“Because my weird has to be able to cancel out your weird, Lady Cross-stitch.”
“At least what I do is considered an art form,” Chubs said.
“Yes, in ye olde medieval Europe you would’ve been quite the catch—”
“Anyway,” I cut in, now in full possession of the map, “we have to be close to Winchester.” I pointed to a dot on the western end of Virginia.
“What makes you say that?” Liam began. “Are you from this area? Because if—”
“I’m not. I just remember driving past Keyser and Romney while the two of you were out. And with all the Civil War Trails signs, we should be near one of the battlefields.”
“Those are some good detective skills, Nancy Drew, but, unfortunately, those signs pretty much mean nothing in this part of the country,” Liam said. “You can barely go fifty feet without hitting a historical marker for the place this army crossed, or that guy died, or where James Madison lived—”
“That’s in Orange,” I interrupted. “We’re nowhere near that.”
The soft blue light of evening gathered around his blond hair, stripping it of color. He studied me for a minute, scratching his chin again. “So you are from Virginia, then.”
“I’m not—”
He held up a hand. “Please. No one outside of this state gives a crap about where James Madison’s house is.”
I sat back. Walked right into that one.
It was my mom’s fault. As a high school history teacher, it had been her personal mission to cart Dad and me around to every major historical site in the area. So while my friends got to have pool parties and sleepovers, I got to walk around one battlefield after another, posing for pictures with cannons and Colonial reenactors. Fun times, made even more fun by the thousands of bug bites and peeling sunburns I always showed up with on the first day of school. I still had scars from Antietam.
Liam smiled at the dark road, keeping the minivan’s headlights off. I thought it was fairly brave—or stupid—considering the commonwealth of Virginia had never considered it a priority to install lights on its highways and roads.
“I think we should stop for the night,” Chubs said. “Are you going to find a park?”
“Relax, buddy; I got this,” Liam said.
“You keep saying that,” Chubs muttered, sitting back, “and then it’s, Oh, sorry team, let’s huddle together for warmth, while the bears try to break in and eat our food.”
“Yeah…sorry about that,” Liam said. “But hey, what’s life without a little adversity?”
That had to have been the fakest attempt at optimism since my fourth grade teacher tried reasoning that we were better off without the dead kids in our class because it’d mean more turns on the playground swings for the rest of us.
I lost track of their conversation after that. It wasn’t that I had no interest in hearing all about the bizarre traditions and habits they’d managed to form in the two weeks since escaping their camp; I was exhausted with trying to figure out why, exactly, those two were able to cling to the thin thread that bound their friendship together.
Eventually Liam found Highway 81, and Chubs found a shallow, restless sleep. The endless stream of old trees, only a few fully dressed for spring, passed by my window. We were going too fast, and we were too far into twilight, for me to make out the patchwork of leaves that had grown in. Wherever we were, there were still traces of the dead leaves from the fall before staining the highway’s cement. Almost as though we were the first car to drive the road in quite some time.
I leaned my forehead against the cool glass, reaching over to point the AC vent directly at my face. My headache was still there, pinching the space behind my eyes. The freezing air would help keep me awake, and, if nothing else, alert enough to catch my mind blindly groping for Liam’s.
“You okay?”
He was trying to watch both the road and me. In the dark, I couldn’t do much else besides make out the curve of his nose and lips. A part of me was glad I couldn’t see the bruises and cuts there. It had only been a few days, a blink in my collective sixteen years of life, but I didn’t need to see his face to know soft concern would be there. Liam was a great many things, but mysterious and unpredictable weren’t included in that deck of cards.
“Are you okay?” I countered.
The car was quiet enough for me to hear his fingers drumming on the steering wheel. “Just need to sleep it off, I think.” Then, after a moment, he added, “Did they really use that on you at Thurmond? A lot?”
Not a lot, but enough. I couldn’t tell him that, though, without fanning the flames of his pity.
“Do you think the PSFs figured out where you’re going?” I asked instead.
“Maybe. We could have just been at the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Chubs woke behind us with a loud yawn.
“Not likely,” he said sleepily. “Even if they weren’t intentionally tracking us, I’m sure they are now. They were probably forced to memorize your ugly mug and Psi number. We already know you’re a tasty treat for the skip tracers”
“Thank you Mr. Sunshine and Smiles,” Liam gritted out.
“For what it’s worth, the guy seemed surprised that it was actually you,” I said. “But…who is this person you keep talking about? The woman?”
“Lady Jane,” Liam said, as if that explained everything.
“Excuse me?”
“It’s what we call one of the more…persistent skip tracers,” he continued.
“First, it’s what you call her,” Chubs said. “And second, persistent? Try she’s been on us like a shadow ever since we got out of Caledonia. She shows up everywhere, at any time, like she can guess what we’re going to do before we do it.”
“The lady is good at what she does,” Liam confirmed.
“Can you please not compliment the person trying to drag our asses back to camp?”
“Why do you call her Lady Jane?” I asked.
Liam shrugged. “She’s a rare British lass in a crop of bloodthirsty Americans.”
“How did that happen?” I asked. “I thought they closed all the borders.”
Liam opened his mouth to answer, but Chubs got there first. “I don’t know, Green; why don’t you hit her up for a chat and tea next time she comes around to capture us?”
I rolled my eyes. “Maybe I will if you tell me what she looks like.”
“Dark hair up in a bun, glasses—” Liam began.
“—long, sort of hooked nose?” I finished.
“You’ve seen her?”
“In Marlinton. She was the one driving the red truck, but…” Cate and Rob had taken care of that. She had been left behind. “Well, she wasn’t there this time,” I finished. “Maybe we lost her for real.”
“Fat chance,” Chubs grumbled. “The woman is a Terminator.”
We passed one rundown motel after another, some occupied more than others. I sat up in my seat when Liam turned into an old Comfort Inn’s parking lot, only to immediately back out of it with a low whistle. There were no cars in the parking lot, but a dozen or more men and women were hanging around outside of their rooms, smoking, talking, fighting.
“We saw this a lot driving through Ohio,” he explained without me having to prompt him. “After people lost their houses, they’d go to the nearest closed hotel and try to fight over the rooms there. Gangs and all that crap.”
The motel he settled on was a Howard Johnson Express, one with a quarter of its parking lot filled with different makes and models of cars and the blue VACANCY sign on. I held my breath as he navigated around the outer ring of rooms, careful to avoid driving past the office. He picked a spot at the very edge of the lot, surveying the line of rooms in front of us. Two were easily ruled out—we could see the glow of the TV through the windows and curtains—but the others weren’t as obviously occupied.