“Don’t apologize. I’m just glad someone’s stepped up as navigator.” I turn to look at Ted, and though he meets my gaze, I can tell he’s staring straight past me. He just seems to be pulled somewhere, like he’s trying to lead us along to wherever somewhere is.
I’m flipping around the radio stations, and all I hear are commercials and the same songs over and over again. Because we’re willing to do anything to distract ourselves from our own anxiety and lessen the tension of Ted’s arm shooting out from the backseat to nudge the wheel north again, Stan and I start a game where we see how many times we can hear the same song within an hour, and you’d be surprised how high our scores go. Then Stan tells me about a thing he read about how Elvis Costello once said that we can blame DJs who keep replaying popular songs for the mistaken belief that radios broadcast “frequencies.” We skip through stations, trying to play a new game to see how many times in a row we can hit the song’s chorus, which is to me the best part of any song, and I don’t care how obvious or unoriginal that opinion is. That big rushing moment, the epiphany electric, on fire. You know the part I’m talking about.
“What if there was a song that was just all chorus?” I say.
“You mean a song whose main purpose was just to give the people what they want, all the time, and then never walk away from it?” Stan says.
“Yeah.”
“How long do you think a song like that could last?”
“As long as people would listen to it, probably.”
Some cheesy Top 40 track comes on, and Stan turns it up in a way that suggests he’s trying to be ironic but that he actually really likes it. Me, I just like the song. He’s drumming his hand on the steering wheel when, with a horrifying jolt, he slams on the brakes and sends the tires screeching.
“HOLY SHIT,” he calls out, then starts muttering more expletives and puts the car in reverse. He has one of those mounted gear shifts, which has taken some time for me to get used to, so while I’m scrambling around to try to see whatever’s freaking him out, the gear shift’s right there in the way. I turn around, and I see Ted and Callie, both of whom are also freaking out, but in an almost negative way, if that makes sense. As in, they are so calm—eerily, unsettlingly, cult-member calm. And now I’m starting to freak out too, I can hear my own heartbeats and maybe everyone else’s heartbeats too, and the sound is deafening. And then I hear this noise, a real noise, from outside this car full of our terrified hearts, and I turn. And then, lo, a bear.
There is a bear. A giant, frothy-mouthed bear, crouching in the road, right in front of us.
It starts to stand. And it’s so big and so close that it can reach the front bumper with its paws, which it does, and sort of pushes itself upright. The car is continuing to reverse. I can’t look away from the bear, which is now opening its mouth.
“Stan,” I say.
He just keeps muttering curses, and I want to tell him to get it together, if not for us then for our siblings, but then the bear roars at us, snarling with its whole head, spittle flying at the windshield, so I don’t—can’t—say anything at all. Stan hits the wipers.
The bear bellows. It bares its teeth and snarls and roars, again and again. Stan’s eyes are wide open, and though I’m practically frozen where I sit, clutching that bar above the passenger door, he’s maneuvering the car to try to get us as far away from the bear as possible. I’m yelling at Stan to back up faster, like way, way faster than he’s going, and oh my God, please just faster can we get away faster, and I look back to Callie, and I reach out to just touch her, to let her know I’m here. Just as the car starts to pick up, I hear a small clattering noise in the backseat and the creaking of hinges and then the rush of air, and then I see Ted, who is out the door and on the road.
Ted looks like Brad Pitt with a crew cut and a broken nose and two chipped teeth, and he’s, like, five eight and built like the kind of house you don’t want to fall on you. He’s moving, striding, quickly and determinedly, right over to the bear. He bends forward at his waist, like his mind is just a few steps ahead of him, or like the world’s a few steps behind, and his arms are widening out to the sides, and his legs are just moving and moving—and then he leaps. He leaps right onto the bear’s back.
He’s on top of the bear, and he just starts pulling its front legs back toward him, and then we hear this awful, strange cry escape from its mouth. And now I’m terrified that the claws will get him, will slice open his arms, or that he’ll kick the bear in the face and its jaw will snap shut on his leg like a trap, with blood and sinew everywhere. I want to turn away, but I can’t, I need to throw up, but I’m terrified of opening the door, so I just stay frozen and let the nausea sink in deeper and deeper. Stan starts muttering something, and at first I think he’s gone delirious with shock, but then I start to make out words in the sounds: “You can do it, you can do it, come on, Ted, you can do it,” he says.
He’s not watching the bear anymore at all; he’s watching Ted. Only Ted.