IN THE MORNING, I opened my eyes to see Chloe curled in a fetal position on top of her made-up bed. She had her hand pressed to her ear.
“It’s worse?” I asked, sitting up. Both Tess’s watch and the clock on the nightstand agreed it was after nine. But the room had the look of early dawn, with only a strip of daylight glowing gray between the heavy curtains.
She squinted at me like she didn’t hear. She was already dressed, even wearing her coat. I pointed at my own ear, and she nodded.
I got up and went to the window to pull the curtains back. But there wasn’t a lot of light to let in—the sky over Sherburn was a white fog, as far as I could see. In the parking lot, just beneath our window, a man blew on his hands before lifting a suitcase into the trunk of a car.
“You should let me look at it,” I said, turning back to Chloe. She didn’t move. I walked around my bed to hers and switched on the lamp above her pillow. I didn’t know when she’d gotten dressed, or how long she’d been awake. She looked like she’d combed her hair. But the coffee maker by the television still had its cord unplugged and tied in a neat bundle.
“Hey,” I said. “Let me see.” Either she didn’t want to, or she was having trouble hearing—I had to touch her coat sleeve to get her to move her hand and pull back her hair. When she did, I gasped, which probably wasn’t the most tactful thing I could have done. But her whole ear was bright red, and so was the skin all around it, going down to her neck. I put the back of my hand to her forehead. Hot like a stove.
“It feels as if . . .” Her voice was quiet. “It feels as if there was a sharpened pencil placed just in my ear, and then someone kicked it, as hard as they could, farther in.”
I sat on the edge of my bed. I’d thought today would be like yesterday, in that we’d just keep getting rides, getting closer and closer to the border. That was all the plan I had. But that wouldn’t work now. She couldn’t stand out in the cold to wait for a ride, not with a fever. And definitely not with a pencil kicked in her ear.
But it didn’t seem like the kind of thing we could just wait out, either. If she had some kind of infection, nothing we could buy at a drugstore would help, and it probably wouldn’t clear up on its own. It would just get worse. It seemed like Chloe probably knew all that. And she must know that there was no way for her to see a doctor, unless she turned herself in.
“What do you want to do?” I asked.
She sat up slowly, putting her feet on the carpet opposite mine. She was wearing her fluffy pink socks, and her big toe poked through one of them. She looked at the nightstand, where she’d left her book, her eyeglasses resting on top of it.
“I want to keep going,” she said.
When we got to the gas station, she picked out medicine with a box that said it was extra-strength for relieving pain and also fever. She took two before we went outside, and they did seem to help a little. She stopped holding her ear, and she sometimes smiled at people as they went by. But from the side, I could see her jaw was clenched.
I was hopeful we wouldn’t be waiting for long. We’d found a little spot between the store’s front door and the propane tanks that was mostly out of the wind, and also hidden from the cashier’s view by a poster in the window advertising lottery tickets. It said YOUR LUCKY DAY? in big white letters, which seemed like it might be good advertising for us, but maybe also some kind of mean joke.
We’d been outside for maybe an hour, cold and quiet, when it started to snow. Tiny flakes fell straight down, and they didn’t melt when they hit the pavement, or the sleeves of my coat, or Chloe’s hat, or my mittens on either side of our sign. And so after maybe twenty minutes, I knew we probably looked like those cows you see standing out in fields sometimes in winter, with whatever part of them facing the wind getting coated with snow, and still they just keep standing there, not even bothering to shake themselves off.
But I didn’t know what else we could do. Most people didn’t even look at us, and the ones who did kept moving. I couldn’t blame the men, as the sign clearly stated we wanted a ride from a woman. But all the women kept walking by, too. Every time a woman walked by, I stared at her like I could use ESP to let her know that we were really having a hard time, and that the person beside me was in pain, and that neither of us was anyone to be afraid of. It didn’t work. Most of them kept their faces pushed down into their scarves, so all I saw was the tops of their snow-dusted hair or hats.
Another hour went by. I say that like it was nothing, but it didn’t feel that way when it was happening. My nose started to run, and I could hear Chloe sniffing too. It got hard to keep trying to smile at people who weren’t even looking up, so after a while, I just watched the snow thicken on the oval roof over the pumps, and also along the cracks in the pavement. I kept thinking, okay, any minute now, somebody’ll stop, because that was what had happened the day before. But I knew that really, just because we’d gotten lucky yesterday didn’t mean there was any rule that said of course we’d be lucky again.
