“It’s kind of spooky out here,” Addie whispered as she walked around the Jeep. Indy followed and sniffed the ground.
Moths thwacked into the single, solar-powered light, which illuminated a small circle of ground and the corner of a picnic table.
“Should we set up the tent?” Mason asked, scouting the area with the flashlight on his phone. “Or do you want to sleep in the Jeep?”
“No offense to the tent, but I think the Jeep is a good idea. I don’t want to find out what wildlife lives out here. Or people, for that matter.”
“Good idea,” he said.
Mason busied himself with the Jeep top, and Addie cleaned out the day’s worth of travel. They put down the back seat and moved as much as they could into the front to make room for the sleeping bags. Mason finished zipping the rear side window panels and walked to Indy, who sniffed around the picnic table.
“Come look at this,” Mason called to Addie. He sat on top of the table and leaned back to take in the spray of stars across the black sky. A sliver of moon, nestled in the stars, barely sliced the dark. He lay back on the table to take it all in.
Addie joined him, pulling her oversized sweatshirt over her knees as she tucked her feet up. “Do you know any of the constellations?”
“Well,” he said, pointing, “that’s the Big Dipper.”
She hit him on the chest. “Duh. You know what I’m talking about. Any others?”
“Wait, let me find it. Yes.” He pointed again. “There’s the Little Dipper.”
“I’ll take that as a ‘no.’”
“I could never quite understand how the stars form all the pictures they’re supposed to form. All I can see are the Dippers.”
“And yet, you can see the pictures left by the skid marks?”
“Yeah, well, that’s a whole different thing.” Mason was glad he had the stars to look at because he didn’t trust himself to look at Addie.
“And you don’t know why you can see those?”
“I don’t understand it any more than I do the constellations,” he said. “And I’ve lived with it all my life.”
“Or at least since your neighbor Kenna died.”
He let the hum of insects fill the silence, and he drifted into his thoughts.
Kenna’s death had been traumatic: the ear-ringing squeal of tires, the crunch of metal, the contorted face of her mother’s anguish. But there was no logic to suggest that the accident made him see things that had happened in the past. He wondered if he had seen the visions all along, but in the funny way memory works for kids, he couldn’t retrieve those memories.
“Did you ever go to a doctor?” Addie asked.
Mason cupped his hands behind his head and closed his eyes. “My parents never believed me when I told them about the visions, so they didn’t take me to a doctor, not that I think a doctor could do anything except lock me up.”
“What about Google? Did you look it up?”
He gave Addie a side glance to see if she was being serious, but no trace of a smile crossed her lips. Instead, her tongue moistened her top lip before she rubbed her lips together. A warm tingle surged through his body.
“Sure, I tried looking it up,” he said.
Addie turned to him. “Yeah? What’d you find?”
“I don’t recommend Googling ‘visions’ and ‘skid marks.’ You will be grossed out by the results.”
Addie broke into a laugh. “Yeah. I guess you have a point.”
“I gave up after finding too many websites about hygiene. And the pictures that people post—gross. Sure, there was information about tire skid marks, but nothing about seeing the stories surrounding them. I figured there was no answer. You know, like in those movies where the mom and daughter switch places or the guy suddenly hears everything women think. It’s just the result of magic or something.”
“Maybe you’re wired differently.”
“Wired differently,” Mason repeated. He hadn’t thought about it that way, that it was some hardwiring issue in his brain. “I guess I’m waiting for the perfect electrical storm to heal me of this affliction.”
“So,” Addie said, leaning back and resting her head in the crook of his arm, “you get these visions, and yet you offered to drive all this way with me?”
Addie’s head was heavy as she relaxed against Mason, and he didn’t dare move.
“As I’m sure you can imagine, I typically try to avoid long drives,” he said.
“And then you said you’d take the longest drive ever so I could annoy my parents?” she said.
“Don’t you mean take care of Indy? I really do love that dog.”
“The dog?” Addie challenged.
The heat rose in Mason’s cheeks.
“You drove because you love my dog?”
Their feet dangled over the edge of the picnic table as they lay across the top looking at the stars. Addie’s leg rested against his, and he held his breath as he took in her warmth.
Did I just confess that I love her?
He forced a laugh if only to release the tension growing in his chest. “Please. A road trip without parents? You were a bonus.”
“A bonus? Like a free gift?” Addie hit his stomach.
Did her hand linger?
Mason brushed off the idea as wishful thinking. “That came off wrong,” he said. “I didn’t mean that.”
Mason rotated to face Addie, and her head slipped from his arm and hit the table with a thud. Indy barked.
“Oh! Sorry!” he said, his cheeks flushing again with his stupidity.
Addie sat up, rubbing the back of her head. “I see where I stand in all this. Come here, Indy. You love me, don’t you?”
“I didn’t mean to bang your head,” Mason stammered. “I hope you know, I would travel anywhere with you.”
She stopped petting Indy and looked at him. “Yeah?”
His face burned at his honesty. “Well, your parents are paying me to keep an eye on you.”
Mason wanted to sound offhand, but he could hear his nerves vibrate through his voice. He smiled and hoped she could see the blue of his eyes, what he thought of as his best feature, in the dim solar-powered light.
Addie raised an eyebrow. “And you’re keeping an eye on me by making me spend the night on the side of a road after taking me to the place where a woman disappeared?”
Mason bit his lower lip and bowed his head. “When you put it like that, I guess I’m not doing a very good job.”
“I forgive you,” Addie said as she leaned into him.
Just as Mason was about to wrap an arm around her, Indy nudged between them and barked.
“I’m hungry too,” Addie said to Indy. “I’ll never be able to sleep if I don’t eat something.”
That dog’s timing is terrible.
Addie hopped off the table and went to the Jeep in search of food.