The Emancipation - Shaena Swanson, 10th grade

The sun was hurting my eyes and the helmet was pushing awkwardly against my temples, but it was worth it, being on that motorcycle and leaving my old life behind. The worn blacktop road unwound behind us and beyond the horizon laid untapped freedom. We had been trapped here for far too long. It was finally time for us to break the chains, to escape the grip society had held us in our entire lives.
Maverick was driving. He was my boyfriend of two and a half years, and was just as motivated to run away as I was. He’d lived in a trailer park with his father for his entire life, and they had hardly any money. On Valentine’s Day and my birthday, he would give up an entire month’s salary from his minimum-wage job at the lumberyard just to buy me gifts. This motorcycle was a gift from his mother, who had remarried an extremely wealthy software producer and now had more money than she knew what to do with.
Me, I’m just from a small town in Oregon. I’ve lived in the same house my entire life. Everything in my life- my house, my family, the dreadful family-friendly minivan- was the epitome of suburbia. That was my mother’s goal: perfect house, perfect family, and perfect life. Unfortunately for her, I was ruining her master plan by running away with my boyfriend to California.
The sun was beating down hard on my neck. The winters here in Oregon were terrible, below-zero temperatures, icy wind, and foot upon foot of thick snow, but the summers here were also disgusting, in a completely different way of course. It was hot and humid. The air was thick and heavy with beads of moisture that seemed to reflect every ray of sunlight, nearly blinding you every time you stepped outside.
“Sophya, are you alright back there?” Maverick called from the front.
“I’m absolutely fantastic!” His hair blew wildly in the wind, dark brown curls flying all over the place. I laughed and took a look around. This freedom, this emancipation- it was what I had been waiting for my entire life. We needed to get away from our old lives. We needed to start a new one, together, in California. There, we would be happy.
I wrapped my arms around Maverick’s torso and took a deep breath in. He smelled like leather and cigarette smoke. To me, that was the true smell of freedom.
The last thing I remember is the back wheel of the motorcycle catching on something- maybe a pebble- and us spinning out of control. I recall flying off the back of the bike and soaring through the air, but I don’t remember hitting the gravel.
When I woke up, my mother was sitting next to me. She had my hand clutches against her heart. Her tear-streaked face stared at me in awe as I slowly opened my eyes.
“M-mom,” I attempted. It was feeble, and came out as merely a whisper. She just nodded. “W-where’s Maverick?” I asked.
“He’s fine, honey. He’s over in the next room with his father.” Tears, stained black with eye makeup, streamed down her aged face. “Oh, Sophya, I’m so glad you’re alright.”
“W-what happened?” I asked. She told me about when they found the motorcycle, how it was badly scraped up on the side and the back wheel was bent. Maverick hadn’t been as badly injured, just a broken ankle, but I had flown off the back of the bike, hit my head, fractured my right arm in three places and broken two ribs. My entire body was bandaged and covered in road rash.
My mother’s well-manicured hands stoked my left hand. She kept whispering, “I love you Sophya. I’m so glad you’re okay.” It was then that I realized that it doesn’t matter what my mother wanted me to be, or how annoyingly meticulous she was. What was important was our relationship as mother and daughter. I no longer felt out-of-place, no longer felt as though I had to run away to feel happy or free. I had found a different kind of freedom, here in my hometown. I was free from my feelings of inadequacy, and surrounded by those who loved me.