twelve

We laugh so hard, we barely notice when we pass another golf cart and three familiar faces stare back intently. “Whoops.” Jason stiffens up.

“What? What is it?” I look back, but the other cart blends into the darkness. Oh my God, don’t tell me it’s Jake.

“They’re making a uey. Hold on, Haley.” He steps on the gas and speeds down the road as fast as a golf cart can go. My hair flies into my face. Then I see headlights shine in our rearview mirror. “It’s my brother,” he mumbles.

“Shit.”

“Shit is right. He’s been poking around my business all day. That’s why I’ve been avoiding him, and he’s with Marsha and that Oscar dude.”

My dad’s in that cart too? I can’t let him see me. What if he recognizes me in the future as the girl who was with Jason, the River Country towel-shack kid, thirty years ago? I’ll be in so much trouble!

“We need to lose them,” I tell him. I mean, this could be it. Jake will tell Jason I was trespassing in River Country, and this’ll be the end of the gig.

“I couldn’t agree more.” Jason swerves off the road into the woods, a hard ride at twenty miles an hour. We bump and boing out of our seats like we’re on WaveRunners. I screech and firmly grip the sides of my seat.

“Hang on.” Jason grips the wheel, concentrating on the lit-up foliage ahead of us.

“Where are we going?” I yell, now hanging on to the frame of the cart. Behind us, his brother’s headlights bounce. We’ll never lose him like this. “Cut the lights,” I say.

“What?”

“You know your way around, right?”

“Yeah. But so does he.”

“So turn off the lights!”

Surprisingly, he chuckles. “Yes, ma’am!” He slams a pulled-out knob with the palm of his hand, and oh my friggin’ God, we are speeding into absolute blackness like it’s Space Mountain minus the ambient lighting. We could easily plow into a lake or canal, fall off a cliff, or who knows what! I am so stupid! This is awesome!

“Woooo!” I yell impulsively, forgetting the fact we’re trying to escape unnoticed, and Jason woos with me.

We make a sharp right, and a sharp left, and then we’re suddenly scraping bushes. I have to pull in my arms to keep them from getting scratched, all the while laughing. I don’t know what’s so funny about nearly getting sliced by branches, but the extreme retreat strikes me as hysterical.

He makes another quick turn and stops, holding his hand over my mouth. “Shh, they’ll hear us. He probably turned his lights off too. Man, this is crazy.” I can’t see much at all of him, but my eyes work their hardest to adjust quickly. I can just make out the contour of his face. There’s something extremely hot about sitting here in the dark with nineteen-year-old Jason, army-bound Jason, both of us panting like escaped convicts.

Slowly, he uncovers my mouth and checks behind us, listening carefully when I really, really wish he’d look at me instead. I’ve never been the kind of girl to sit around and wait for a boy to kiss me if I really, really wish he would, but something tells me I shouldn’t be the one to make the first move. We’re in 1982. This is a whole other era. What if he thinks I’m too aggressive? I don’t want that. What did girls do in 1982?

“Do you hear anything?” he whispers.

“You, breathing.” Even though it’s still nearly pitch-black around us, I can hear him smile. I can feel his heat, his energy, and smell his clean skin near me.

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be.” And I don’t know why, but I take his hand and gently move it back over my mouth, then the side of my face, and lean into it a little.

“Haley . . .” His voice drops a bit.

I’m not going to kiss him. I’m just going to wait and see. In the shadows, I can now make out more of the outline of his face, his parted lips, eyes focused on my mouth. But, wow, hurry up and get it over with already. He runs his fingers down over my hair, then brings his thumb back to my mouth, sweeping it across my bottom lip. I clutch his hand and close my eyes.

“Did you hear that?” he whispers.

“No.” I do not hear or sense anything outside of this bubble right now. I cling to his thick hand, breathing quietly. Then I open my eyes and glance at the only other thing I can truly see, the stars pulsing way up over the silhouette of big pine trees reaching up toward the velvet sky.

Jason switches back to high-alert, protective mode. He scans the thicket of trees that surround us. “That. The hissing.”

I strain to listen, and yeah, I mean, I hear the sounds of mechanical things swishing through the night, but we are at a resort in the middle of a packed summer. It could be any car, bus, golf cart, boat, or monorail within a few miles. “Are they still following us, you think?” I ask.

“Probably. Jake would love to catch me doing anything wrong just to take the focus off of him.”

Hmm, I’m something wrong? I pull my hand away from him.

He looks at me, confused. “Haley, that’s not what I meant. What I mean is . . . remember that I work here. We’re supposed to respect the employee-guest relationship. That’s all.”

“You sure?” It sounded like he’d be embarrassed to be seen with me.

He takes my hand and, looking down at it, laces his fingers through mine. “Yes. I’m sure. I just don’t like my brother in my business, that’s all. Okay?”

“Okay.” I don’t really have any reason to doubt him, but I wish he knew how I’m making a big sacrifice by being with him when I could be trying to find my way back home instead. Even though I might be stalling on purpose. To spend more time with him. Maybe.

“You hear it? Listen.” He points to the cricket-chirpy area behind us.

It does sound like the flattening of grass somewhere near, along with maybe some girl giggling. “They’re creeping up on us,” I whisper. I sit up straight. I don’t want my father to remember a girl who looked like me getting cozy with a guy in the woods.

