Nowhere Girl Read Online Free PDF

my cot. Kiet starts talking again, but I just look and look. Everywhere, all around, so much to see! Buttons and knobs and handles—but above all, light. I am surrounded by light. The window in front of me is as big as the world, and there’s more beside and behind me. There is nothing, anywhere around, that I cannot see. It’s like being outside, but safer. I can see the world, but it cannot get to me.
    Then Kiet moves the gear shift and the car jumps forward. The movement hums through my body and sends my fear screaming back. Did I just think this metal box was safe ? The motor coughs twice and starts to pick up speed.
    I desperately want to clamp my eyes shut, to hold this moment in a dark bubble and block my view of the countryside that’s now speeding by outside. But I force them to stay open. This is my world now. I must learn its ways.
    Kiet turns to me with a lopsided smile, and I know he thinks he understands how I feel. He doesn’t. How can he? But he is trying, and I am grateful.
    â€œWe’ll take the old highway,” he says, “the 106. It’s slower going than the 11, but it’s prettier.”
    I nod. This world here, now, is flying by—how could anything be faster?
    My hands are squeezed into tight balls. I make myself unwrap them slowly, one finger at a time. I reach into my pocket and feel the paper Jeanne gave me. Mama’s letter. I will not pull it out now, not with Kiet’s eyes watching. I will read those words when they can fill the center of my mind for as long as I need them to.
    â€œLuchi,” says Kiet. “It’s been a long time. Do you remember the games we used to play?”
    I nod. “You were so tall,” I say, then laugh because I sound like a child all over again.
    But he grins. “I was sorry when my aunt thought I was too old to come and play.”
    That explains a lot. I’d always wondered why one day Kiet stopped visiting the cells. But in a prison filled with women, a fourteen-year-old boy would have been out of place. And not long after that, Kiet had left for Bangkok.
    â€œOne thing I’ve always wondered,” he says now. “What does your name mean—Luchi? I’ve never heard it before.”
    I turn to my window. The happy flicker inside me hisses out and I remember where I am going, what I am setting out to do. “Light,” I say. “Though it doesn’t, really. Mama got it wrong. She thought the word meant light.”
    Kiet nods, as if accepting the tangle that was my mother’s mind. I suddenly think of my naming as a frame for the rest of my mother’s life. What other things did Mama assume, or come close to understanding, yet end up getting wrong? Is this another clue to the puzzle of my past, to all that she kept from me?
    I could drown in these thoughts, so I’m happy when Kiet changes the subject. “You can open the window, you know.”
    Following his example I turn my handle in slow circles, enjoying the scritch-scratch sound and watching the window lower itself like an obedient subject. When it is all the way down, I put my elbow through the opening and lean my head out.
    The wind grabs at my face and catches hold of my breath. I jerk back in and turn to Kiet, fighting the sudden sharp burst of joy. It doesn’t fit with the turmoil of my thoughts. I don’t want it, but it persists, dragging me into the core of the moment, filling me with a smile that pushes out onto my face.
    Kiet is laughing. I return to the open window. My eyes eat up the countryside as it goes by. And suddenly … I feel at home. Tall bars line the road we are driving on, bars that shoot up into the sky as far as I can see. Out beyond are orchards and green rice fields, but all are framed by the comfort of the passing bars.
    I lean my head back to look all the way up, and I realize the truth. “Those are trees?” I yell into the wind. “That tall?”
    â€œYes,