Lessons From the Kissing Booth

We stopped in Montana for gas during a rainstorm that would eventually cleanse my car of four and a half days of bugsplats.



I was on the run, I admit, from the entire state of Florida. I was running from the heat and the mosquitoes, from the useless degree I had just obtained. I was running from my addled family. Mostly, I was running from the sad scared little girl who was failing so profoundly to live up to my expectations.

Someday maybe I'll tell you all about the darker stories, about drug deals gone wrong, about midnight threatening phone calls, about being homeless. I'll tell you about all the times I failed to stand up for myself and about the times that I did not fail to stand up for myself but instead failed to move properly out of the way of heavy things intended to hurt me. I'll tell you about the things you don't want to hear about, the things that are largely what I was on the lam from.

But not now. Now, I'll tell you that I ran away successfully. I will tell you that I drove as fast as I could away from the old world and forced myself on the new one. I'll tell you that I've tried to wash away the stains of back then like that rainstorm washed away all the bugs on my car.

But I'm still sad that I didn't keep that butterfly.