Page 18

chapter seventeen

Emily

Day Three

Once again, we set out at the break of dawn. I’d actually slept decently next to the smoldering substation that cast off enough heat to ward off the winter night chill. That and my exhaustion had meant I hadn’t stirred and for that I was grateful.

There was also a buzz of hopefulness inside because of the fact that we were setting off on a road. A road that, like Tuck said, led somewhere, and I hoped to God that somewhere arrived quickly. I wasn’t sure how many more blisters I could sustain and still walk. My slippers and socks were brown from the mud and dirt we’d been trampling through, but I refused to utter a word about the state of my feet and allow Tuck to look at me like I was the greatest burden that had ever been foisted on his broad shoulders.

We shared the last pack of almonds and then Charlie and I fell in line behind Tuck. The sky was again cast in tangerine the way it had been the day before and gave off that same hazy glow that was both beautiful and bizarre. Haunting.

I hefted my suitcase higher, attempting to rest some of the weight on the front of my hip without disturbing my bandaged wound. “Here, babe, I’ll carry that,” Charlie said. I resisted, but not overly much because, God, it really was heavy and cumbersome and when Charlie took it, I sighed with relief. But when he transferred it to his other hand, I caught the fleeting expression of annoyance.

We continued walking, my guilt increasing with every step. Because what was the point of holding on to something that was supposed to represent independence, if it was causing my boyfriend to have to suffer under the weight? How was that independent? How did that signify girl power? You’re a sellout. And how long were Tuck’s angry words about me lacking talent going to repeat in my mind?

I stopped and so did Charlie, allowing me to grab the suitcase from his hand. “You know what? Fuck it,” I said, as I tossed it to the side of the road. “I can replace my stuff too. And I’m sick to death of lugging that stupid thing along.”

I brushed my hands together and began marching forward, Charlie caught up and slung his arm around me. “Being rich is freeing, right? Like I said, when we get back to LA, we’ll go on a shopping spree.”

“Sounds dreamy.”

Tuck had stopped and turned toward us when I’d chucked the luggage. Before he turned back, he pressed his lips together, and I swore I saw a tiny flicker of amusement move over his expression. Laugh if you will, Tuck. I’ll show you. I’ll show everyone. I had beat all the odds so far and I’d continue to do so.

We traveled, and walked, and walked some more. The sun rose higher, a yellow swath across the orange sky. At some point we ran out of water and so we stopped and gathered snow in our water bottles and then pressed the plastic against our bodies as we walked to melt it.

As I trailed Tuck, my mind roamed freely. And it was the weirdest thing because I realized that my mind hadn’t done that in…well, probably years . It was a sort of panicky sensation not to have anything to reel me back in. I kept reaching for my phone to distract myself, and each time I looked at its blank screen, a trill of fear would vibrate inside me. I saw Charlie doing the same thing, patting his pocket intermittently and then flinching.

The lack of search engines, and online maps, and the ability to call for help made it clear that, at the moment, the only things I could count on were the strong lines of Tuck’s body moving smoothly in front of me, leading the way.

Tuck looked back at me, and I realized suddenly that I was humming, snippets of song lyrics weaving through my brain, arranging and rearranging and then forming tunes. I went quiet.

“I’ve gotta take a leak,” Charlie said. I halted too and he stepped off the road and walked toward the woods. Tuck, just a few feet ahead, looked back and then came to a stop as well, opening his backpack and removing a bottle of water and taking a long swallow. I walked the short distance to him, honestly surprised he’d stopped. Over the past few days, he’d kept walking each time we’d needed a bathroom break and we’d had to hurry to catch up. We’d been walking for what had to be close to three hours now, and perhaps even Tuck needed a break once in a while. “You used to hum like that during those harvest mornings,” Tuck said, his gaze focused on his hand screwing the cap back on.

For a second, I was confused, but then his words brought forth a memory, the picture blooming so suddenly and so vividly that I swore the scent of orange blossoms infused the winter air. The workers at our grove had risen at the crack of dawn to avoid the heat of the day, and so had we, running outside in shorts and bare feet, with bedhead and sleep grains still stuck in our eyelashes. The oranges were so fragrant. If I closed my eyes, I could feel one in my palm, heavy with ripeness, and hear the small snap as it broke from the branch. It’d felt like a gift, the way the tree had so easily let go of its fruit with only the smallest twist of my wrist. A blessing. “I did?” I asked. I’d hummed as I’d picked? I didn’t remember that.

