“You can’t take my car!” the man yells. He’s running toward me.
I rip the gear into drive and aim right at the guy. He rushes for the car door, but I hit the accelerator hard, and he gets jolted into the blackness beside me. I jerk the wheel to steer onto the road, barely missing a post that appears out of nowhere. I jab my bare foot harder on the gas and hold myself up by the steering wheel so I can see over the dashboard.
Night trees flash past in a wild kaleidoscope of high beams and black. A void of eager emptiness opens on my left, signaling the edge of a cliff. Bumps jolt me wildly in my seat, but I don’t slow for anything—not my seatbelt or ice or stop signs—until I make it out to the flatland and a straight, two-lane highway. Some bottle clinks on the floor, toasting my acceleration, and I roar the car as fast as it will go.
11
ROSIE
THE PICKUP
FREE! I’M FINALLY FREE.
The snow has picked up, and the flakes aim into my headlights with mad surprise. My windshield wipers thwack away. I manage to pull my seat forward, but I have to sit tall to see because the car was designed, apparently, for a giant. Plus, despite the blasting heat, I can’t get warm, so my scrawny muscles are tight with shivering. I’d give anything for a coat. Or shoes.
I sniff and wipe my drippy nose with the back of my hand. I need everything: clothes, food, and a place to hide. I have to get as far away from the Onar Clinic as I can, but I also need to ditch this car, which is easy to track. Every mile feels like a risk either way.
That’s why I fly like wild. My wheels catch a patch of black ice, and I swerve in a nasty spin that lands me backward in a full stop. Only then, with the heat ticking in the silence, do I realize how stupid I am. I didn’t get out of the vault just to kill myself on the road. I’m not the best driver to begin with. Never got my license. From then on, I’m more cautious. I straighten out and drive for a couple hours through worsening weather. The road meets a clutch of small, dark buildings and a brace of streetlamps, all haloed with falling snow. I turn into the parking lot of an all-night diner and skid slow-mo into a spot. Exhaustion hits me as I turn off the engine.
The slats of the blinds are open in the diner, spilling striped rectangles of yellow light out onto the snow. It’s like a Hopper painting, but grainy, and I squint to see inside. Behind the counter, a tall, thin man with a gray complexion is filling sugar shakers. Another man sits on a stool at the counter, methodically eating ham and eggs. The only other customers are two young black women in a booth. They’re sharing French fries from the same dish, and the sight of one smearing a long fry in ketchup sets my mouth salivating.
Think, I tell myself. I can’t, obviously, go into the diner in my hospital gown, but I can’t stay here in this stolen car, either. I check around me once more for anything I might wear or use, but the only article of interest is a bag of weed in the glove compartment. I dump the weed on the floor and slip the bag over my foot. I wrap the bag at my ankle as best as I can, for one sad sock.
As soon as I climb out of the car, the cold swirls viciously around me and steals my breath. I run as fast as I can and try the doors of the Honda Fit, hoping to hide in the back, but they’re all locked. I glance toward the diner where the French fry eaters are now rising out of their booth, and then I sprint to the pickup. These doors are locked, too. Crap!
I’m out of options.
In the bed of the truck, a couple of over-sized bags of cat food are collecting snow. The cold is unbelievable, and I instinctively huddle low, balancing on one foot. The diner door opens with a tinkling bell.
“Hang on. I forgot my purse,” says one of the women.
“I’ll get the car,” says the other. “Man, it’s cold. Isn’t the snow pretty, though?”
At the same time, a Jeep turns into the lot. It pulls up in front of the car I stole and blocks it in. Not good. I try to see into the cab to identify the driver, but the angle is wrong.
The French fry eater crosses through the car’s low beams, and before she can come any nearer, I climb into the back of the truck and huddle down. The night is stupidly, brutally cold, and I’m shivering on top of my shivering. How fast can I die in this cold? The truck’s door opens audibly, then closes, and a second later, the engine starts.
Peeking over the edge, I see the driver from the Jeep climbing the steps, and as he enters the diner’s light, he’s clearly Ian, bundled up in a big white coat with fake fur around the hood. I could kill him for his coat alone. He holds the door for the second woman as she exits, and soon after, she gets in the pickup. I lurch onto the nearest bag of cat food as we head down the lip of the driveway, and then the truck turns onto the road.
The truck picks up speed, whipping my hair around me. I keep low and drag the bags of cat food into the corner behind the cab. As I climb onto one, its paper cover breaks open beneath me. The pellets are dry, and they give a bit under my weight. I can actually burrow into them somewhat, and I brace the other bag against me as a windbreak of sorts. It’s hardly any shelter, and I’m shaking from cold, but I curl into a ball and put my head down against my knees. It occurs to me dimly that I should knock on the back window of the cab and try to get the attention of the women inside, but it’s already too hard to uncurl.
For a time, the cold is unbearable, a pain beyond madness, but soon I slip into a dream. I’m huddled by a fireplace, with a soft white rug beneath me. As long as I don’t move, the firelight flickers on my closed eyelids and warmth eases through my body. I smell hot chocolate, and Linus kneels down beside me. I know he’s there, even if I don’t open my eyes, simply from the feel of his nearness. He says, “Where’ve you been? I’ve been looking for you.”
It’s hard to speak, but I manage a whisper. “I’m freezing,” I say.
“Yes. This was an idiotic mistake. But I’ve got you now.”
I feel another layer of warmth as he covers me with a blanket, and I keep very still.
“Don’t tell Dubbs,” I say.
It’s the wrong thing to say because he’ll never see my sister. They aren’t even acquainted. But he gives me the right answer anyway.
“I won’t.”
*
Some time later, a new voice comes from far away.
“Portia, check this out.”
I can’t move or feel anything.
“Don’t tell me she’s dead,” says another woman. “Where’d she come from?”
A touch on my back sends a crackling through my body, like I’m ice and streaks of white are breaking me into pieces.
“We have to get her to the hospital.”
“I doubt she’d last that long,” says the other. “Help me get her inside.” She adds a curse.
I feel them rolling me, but I’m so clenched and cold, I can’t do anything to help.
“Look how skinny she is.”