I was sixteen. I dropped out of high school, which was a lot less complicated than I thought it would be. I remember standing outside of Parkdale, waiting for someone to stop me, to tell me I was throwing my future away, but I didn’t live in a place that possessed that kind of imagination. For some people, the future ahead is opportunity. For others, it’s only time you haven’t met and where I lived, it was only time. You don’t waste your breath trying to protect it. You just try to survive it until one day, you don’t.
I rest my head against the seat and breathe. I slip out of my shirt and the air turns my skin to gooseflesh. The front of my shirt looks like a crime scene. I grab a bottle of water from my bag and wet the clean back of the shirt. I use it to wipe off my face, my beat-up elbows. I go through my things again, grab the cleanest shirt I can find and put it on. I shove the bloodstained one under the backseat so I don’t have to look at it and check my face in the mirror. The scrape on my chin looks ugly. My nose is swollen, achy and tender to the touch. I don’t know if it’s broken. I don’t know what I’d do if it was.
At least I have somewhere new to go, so it wasn’t for nothing. I drag my hand across my face and it fucking hurts, and it feels … heavy. I’m so tired. I need to really stop. I need to get farther away before I think about doing that. I lean forward, peering out the windshield. The sky has gone gray, a thunderstorm on the horizon. It’s already raining by the time I pull away from the shoulder. I watch the road disappear under the car. I feel like I’m teetering on some kind of edge I can’t see over.
451 Twining Street. Langford.
If I had a phone, I could figure out where the fuck that is and how far away. Next town … next town I’ll find another library. I glance at the gas gauge. Half empty. My eyes close. No. I rub them open, blinking against the flare of oncoming headlights.
Javi. I make myself think of him because thinking of him makes my blood burn hot enough to wake me up a little. I was weak about Javi, too desperate for a taste of some other life. Too hungry and too tired to think it through clearly. I tried, I tell myself. At least I tried. As if it counts for anything when Silas Baker is still out there, still alive. Fuck you, Javi. I squeeze my eyes shut briefly and what I found in that house— My knife against Silas Baker’s abdomen.
I tried.
What good is trying when you fail.
I push it all from my mind and ease the car to a stop because there’s a red light in front of me. I stare at it, watch as it blurs around the edges before turning green. A moment later, I finally pass the YOU ARE NOW LEAVING MONTGOMERY sign.
It rains harder and the rain turns the world into a gloomy watercolor. Every so often, sheet lightning flashes across the sky. It’s just the start of the weather, I can feel it. There’s an electricity in the air and it’s making my skin hum, tells me it’s going to get worse. The highway stretches endlessly nowhere, but then—a shape of someone on the side of the road. I squint past the rain. They have their thumb out. I didn’t know people still did that. I slow as I pass, so I can get a look at them. It’s hard to see clearly but …
A girl.
I pull over carefully. It takes her a full minute to register it, like she can’t believe someone actually stopped for her and it makes my heart hurt a little. But just because I can be soft doesn’t mean I’m stupid. I roll the passenger’s side window down. She leans in. She’s wearing a jacket with a hood that’s done little to protect her from the elements. She could be blond or brunette. I won’t know until her hair dries. Her white skin looks irritated from the rain, blotchy and red, but that still leaves it looking a sight better than mine.
“Y-you’re n-not a psycho, are you?”
She blinks against the rain. “Not last time I checked. You?” I can’t get a sense of her voice over the car’s idling engine and the weather.
“M-maybe. W-where you headed?”
“Markette.” She points ahead. “It’s about forty miles that way. Straight through.”
“D-do you know where L-Langford is? I n-need to g-get there.”
“Nope, but I could probably look it up on my phone.”
“Then I could p-probably give you a r-ride.”
“I’d sure appreciate it.”
She waits for me to let her in. I hesitate.
“I’ve never d-done th-this before.”
“I can pay you,” she says. “Cash or gas, next station.”
I unlock the door.
*
The girl hasn’t stopped apologizing to me since she climbed in the car because, thanks to her, the seat got all wet. She peels out of her jacket and reveals a slightly drier tank top underneath. Her jeans look like they’ve been painted on. It’s got to be uncomfortable and I feel bad for her but I don’t know what I could do to make it better.
She squishes back against the seat, stretching out her legs and wrangles her wallet from her pocket. She opens it to show me the bills and credit cards inside. I can’t imagine her doing something so stupid if a guy had picked her up. It’s vaguely insulting.
I’m dangerous, I want to tell her.
But after today, I believe it less and less.
“Just so you know I’m good for it,” she tells me and now that I can hear her, her words kind of run together, sort of the way actresses talked in old movies, and I think if I sounded like that, I’d talk all the time.
“Okay.”
Then, she gets her phone out and asks me what’s the name of the place I’m looking for again. 451 Twining Street, Langford. She taps it out and a moment later informs me it’s four hundred miles away. I tell her to get a pen and a piece of paper out of the glove box and write all the directions down, exactly how to get there. It goes quiet while she scribbles. The scratch of the pen and her breathing lulls me into that hazy space again. I turn the radio on. The sound of some man’s voice fills the car.
“This is West McCray with WNRK and I’m here today with…”
The voice is distractingly clean and gentle, sort of smooth in the exact same way Silas Baker’s was and the way my stomach lurches tells me I don’t want to hear any man’s voice right now. I turn the radio off. The girl gives me a crooked smile and finishes writing the directions, handing them over. I half-glance at the paper before setting it on the dash.
“W-what’s your name?”
“Cat.”
“S-Sadie.”
I close my eyes briefly. That wasn’t the name I meant to give her.
“Thanks for the lift, Sadie.”
“No p-problem, Cat.”
“Looks like we were both leaving Montgomery,” she tells me. “And I’ve been on the road for … I don’t know. But I’m telling you, it’s always the nicest places that are the worst. They got all there probably is to give and they won’t. You can’t bleed ’em, not even a little.”
“You b-bleed p-people a lot?”
She rolls her head toward me and some of her hair is starting to dry into ratty blond tangles. All she does is smile, then asks me, “So what happened to your face?”
I sniff and immediately regret it. “F-fell on it.”
“Ouch.”
“A l-little.”
“You mind if I change my jeans? They feel gross.”
I shrug and she grabs at her soaking wet bag and rummages through it. Doesn’t look like much inside it escaped the rain either, judging by all the muttered cursing that follows. After a long minute, she triumphantly declares, “Ah-ha!” and pulls out a pair of black leggings, which are so knotted up in her bag, as soon as they come out, the rest of everything else she’s got does too, spilling all over the car.
“Oh, fuck.”
She spends the next few minutes feeling around, between and under the seats, to make sure she has everything and she does it in a way that tells me she can’t afford to lose anything.
Once she’s done that and she’s satisfied, she peels out of her stiff jeans and underwear—leaving her naked from the waist down—and gets into the dry pants.
After she’s redressed, she sighs contentedly. “Better.”
This is survival, what she’s doing right now. I recognize it. A girl who bulldozes a person by being ten times herself in front of them. I want to tell Cat she doesn’t have to do this in front of me, but there’s no point.
“So what are you doing?” she asks and I tell her I’m driving. She laughs. “I mean, why are you headed to 451 Twining Street, Langford, Colorado?” It’s startling, hearing it repeated so perfectly by a perfect stranger, but I guess after writing it all down, it would be stuck in her head.