Tuck nodded and then took another swig from his bottle.

I tilted my head. I remembered the picking. I remembered following along behind Tuck. But I didn’t remember humming. It was because my mind had been free to roam, I imagined, like it was now, my body moving from tree to tree, reaching and plucking, reaching and plucking. Daydreaming as I worked. I wondered if that was when I’d first started composing “Find You in the Dark”—the melody, if not the lyrics—which became the single that had catapulted my career into the stratosphere. Because the thing was, when I wrote that song, and the others on the album too, they’d all felt so effortless, like they’d lived inside me all my life, and had just been waiting to be set free.

They could have picked up any pretty girl off the street and created Nova. They didn’t need talent. They needed compliance.

I sucked in a breath, once again shoving aside the words Tuck had volleyed at me on the plane. He’d said them out of resentment at being exposed. The problem was…they hit hard because it was a vulnerability. He must have known that and that’s why he’d said it. To hurt me back.

I hadn’t written anything nearly as inspired since “Find You in the Dark.” My deepest fear, the one I didn’t like to think about, was that that was all I had. The well had run dry. I was a one-hit wonder and nothing more.

Maybe it was why I pushed myself so hard to milk every drop I could from all the recent opportunities I’d been given. Because there wouldn’t be more after this. The Louis Vuitton I’d tossed aside really was the last luxury item I’d ever own, the final sign of my once shooting star that had fizzled to the ground. A part of me wanted to run back and snatch that suitcase from whatever animal was now burrowed inside of it.

A void opened inside me as words attached to the fear that had been skating at the edge of my brain for years, the one I’d refused to really think about. The one Tuck had clearly seen and thrown at me.

I massaged my temples and looked at Tuck. He was watching me, a look of curiosity on his face as though he was mesmerized by the shifting nature of my thoughts. He’d noticed I was humming too, and I hadn’t even realized until Tuck had mentioned it. A cascade of emotions tumbled through me: bitterness, fear, happiness, uncertainty, hope. I couldn’t grasp any of them, because they were all fleeting, and I didn’t know what to attach them to.

I cleared my throat and looked away briefly. There was no need to think about any of this now, during this harrowing, yet temporary circumstance. “What do you think it’s going to be like when we get to civilization?” I asked.

He paused for a moment. “No idea. It’ll depend on how far the outage stretched and whether their infrastructure is back up. But they’ll at least have some information about what’s going on and how long before things are expected to be working again.”

Before I could respond, Charlie came stomping noisily out of the woods and breaking me from my worried thoughts. “Goddammit,” he said. “I think I fell in some poison oak.” He was wiping his hands off, his jacket covered in dirt and pieces of brush.

“I’m sure it wasn’t poison oak.” Charlie had never communed with nature—he probably had no idea what poison oak even looked like. He’d grown up in Bel Air. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah. I’m fine. Let’s go.” I plucked a piece of leaf out of his hair before we both turned back to the road.

Tuck was already walking. We fell in line behind him just as we had before, continuing down the dirt road.

Eventually the dirt road turned into a stretch of gravel, which seemed like a good sign even if the only thing surrounding us were derelict fields. But as day turned to evening, Tuck slowed, and then came to a stop. I shielded my eyes from the bright horizon, squinting as something up ahead caught my eye and I saw why he’d halted. “Holy shit, it’s a gas station,” I said. My heart lurched toward that beautiful beacon of hope. And of people. And even one of those gas station sandwiches that I would have never touched with a ten-foot pole a week ago. But now…now, I was going to devour every bite of it and lick the wrapper. I’d kiss it before I put it in my mouth. I’d say a prayer of gratitude. Then I’d buy a bottle of cold water and drink every drop. They might have shoes there. Those canvas ones that hang on a rack near the ball caps and playing cards. Neosporin!

“Oh my God, Tylenol,” I almost sobbed.

We all started walking again more quickly than before. We turned onto the paved road that led to the gas station a quarter mile or so up ahead, and I never thought I’d be so excited about asphalt, but I was. Oh, I was. I grabbed Charlie’s arm. “We did it,” I said. “We made it, Charlie. The nightmare is over.”

He grinned at me, but then took out his phone and raised it to the sky as had been his habit since the crash. He was like a man who’d been tossed into the ocean, reaching for an invisible lifeline.

“Don’t worry about that,” I said. “They’ll have a landline there. Or some other way to call for help.”

