I WAS STARTING TO GET the hang of small towns, but only after I realized there was really, truly nothing to do.
Not that it wasn’t fun hanging out with Isobel. It just wasn’t exactly as I’d imagined it would be. We’d talk and laugh and do puzzles and play games and eat microwave popcorn and watch movies. But it wasn’t like when she stayed with us for that month and a half, helping me get better. Here, she had her regular life. She had to go to work, and sometimes she worked crazy double shifts at the hospital that was already over an hour away in Charlotte. I’d never admit this to my parents, or even to Coleton, but it was starting to feel a little too much like home: me, stuck in a room, alone, reading, planning, and thinking, thinking, thinking.
I’d traded one prison for another.
I hopped into the station wagon—I didn’t know where I was going. The car bounced and rocked back and forth as I carefully drove over the railroad tracks and past Bargain Mart, and the brick cube that was the post office, and a corner store that boasted in its window that it sold both “Live Bait!” and “Custom Headstones,” a sampling of which were proudly displayed in the patch of weedy grass next the crumbling parking lot.
There was one stoplight. And then nothing, as far as I could see.
I liked the car windows down and the music blaring, even if it was only Isobel’s old cassette tapes from the nineties. They were full of songs from bands I’d never heard of, music that sounded like it was from another planet—tinny and off-key and imperfect, singers who couldn’t really sing but made their voices raw and open. There was something so real about it. Something that made me lose my sense of time and place, sort of like the feeling I get when I look at the stars. When I was driving, I could lose myself.
I was in the middle of getting lost when a wave of thunder rumbled in the distance. I turned the volume low on the radio. I took my foot off the accelerator and slowed down, watching the speedometer decelerate—55-50-45-35-15—before I pulled off onto the shoulder of whatever no-name road I was on. I stopped for a moment, checking my mirrors before I made a U-turn.
By the time I got to Carson, the rain was already there, the sky darkening by the minute. I went over the railroad tracks and past the Bargain Mart, and through the podunk “downtown,” my body feeling heavier with each mile.
Through the screen of rain I saw something on the side of the road. Someone. The windshield wipers swished back and forth as fast as they would go, leaving streaks of water that made it hard to see, but I could tell right away who it was: Maia. She was wheeling her bike alongside her.
As I slowed down next to her, she looked up quickly, her hair dripping in strands, and waved me on with one arm. I lined the words up carefully in my mind before I even rolled down the window because I already had one strike against me and I didn’t want to say the wrong thing again. I had to shout over the pounding rain: “Hey, you want a ride?”
“No,” she yelled back over the noise.
I stopped the car completely, and she stopped walking too. Squared off her feet like she was ready for a fight, but the effect was weakened when her voice—strained and splintered—fought for enough volume to yell, “I said I don’t need help!”
“I know. That’s why I said want a ride, not need a ride.”
She pushed her hair out of her face and opened her mouth, but before she could say anything else, another crack of thunder roared—it vibrated through the car, rattling the windows. She looked around, and reluctantly nodded. I braced myself against the rain as I ran to the back of the station wagon to open the trunk. It was coming down sharp like needles. She wheeled her bike over, and I grabbed on to the handlebar while she took the rear tire, our hands touching for a moment as we both reached for the crossbar at the same time. In that second it felt like lightning had touched us both.
“Go, get in,” I said, adjusting the bike’s position.
She ran over to the passenger side, and I scrambled into the driver’s seat, which was now soaked from the rain falling into the car.
“Shit,” she breathed as she slid in and quickly slammed the door behind her.
We looked at each other, dripping and soaked, and both started laughing.
I could feel her watching me as I shifted the car into drive and pulled back onto the road, but when I glanced over, she looked away.
“This weather’s no joke,” I said.
She didn’t respond, so I turned the volume on the music back up just a little, anything to cover the silence.
Finally she cleared her throat and said, “Thank you,” as if they were the most difficult pair of words she’d ever had to utter.
“You’re welcome.”
I didn’t know what to say next, so I didn’t say anything.
It seemed like minutes passed before she broke the silence again. “You know, I knew what I was doing back there.” She paused. “I mean the other night—I knew what I was doing.”
“All right.” I tried so hard to stop myself from saying anything else, but I couldn’t quite exercise that much restraint. “You know I was only trying to help, though, right?”
“I know, but I didn’t want help—I didn’t want to need help.”
“I get it.”
She just stared at me, squinting, and I could tell she didn’t believe me.
“No, I really do. I mean, I know better than you’d think. I know what it feels like to be targeted. Someone once had to help me out in a situation, and I didn’t want to need help either.”
“Oh,” she whispered.
“I guess I just couldn’t stand by and do nothing. But not because I thought you were some damsel in distress—I would’ve done the same thing for anyone.” I was worried I’d said too much, but something in the space between us loosened in that moment.
“So maybe”—she paused—“maybe you were partially right. Maybe I was taking it out on you,” she said, her voice softer. “But Neil doesn’t scare me, okay?” she added. “We just—we have history.” I couldn’t tell what the expression on my face looked like, but it clearly must have given away exactly what I was thinking, because she quickly added, “I mean, not that kind of history.”
It was still raining when I turned into her driveway, but not quite as violently as it had been only minutes earlier.
“Well, thanks,” she said, unbuckling her seat belt as we approached the house.
“No problem.” I got out of the car and helped her get the bike. It was only then, as we began maneuvering it back out of the trunk, that I noticed both tires were completely flat.
We stood there next to each other, her bike in between us, and right then, the rain slowed down to a drizzle.
“Okay, well—” I started, but she interrupted me.
“So are you going to the thing on Sunday?”
“What thing?”
“The Fourth of July thing—it’s just this stupid town picnic fireworks thing.”
“I don’t know, are you?”
She laughed, that ha laugh again. “Yeah, I’ll be there. I mean, it’s not like I have much choice.”
“Why not?”
She looked at me for a second, then took a deep breath like she was preparing to say something long-winded, but she just shrugged and mumbled, “I don’t know.”
“I might check it out,” I said.
“Maybe I’ll see you, then.”
“Yeah,” I agreed, while biting down on the inside of my cheek to keep my grin in check. “Maybe.”
I watched as she wheeled her bike toward the house and leaned it up against the railing of the porch. As I pulled out of the driveway and back onto the road, I let the smile I was holding in take over my face. I’d told her maybe, but I knew there was nothing that could prevent me from being there.