“You mentioned that.”
“I know,” she said, “but that’s why I don’t answer questions. Until I’m eighteen, I have to be careful. Anyway, I’m just telling you because I can see you feel sorry for me—things will get better.” She spoke with a conviction she didn’t entirely feel. Except she had to feel it, because otherwise her feet wouldn’t move, her lungs wouldn’t expand. “I mean, the ride and the doughnuts—I really do appreciate them. But you don’t need to feel sorry for me, is all I’m saying.”
“What are you going to do when you turn eighteen?” he said. “Is that what the car is for?”
“Is what what the car is for?”
“Well,” he said, “if you’re eighteen, and you have a car, you can pretty much go anywhere you want. Do anything you want. You don’t have to live at home. You don’t have to live in Pitlorsville. You could drive to LA, break into show business. Or you could drive to Houston and break into the oil business. We get born into these situations, and you do the best you can with it, but sometimes the best you can do is get the fuck out, you know?”
She thought of the car, gleaming white by the side of the road—the road that stretched on, all the intersections and exits that led from here to places like LA and Houston and Seattle and Des Moines and who the hell even knew where.
“My mom needs me,” she said.
“Yeah, well,” he said. “Everybody needs something. We don’t all get it. You need a car, right?”
He was smiling but the things he said hurt. “What about you?” she said. “What do you need?”
In the semi-light from the SuperSpeedy, she saw him roll his eyes, as if the things he needed were legion, and there was no point in talking about it. “What do I need,” he said, almost to himself.
Then he didn’t say anything else, and for a moment they sat in silence in the parking lot, the engine the only sound. The silence lasted so long that Caro began to feel nervous. “Are we going to go?” she said.
“Yeah, but—” He turned to look at her. “Maybe we could help each other.”
Her guard snapped back up. He must have seen it on her face because right away he said, “No, no. Not that. Don’t worry. I could use some help with an errand, is all.”
“An errand,” she said.
“Really quick. I just need you to run something inside to a friend of mine, at his office.”
“What?”
“A package. Not a bomb or anything, I promise.”
But not something legal, or he’d do it himself. “You said you work in pharma,” she said. “You mean pharmaceuticals? Like drugs?”
“Legitimate medicine. Headquarters in Jersey and everything. I rep all sorts of things: Antibiotics, boner pills. Statins for high cholesterol.”
“Is that what’s in the package you want me to run inside to your friend?” she said, a bit dryly. “Antibiotics and boner pills?”
“Not exactly.”
“So painkillers.”
He looked at her steadily and said, “There’s all kinds of pain in the world. Not all of it shows up on an ER scan.”
Caro didn’t say anything. She was thinking. Once she’d worked at a box office in a movie theater, a corporate chain; the usher had palmed the tickets, and she’d resold them, and they’d split the profits. They made minimum wage there, with no overtime no matter how much they worked. Nobody knew the difference and nobody got hurt. But the couple who lived upstairs in the duplex were on pills, when they could get them, and they were a mess. The cops came all the time and it was a pain; sometimes they wanted statements and Caro had to lie, and then she had to make sure Margot could act sane for a few minutes. Drugs were not movie tickets. She wasn’t sure she wanted to get involved in anything having to do with drugs.
“My friend’s office has security cameras,” he said. “I’ve already been there once today so it would look weird if I came again after hours. I’ll pay you.” He gave her a tense smile. “But you kind of have to decide quick. We’re running out of time.”
“How much?” she said.
“How about five hundred?” he said. “That’d get you a long way to your car.”
She shook her head and suddenly realized that she’d made a decision. “For taking something into a building? No. You give me that much money, I can’t play stupid when the cops come.” The closer a lie was to the truth, the easier it was to pull off. “One hundred.”
“Are you sure?” he said. “The cops won’t come. I can give you more.”