“Tell me when you need to go in,” I said, my voice low, my lips barely moving. I was on the side of Chloe’s good ear, but I didn’t know if she’d heard me. I leaned in a little. “If you’re hungry or you just need a break.”
She nodded once, but that was all. I guessed she was thinking the same thing I was—that if we went inside for even ten minutes, that might be the exact time when the one person who would give us a ride walked by. We couldn’t afford to be babies. I couldn’t even let Chloe go sit inside while I stayed out with the sign, as somebody might come up and try to talk with her, or they might look at her more carefully if she was on her own. When we’d been inside buying the medicine, we’d both seen the front page of the local paper, with its picture of the dead man lying in the doorway of his house. There was also a picture of one of the Muslim women being led out in handcuffs with the two kids holding on to her coat. You could see the face of one of the kids, and how scared he looked, so maybe the photographer was trying to shame people. Then again, Chloe had said this was the woman someone had thrown something at, so at least one person wasn’t shamed at all.
“I’m still doing okay,” I said, as if Chloe, or anyone, had asked me. I dusted snow from my hood and locked eyes with an Asian woman hurrying into the store with her little boy. The boy had on a red snowsuit, but the woman just wore leggings and a sweatshirt that said Gimme a slice! Big Al’s Pizza. She gave me a tight-lipped smile, but that was all.
I shook my head, watching the vapor of my breath float up into the gray air. It seemed to me a body could only take so much, whatever the mind was telling it. I mean, there was no guarantee we’d get a ride at all, not even if we stayed out here until dark. And that wasn’t the worst of it. The police could come by for gas at any time. Or somebody might get weirded out by us and call them. I didn’t even know if it was legal to hitchhike in Iowa.
We had to do something, and I didn’t mean just hoping or praying. It seemed to me we had to start acting like this was the emergency that it was.
I looked down at our sign. It was holding up in the snow okay, as I’d gone over it with the clear tape again, and the ink hadn’t run at all. I tugged off one of my mittens, so I could crease the poster straight across the middle. Then I held up the sign so the part about wanting a ride with a woman was upside down and facing me.
Chloe looked at me from the corner of her eye. I shrugged and turned away. We’d be okay. It seemed pretty clear to me, standing out there in the cold and sniffing my nose every five seconds, that you couldn’t just rule out a whole group of people, even if they made up the overwhelming majority of killers and rapists. All I’d done just now was double our chances for a ride. I’d also at least quadrupled them for getting us chopped up in little pieces. I tried not to think about that.
And for a while, it seemed like I hadn’t done anything. It turned out that men, at least the ones stopping for gas or snacks in Sherburn, Iowa, that day, weren’t that excited about being included in our invitation or my hopeful smiles. In fact, most of them just seemed more likely not to look at either one of us after they’d read our sign. One man paused to cough something serious up from his throat so he could spit it on the curb, not that far from my feet. He didn’t look at us either.
“I hate this town,” I whispered. I didn’t know if Chloe heard me or not.
But maybe ten minutes later, she nudged me and nodded over to one of the pumps. I followed her gaze to a tall, slender man leaning against an SUV, squinting at us, or maybe at our sign. He wore a dark peacoat with a red wool scarf knotted at the collar. Nothing about him seemed particularly worrisome. But he was a white man, and he looked like he got regular haircuts and shaved his face every morning. So as far as being a serial killer, he checked all the boxes.
I smiled at him. That felt weird, trying to give a smile that would win him over at the very time when I was trying to figure out if he looked like bad news himself.
He started to walk over. I turned to Chloe. “Nudge me if you get a bad feeling,” I murmured. “If you don’t like him, we won’t get in.”
“Hi,” he said, his chin raised, though he was a good foot taller than I was. He wasn’t wearing a hat, and the snowflakes rested unmelted on top of his curly dark hair. “Let’s hear your sales pitch.” He glanced over my shoulder. “Make it snappy.”
