Some Place Better Than Here

Chapter 1: I've Just Seen A Face

1 

I've Just Seen a Face

==========DANNY============

It was the seventeenth of too many summers spent in that dumpy little town when everything life-changing happened. The intolerability of living in that town reached its peak when, during the fifteenth summer, I had my bike stolen from the beach and had to walk two hours home in a melting puddle of sweat. I needed a car.

Things did get better, however, when months before starting the sixteenth summer, after aceing parallel parking in one shot on the exam, I got my full-blown license and no longer needed Mom in the passenger seat to drive.

So that day I finally got my license, got in a car, and got to drive anywhere my heart oh-so-wanted to go, felt like the first day my life truly began. Even something about the way I listened to music changed when the sound came blasting (always blasting) out of the speakers of a car. From then on, freedom only went withheld by where I didn't steer the wheel. But mind you, that freedom was still limited to the streets of that shit town. My license was only a hall-pass from the prison of my dreams. Because, if I'm going to start being honest with you—the only thing I had ever really dreamt of doing, was running away.

So, all that being said, it half-killed me that morning when my mom had to drive me to work.

"And what did I say?"

"Seriously? Mom—"

"Do not take his car out. Drive it home. Clean it. And leave it at home."

She was talking about my boss's Porsche. Do you get why this sounds stupid now? But I'll continue to regurgitate.

"Yes, Mother," I said. "I get it. He trusts and respects me, and I need that job." Which was a complete and utter lie. I didn't really need that job. Mom and I were soon moving to California.

"Wow. Congratulations, Danny! Something got through your thick skull!" Mom said, scratching my head with her knuckles as we pulled up into the driveway of Superior Carwash.

"Mom. Mom. Whoa. My hair."

"Danny—you're going to a carwash. Come on. See you later. Love you."

"Loveyoutoo," I said as I grabbed my bag, shut the car door, and then went on to trudge through the open garage of Superior Carwash. In my imaginative little noggin, where most of my life played itself out, good ol' Superior was some sort of retro Ford Motors assembly plant.

Geez, now that I think of it, maybe I did have some sort of mental disability that at my then elderly age of seventeen-going-on-eighteen I was still playing in my head.

But, I guess I had nothing to truly fear, because for as long as I can remember, I always made up stories and scenarios in my head. Such as the time when I was in the fifth-grade, nursing a stupidly major crush on class hottie, Julie Holdaway, and had just discovered the religion I would soon become a devote adherer of: The Beatles.

My then growing obsession with The Beatles—in particular the song "I've Just Seen A Face"—led me to the point where I began living my life through the lyrics. It got so bad that at recess, I made sure to "look the right way" at Julie on the tetherball court, because "had it been another day, I might have looked the other way" to the basketball nets.

"Danny!"

The voice of my carwash manager, Rob, boomed as I walked into the garage, my rubber soles squeaking on the wet concrete floor. Inside the carwash, a conveyor-belt stretched through the rectangular building that shotgunned all the way back in a long open tunnel.