We were hurrying toward that beautiful piece of civilization that would offer a way to reach the outside world. And a toilet! I could pee in a toilet rather than squatting in the woods. “Never again!” I shouted to which Charlie glanced over at me in alarm. I laughed and squeezed his arm again.

A quarter mile felt like twenty as we limped toward our destination, turning onto the paved entryway to the lone gas sta tion. With each step, however, my hope diminished. “It looks closed,” Charlie said.

Tuck was already walking slowly, and we caught up to him, all moving at the same pace now. “Maybe the power outage extends all the way here,” Tuck murmured. “There could still be people inside. The lights might just be off.”

There was a vehicle sitting in the middle of the road, and Tuck leaned over to look in the window and then stood straight, his head turning toward another car sitting to the side of the road.

“Why are they just sitting there?” I asked, as Charlie and I came to stand next to him, shading my eyes as I looked farther down the road where I could see another car seemingly abandoned near the center as well. It was like all the vehicles that had been traveling on this road had just…stopped. So where were the people? Why hadn’t they been towed? It was eerie.

“I don’t know,” Tuck muttered. “But it makes me think the station might not be open if these cars are just sitting here like this.”

“Wouldn’t a gas station have a generator though?” I asked. “I mean, usually businesses, especially crucial ones like gas stations, have generators, right?” Charlie looked at me and nodded hopefully. Honestly though? I had no idea who had generators or even how they worked. But it…sounded right.

“Let’s just stop guessing and wait and see,” Tuck said before he started walking again.

We all stepped into the lot and came to a stop as we looked around. There was an ice machine out front of the tiny store, and a lotto sign in the window that was obviously meant to be lit—but was as dark as the rest of the place.

Tuck started walking first, moving slowly and cautiously as he glanced around like we might be ambushed at any moment. We walked past the singular gas pump and came to stand in front of the store. The sound of the door of the ice machine opening broke the silence and made me startle. I looked over at Charlie, who smiled sheepishly and shrugged his shoulders. “The ice is gone and what’s left is mostly melted,” he said.

There was a handwritten sign on the door of the store that said, “Sold Out.”

“What do you think that means?” I asked but received no answer from either Charlie or Tuck. I cupped my hands against the glass and peered inside, my gaze roaming the small space. “There’s nothing in there,” I said. The refrigerators along the far wall were empty, as was the case that would have held sandwiches near the register. I wanted to cry.

Worse than that, there was no person manning the register who might have called for help.

“They must have cleared the food out so it wouldn’t go bad,” Charlie said.

“Or people bought it all,” Tuck said, gesturing to the sign again.

“It’s just…weird,” I said. And I was so disappointed and hungry that I felt like I was going to lose it.

“Let’s fill up our water bottles at least,” Tuck said as he took his empty bottle from his bag and dipped it into the ice machine that was now a water machine. I was sure the water would be less than clean now that it had been sitting in a metal freezer, but still safer than scooping water out of a stream, and I had finished the last of mine hours ago, so I did as he suggested, drank half the first bottle I scooped, and then refilled it again.

Tuck pointed off through the trees. “Look. I think I see a highway there. It looks like a portion of overpass. See that?”

I squinted in the direction he was pointing, but my eyeballs must have been as tired as the rest of me because I didn’t see it. “Come on,” he said. “A highway definitely leads somewhere. We’re back to civilization. We just have to find someone who can help us make a call now.”

My shoulders curled forward. I’d convinced myself this was the end of our trip out of hell, and I just couldn’t go on. I’d done my best. This station was out of fuel and so was I. I couldn’t take another step. Tears spilled from my eyes and tracked down my cheeks. Tuck looked at me, his expression blank. “I can’t walk anymore. I’m sorry. Just send someone for me. I’ll be here.”

“You’re not staying alone at an abandoned gas station in the middle of who knows where,” Tuck said.

My shoulders shook as I gave in to my exhaustion and misery. “I’ll wait. I can’t move.”

“The sun is starting to go down, Emily,” Charlie said.

“Yes!” I waved my arm around at the sky that was dimming by the moment. “And still no lights! Anywhere. Look!”

“We’ll be able to see better from the highway,” Charlie said. “I don’t want to walk more either, but it’s just ahead. See? There have to be restaurants and hotels and all sorts of businesses close by.”

“What if they’re all out of power?” I cried. “We’ve walked for days and the power’s out here. It probably is there too. Maybe it’s out everywhere. Maybe the whole world is dark.” I let out a high-pitched sob. “We were expected in New York days ago. You know how tight the schedule was! They’ve probably replaced me by now.”