Kind of rude, I thought. But I launched into the story of how Chloe was my mother’s cousin visiting from Portugal, and how we were headed up to see my mom in Minneapolis. I did my best to be as snappy as possible, all the while trying to be charming and just pathetic enough, too. I thought I did pretty well, especially considering my nose was running and I couldn’t feel my toes anymore. He looked like he was listening close, and his eyes moved over both of us. But he didn’t seem to be doing it in a creeper way. Whatever Chloe thought of him, she didn’t give me a nudge.
He tilted his head at our sign. “What part of Minneapolis are you headed to?”
“Downtown,” I said. It seemed likely Minneapolis would have one. “But any exit would be fine. We’ll just call my mom to come get us when she gets off work.”
I wasn’t sure how that answer would go over, but he nodded like it made sense. “Listen,” he said. “Do you know how to change a subject? Like in conversation?”
I blinked. “Yeah. I do it all the time.”
“Then that’ll be your job. My brother and I are headed to Saint Paul, and we can detour over to Minneapolis if you want a ride with us. But you’ve got to change the subject when he gets going. Okay? That’s the deal. That’s how you pay for the ride.”
I looked over his shoulder at his SUV. No one was in the passenger seat. His brother must still be in the store, or using the bathroom. And still no nudge from Chloe. It was up to me.
I took my old phone out of my pocket. “Okay if I take a picture of your license plate and text it to my dad? Just for safety reasons?”
“Whatever you want.” He was already headed back to the pump. “But it would probably be better if you were both in the backseat before he comes out. It’s my car, but he’s often under the impression he has a vote on things when he doesn’t.”
I touched Chloe’s arm and hurried behind him, holding out my palm to a little hybrid to remind its driver not to run us down. “Hey! How will I know when you need me to change the subject?”
He’d walked around to the driver’s side, but he was tall enough that I could see his face over the roof. When he opened the door, he looked like he was taking a deep breath before going underwater, and the water didn’t smell so good.
“Believe me,” he said. “You’ll know.”
I felt more at ease once we got in the backseat, because it looked like the driver had at least one kid, which didn’t seem like a serial-killer thing to have. The mesh net behind his seat had coloring books and a pack of crayons in it, and a half-sucked lollipop was stuck to my seat belt. Chloe and I were both wet and sniffing, and he turned up the heat while we waited for his brother, which was nice.
“You live in Saint Paul?” I asked, trying to be friendly. Chloe was hunched over behind the passenger seat, breathing a little heavy. I didn’t want him to be freaked out.
“Yup,” he said, and that was all. I got the message. He’d really only let us in the car so I could derail a conversation when necessary. And as there was no conversation going on just yet, he didn’t want to talk.
The brother, when he finally came out, didn’t notice us at first. He was maybe preoccupied, trying to hold both a coffee and a soda while he opened the passenger door with the edge of his hand. It was only after he’d sat down and set both his cups in the holder that he saw us. He said “Jesus!” and put his hand to his chest, looking at me and then at Chloe like we were a big spider and a snake.
He turned to his brother. “What the hell?”
You could tell they were brothers. The one who’d just gotten in had the same deep-set eyes as the driver, and they both talked in a quick way, their words clipped. But the one who’d just gotten in looked like he was only regular height, and he was wider across the shoulders, even just wearing a flannel shirt.
“Excuse me?” His eyebrows shot up. “David? Do you know there are two women in the back of your car? Who were not there before? Are you kidding me? You picked up hitchhikers?”
He was yelling. Chloe probably couldn’t hear him as well, as she was sitting right behind him and had the protection of the seat, not to mention her clogged-up ear. She’d scooted right up against her door, her blue hat resting against her window.
“This is Amy and Chloe.” The tall one, David, shifted the car into drive. “They need a ride to Minneapolis, and that’s not so far out of our way. . . .” He shrugged, then checked his rearview like there was really nothing more to say.
“Unbelievable.” The brother yanked off his hat and threw it at the windshield. He had the same curly hair as his brother. “Un-buh-leev-a-ble. Wow.”
Nice manners, I thought. I mean, we weren’t doing anything to him. If he faced forward, he wouldn’t even know we were there, except for us both sniffing our runny noses. I sniffed again, and we rolled out of the lot, the windshield wipers beating away snow. The brother picked up his soda and sucked it through the straw, glaring at the road ahead.
