It’s six a.m. and the sun is just beginning to rise. We’ve been driving for a couple hours already, and though I’m tired, my dad tells me to stay awake. He says I have to pay attention or the whole trip will be for nothing. How does he expect me to pay attention when I got five hours of sleep at best last night?

It was my sixteenth birthday last night, and my friends and I stayed up late playing video games and such. My dad is way lenient as far as bedtimes, so plenty of parents were upset when they learned that their kids were still awake at twelve p.m. (Johnny was told to call his parents every couple of hours while he was awake, and he did just that).

Anyway, dad comes and gets me out of bed, puts me in the car with a cup of coffee and tells me we’re going out to learn something important. We left town driving towards the mountains and it feels like we’ve been driving forever.

My dad’s an odd guy. He works as an outside consultant to a car insurance firm, whatever that means. He works from home normally, but every now and then he’s gone for a week, and I’m all alone. He doesn’t have any rules, and if he ever did he didn’t enforce them. I guess I’m a good kid simply because I’d be dead or incarcerated by now if I’d screwed up. My dad doesn’t really ‘father’ me so much as provide the materials to survive. I’ve cooked or bought my own food since I was seven, with his money though. But I make the walk to and from the store.

We’re going up a bending road now. Trees block the weak morning sunlight, making it seem almost like night again, and I want to sleep. I see various animals wandering through the woods, groggy from just waking up themselves, I bet! They walk around oblivious to our lone vehicle climbing the steep mountain road. I look at them and for a second I’m envious of their simple lives.

These animals, they will never know what it feels like to fall in love with someone and then for that someone to leave, or cheat on you. They’ll never know the hurt of a friend double-crossing you to get a better job, hot date, whatever. They’ll never feel the pain of war taking thousands of lives of their species, the hurt of seeing mommy at the door crying so hard she can’t breathe while a man in a uniform tells you daddy won’t be coming again. Or worse, your daughter-in-law making funeral plans for your son with you.

My dad doesn’t date, despite being single now. If you want to know what happened to my mother, take that up with dad. Whether or not he was saddened by being separate from her, he seemed to prefer being alone. I would be lonely if it were me, but he appears to be content with himself. He often has told me that when he lies on his death bed, he wants the room to be empty when he finally passes. Complete solitude, he says, as he slips away from this life. It runs chills down my back.

I almost doze off and my dad pushes me. I jump awake and it looks like we’re now going up the steepest part of the mountain. The road runs laterally up the slope. We go around sharp turns, rock on one side and a drop on the other. My dad’s driving too fast but I’m just barely too tired to yell at him. He asks if my eyes are closed because I’m going to sleep and I merely shake my head.

When I turned five, the earliest birthday I can remember, my dad got me nothing. When I turned six, the first birthday without mom, my dad got me nothing. When I turned seven, the birthday when my best friend got me this toy I had wanted for months, my dad got me nothing. When I turned eight, the day before I broke my arm playing on the big rocks behind the playground, my dad got me nothing. My dad got me nothing for birthday nine, nothing for ten, nothing for eleven, nothing for twelve. Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, nothing. And now, my friends throw a party for me at my house, knowing full well that they don’t even have to get my dad’s permission because he won’t care, and my dad gets me nothing. I asked my dad what we were doing this morning at one point during the drive, and he simply responded, making up for lost time.

We break the peak of the mountain, and sun shoots into my eyes, powerful and invigorating. For the first time this morning, I’m really awake. We’re at some sort of scenic viewpoint. My dad parks the car and gets out. He starts walking over to a pile of rocks. I get out and follow.

He starts climbing to the top of the large pile, making no effort to help me or even tell me what he wants me to do, but I know he wants me to follow him. We climb up, I more slowly than he, and we finally reach the very top. My father looks at me and smiles, smiles at me for the first time since birthday four. That’s the last one I don’t remember, so I’m making a guess.

He points down to a large populated spot in the woods where buildings and houses are. He asks me if I know what that is and I respond that it’s our town, the place where I’ve lived my whole life. He is silent for a minute, and then he says we had to come up so early because it’s easier to see it at this time of morning.

He points out to the horizon and asks me what is there. I don’t know I tell him. That is the world, he tells me. I’ve lived my whole life in this one town, and the world was waiting for me. He says it took us four hours to drive here, and then he asks me how close the town look compared to the world. Much closer, I say.

He tells me that the world is huge, that it can be mine if I want it, and that precious time is wasting away. See the world, he says. See this huge thing that belongs to you so beautifully. You can do whatever you want. You are your own God and you’ve been trapped in this one speck right in front of us. It’s time to see the horizon.

He tells me I have a bank account with enough money to keep me going until I die, if I spend a little carefully. He’s saved it up since before I was born. He gives me a bank card. The he tosses me keys and points to a car parked off in the corner of the lot where I couldn’t see it before. It’s nothing special, but it’s new. Tank’s full, he says. Then he looks me in the eye, and says one last thing. Live.

This all hits me so hard that I can’t breathe. I’m told to leave my home, my friends, my life. A door that I never saw before is suddenly opened, and the light on the other side is so bright and hot, that it makes me realize just how much in the dark I was. And the dark was comfortable. I got used to it. Did he ever stop and think that maybe I was okay with staying down? My friends are friends, not things you replace with better ones. My life is a life, not a frame you can change out for a bigger one if the picture doesn’t quite fit.

How dare he do this for me when he’s never fathered me a day in my life? Is this getting me out of his way supposed to make up for that? Is his putting so much time into getting money and a car for me supposed to make me think everything is okay? It doesn’t make sense. He’s put so little time in me. But he’s put so much time into this…maybe, maybe he does care? I look at him and smile for the first time since I was born.