“No one replaced you, babe,” Charlie said. “You’re irreplaceable. They know our plane went down. Lots of people will be worried about us. They’re probably having a candlelight vigil. Oh my God, we’ve gotta be front-page news…everywhere.” He looked briefly elated as his gaze zoned out somewhere behind me, probably picturing his fans sobbing uncontrollably in social media posts. The whole imagined scenario seemed to perk him up, but all it did was make me more miserable.

The world was dark, and my career was fading by the moment. No one waited around in the music business. Not even for tragedies. Not even for things that weren’t your fault. Char lie was established. They wouldn’t give up on Charlie. But me? I was replaceable. Everything was crumbling. Everything.

“For the love of Christ, get it together,” Tuck said.

My head came up as anger raced through me. “ You get it together, you smug asshole.”

“I have it together,” he said smoothly.

“Do you?”

His eyes flashed, and another bolt of indignation pinballed through my body. How dare he? I’d been miserable for days and I hadn’t complained at all, despite being the smallest of the group and wearing improper footwear. I reached down, picked up a handful of gravel and hurled it just because. The resulting sound was soft and scattered and mostly unsatisfying, even if both Tuck and Charlie leaned to the side so as not to get hit by a rogue pebble. “I don’t have your muscles and your…stupid long legs,” I shouted, waving my arm in the general direction of his sturdy thighs and well-muscled ass I’d been staring at for days now. “But I’ve been keeping up anyway! And I’m wearing fucking slippers and leather pants!” I practically screeched.

“Are you done?” Tuck asked.

With a loud growl, I elbowed him aside, moved past him, and started marching down the road, Charlie catching up after a moment.

My general rage kept me moving for the next thirty minutes until we made it to the base of an on-ramp at which point I sagged against the guardrail. The sky had turned a gorgeous shade of deep mauve, and despite the dwindling sunlight, not a single light had blinked on over the highway. It was confirmed: we’d walked for miles and miles and were still in the dark.

And beyond that, it was quiet. We were standing right beside a highway, and not a single engine could be heard.

“Damn,” Tuck said. “There are cars up there, but they’re all stopped, just like the other ones we saw.

“What the fuck is that about?” Charlie asked as we followed Tuck up the on-ramp to get a closer look. We’d see more from up there. Maybe a hotel… I didn’t need power. Just a bed. A pillow. Oh my God, carpet beneath my feet.

Vehicles littered the highway, dark and abandoned like the few we’d passed at the gas station. We stood there, looking in both directions. “Whatever happened disabled all these cars and trucks,” Tuck said.

“I saw this movie once where a comet vaporized most of the people on earth,” I said. That explanation seemed ludicrous, but then again, this whole situation felt bizarre and inexplicable. What if ? At this point, I might even be willing to consider aliens.

“This isn’t a movie, Emily,” Charlie said, gripping the front of his hair and screwing up his face, clearly at risk of having a breakdown too now that we’d arrived at another disappointing location.

“Yes, I’m aware, Charlie ,” I retorted. There wasn’t space for both of us to fall apart, but of course, Charlie couldn’t abide by that simple, unspoken rule.

“Kids,” Tuck warned. “No one got vaporized.”

“How do you know?” I demanded.

“Because we’d see their empty clothes where their bodies used to be. I saw that movie too.”

“That doesn’t make a lot of sense though, right?” I said as he moved around a big rig blocking our way and I shuffled behind him. “I mean, if a comet vaporized human hair, wouldn’t it vaporize cotton too?”

He shot me a look and then pointed. I followed his finger to a sign up ahead that told us Springfield was eleven miles away. “Oh,” I breathed, even if in that moment, eleven miles felt the same as eleven feet—I could walk neither. Also, which Springfield? I looked from one license plate to another. If these cars were all local, then we were in Illinois. Tuck hesitated for a moment and then climbed up onto the side of the truck, mak ing it to the roof in mere moments. He stood up and peered off into the distance, in the direction where there was apparently a metropolitan area.

It was then that I noticed the logo on the side of the truck we were standing next to. “Charlie,” I said, grabbing for his arm and gripping it.

“Ow. What?”

“This truck.” I pointed to the large red logo that I’d seen on every box of breakfast cereal I’d eaten growing up. We locked eyes for only a moment before we both headed for the back.