By the time we were on the entrance ramp to the interstate, Chloe had closed her eyes. I was hoping she was just sleepy, and glad to be out of the cold. But just as I was looking at her, she pressed her hand to her ear again. And then a tear slid out of her eye and down her cheek, leaving a shiny trail.
I knew, right then, we were really in trouble. It didn’t matter that we’d finally gotten a ride—not with her ear hurting her enough that she would cry like that. For now we were warm in the SUV, flying past farmhouses and empty fields, and even other cars. But once we got to Minneapolis, we had the whole rest of Minnesota to get through. It wasn’t like her fever would just miraculously go back down, or the pain in her ear would stop. If anything, it would keep getting worse.
I listened to the beat of the wipers, trying to adjust my hopes. I could ask the police, very nicely, to make sure Chloe got to a doctor. Before we even called them, I could get Chloe’s husband’s name from her, and get a message to him in Canada, and their son, so they could know how hard she’d tried.
We’d been in the car for maybe twenty minutes when the shorter brother, the one in the passenger seat, slurped up the last of his coffee and started laughing. But it wasn’t a real laugh. It was an unhappy laugh, and too high-pitched to be anything but for show.
“Pretty bold move, Big D. I’ve got to hand it to you.” He looked over at his brother. “Picking up hitchhikers. Really smart.”
David shrugged. “Just thought I’d help them out.”
“That’s nice. Interesting, really. As you won’t help your own brother.”
David didn’t respond.
“It’s just a loan I’m asking for. A loan.”
David tilted the rearview mirror so I could see his eyes, and he could see mine. He bobbed his eyebrows at me like, Okay, girl, you’re on, and it was only then I remembered we had a deal.
“How much farther to Minneapolis?” I asked. It was the best I could do. Chloe was still holding her ear, and now she was hunched forward again. It was hard to know if she was still crying.
“About two hours,” David said, his voice as pleasant and sunny as a flight attendant in a movie. “Do you get up to visit your mother often?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I just usually come a different way.” I looked away so he wouldn’t see me wince in the mirror. I should have said no. I should have said I hadn’t ever visited her, not in Minneapolis, so it wouldn’t seem strange that I knew nothing about the city, or even where to tell him to drop us off. I wasn’t thinking. At least not as carefully as I should. It didn’t matter. We weren’t going to make it anyway. We were already done.
The shorter brother turned around. “So what’s your story? You two just go around getting rides with strangers?”
“Yup.” I held up my hands and waved them like they were little flags to keep his attention on me. But he turned a little more to try to look at Chloe over the edge of his seat.
“What’s wrong with her?”
“Oh,” I said. “She’s just sad about my uncle dying. That’s why she’s here, visiting from Portugal. She’s my mom’s cousin, and she came over for the funeral. She doesn’t speak English. She’s okay though.”
David tilted the mirror so I couldn’t see him anymore. He was looking at Chloe, too. “Is something wrong with her ear?”
“Yeah,” I said. “It’s giving her problems. My mom’ll get her medicine. She’ll be okay.”
The brothers exchanged glances. I wiped my palms on my jeans.
“Okay,” the shorter one said. “Well, which one are you? Chloe or Amy?”
“I’m Amy.”
“Okay, Amy. Let me ask you a question.” He put his left hand on the back of his brother’s seat and looked at me over his shoulder. “Do you think family should help each other out?”
Up in front of me, the tall brother slapped his forehead. “Oh my God. You’re ridiculous, Adam. You’re a ridiculous person.”
I cleared my throat. “Hey. Do you all know if you absolutely have to have ID to cross over to Canada?”
They glanced at each other again. Sweat sprouted out across my arms and my chest, and I got so itchy I had to unzip my coat and shimmy out of it, my neck straining against my seat belt. I knew I shouldn’t have brought up Canada. I hoped David would just think I was doing my job and changing the subject. But part of me was still thinking maybe there was a chance for Chloe, even with the pencil in her ear. I was hoping these brothers might know some little trick for getting through the border, some secret that only Minnesotans were wise to. And maybe, if they understood what we were up against, they might even drive us all the way. I thought of football, the quarterback too far from the goal, the buzzer about to ring. A Hail Mary pass.
