Andy stargazed at her skin for a couple minutes and then switched the roof light off and followed suit.
She actually enjoyed sleeping like that—she often preferred her car to beds. In motels or cities there are always faraway noises and blinking lights beyond one’s eyelids, distracting the conscience, but inside a car in the middle of nowhere there is nothing to hold on to, nothing to see or hear. Which means, in a way, being able to see and hear everything. During her nights alone on the road she liked to sink into that void. She could dive in the all-enveloping silence and swim toward any signal-emitting system she wanted. She could navigate toward a highway, or a small town, or a big city. She could zoom across state lines toward the lights, fly over the red-and-white traffic and through concrete and neon signs until she spotted Kerri in a crowded club, and watch her for a while before whispering into her ear to call it a night.
Though she didn’t need to do that tonight. Kerri slept right by her side, sharing that metal eggshell with her, her curly contour clearly defined against the driver’s side window. Andy could close her eyes and easily tune her mind to the breathing of Kerri’s hair, the warmth of Kerri’s blood, all inches close. Tonight she was physically sitting right where she wanted to be on Earth, next to the source of the signal she always longed for.
The rest didn’t matter. Not Nate, not Tim, nothing else in the sleepscape. She could hear the grumblings of the mountains and valleys, and the legions of trees crowding the Pacific Northwest. She could perceive the gentle snoring of a wooden church and the window blinds of the restaurant in Blyton Hills, the roads north under the starry night, and the aloofness of firs. She could feel the icy quietness of the moonlit mirror that was Sleepy Lake. She could eavesdrop on the whispering conspiracy of trees on the solitary island, and the neutral, unassuming walls of the haunted house. She could peek through the battered windows and spy between the dusty floorboards. She could sink into the basement and even see the dungeon where she and Kerri locked themselves up. She could near the walls and still hear the things outside. Their squelching footsteps, the sandpaper breathing. Their needle fingernails tapping the bricks, scratching the glass, smelling the warmth of Kerri and Andy sleeping inside the car.
Andy opened her eyes and the creature banged the windshield and screamed.
—
She jolted awake and the seat belt around her arm prevented her from crashing her fist through the windshield just as the creature flew away in terror. Probably an owl. Andy had to cover her mouth with both hands to exhale the adrenaline without waking up everyone in the car.
She checked on Nate enjoying the whole of the backseat, Tim on the floor, and Kerri, still asleep like a beautiful charm, her power to repel bad dreams yet unchallenged. It had been the owl’s fault. Anyone would have jumped because of that owl, she rationalized. Almost anyone would have tried to one-punch it dead through a car glass.
After a while she considered it safe to sneak out without disturbing anyone. She miscalculated, though: as soon as the door latch clacked open, Tim scurried out from under the seat and ran into the wild.
Andy left him to reconnoiter the area and stayed close to the car. Condensation had fogged up the windows and locked the landscape out of sight from inside the car, but Andy was glad to notice the outside world had not deserted them. It was a busy night; not clear, but shared by enough clouds and stars and a half-crescent moon to keep owls and cicadas and rodents entertained and the scene as alive and thrilling as a never-sleeping metropolis. The dirt track they’d been driving on veered a few meters shy of the top of a hill, and Andy found the top and the opposite slope sparkling with early flowers in the blue night.
She sat down, feeling the damp dirt under her jeans, and thought.
Tim came back from reconnaissance some minutes later and sat down comfortably close to her. He seemed to scan the horizon with a seed of astronomer’s curiosity.
“Tomorrow, Tim, we’ll be in Blyton Hills. You know what that is?”
She scratched his head, their eyes locked and perfectly level, and Tim listened closely.
“You’ve never been there, but your great-grandfather Sean had. It’s the best place in the world,” she told him. “A very little town in a valley filled with summerhouses, not like those shitty plastic suburbs, but with cute gardens and really old trees, where not yuppies, nor rednecks, but real nice people live. And all around it, in every direction, under the green mantle of woods, miles and miles of…adventure.”
Her sight, and Tim’s, had strayed into the stars.
“Mountains to climb, and creeks to cross, and treasures in every spot. Swamps where you can build rafts, and caves to take shelter in when it rains, and old mills and barns where hand-wringing bad guys think of their evil plots, and lakes with monsters, and haunted houses where pirates used to live.”
She paused. Tim nose-prodded her like she was a music box that had stopped playing.
“It’s actually a little scary,” she warned him. “We’re going to need you at your best, soldier. We rely on you.”
Tim held her stare.
“But if it ever gets too bad, you don’t worry. Because Kerri has this place in Blyton Hills, her bedroom in Aunt Margo’s house, and it’s the safest place on earth. Like a sanctuary where we heal our wounds, lay out our strategies, and laugh away fear. And nothing can happen there; no monsters, bullies, or harm can reach you, because it’s the place where Kerri lives. It’s where she sleeps and reads and it’s the core of Blyton Hills’ warmth, the source from where everything soft and sweet and orange sprays onto the world. And that’s where we’re going. You’ll see. It’s going to be fine.”
“What is?”
Kerri wandered by, hands deep in her pockets, a trail of steam and a flame of hair carrying her words away.
“Hey.”
Tim rose to greet her, his tail causing cyclones as near as California. Kerri stroked his snout.
“Am I interrupting a moment? I can leave.”
“No, stay. We’re done.”
“Can’t sleep?”
“I needed to stretch my legs,” Andy said. “But no, not really.”
Kerri lotused down by her side, careful not to squash any dandelion. The nightscape teemed with guessable constellations.
Andy stayed silent, but the train of her thoughts had derailed already.
KERRI: (Amused.) Scattergories?
ANDY: No. Please, no, I suck at that.
KERRI: Oh, come on. Okay—word bluff! It’s like a simplified version.
ANDY: (Embarrassed.) No! I’m so bad with words!
KERRI: Come on, it’s not about words. You play the other guy’s mind.
ANDY: I’m no challenge.
KERRI: Just let me explain how you play it.
ANDY: Okay, go.
KERRI: Normally we’d use paper and pencil, but you and I can play on an honor code. You think of a word. And you just say one letter in it. Any letter, got it? Then I think of a word that has that letter, and I say another letter in it. Follow me?