“Okay. But I have some stuff I have to do when I get to Cash Creek.”
“Don’t worry. Soon as we get there, I’ll split.”
*
While we drove, we talked. Turned out she was sixteen, but she looked older, with lots of makeup. She was from Hope, that first small town I’d driven through, and fighting with her parents because they didn’t like her boyfriend. She was running away to meet him in Revelstoke. I thought she was crazy to be hitchhiking but she said she did it all the time. She showed me a photo of her boyfriend, who was kind of cute, with brown eyes and really white teeth. She wanted to know why I was going to Cash Creek, and I just said I was meeting up with my aunt.
I turned up the radio when a good song came on and started tapping out the beat on my steering wheel, singing the melody.
“You have a good voice,” Lacey said.
“Thanks.”
“Are you a singer?”
“No, I’m a DJ.” I felt a thrill saying the words, a little lift at the bottom of my stomach. “I have a YouTube channel.”
“That’s so cool. I wish I could do something like that.”
“You like music?”
“Yeah, but I can’t sing, can’t play. I’m not really good at anything.” She shrugged. “My mom tells me all the time that I’m stupid.” She put on a harsh voice. “‘You’re going to end up living in a trailer park.’” She laughed, but it sounded bitter, and when she looked out the window her upper back quivered like she was fighting tears. I didn’t know what to say.
After a few minutes she turned back around, started singing aloud to the radio in a really goofy high-pitched voice. I started laughing.
“I told you I can’t sing!”
“Wow, you weren’t kidding.”
I joined in, making my voice go all squeaky, and it was kind of fun for a few minutes, until I remembered why we were on this trip. I stopped singing. Lacey glanced over, her voice drifting off. She stared back out the window.
We’d been driving for over two hours through mountains, lakes, rolling farmland, and alpine meadows when a sign with food and lodging symbols showed that we were almost at the exit for Cash Creek, which was good because we hadn’t passed a gas station for miles and I was almost on empty.
The town was small, the downtown core only a few streets. I’d only ever seen a few small towns on the way to Emily’s cabin, but those ones looked cute, like somewhere you’d want to stop and get ice cream or take photos. This one looked really rough. Most of the old buildings seemed run-down, and the park benches and metal garbage bins didn’t look like they’d been painted for years. Everything seemed faded, the paint on the stores, the pavement, the awnings.
“I better get some gas,” I said.
I noticed an older garage, remembered my mom’s words. One of them worked at a garage. What if he still worked there? Should I try to find another garage? I looked down at my dashboard. The light had been on for a long time.
When we pulled up by one of the pumps no one came out, and the office looked empty. Two big shop doors were open, though.
I got out of my car. Lacey also got out and leaned against the side of the car, fanning her face. I walked over to the shop, feeling the heat radiating off the pavement through my flip-flops. My hair felt heavy and hot on the back of my neck.
A tall boy with a red baseball cap was bent over talking to another boy who was halfway under a truck. Looked like an older Chevy, and painted a gunmetal-gray with a Budweiser sticker in the back window. The truck was on a jack and huge tires with a meaty tread were off and leaning against the wall. A radio on the bench was playing country music. I was relieved there didn’t seem to be anyone else working.
“Can we get some help?” I said.
The boy with the baseball cap spun around. The other boy pulled his head out from underneath the truck and stood up. His eyebrows rose when he noticed Lacey, who had come to stand beside me. He had blond hair cut short on the sides and back, with long bangs brushed forward into his face. Both boys were probably around our age and looked grubby, grease under their nails, sweat stains under the arms of their dirty T-shirts, ripped faded jeans hanging low off their hips.
“We need gas,” I said.
“Shit, sorry, didn’t hear you pulling up,” the tall boy with the red cap said, coming toward us while wiping his hands on a rag. Even taller than me, he had fair skin and dark curly hair winging out from underneath his baseball cap, lively eyes and a cheeky smile.
“You girls aren’t from around here,” he said.
“Just visiting,” I said. I wondered if I should show them the picture of Crystal and ask if she’d filled up on gas, but wasn’t sure yet how to explain why I was looking for her. I glanced over at Lacey. She’d said she was going to split as soon as we got to town, but she hadn’t made any moves to hit the road yet.