David shifted the mirror again. “I hear they’re pretty strict about it. As much for getting out as for going in. Are you headed to Canada?”
“I was thinking about it,” I said, like I hadn’t really made up my mind.
They didn’t say anything to that. After a while, the shorter brother, Adam, looked back over his shoulder and smiled at me. It was the kind of smile guys give you when they know they’re pretty cute. I guess he was, for being over thirty.
“Okay, Amy,” he said. “Back to what I was asking about helping family. I understand you’re probably thinking about it now, because of your uncle dying. Your whole family is probably thinking about what really matters right now.”
“Yeah,” I said, looking over at Chloe, who was rocking back and forth a little, still holding her ear. David cleared his throat.
“Hey,” I said. “It’s really snowing out, isn’t it?”
David nodded, giving me an appreciative look in the mirror. “It is! And you know it’s only going to get worse, right? They’re saying more snow, all day tomorrow. It’s really going to hit.”
I shook my head. As if things weren’t bad enough for us. Even if somehow, by some miracle, Chloe’s ear stopped hurting, we’d have to hitch the rest of the way up Minnesota in a genuine snowstorm. Chloe was still rocking back and forth.
“Like an actual blizzard?” I asked. It was all I could think of. I sounded like a ding-a-ling.
“Okay, enough about the weather.” Adam turned around again, just looking at me. “So back to what I was saying about family, Amy. It’s Amy, right?”
I nodded.
David raised his chin to the mirror. “They’re saying two feet of snow, even more in the northern part of the state. Probably not the best time to visit Canada.”
Adam waved him off again. “Okay, Amy. Let me give you a hypothetical situation.” He turned back and touched the knee of my jeans, just for a second. “If you had disposable income, like say, enough that you just went to France with your spouse and two children for Christmas, and aside from that, every year you could afford to send both kids to private school as well, and you had a nice SUV that never broke down, and so did your spouse, everything was wonderful, et cetera, and then your brother, your brother who used to beat the crap out of anyone who picked on you when you were growing up, and let me tell you, that kept him busy . . .”
He paused to give me a look like, You know what I mean. Turned around the way he was, I couldn’t believe he didn’t notice Chloe rocking with her head down just behind him.
“Okay?” he continued. “And let’s say this brother had fallen on hard times, and he didn’t even have a car anymore, and he’d just been rebuked by his own parents, his own mother and father, for having the audacity to come to them for help.” He held his hand out to me, palm up, like I had something to give him. “If this brother then came to you, asking for just a few thousand dollars, just what he needed to get back on his feet, let me ask you, Amy—would you let him borrow it?”
I wasn’t sure what to say. I knew I was supposed to be hired for David. And maybe, being distracted by Chloe, I wasn’t listening as close as I should have. But the proposition sounded reasonable to me.
David cleared his throat. “Um, Amy, he’s leaving out a few details. Like that he plans to get on his feet at a poker game down in the Keys, which is always his plan.” He held up one finger. “Unless it’s a plan to invest in a company that doesn’t actually exist, or a plan to flip a house with a bad foundation and problems with black mold in the vents.” He glanced at his brother. “And he’s leaving out the thirty grand I already lent him.” He lifted his hands off the wheel to do quote marks around the word lent. “And also the fact that he thinks it’s beneath him to get a regular damn job.”
“You did lend it to me, David. It was a loan. Okay? We all get that it was a loan. Everyone understands that.”
I slid my eyes over to Chloe. She was clutching at her ear like she wanted to pull it out of her head. I could think of nothing to do or say that would help her. I was trying to make something click into my brain, some plan, but it wouldn’t come.
“And also,” David said, looking at me in the mirror. “This is the first time our parents have actually said no to him, because they’ve finally figured out that he will bleed . . . them . . . dry. And he just spent our mother’s seventy-third birthday making her feel bad about it.”
“No,” said Adam. “That is not what I did.”