“Yes. And we have to get out soon. The battery on this cart won’t last long, especially with the extra strain we just put it under.”

I’m not sure how far off the road we are, but getting even more stranded than I already am would so be the opposite of fun. “How about heading back the way we came?”

“That’s what I’m thinking too.” Slowly, he maneuvers his way out of our spot and drives in the direction of the road again.

I keep looking behind us. “Should we speed up?”

“I don’t want to waste the battery, or we’ll be walking back. Then my old man’ll be pissed and won’t let me use the cart anymore.”

I face the front again. Any moment we’ll pop through the trees and be back on the main road. Suddenly I feel Jason’s hand back on my face, real soft, and I see him looking at me intently. “What?”

“I wanted to kiss you back there,” he says.

My stomach does a big flip, one of those that makes you stop and savor the moment just before something awesome happens. I hold on to his hand. We’re quiet for a minute. The air between us is thick with all sorts of unsaid things that are probably better that way.

All of a sudden, the glare of headlights switches on behind us, lights that were there all along, poised in the dark. “Suckers!” a guy yells, and I recognize the voice from River Country. The lights come charging toward us.

“Shit, Jake.”

Shit, my dad.

“Let’s go.” Jason switches back on our lights and plows into the brush, annoyed as hell.

The right tire bounces over a rock. “Ahh!” I yell way out loud. “I’m so going to need a new bra after this,” I mumble to myself.

Jason side-glances me with a sly smile, then he starts swerving right, left, and I get the feeling that our cart is getting weak from traversing over this rough terrain with two full bodies in it for so long. Jake, Marsha, and Oscar—Oscar!—have fallen behind, but they’re still back there, ’cause I can see their high beams bouncing all around and hear a girl yelping.

“He’s losing battery,” Jason says. “That cart was last charged this morning. I know because I unplugged it right after lunch to plug mine in at River Country.”

Finally, we bump over something that makes us both jump in our seats so hard, we almost hit our heads on the roof. “What was that?” I ask.

“I don’t know.” He slows down and backs up.

“What are you doing?”

“I wanna see.” He backs up over the hard object on the ground. Behind us about fifty feet, Jake’s cart lights falter. The cart lunges forward then stops, lunges again, then stops. Jason looks at his chunky, black plastic watch.

“What? Why are you looking at your watch?” Who cares what time it is!

On the ground, something long and dark metallic stretches into the darkness, but it’s hard to tell what it is. I reach down to feel it. Smooth, cold metal . . .

HISSSSS. A loud steamy noise sends my heart racing.

“Is this what I think it is?” I say, only to be interrupted by a growing light in the distance coming around some tall trees.

“Right on time.” Jason smiles. “Watch this.”

“A train? There’s no train in Fort Wilderness!” I yell, watching the light grow brighter, listening to the sound of metal on metal, screeching and chugging toward us.

“It’s decommissioned for guests, but they still run it every so often, usually at night.”

“For real?”

He smiles. “For real.”

“Um, don’t we need to move, then? We’re sitting right on the tracks!” Great, I am going to die by train. Who would’ve thought? “Oh my God, oh my God . . .” The train is almost right on us. Its light envelops us, and the conductor blows his whistle, a real steam train whistle. “Jason, we’re going to die! Move, Jason!”

Jason hugs me real tight. “I’ll save you, Haley!”

“Stop it!” I smack him.

He laughs so hard and looks back at his brother, who has run toward us and is now only a few dozen feet away. At this point, I’d rather get hit by them than by the oncoming train. Marsha and Oscar-Dad are yelling out random stuff.

“Haley, relax!” Jason yells through his laughter. “You really think we’ll die when we can jump out of the golf cart and run away? Holy crap, girl, you are funny as hell!”

“What?” Oh. Right. We can. Do that, I mean. Get out and run. “Well, come on, let’s go. Step on the gas, Jason! What if your brother thinks we’re stuck and is coming to help us?” I look back.

“We do this all the time!” And right as the train is upon us, and it looks like his brother is mere feet away, he steps on the accelerator and we push over the tracks, leaving his brother, Marsha, and Dad stuck on the other side.

“Don’t look back, don’t look back,” Jason commands over the sound of the passing train. “I don’t want the conductor seeing it was me.”

Jason drops his head on the steering wheel, but I do look back. An older man, older than my dad in 2014, is hanging out the engine window, yelling what is probably lots of obscenities at us as the engine passes us by. I avert my face and pretend not to hear him. The train is red, gold, green, and super, super pretty! I have never, ever seen train tracks in Fort Wilderness before, much less a real steam engine. I can’t help but smile, taking in the sight. Who knows if I’ll ever see it again.

“It’s beautiful,” I whisper.

Jason looks up. “Yes. And it’s only four cars long. We have to hurry.” He drives a few feet more, and I recognize the wooden lampposts of the campground signaling that we’ve reached the main road again.

“I can’t believe we just did that. That was crazy, Jason.”

“That was nothing.” He looks back again, and when I follow his gaze, the last car of the train is moving past, revealing his brother, Marsha, and my dad on the other side, out of battery, pushing their cart over the tracks. Jake looks at us and offers a nice flip of his middle finger.