rearview mirror. The gray clouds seem lighter. As open road unfolds before you, the cloud-bank does not recede. Instead, it is following, trailing a little ways behind, but as the car picks up speed, something inside you crumbles away.

Carrie Midkiff