I didn’t know if I was supposed to keep trying to change the subject. I was thinking I understood the problem, which was that the shorter brother, Adam, was a screw-up. But as soon as I heard myself think that, I felt ashamed. Screw-up was an Aunt Jenny term. She’d used it to describe my dad once, though as far as I knew, he didn’t borrow money from people. He’d just been a drinker. That’s how he’d died, though. He’d had a big screw-up at the end. But I always thought it was a point in his favor that he’d at least tried to walk home from the bar that night, when his car had been right in the bar’s parking lot. He’d known he was drunk, and he didn’t want to hurt anybody, maybe. So he’d walked. And that meant he wasn’t completely bad. Not completely a screw-up. Aunt Jenny said he probably just walked because he was scared of getting a DUI. But I liked my way of looking at it, and she didn’t know any more than I did what was in his head that night.
Adam was still talking. “If Mom was upset, it wasn’t because of anything I said. It was because she wanted to help me, but Dad wouldn’t let her. Because he’s controlling”—he pointed at his brother—“like you.”
Chloe started to moan, low at first, then rising up, like somebody pretending to be a ghost on Halloween. I stared at her, openmouthed. Both brothers turned around. David looked back at the road, and then turned back to Chloe again.
“Whoa,” Adam said. “She’s really not doing well.” He gave me a hard look. “What does she have, exactly?”
“She’s got water in her ear,” I said.
“Like swimmer’s ear? Just water?”
I nodded. “I guess it’s infected.”
He made quick eyes at his brother and turned back to the windshield again. The snow was coming down harder now. Already the fields and tops of tree branches on either side of the highway were blanketed white.
Chloe moaned again. I started to shake my head at her, but that wasn’t fair, or even reasonable. If she could have stayed quiet, she would have.
David tilted the mirror at me. “She sounds like she needs a doctor.”
I waited for Chloe to speak. If she wanted a doctor, if she wanted to give up, she should be the one to say it. She was silent, so I shook my head.
“She’ll be okay when she gets the medicine. My mom has medicine for her.”
“Antibiotics? Your mom has antibiotics?”
I nodded. My teeth were chattering, and I wasn’t even cold.
David’s deep-set eyes got even smaller. “Why does your mom have them? Why doesn’t your cousin, or her cousin, have them herself?”
I tried to think. The brothers glanced at each other again. I had nothing to say. I was all out of lies. I had nothing.
“Listen,” David said. “I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m getting off at the next town, and I’m taking her to an ER.” He nodded at his brother. “Put in our location and find the closest one that comes up.”
“No!” I slapped the back of his seat. “No! Don’t do that!”
Adam nodded, his bottom lip sticking out. “This is a great idea you had, by the way, bro. Picking up these two. Seriously a smart move on your part.”
“Shut up.” David looked back at me in the mirror. “Why don’t you want her to see a doctor? Are you worried about money?”
I didn’t know what to say. I could say yes, but it seemed to me, just from the tone of his voice, that money wasn’t a good enough reason not to go to the ER. He’d drive us there anyway.
“Amy,” he said, not as friendly now. “What’s going on?”
I shook my head. There was nothing to lose anymore. But I wouldn’t give her up, not without her permission. I’d wait for her to do it herself. I could tell Caleb I’d done everything I could. I could tell myself that too. But I wanted, so much, for her to keep holding on, at least until she really couldn’t.
“I’ll tell you what’s going on,” Adam said. He laughed in the high-pitched way again. “Think, David. She can’t take her cousin, or whoever that is, to the ER. And she just asked about Canada. That’s where they’re headed. Without ID. Okay? Use your head. I don’t think the cousin is Portuguese.”
I could see David’s eyes in the mirror, the new understanding lighting in. His hand moved fast through his curls. “Oh Jesus,” he said. “Oh God.”
Adam turned back to me.
“What’s the deal?” He pointed at me. “You’re a little liar, okay? And so help me, don’t you lie anymore. I mean it. Tell us what’s up, right now.”
I couldn’t speak. I mean really, physically. It was like my tongue wouldn’t work. I was that scared.
Chloe held up her hand. “Leave her.” She breathed heavily. “She’s done nothing. I’m from Iran.” She put her hand back to her ear. “I didn’t register. I just want to leave. I want to be with my family. That is all.”
We were all quiet again, the wipers beating. Adam shrugged.
“Yeah,” he said, almost pleasantly. “This is way better than just giving me the loan, Big D. Way to go. You really showed me.”
