This is what Charlotte writes.

03.26.08

Welcome to Bemidji! The words splash yellow and blaring across the front of the brochure produced by the Chamber of Commerce. Inside are listed all the “attractions” of my small Minnesota town, accompanied by pictures of smiling kids and smoking barbecues. There is also a map, with stars marking the important places. As I trace my finger along the street, in my mind I do not see what the brochure tells me that Bemidji is. Instead I see the city I know. The city I grew up in. Ignoring the sounds around me I let myself travel back there, revisiting a past I haven’t thought about in years.

It’s a Sunday morning and almost everyone is in church. It’s quaint and old-fashioned, I suppose, but that is the way things are. I’m home in bed, a cup of tea cooling on the table beside me and the TV on. I hear my parents’ car pull out of the driveway and off down the street, but still I wait. Ten minutes pass and the program on TV changes and I know that I’m safe and I stop being “sick” and shoot out of bed. My feet are bare and I’m dressed in pajamas but I don’t care. I’m outside and the air is hot, the humidity frizzes up my hair. The streets are deserted, the cars that normally fill the roadway and the driveways by now are parked in the parking lots of the many churches. For a few hours, the world is mine. I take off running down the street, leaving behind my house and the others like mine, passing the supermarket, the gas station. I run until I reach the edge, skidding to a halt on a traffic island, grabbing the stop sign to balance myself. A huge truck rumbles by and I choke, pulling in huge lungfuls of exhaust. Even as I struggle to breathe my mind is racing. I’m caught. My mother will kill me, my father will yell, and I’ll have to suffer the humiliation of school on Monday because by then everyone will know. There are not secrets in this town. But the truck continues without stopping, leaving me coughing and spitting exhaust, my cheeks burning with imagined, anticipated embarrassment. False alarm. It was a stranger with more on his mind than dirty kids in Spider-man pajamas. But I’m out of there anyway. Racing, running, speeding, jumping into bed and swallowing my tea as my parents’ car pulls into the driveway. My mum walks in the door, puts her hand on my forehead. “You’re warm, baby,” she says, and my face burns hotter with shame. But I know that this won’t be my last stolen Sunday.