Arlene cocks her head, her eyes probing. “It’s not about how I feel. It’s about how Chelsea feels. You can still sue, if you like…”
“But the courts are a madhouse right now,” Chelsea finishes for her. “My stepfather is a judge. And…” She doesn’t want to minimize what happened, now that it’s borne ripe fruit, but she’s also not going to set herself up as a diva, as someone who’s more trouble than they’re worth. “I didn’t take offense. I’m just glad I still have a job. No harm done.”
Harlan stands—or tries to. The booth is awfully small for such a large man. He scoots out, hunched over, and then stands, his head nearly brushing the ceiling. He smiles at Chelsea, and she realizes her audience is over. She slides out and stands, then makes room for Arlene, who moves behind her. When Harlan holds out his hand, she takes it and shakes, feeling like a child shaking the hand of a bear.
He’s a good man, she realizes. And not because anyone is watching. He just is.
“On behalf of the VFR, thanks for all that you do,” he says.
“It’s a tough job, but somebody has to do it,” she responds drily, making him laugh again.
“I’m surrounded by crazy people,” Arlene says.
“I’m so glad I met you in rehab, Arl.”
Arlene playfully swats his arm. “That’s confidential!”
“Only for you. Me? I can say whatever I want.” Harlan bobs his head at Chelsea. “Sorry I got to let TJ kick your ass tomorrow.”
“All in a day’s work.”
And it could go on like that, awkward ripostes ad nauseam, but Arlene says, “C’mon, let’s get you back to breakfast,” and then Chelsea is waving goodbye and stepping down from the cool breath of luxury and back onto the heat-cracked Florida parking lot and thick summer air.
“You did good,” Arlene says as they walk back to the breakfast trailer.
“That was the weirdest thing that’s ever happened to me in my life,” Chelsea admits, glad to have her original assumption about Arlene’s skills as a therapist confirmed. “Did that just happen?”
“It did, but you should’ve asked for your own car. When he feels bad, he’ll do just about anything to please the people he likes.”
Chelsea can’t help grinning. She thought she was going to get fired for turning her boss down, and instead, she got most of what she needed.
Apparently standing up for yourself and asking for what you want actually works when the other party’s not a narcissistic asshole.
47.
The world moves in slow motion as River pulls out their laptop and shows Ella the webpage for the Violence Fighting Ring. They click on the lurid image of Florida Woman, and Ella recognizes the mother she’s known all her life despite the over-the-top makeup and costume. The location of the next VFR match is several hours away, which means Ella’s mom is several hours away, but it feels impossibly far. Can her mom really have been that close all this time, while she’s been running and fighting and starving and trying so hard to make it on her own? Has her mom really just created a new life for herself while Ella’s been slowly losing herself in someone else’s abandoned home, malnourished, terrified, alone? It can’t be possible. In her imagination, her mother was across the country, across the planet, maybe on Mars.
So much has happened. Ella is a different person now. Washing blood off your hands will do that.
But then again, her mother is probably a different person now, too.
She killed Olaf. She killed Jeanie. Maybe she killed someone else.
It doesn’t matter. She’s still Mom.
“When can we leave?” Ella asks.
River and Leanne exchange a troubled look.
“We can’t,” Leanne says softly. “We’re on a schedule. People are signed up to donate, to get vaccinated. Most important, at each stop we have a rendezvous with someone with lab equipment who can spread the cure themselves. We’re meeting a doctor in Zephyrhills tomorrow.”
“So we can drive over now, and—”
River shakes their head. “Nope. We don’t take chances. A six-hour round-trip journey on the highway means we could pop a tire or get in an accident or get pulled over and arrested. Having a lab in the back of your camper doesn’t generally look too good, especially when half the equipment is stolen.”
Ella looks to Leanne, tearing up and shaking. “Please. You guys could give her the vaccine. She’s already got the Violence. I watched her kill the dog. Please.”
Leanne leans forward in her chair, eyes brimming with sympathy. “You don’t need us to give her the vaccine. It’s easy. We’ll give you a vial and a needle, and you can vaccinate her yourself. And a few people more, besides. And I’ll print a copy of the vaccine instructions so if you find anyone with the right background, they can spread it, too.”
Ella glances around the RV. It’s funny—a few hours ago, she was so anxious to not be in here that she accepted the fact that she’d rather kill someone than get herded up the steps. And now she doesn’t want to leave it. It’s like home—a small, portable home where no one is cruel to her—and she likes Leanne and River, likes their easy energy, likes knowing that there are still people in the world who will heat her soup for her and put a folded napkin beside it.
She assumed she would go back to Mr. Reese’s oven of a house after this, but ever since she woke up on the RV floor and understood what was really going on, she’s nursed this tiny, sweet vision of traveling with Leanne and River, helping people, knowing that if something bad happened to her, someone would care. And they do care. But they care about a lot of things, and people are counting on them. They’ve made commitments, and what they’re doing is, in the long run, a thousand times more important than what Ella is doing.
But to her, there’s nothing more important than being reunited with her mom and getting Brooklyn back.
“Maybe you could postpone it a day?” Even as she says it, she hears the whiny little baby in her voice.
Leanne shakes her head again. “We can’t. But look: It’s going to be okay. Okay? We’ll give you the vaccine, you’ve got your groceries, you’ve got a working car. You leave here and you’ll see your mom in just a few hours. No big deal, right?”
Ella takes a shuddering breath, tries to connect with the ground under her feet. There are probably alternate universes where it’s no big deal, where she could just hop in her car and drive three hours as part of a fun road trip on spring break with her girlfriends.
But she doesn’t have girlfriends anymore, and there is no spring break when all the beaches are closed because people keep bludgeoning one another to death with umbrellas.
In this world, she’s never driven that far. She’s never driven more than thirty minutes away from the house, really. Doing it all alone, on new, big highways, not knowing how she’s going to get to her mom when the show is sold out and everyone will probably be trying to get in? It’s crazy. If she had just one person with her, she would feel better.