David took one arm off the wheel and made a fist, and for a second, I thought they were going to start fighting, like really fighting, while David was driving up the interstate. Chloe and I both put our hands in front of our faces, but then David put his hand back on the wheel.
“Shut up. Seriously. Shut up. Okay? This is serious.” He turned back and glanced at Chloe. “What the hell are we going to do?”
“Uhh. Pull over and drop them off?”
He’d said it like it was obvious, like that was the only thing that made sense. But there was nothing on either side of the road except snow-flocked trees and grass. I held my breath and looked at Chloe. She had one hand on her ear, the other on her forehead, and she was rocking back and forth again. I knew people used to die from infections, before antibiotics.
“We can’t leave them on the side of the road.” David’s voice was quiet enough I had to lean forward to hear. “She’s in real pain. My God. And somebody’ll find her.” He lowered his voice even more. “Even if they aren’t a nut, there’s probably a rewar—”
He didn’t finish the word. And I guessed why he’d stopped. Ten thousand dollars. Like a gift from above. His brother wouldn’t need the poker game. Or if he wanted to go, now he could go in style.
But Adam turned to glare at David, and now he looked like he was the one who might deliver a punch.
“Thanks. That’s really a nice thing for you to think about me.”
David didn’t say anything. Adam kept staring at him.
“I’m not going to turn her in for the reward, okay? That’s disgusting. That’s disgusting that you would think I would do that. I’m insulted. Offended.” He thumped his hand against the front of his flannel shirt. “Deeply offended.”
“Sorry,” David said, like he meant it.
“Good. There’s a big difference between asking for a loan from your own family and selling your damn soul. You know me better than that. Or you should. I didn’t hear the same stories you did growing up? I didn’t hear the same stories?”
“I’m sorry,” David said again.
Adam looked out his window and shook his head. “But I also don’t want to go to prison. And I don’t think you do either. You want to wait until the next exit, fine. But then we’re saying bye to your new friends.”
“What about her ear?”
Adam held up both hands. “What would we do for her?” He turned around and looked at me. “Hey you, Little Miss Liar. Is there really a mom and medicine waiting for her in Minneapolis?”
I shook my head.
“Don’t even start with the tears, okay? They won’t do you any good with me.” He pointed at me again. “I don’t know what your deal is, or why you’re helping her, but you just put me and my brother at risk for serious legal problems, okay? Without our permission. So I’m fresh out of sympathy for you right now. Forget the waterworks.”
I nodded. I wasn’t crying on purpose. I was seriously trying to stop. But I was thinking about the pencil jammed in Chloe’s ear, and about her husband and her little boy in Canada. I knew he was right, that it had been wrong of me to lie to them. But I didn’t want her to die in this car, and I didn’t want her to get caught.
“You’ve got to help her.” I wiped my tears away fast. I wanted him to understand. “She didn’t do anything wrong. She just stayed too long because she liked it here. She liked being American. So she stayed, and now she’s stuck.”
He stared at me. He looked at me like he wanted to start laughing again, in the fake way, but he couldn’t quite manage it.
“I don’t have to do anything,” he said. “And listen, no, I don’t want the blood money. But I don’t have to do anything for either of you.”
“Adam.” David’s voice was low. “We at least have to get her to a doctor.”
Adam’s hands went to his head, then sprang up again like his head was too hot. “What doctor? What doctor are we going to take her to? What would we be risking? I’ll tell you what. A federal offense. Treason. And let me ask you something, David. If the shoe was on the other foot, if we were down in her neck of the woods, do you think she’d risk it all for the likes of us? For the likes of you?”
David didn’t say anything.
“You know what I’m saying?” Adam asked. “I mean, how come you and Stephen took the kids to France last month? Why didn’t you go to Iran? Oh. That’s right. That wouldn’t have gone so well.” He leaned around the edge of his seat to look at Chloe. “You people still executing gays over there? Apparently tolerance only goes one way.”
“Stop it.” David held up both hands. “We’re not in Iran. We’re about an hour outside Minneapolis. And we’ve got to figure out what to do. Right now.”
