Zach was buckled into his car seat, still fast asleep. With the heavy-duty straps over his shoulders and across his chest, he looked like a little astronaut about to blast off.
“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” I said.
Ronnie grinned at me. “It’ll be nice to have company. Zach’s great, but let’s face it, he has a pretty limited range of conversation topics.”
“I bet he doesn’t do his share of the driving either.”
“Ha. He’d love to. He adores anything with wheels.”
I buckled my seat belt and glanced over my shoulder at him. “Is he always such a good sleeper?”
She hesitated before answering. “I guess so—I mean, yeah. He is.”
“What’s wrong?” I studied the frown lines that had appeared between her eyebrows.
“Nothing.” Ronnie started the engine. “Let’s go.”
Last chance to change your mind. I closed my eyes for a moment, imagining the shock on my parents’ faces when they got back to the hotel room and realized I’d taken off. Dad would be furious with me. Mom, too, but she’d take it out on Dad, blaming him. If you hadn’t insisted on sniffing his breath at dinner, this would never have happened. You never know when to back off, do you?
Nope, I didn’t need to listen to any more of their arguments. “Right,” I said. “Hollywood, here we come.”
Zach slept for the first twenty minutes and then woke up crying. We were just outside Redding, heading south on I-5, but Ronnie pulled over and tried to comfort him. She offered snacks, books, toys, but Zach just kept screaming at the top of his lungs. At least, I sure hoped it was his top—any louder, and he’d do permanent damage to my hearing. Ronnie unbuckled him and tried to pick him up, but he just kicked his legs, arched his back and tried to push her away. She looked like she was about to start crying herself.
“Maybe we should just keep driving,” I said at last. “Buckle him back in and keep going, you know? I mean, if he’s just going to scream anyway.”
Ronnie gave me a look, like I was a terrible person for suggesting it, but she stuck him back in his car seat. You can only park at the side of the high-way listening to a toddler screaming for so long.
“How about I drive?” I suggested. “You can sit with him.”
She nodded. “Jump to lightspeed,” she said. “Though my car starts to rattle if you go over sixty, so maybe not.”
I dropped my voice an octave and did a Han Solo swagger, smacking the car roof with the palm of my hand. “She may not look like much, but she’s got it where it counts, kid.”
Ronnie shook her head as she slipped into the backseat beside Zach. “Un-freaking-believable.”
I drove and Zach cried. He yelled and sobbed until his whole face was covered with bright red blotches.
“Um, Theo? Yesterday in the car, singing really helped,” Ronnie said.
“Singing? Me? I can’t sing.” I glanced at her face in the rearview mirror and caught her wiping tears from her cheeks. I groaned. “Okay, okay,” I said. “We’ll sing.”
After a few verses, Zach settled down, but each time we tried to stop singing, he went right back to screaming. When we passed the exit for Clear Lake—the turnoff that I should’ve been taking with my parents, to go to Darrell’s place in Santa Rosa—my stomach started doing flips. God, my parents were going to freak out. What had I been thinking?
Ronnie and I sang Raffi songs nonstop all the way to Sacramento—over two straight hours. “Baby Beluga in the deep blue sea...” My eyes met Ronnie’s in the rearview mirror and she gave me a weak smile. She’d stopped crying, at least. I kept singing. “Swim so wild and you swim so free...”
This was so not what I had imagined when I pictured the two of us driving off into the sunset together.
Just past Sacramento, I heard sirens close behind us. I glanced in the rearview mirror. Cops. I was over the limit but only just. “Seriously?” I muttered.
“Oh my god.” Ronnie’s voice was strained. “Oh my god, Theo. Were you speeding? Damn it, what were you thinking? Do you have any idea—”
“I’m only, like, five miles over,” I protested. “If that. I mean, cars are flying past me in the other lane.” I slowed down and started to pull over.
“I can’t believe this,” she said, her voice rising. “I shouldn’t have let you drive.”
“What’s the big deal?” I drove onto the shoulder, braking. “If we get a ticket, I’ll pay it, okay? So chill.”
