I’m in the car, under a blanket, where I started off. Mom is leaning over me, frowning. I look down and see that I’m shaking.
What? What? I say.
It’s morning, honey, she says.
Oh.
Did you have a nightmare?
I look at her. Uh, yes, I guess, I say.
Sorry, honey.
When I realize that her voice isn’t in my head, that she’s speaking to me with her hands, I nearly cry. For a moment, I wish so powerfully that I was back in the Dreaming again, that it’s like a pain in my chest.
Luke made eggs, she says. He has a kerosene stove.
Mom helps me to lever myself out of the car, swinging the heavy CAM Walker out and down. I stand slowly—the pain is back in my leg, a constant throbbing, like there’s another heart down there, a big one. Mom goes over to Luke.
That’s when I feel something hard pressing against my other leg, and I check my sweatpants pocket. My hand closes around a handle of bone, and I gingerly touch the blade below it, and yes, it’s the knife that Mark gave me.
What the hell?
I try to calm my breathing, because now Luke and Mom are looking over at me. I smile and point to my right leg, as if to say, I got a twinge of pain, you know?
Mom clasps her hands over her chest like, poor sweetheart, and Luke gives me a sympathetic look. Then they beckon me over.
I leave the cocoon of the car; step out into the forest. It is silent. After the Dreaming it is so silent. The birds have swallowed their song, the wind has closed its mouth, the leaves are still and their rustling is gone. I feel like I am going to cry all the tears. All of them.
But no. I need to reserve some tears for the whole Luke and Mom situation.
Because I look at them and I see the way Luke’s and Mom’s hands touch as he hands her a plastic plate of eggs, and a pang of—what? hurt? jealousy? both?—shoots through me. But I sit down anyway and accept my own plate, and also some muddy, bitter coffee that Luke has brewed who knows how.
I can still feel the knife pressing into my leg. Its bone handle, its blade. I try to mentally will it into disappearing, into not being there.
Only …
Only …
I can’t get one feeling out of my head: it’s the feeling of sound, glorious sound, trickling into my ears, buzzing in my head. I know already that I would go back to the Dreaming again in a second, if I could, that I would embrace madness like an old friend—if madness is what it is—just to hear those leaves in the breeze again, just to hear my own voice.
After breakfast, Luke walks into the forest, I guess to use the bathroom. Mom comes quickly over to me.
Are you okay? she says.
Yes. Why?
You look pale, honey.
Oh, I say. I’m just worried, I guess. About what’s going to happen to us. This is at least partly true. Okay, 100 percent true. I mean, what IS going to happen if my dad, who I always thought was dead and gone, catches up with us? Is he seriously going to kill us? What kind of lunatic does something like that?
I understand, Mom says, her hands moving quickly. I’m sorry about that. But right now I have to do something. We’ll discuss it later. She looks over to the forest, checking that Luke isn’t coming back, then steps to the front of the car and pops the hood, then bends over it. I see her disconnect some stuff, and pull on some other stuff.
Mom, I say. What are you doing?
But she doesn’t answer me. She sits in the front seat, and turns the ignition. Then she nods, satisfied.
Mom.
She comes over to me. She touches my hair, brushing a strand of it behind my ear. Her hand is trembling a little. We can’t keep the car, she says. It could be traced.
I blink. Traced?
Yes. It’s not safe. This way we can hitch a ride with Luke.
This is insane, I say.
She gets like a pained expression. I know, she says. I’m sorry. But it’s better than hitting him with a rock, huh?
Uh, yeah, but that doesn’t—
She shakes her head. I wish it were—
She turns, suddenly, because Luke is waving to her, smiling broadly, as he returns from the forest.
A short while later, after everything is cleared away, Mom says we have to get going—we want to be in Flagstaff this morning.
Special plans? says Luke.
Oh no, says Mom. But we do want to see Route 66, don’t we honey? Before we go on to the Canyon.
I look at her and she shoots me daggers, and I nod.
She makes a big show then of getting me into the front seat, which is super annoying because I know that she has sabotaged the engine and I’m going to have to get back out again, but I don’t say anything. I watch while she puts on a dumb show of trying to start the engine, throwing up her hands, the whole works.
Then she gets out and pops the hood again.
Luke comes over and I know Mom so well that I can read just in the movement of her face that she’s really, really hoping he doesn’t know mechanics. But from the way he looks at the engine I can tell he doesn’t.
Damn rental car, says Mom.
You have a cell? asks Luke.
Mom reaches into the car and snags her cell from her purse. She checks it. No coverage, she says.
Luke starts for his car. You can use mine, he says. Call the rental company.
Well …, says Mom.
Luke stops. His face is hope and suspicion, mixed. I don’t know who this person is who’s stepped into my mom’s skin, but she freaks me out.
I’m thinking…, says Mom. We don’t have that long for our vacation. If we have to wait for the tow truck … I mean, say you gave us a ride to Flagstaff. Then we could rent another car, to get to the Canyon, and we could call Hertz and tell them to come pick up this one. And no one …
… wastes their time, says Luke, considering.
What do you say? asks Mom. You have space for two more?
Watching Luke’s face, it’s fascinating. You can see that he doesn’t buy it, that he has figured by now something weird is going on, but that he really, really wants to. Sure, he says eventually, I mean it was fun yesterday, right? We may as well stick together for another day. He has walked all the way back now and he kicks the tire of the rental.
You don’t want to travel in this anyway, he says. I don’t even know how many people I’ve seen cut out of these. The crumple zone is a piece of crap.