Nowhere Girl Read Online Free PDF Page B

the yang na ,” says Kiet. “Rubber trees. Aren’t they amazing? There are nine hundred and three of them, planted more than a hundred years ago. There’s a number on each one.”
    I can’t see the numbers; we’re moving too fast. And I can’t think of them as trees. It makes me happy to feel there are still some bars—wide enough to slip through, but strong enough to stand guard for me, though I am set loose into the world.
    â€œLamphun,” Kiet says, waving at a city just coming into view. “We’re at the provincial boundary. This is where the yang na end.”
    I can see it now, the gaping hole up ahead where the tall bars stop, where the empty world circles, waiting for me. My eyes fill with tears and I stretch my hand toward the last trees that are flying by my window.
    The outside is different, too. Something is changing. A low drumming sound starts in the distance and builds until I can hear it loud over the motor of the car. Then I feel it: a fat drop splatters on my outstretched palm. I rub my fingers together to savor the cool wetness. Another drop licks my fingertips. In five seconds, my hand is damp.
    â€œStop,” I whisper into the wind, and somehow Kiet hears me because he swerves off to the side, ignoring the screeches and honks behind us. We ride up onto the grass and I fling open my door and fall out.
    We have stopped next to the last tree, and I stand by it with my head bowed.
    And the rains come at last.
    They pour down on me with all the force and fury of a pent-up storm. I know Kiet is sitting inside the car, watching me, not understanding. But I don’t care. I am alone in a world of water, swimming in the tears of the sky.
    I let it consume me. I am water inside and out. The rain draws up all my sorrow and brings it bubbling to the surface. And now, finally, I can let loose the thunderstorm inside me. I cry for Mama. I cry for Bibi and Jeanne and Isra. I cry for the last yang , the last bar that I will now have to leave behind.
    And I cry for the wide-open space ahead of me, the great unknown that wants to swallow me whole. I cry until I look up and I realize that I cannot see the city ahead, Lamphun, anymore. The sheeting rain is blocking it from view.
    Then I know I have cried enough. I don’t want my tears to block my view of what’s ahead. I am terrified, but I am determined.
    I must go forward.

8
    Kiet looks at me and my open window. We are driving again, and he says the rain will drown the car. There is a river around my feet and the seat under me sloshes like laundry. Kiet flips a switch and little gusts of air start to blow on me. But they will not dry me while I have the outside pouring in through my window. And I can’t bear to close it.
    My tears are gone, but I love the feel of the sky on my skin.
    I wonder if Kiet will be angry with me, but he just laughs. “The car will not dry out until the end of the rainy season anyway,” he says.
    I keep my hand outside the window, watching every drop patter across my palm. Growing up I didn’t like to bathe—the big open room, with so many women coming in and out. But a bath like this I could learn to enjoy.
    Now Kiet rolls down his own window and the rain pours in on his short-cropped hair, soaking his orange T-shirt. He flashes me a wide smile. “I should get used to being out in the rain,” he tells me. It is the kind of sentence that starts a story, and I don’t have to wait long to find out more.
    â€œI am driving to Bangkok to buat phra . I will be ordained as a monk at the Wat Suwannaram.”
    I try to imagine Kiet in the saffron robes of a monk. It does not fit the picture my mind has built around the prison gossip of the careless, irresponsible youth. Of course, from that same gossip I know he did poi san long when he was younger than I am now. Many boys perform this ceremony before they reach their teen years, taking up the robes as novices