}}}Jackie. 2013. Just off the I-10, outside Quartzsite, Arizona.}}}}}}}}}
“What about you?” Carey said, and gestured with his beer can toward Kaitlyn, sitting crisscross applesauce in a dry riverbed. “You go in for all this Hindu voodoo Jazzercise bullshit?”
“None of that was even slightly right,” I said.
I drained the last of my Tecate, which was now room temperature, provided that room was a hot trunk in the Arizona sunshine. I tossed the can on the floor in the backseat. Carey crumpled his and tossed it in the ditch running beside the shoulder. It landed next to a wadded up ball of aluminum foil with two bites of burrito inside, a few crumpled-up napkins, and six other half-crushed Tecate cans.
“Can you not litter?” I said to him.
Carey burped as loud as he could.
“What, am I ruining this pristine vista?” He swept his arm grandly over the sand, sand, more sand, handful of stunted bushes, and white girl quickly turning red.
“You’re such a dick,” I said. I cracked open another beer. Tasted like somebody had made tea out of cigarette butts.
“How long is she going to be out there?” he asked.
“No idea,” I said. “How long does it take to master bizarre teleportation powers stolen from an evil ball of light?”
“Like twenty minutes, tops.” Carey laughed. “Hey Jackie, you know what we could do to pass the time?”
“Fuck by the side of an active highway, in the backseat of this stolen 1996 Toyota Camry, on top of all the Red Bull cans and fast food wrappers, in like, 103-degree heat?”
Carey tapped his nose.
“I’ll pass. I’d rather juggle the balls of a rabid grizzly.”
“Well, our other option is watching Sitting Bull here contemplate her—whoa, what the hell?”
I followed his gaze to Kaitlyn. But there was no Kaitlyn. She was gone. I looked around: nothing but flat, featureless desert as far as the eye could see. What? There was nowhere to—she couldn’t even duck without us seeing her out there.
“Holy shit! Did you see where she went?” I grabbed Carey’s forearm, all loose flesh over wiry muscle.
He looked down at my hand.
“No, but I know what we can do to pass the time while we wait for her to—”