“I don’t care about a goddamn ticket,” she said. Zach started to cry again. “Shut up, Zach!” Ronnie turned to him and grabbed his shoulders. “Goddamn it! Zach, please. Just stop crying.”
I got an icy feeling in the pit of my stomach. I stopped the car and turned to look over my shoulder at her. “Please tell me the car isn’t stolen.”
“Theo! Of course it’s not stolen.”
“What is it then? Why are you freaking out?” Behind me, I could see the cop getting out of his car and walking toward us. My chest tightened. “Ronnie? Is there something I should know?”
Zach started crying louder than ever. “Just don’t use my name,” Ronnie said. She unbuckled Zach and pulled him out of his car seat and onto her lap.
I had started to roll down my window, and the cop was only a few feet away. “What? Are you serious?”
“Or Zach’s,” she said under her breath.
The car was stolen. I just knew it. My hands were slick with sweat. I wiped them on my jeans and turned to watch the cop walk the last few feet to our car.
Ronnie was cooing to Zach now. “Come here, baby. I’m sorry I yelled at you. You want a snack, honey? Raisins? Goldfish crackers?” She rummaged in the bag on the seat beside her.
I felt sick. Sure, Ronnie had been my babysitter—but that was six years ago, when she was an eleventh-grader. I knew nothing about this girl sitting behind me. She could be anyone. A car thief. Or worse, a drug dealer. What if the trunk was full of coke or something?
God knows my parents weren’t going to believe that I had nothing to do with it.
“Good evening,” the cop said, leaning down to the open window.
“Um, hi. Sorry. Was I speeding? I thought I was pretty much going the speed limit.” My heart was racing, and I had to fight to keep my voice level. Please, God, I know I haven’t been to church in a few years, but if you could just do me this one favor and not let him look in the trunk...
The cop was middle-aged, darkeyed and brown-skinned, with a heavy moustache. I figured he was leaning in to check my breath, like my father always did. “You had anything to drink tonight?” he asked.
“No.” I gestured at the paper cups in the drinks tray. “Just coffee.”
“Oregon license plates, huh? Where are you heading?”
“I’m from Portland. Going to Los Angeles. Um, I have family down there,” I said. It wasn’t true, but it seemed like a good thing to say. Like, a responsible kind of reason to be driving through California at night. Please don’t look in the trunk. Don’t search the car. “Um, was I over the speed limit?”
He straightened up with a grunt, hands on his lower back. “You weren’t speeding. You’ve got a taillight out though.”
“Oh. I didn’t realize...”
“No one ever does. No one thinks to check their taillights.” He shook his head. “Better get that fixed, all right?”
“Yeah, for sure. Thanks for letting me know.” Zach wasn’t crying anymore, and I didn’t want to draw attention to him and Ronnie in the backseat, so I kept my eyes on the cop. “I’ll get that dealt with right away.”
“All right then. You have a safe trip.”
“Thanks.” My hand was shaking as I rolled my window closed. A cold trickle of sweat ran down my back. I turned around in my seat. “What was all that about?”
She lifted Zach back into his car seat. “What? I just didn’t want to get a ticket, that’s all.” She tucked Zach’s arms back into his straps and fastened the buckle across his chest. Her face was flushed, and she didn’t meet my gaze.
“And that business about not using your name?” I started up the engine and rejoined the flow of traffic on the freeway.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I just don’t like cops, okay?”
“Yeah, but—”
“Forget it, Theo. It’s nothing.” She sounded annoyed. “Can we just not talk right now? I want Zach to go to sleep.”
I shook my head but said nothing. I turned on the radio, some bland music that I hoped would get me out of singing more Raffi. Angling the rearview mirror, I could see Ronnie stroking Zach’s cheek. It looked like he was actually going to doze off. Ronnie’s face was tilted toward him, her eyes downcast, her long dark hair falling loose around her shoulders.
She was beautiful, sure. But there was something seriously wrong with this whole picture. I needed to find out exactly what kind of mess I had got myself into.