Page 8

Fast Car – Tracy Chapman

I still couldn’t believe I was here with her.

Brooke.

Brooke Summer.

The girl I’d had a crush on for almost a year . The girl who used to make my stomach flutter when she smiled at me in school, and now got irritable with me when her blood sugar dropped.

Whenever I offered to drive, she shot me down, so there wasn’t much I could do about that. I had my driver’s license, but that didn’t seem to matter to her. To be fair, if I owned a vintage Mustang, I wouldn’t let other people drive it, either.

‘All good?’ I asked as Brooke got back into the car. She handed me the fake ID she’d been using to check into the motels – since we were both seventeen and some places were funny about that – and I slipped it back into the glove box for safekeeping.

‘Yeah. We’re on the second floor at the back.’

‘Perfect.’

The afternoon was hot, hotter still now that we weren’t whizzing down the highway with the top down. Brooke parked in the shade of some tall trees and worked to get the roof back on and secured while I grabbed our bags.

We headed for the stairs, since last night we’d found a dead rat in the elevator and Brooke had turned very green at the sight of it. I’d had to calm her down for a solid twenty minutes before she’d agreed to stay in that motel. This one seemed nicer, but I still wasn’t taking any chances.

‘We’re two-ten,’ Brooke said from behind me. ‘Should be just down here.’

The room was dim, with heavy blackout curtains and weird floral wallpaper. The dresser was dark wood and held a TV that was super 3D. It was probably older than me.

‘Ugh.’

‘I know,’ Brooke said. ‘But it was cheap, Mouse.’

‘Yeah, it’s fine. It’s only for tonight.’

‘You want to order pizza?’ she asked, holding up a leaflet that had been left on the desk.

‘Sure. I’ll eat anything.’

‘They’ve got some good deals.’

I let her call the order through using the phone on the nightstand while I started separating out everything from my bags. I organized stuff into piles on the bed: clean clothes, dirty clothes, wash bag, cash.

Three and a half thousand dollars had felt like a lot of money, but between gas, food and motel rooms, we were spending it quicker than I had expected. I grabbed all the bills from the different hidey-holes and started bundling it in ways that made sense, a hundred dollars at a time.

Brooke flopped onto the second bed and covered her eyes with her arm. ‘I’m going to sleep for a thousand years tonight.’

‘That would be one hell of an achievement.’

She snorted with laughter, then fell silent again. After a few minutes, I decided she had fallen asleep. Or a-snooze, at least.

Every now and then it hit me that I had actually escaped.

Freedom tasted sweet. But also like something I hadn’t earned …

the sour that went with the sweet was guilt.

It swirled in my stomach uncomfortably, forcing me to ignore the emotions that wanted to bubble up.

I couldn’t start thinking about my mom, or her now dead boyfriend, or how my mom was going to make rent this month without my usual contribution and after everything that had happened.

I knew from painful experience that once I opened those floodgates, it was almost impossible to close them again.

‘I don’t want to stay in the room tonight,’ Brooke said, sitting up suddenly. I hadn’t realized she was awake again.

‘Okay. What do you want to do?’

‘I don’t know. Go out. We can go out, you know, Mouse.’

‘I know,’ I said, trying to placate her. ‘You’re tired, though. You shouldn’t push yourself to be sociable in the evenings, too.’

‘Let’s go down to the bar.’

‘They won’t serve us, Brooke.’

She rolled her eyes. ‘I know. I don’t want alcohol, I want company.’

I knew what she meant and tried not to be upset that my company wasn’t enough. But Brooke was always with a group of people at school, and she had siblings at home, and I guessed she wasn’t used to spending time just one on one.

‘I’m gonna get changed, then,’ I said. ‘We can go downstairs after we’ve eaten?’

‘Yes,’ she said emphatically.

The pizza guy turned up while I was in the bathroom trying to do something with eyeliner that didn’t make me look like a kid playing in her mom’s makeup bag.

It was stupid, but I wanted to wear my new dress, and I felt like the dress deserved eyeliner, or some kind of effort not to look like the most boring person in the room.

That was difficult when I was traveling with Brooke.

She looked like a supermodel in jeans and sneakers.

I let my hair down and tried to arrange it in effortless waves around my shoulders, like Brooke’s hair, but it hung limply and had big dents in it from where I’d had it tied up all day. I heaved a sigh of frustration and pulled it back up into a messy bun again.

‘Mouse!’

‘I’m coming,’ I called.

