“We’re taking a year off,” said Brooke.
“Sounds fun,” said Kate. She switched the radio station, skipping some commercials and settling on a bombastic country song, though she kept the volume so low it was mostly muffled thumps and the occasional twangy holler. “Where are you two from?”
“Kentucky,” said Brooke quickly. Her confusion seemed to have dissipated, and I wondered if this was a lie or if she’d become a girl who was actually from Kentucky. She didn’t look disoriented, but sometimes she didn’t.
“Wow,” said Kate, “I wouldn’t have guessed that at all. ’Course, I don’t really have an accent either. Our generation doesn’t, really, right? All the TV and movies and stuff, we all sound like we’re from … I don’t know … Cleveland?”
“Comfortably Midwest,” I said. I had no interest in small talk but I didn’t want her to feel awkward, either, as the only one talking.
“Can I ask what brings you to Missouri?”
“Just traveling,” said Brooke. “We thought about going to Europe, but decided there was so much of America we didn’t even know, so why not get to know that better first?”
“There’s no way,” said Kate, shaking her head. “I’d never pick Missouri over Europe, are you kidding me? I mean, sure, I grew up here, so it’s old hat and I’ve already seen it and all, but even … what else … Kansas? Tennessee? Maybe, what, Arizona and the Grand Canyon, or anywhere in the States is pretty enough, I guess, but they’re not Venice. Weigh them on the scale and they don’t stack up.” She took her hands off the wheel, mimicking a scale with her palms. She grabbed the wheel again. “I’d give anything to go to Venice.”
“It’s beautiful,” said Brooke.
Kate brightened. “You’ve been?”
“A long, long time ago,” said Brooke. She stared out the window. “I’m sure it’s changed a lot.”
“Even if it’s all touristy and whatever I still want to see it,” said Kate. “Not just to take pictures, you know, but to stay there, to live there, even if it’s only for a month or two. Maybe a summer, shacked up in a one-room apartment with nothing but a laptop to write poetry on. Or even better a typewriter. Old school.”
“You’re a writer?” asked Brooke.
“No, no, no,” said Kate, shaking her head so vigorously I worried she’d drive us right off the side of the road. “Anthropology major—I’m going to join Doctors Without Borders or something like that. I’m hoping for an internship with them over Christmas, but, I mean, if you had the chance to just sit in Venice and write poetry, why wouldn’t you? Just, like, sipping little demitasse cups of coffee and smoking in a plaza reading Byron. I don’t even smoke but I would, because, come on.”
I realized, listening to Kate talk, that no one would miss her for days if we killed her. She was in the first hours of a cross-country trip, with the kind of free-spirited independence that would explain away all kinds of silences. I could grab the back of her neck—soft and exposed, her hair pulled up except for a few wispy strands and the light blond down on her skin. She’d let two strangers into her car because she’d wanted the conversation, and because our status as drifters suggested a shared love of reckless romanticism. It was more likely that we were addicts, car thieves, or straight-up murderers looking for someone to chop into pieces. I thought of all the ways we could kill her, all the ways we could hide the body—dozens, if not hundreds, of ways that we could make her disappear without a single trace.
That slender neck, right in front of me. I could choke it, or stab it, or pull its hair and listen to it scream—
“It was really cool of you to pick us up,” said Brooke. “Most people are scared of hitchhikers.”
I looked at her and saw she was staring at me as she said it.
I closed my eyes and leaned back into my seat.
“I know, you hear all the stories,” said Kate. “But seriously. I mean, you guys are great, and I think most people are great, you know?”
“It doesn’t hurt to be careful though,” said Brooke.
I never would have actually hurt her. I was just thinking about it because … because that’s what I did. Killing wasn’t a job, it was literally what I did for a living. To live. To help other people live. I couldn’t just kill people, except sometimes I could.
That was the moral swamp I swam in and I was barely keeping my head above water.