“Yeah.” Adam nodded, facing forward again. “That’s right. We’re not in Iran. It’s different here, because they’re not all coming over and bringing sharia law with them, you know? And wanting to push us out into the sea. I’m all for the containment. Believe me.” He thumped his chest again. “I’m all for it.”
Chloe was still holding her ear. “I did not bring sharia law with me.” She said sharia in a different way than he did.
“Uh-huh. Well. When you get back to wherever you’re going, you remember we helped you. Okay? My brother helped you.” He leaned around the edge of the seat again. “A gay Jewish man. And his brother. Okay? We’re Jews.” He kept his gaze on Chloe. “These are Jews helping you. Remember that.”
Chloe nodded. I crossed my fingers on both hands, wiping my cheek on the shoulder of my coat. He’d said it like they were going to help her. He’d maybe changed his mind, and I guessed why. He’d been trying to yell at her, to make himself hard, but he’d made the mistake of turning around to look at her, seeing her up close.
He turned back to the road again. He still looked mad, but I could see he was thinking, his dark eyebrows pushed low.
David looked at him. “I seriously don’t know what to do. We can’t take her to a doctor.” He was whispering, maybe for Chloe’s sake. “And I don’t have any . . . amoxicillin or whatever lying around. Do you?”
Adam looked at him like he’d asked about the stupidest question ever.
David exhaled through puffed out cheeks. “Okay. Could one of us call our doctor and say we’re out of town? I could say I came down with swimmer’s ear, and I let it get infected? Then have them phone in the medicine and give it to her?”
“That won’t work.” Adam took his soda cup out of the holder. “They’re going to want to see the ear. So unless we can remove her ear from her body, it’s not happening.” He tried to sip his soda, though it was empty now, the straw just sucking air. He shoved the cup back into the holder.
“What about Audrey Chang?”
I didn’t know who Audrey Chang was, but Adam gave him a look that implied that David had now truly asked the dumbest question of all time. I had to sniff again, and I tried to do it quietly. I didn’t want to interrupt them. I wanted them to keep talking, trying to work something out.
“She’s a doctor, right?” David was still whispering. “She even works at an ER, right?”
“It’s a walk-in clinic. And she’s way over in Stillwater.”
“Yeah. But she could call it in. We could pick it up anywhere.”
“Uh-huh. There’s one tiny problem, besides, you know, her risking her license, and us risking arrest. Which is that she hates me.” He lowered his voice. “I cheated on her. Remember? With her friend?”
David shook his head. “She doesn’t hate you. She’s always liking your posts. Even the dumb ones.”
“No. That’s just her pretending to be over it. Believe me. She hates me. She said I was disgusting.” He pointed his thumb up toward his own chin. “She said that to my face.”
“Okay. But would she help?” David nodded back at Chloe. “Would she be . . . sympathetic?”
“No idea.”
“How can you not know? She was your girlfriend.”
“That’s not the kind of thing we discussed, okay? Believe it or not, it didn’t come up.”
We passed a green sign saying we were sixty-five miles from Minneapolis. I sucked my lips between my teeth, reminding myself to stay quiet. Best-case scenario, they would think of a way to get Chloe medicine. Worst case, they would drop us off at the edge of the road, or maybe even at a gas station. They weren’t going to turn us in. But I could tell they were both panicked, talking even faster than they normally did. I looked over at Chloe, who was still hunched over, and shaking, too, though the car was warm. I put my hand on her shoulder and gave her a pat, as much for me as for her.
“Do you have her number?” David whispered.
“Audrey’s? I have her cell.”
“Then what are you waiting for? Make the call.”
“And say what?” Adam’s voice came out shrill. “What am I going to say? ‘Oh, hey, Audrey. ’Sup? Yeah, it’s Adam. Listen, I know things didn’t go so well between us, but you know, I’ve got swimmer’s ear that’s turned into an infection, and I don’t want to have to come in, and I think you’re going to give me special treatment.’ Are you kidding me? She’ll think I just don’t want to pay for a visit. She’ll be nothing but annoyed.” He looked up at the roof of the car. “I’d have to explain what’s really going on and hope she’s . . .” He made his hand into a blade and rotated it forward, like he didn’t want to say the same word his brother had used, but he couldn’t think of anything else.
Sympathetic. That was what we needed Audrey Chang to be.