Shawn Bowers: The Website

Our car broke down in the middle of nowhere, but I managed to fix it up pretty quickly by clanging various objects under the hood with increasing rapidity. My family was stunned when our world-weary Buick Sentry puttered back to life by my touch, as I had shown no competency in any field before this, let alone auto repair. While it was arguable that I had shown any competency in this case either, they were too busy complaining at each other in the car to notice how I’d done it, only that it was done.

I took my time, dramatically slamming the hood with a devil-may-care flourish and strutting all the way back to my designated hole in the passenger side backseat. Everyone in the car was silent, their eyes (and, by association, their brains) unsure of what to say or do for fear that any sudden actions may somehow reverse the miracle of my idiot savantitude.

Without a word, my brother, a neurosurgeon, and my older sister, an astronaut, scooched over so I could squeeze back into my lot. My mother, a popular mystery novelist, stared at me through the side mirror as my father, the inventor of the VHS tape, turned the key in the ignition and picked up down the road as if we had never even stopped.

For the next ten miles, everyone tried desperately to avoid glancing in my direction and the silence remained palpable, the pressure of comprehension straining them too much to attempt outward communication.

Finally, my father screeched the car to a halt on the dusty shoulder of the highway. He shut down the engine and turned around, the first to break the embargo on direct eye contact. I had forgotten how brown his pupils get when his eyeballs are bulging.

“Alright, goddamn it. How did you fix the damn car?!”

“I don’t know, dad.” I said with a wink. “Maybe I’m just good at something after all.”

He shook his head, unwilling or unable to accept an explanation so banal for what just happened. He turned the key again and the Sentry coughed back to life, still fixed and undeniably functional by my blessed hands.

And then the car exploded.