“I’m not coming for food at all,” I say. This girl kind of scares me.
“Huh.” She still hasn’t looked up. “So what do you want? I’m understaffed and irritated.”
“I, um.” I try to catch a peek into the back of the truck. Where’s Elle? She has to be in there somewhere, doesn’t she? I don’t remember her ever talking about a day off. “Actually, I…” I swallow hard. “I thought I could find Elle here.”
That piques her interest. She finally looks up at me. “Huh.”
I shift. “Huh what?”
She shows me her magazine. My promo shoots from after Hello, America. I wince. “You look way better Photoshopped.”
“That’s a first,” I say. “Hearing it out loud, I mean.”
“Everyone probably thinks it.” She puts down the magazine and cocks her head. “What’re you doing here?”
“You wouldn’t believe me even if I told you.”
She lifts an eyebrow. “You’re right.”
I take a deep breath and pull out Elle’s lost shoe. Her eyes widen.
“Okay. I’m interested.”
I explain everything—from the first text to someone I hoped was Robin Wittimer to the weeks talking with Elle to ExcelsiCon to the ball to the moment the truck pulled away. “I want to find her and tell her the truth. I want to apologize.”
She leans farther over the counter, debating. “Why? So you can clear your conscience? You just gonna run away again, Carmindor?”
It’s irony, we both know. Carmindor never runs away from anything. He stays and he fights and he deals with the consequences. And I think we all have the chance to be him.
I think this is my chance, now.
“No,” I reply. “I won’t run away from her again. Unless she’s chasing me with something and then I’ll probably run—but never from her.”
Teal-hair girl debates for a second, chewing on a chunk of bright pink bubblegum. “Well, Elle quit. Or her stepmother quit for her. And she’s not answering her phone and she isn’t at home. I have no way of contacting her.”
My heart begins to sink.
“But,” she holds up a finger, “I thiiiink know where she might be. If you’re interested. I can take you there.”
I hesitate. “Now? But aren’t you—”
“It’s a restaurant on wheels, Carmindor. It’s supposed to move.” She closes the serving window, climbs through the middle to the cab, and pushes open the passenger door with her foot. I climb into the seat. The entire vehicle smells like pumpkin fritters and oil and twenty-year-old leather seats.
“I’m Sage, by the way,” she says, as she cranks up the monster of a truck, “and I suggest you buckle up.”
The Magic Pumpkin roars to life with a belch and begins to rattle like it’ll come apart at the seams. I quickly heed her warning and wrap the seatbelt around me. She forces the truck into gear and slams on the gas, swirling onto a one-way street with the speed of a NASCAR driver. My eyes dart to the rearview mirror—I see Lonny has fired up the rental car and is hot on our tail. Sage tears through historic Charleston, the crowds simply peeling out of the way, and points us out of the city.
“So…where are we going?” I ask, once I’m sure I’m not going to die.
“This country club over in Isle of Palms. It’s horrible.”
“Then why is she working there?”
“Because she wasn’t supposed to go to the convention,” Sage says. The truck jostles across one of the many bridges in and out of town, their white suspension cords intertwined overhead. “Her stepmother didn’t want her to, but we took the truck—I got in major trouble for that by the way, grounded until the sun rises in the west. Like hell I am,” she adds under her breath, before going on. “But we went anyway and entered that contest. We thought we could make it home but—”
It begins to make sense now. “That’s why you left in such a hurry.”
“Bingo.” Sage grins. “And now I’d bet the Pumpkin that her stepmom’s got her chained up at the club.”
Sage turns off the bridge, following the signs to Pointe Greene Country Club. Everything suddenly grows greener, with lush grass and dense foliage. The roads improve, too. She follows the winding route up to a checkpoint and eases the truck to a stop in front of a yellow barrier arm. She leans out as the guard on duty opens his window.
“Business?” the guard asks.
“Just here to look around,” she replies. “I think I might want to become a member.”
He twitches his mustache. “I’m sorry, I can’t let you in without permission.”
“From who?”
“People who belong to the country club,” he says slowly, as though Sage is stupid or something, and gives her a lookdown, from her teal hair to her piercings to her Killer Queen halter top. “And I don’t think you’re a member.”
Her hands tighten around the steering wheel. She scowls. “I’ll show you what I’ll do to your member if you—”
“Excuse me,” I interrupt, leaning forward in my seat. I flick up my Aviators and put on my best smile. Slipping into Darien Freeman in the blink of an eye. I never thought I’d actually be happy for the mask.
The security guard narrows his eyes. “What?”
“Hi. Darien. You might know me. Starfield?”
His eyebrows dart up. Ah, bingo.
“I’ve got a friend who works here, and I’m in town for just a little while. Do you think you could, you know, let us in to see her? Please?”
He begins to nod—thank you Starfield, thank you—but then his eyebrows collapse down again. “I don’t care if you’re the prince of England,” he says. “You can tell your friend to back her pretty truck up. You ain’t getting in.”
“Well that’s rude,” I mumble.
Sage mutters something under her breath and slams the truck into reverse. The security guard sits back triumphantly and begins to close the window.
My shoulders slump. “I guess I’ll wait until she gets off work.”
“No.”
“Why not? It’s only a few hours, right?”
“Because the only way Elle can get home is with her stepmom. And if the security guard won’t let us in, what do you think Catherine’ll do?” She eases the truck to a stop and slowly slides it into gear. The engine belches black smoke.
“What else can we do?”
Sage narrows her eyes. “This day, we fight.”
She slams her foot on the gas pedal. The truck’s tires squeal, burning rubber, before they catch traction with a jerk. I grapple with my seatbelt. You’d think by now I’d be good with stunts. You think I wouldn’t want to kiss my butt goodbye.
You’d be wrong.
Sage pulls the truck to the side and we curve around the barrier, barely squeezing through. The security guard throws open the window, his face beet red, and shouts after us, but Sage just slams the PLAY button on the stereo and cranks the music as loud as it’ll go.
The Starfield theme roars from the speakers like the trumpets of war.