Welcome to Night Vale Read Free Page B

control the car. It was important to him that he look cool while driving, although he would not have been able to articulate why.
    Diane stared him down. Josh took a fully human shape, save for a few feathers on his back and shoulders. Diane saw them poking out from underneath his shirtsleeves but decided that not all battles are worth fighting.
    â€œHuman form when driving the car.”
    Diane saw herself in Josh. She had been a teenager once. She understood emotions. She empathized. She didn’t know with what, but she empathized.
    Josh huffed, but Diane reminded him that if he wanted to drive her car, he would play by her rules, which involved not being a three-inch-long wolf spider. Diane reminded him of his bike and how that was a perfectly reasonable form of transportation.
    Diane’s task of teaching her son to drive took additional patience, not just because of Josh’s insistence on constant reassessment of his physical identity but also because the car was a manual transmission.
    Imagine teaching a fifteen-year-old how to drive a car with manual transmission. First, you have to press down the clutch. Then you have to whisper a secret into one of the cup holders. In Diane’s case, this was easy, as she was not a very social or public person, and most any mundane thing in her life could be a secret. In Josh’s case this was hard, because for teenagers most every mundane thing in their lives is a secret that they do not like sharing in front of their parents.
    Then, after the clutch and the secret, the driver has to grab the stick shift, which is a splintered wood stake wedged into the dashboard, and shake it until something happens—anything really—and then simultaneously type a series of code numbers into a keyboard on the steering wheel. All this while sunglasses-wearing agents from a vague yet menacing government agency sit in a heavily tinted black sedan across the street taking pictures (and occasionally waving). This is a lot of pressure on a first-time driver.
    Josh often got frustrated with his mother. This was because Diane was not the best teacher. This was also because Josh was not the best student. There were other reasons as well.
    â€œJosh, you need to listen to me,” Diane would say.
    â€œI get it. I get it, okay,” Josh would say, not getting it at all.
    Diane enjoyed arguing with Josh about driving, because it was time spent talking, having a relationship. It was not easy, being a mother to a teenager. Josh enjoyed this time too, but not consciously. On the surface, he was miserable. He just wanted to drive a car, not do all of the things it takes to be able to drive a car, like having a car and learning to drive it.
    And sometimes he would say, “Why can’t my dad come teach me?” because he knew that question hurt her. Then he would feel bad about hurting her. Diane would feel bad too. They would sit in the car, feeling bad.
    â€œYou’re doing a good job,” Diane once said to Josh, in relation to nothing, only trying to fill a silence.
    So every other time, I’m not doing a good job, Josh thought, because he didn’t understand the context of her statement.
    â€œThanks,” Josh said out loud, trying to fill the silence with graciousness.
    â€œYou still need to work on a lot of things,” Diane did not say. “I’m sorry your father isn’t here,” she also did not say. “But I am trying so, so hard. I am, Josh. I am, I am, I am,” she did not say. As far as things go, her self-control was pretty good.
    I’m really good at driving, Josh often thought, even as he veered too close to highway barriers, rolled wheels up on curbs, and failed to yield to hooded figures, resulting in mandatory citywide ennui for hours. Night Vale’s traffic laws are byzantine and kept on a need-to-know basis with civilian drivers.
    Their driving lessons often ended in a “Good job” and a “Thanks”