‘You look cute,’ she said as I sat down opposite her at the small table.

‘Thanks.’ I tried not to let her see how much her offhand comment affected me. I pushed the fizzy, excited feeling down, down, into the box with all my other emotions, and slammed it shut.

Brooke had ordered a large sausage-and-mushroom pizza with garlic knots and a huge soda and had it all spread out on the table. It smelled incredible.

‘Hungry?’ I asked, and she looked up at me, her mouth already full. I laughed and took a slice for myself, letting the hot pizza soothe my frazzled nerves.

The bar in the motel was next to the lobby. Brooke walked right up to it like she’d done it a hundred times and slid onto one of the tall barstools.

‘Do you want a Coke?’ Brooke asked as I awkwardly climbed onto the stool next to her.

‘Sure.’

There was a baseball game showing on the TV behind the bar, and my eyes flicked to it automatically. At home, there was often baseball on the TV, and I’d gotten used to having no say in whether or not we watched it.

‘Good evening,’ the bartender said. ‘Do you have ID?’

‘Yeah, but neither of us want a drink,’ Brooke said easily. ‘We have to get up early in the morning.’

‘Okay. What can I get you?’

I made a point to close my mouth, sure that it was hanging open watching Brooke navigate the awkward situation with an ease and grace I was certain I’d never possess. And she could lie!

Like, oh my God, she could lie.

The bartender put down two little paper napkins and set a glass of Coke on each of them. Brooke handed him a ten-dollar bill with a smile and waved away the change.

The bar wasn’t too busy. It seemed like there was a decent mix of couples, single men in uncomfortable-looking suits, and a group of women who could have been part of a bachelorette party.

I spotted the weirdo before Brooke. Long before Brooke.

He was in his early twenties, drinking from a bottle of Bud Light, staring at us as he pretended to watch the game.

He was blonde and pale, with a stupid little goatee beard and expensive jeans.

The type of guy who paid attention to two teenage girls who looked like they were on their own. And were therefore vulnerable.

I knew his type.

He waited until my glass was empty before sidling over.

‘Can I get you girls another drink?’

‘Oh, thanks!’ Brooke said, beaming at him before I could give him the brush-off. ‘We’re just drinking Coke, though. We have an early start in the morning.’

I resisted – just – the urge to slap my hand over my face.

A few days ago, when Brooke had stopped to pick me up, I’d thought it was because we knew each other, sort of, and she was looking out for me.

Now, I was rapidly reassessing that opinion, because it looked like she was maybe just a dumbass with no sense of self-preservation who would stop and pick up a serial killer, given the opportunity.

‘I’m Chris,’ he said, extending his hand in a way that would make it rude to refuse to shake it.

‘Summer,’ Brooke said, and thank God she had the common sense not to give him her actual name. ‘And this is my cousin Jenna.’

Jenna? It wasn’t terrible. I could be a Jenna. It was better than Mouse, at least.

‘Hi.’ I gave him a little wave rather than offering a handshake.

‘What brings you to this corner of Utah?’

I could hear the twang of his accent, which gave away that he was local, to the state if not the city, and that was weird, right? Why would he be staying in a motel in Utah if he was from Utah?

All my alarm bells were ringing, the red flags waving, Spidey-senses tingling, and Brooke flashed her shiny, happy smile at him. She was just so goddamn friendly , and something I usually admired about her turned into a trait that was now incredibly frustrating.

‘We’re heading down for our Grandpa Jim’s funeral,’ she said. ‘It’s going to be a big family thing, but Jenna doesn’t like flying, so …’

‘Don’t like heights?’ he said, leaning around Brooke to give me a theatrical wink. ‘Me neither.’

‘I’m not scared of flying. I’m scared of crashing,’ I told him, deadpan.

Brooke gave me a subtle kick on the ankle. I took that as my cue to shut up. She was clearly enjoying herself.

Chris waved over the bartender and ordered two more Cokes, another beer and a basket of fries. I was glad we’d already eaten. I didn’t want him ordering food for us as well as drinks.

I turned my attention back to the TV and sipped my drink while Brooke fell into a deep conversation with Chris.

He seemed charming and personable, and was letting Brooke do a lot of the talking.

We’d outlined the bare bones of a story about going to Grandpa Jim’s funeral in case we were asked at any point, but Brooke was doing a lot of elaborating.

And lying. Whenever I lied, I turned red and started to stutter, which was somewhat of a giveaway.

It took almost forty minutes before I saw him do it.