Desert Crossing

by Elise Broach

  4

  It was raining so hard we could barely see the turnoff. But the light was there, deep in the desert blackness, and when we slowed down we saw a thin gravel lane breaking off from the highway. It was muddy and pooled with water. Little streams coursed over it. Kit slowed the car to a crawl, and we bumped and heaved over the ruts. I was still shivering, but I felt like I was waking up, paying more attention. Now everything seemed too real: the metal handle of the car door, ice cold, pushed against my thigh, and the tangy smell of beer filled the front seat. I kept sneaking quick looks at Kit. It wasn’t like him not to talk.

  Finally he said, “We should get rid of the cans.”

  “What?”

  “We have to dump the beer.”

  “Now?”

  It seemed impossible that there was something else to think of besides the girl. But there would be police.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “We have to get rid of it.”

  “But the car really smells. They’ll figure it out. It’ll look like…” I didn’t know how to say it.

  Kit shrugged, squinting at the road. “If they find open beer cans in the car…” He hesitated. “Think about Jamie.”

  I was mad at him, furious. He was the one who’d wanted the beer, gotten the six-pack, given Jamie a can while he was driving. And now a girl was dead, and it wasn’t Jamie’s fault, it couldn’t be Jamie’s fault. But we’d been driving fast and our car stank of beer. Who would know what really happened?

  “I am thinking about Jamie,” I said. Kit shot me a sideways glance. He slowed the car and rolled down his window. Then he reached across my shins and grabbed the two cans, heaving them into the night. A minute later, he sent the rest of the six-pack spiraling after them.

  “Kit,” I said. But he just drove on.

  Suddenly the house was in front of us. It was low and rambling, with lights shining in two of the windows. There was a truck parked next to it. As soon as we pulled into the yard—if you could call it a yard because there wasn’t a boundary, it stretched right into the desert—two big dogs came charging out of a shed, barking.

  We stepped out into the rain.

  The dogs surrounded Kit, but their big tails swished back and forth, and they only sniffed his legs. I pulled up my hood and headed for the door.

  It opened before I had a chance to knock. A woman in her thirties stood there, wearing a man’s shirt spattered with paint. She had a pretty face, tan from the sun, and her dark hair fell around it like a veil. She brushed it back, looking annoyed. “Yes? What is it? Car trouble?”

  “No,” I said. “There’s … we…” I couldn’t think what to say.

  Kit came running up then, with the dogs bounding beside him and tangling in his legs.

  “Oscar! Toronto!” the woman said sharply. The dogs backed away, cringing. I held out my hand to the big black one, and he licked it, butting his head under my palm.

  Kit was talking fast. “A girl ran into the road. Right in front of our car. She’s … she’s dead. My friend stayed back there with her, but she’s dead.”

  The woman looked from Kit to me. She had dark, steady eyes, and it was hard to look back at her. “Come inside,” she said. “I’ll call the police.”

  We dripped water all over the floor while she dialed. There was in the middle of the room, a huge piece of twisted metal, painted all different colors, with weird things sticking out of it—a hubcap, a piece of pipe. A drop cloth was spread underneath it, and a rug was rolled up against the wall. Kit looked at me and raised his eyebrows.

  “Joe? Hi, it’s Beth Osway. I’ve got a couple of kids here. They’ve had an accident, they hit somebody. They think she might be dead.” She listened for a minute, then turned to Kit. “Where was it? How far from my road?”

  Kit gestured. “I don’t know, east of here, maybe two, three miles?”

  She repeated the information into the phone. “Okay, we’ll meet them there.” She turned to us. “Are you all right? Were either of you hurt?”

  We shook our heads.

  “No, they seem to be fine.” She hung up and took a nylon jacket from a peg on the wall. “It’ll take them a while,” she said. “But we’ll go wait.”

  She looked at us curiously then, with the same sharp gaze, almost like she was solving a puzzle. “I’m Beth. What are your names?”

  Kit spoke. “Kit Kitson and Lucy Martinez.”

  She looked at Kit. “Kit Kitson?”

  Kit flushed. “Well, Frederick. But everybody calls me Kit.”

  I stared at him. Frederick? I wasn’t sure even Jamie knew that.

  We ran out into the rain again. When I climbed into the back of the car, the smell of beer was stronger than ever. Beth pulled open the passenger door and started to get in, but she stopped. She looked around the inside of the car, then back at me.

  “Have you been drinking?”

  “No!” I said quickly. “No … I’m only fourteen.”

  Kit was sliding into the front seat, not looking at her.

  Her eyes didn’t move from my face. “Has he been drinking?”

  I turned to Kit. He started the car, not saying anything.

  Beth reached over and twisted the keys, yanking them out of the ignition. “We’ll take the truck,” she said. Her voice was hard.

  5

  In the truck, I sat in the middle, pulling my shoulders together so I wouldn’t have to touch either of them. I could feel Kit shifting around, getting ready to say something. In the dark cab, his face looked tense; the usual smirk had disappeared.

  “We weren’t drinking,” he said finally.

  Beth didn’t answer. I stared at him. I couldn’t believe he was going to lie. She’d been inside the stinking car.

  Kit shrugged. “I mean, we had one beer.”

  Beth kept her eyes on the road. The windshield wipers swished back and forth in a panic, beating in time with my heart.

  Kit leaned forward. “Like one sip, really. Half of it spilled, anyway. You know, when we…” He was trying to get her to look at him, but her eyes stayed on the road.

  She frowned. “Pretty goddamn stupid, don’t you think?”

  Kit sank back, defeated, and I shrank into myself. I couldn’t figure her out. She seemed to be helping us, sort of, by calling the police and driving us back to Jamie. But she wasn’t treating us the way a normal adult would. She didn’t keep asking us questions to fill the gaps in the conversation. She just seemed eager to get rid of us.

  Then we saw Jamie, sitting where we’d left him.

  “There he is,” I said softly, but Beth had already seen him and was slowing the truck, steering onto the shoulder.

  “Stay here,” she said abruptly, slamming the door. I scooted away from Kit and watched through the window. She walked over to Jamie, pulling up her hood. He tried to stand but his legs were unsteady. He looked like he hadn’t moved since we left. He stumbled sideways and Beth grabbed his arm to keep him from falling.

  I could see him talking to her, her answering. He pointed at the girl. Beth squatted down and stayed there awhile, with Jamie gesturing and talking. When she started to get back up, he held out his hand to help her.

  “What are they talking about?” Kit asked.

  “I don’t know.” I glanced over at him. “Maybe the beer you didn’t drink.”

  “Oh, come on. What was I supposed to say? We’re in enough trouble without her making a federal case out of that. It wasn’t even half a can.”

  “But you can smell it in the car! It’s just dumb to lie about it now.”

  “Okay, okay.” He looked mad. “I didn’t hear you come up with any great ideas.”

  There was nothing I could say to that.

  I turned back to the window, and as suddenly as it had begun, the rain stopped. It didn’t taper off to a drizzle—it stopped altogether. We sat in the new silence, listening to the tiny trickling sounds of water streaming off the road. The windshield sparkled with a screen of dr
oplets. The highway shone like a river in the headlights. I could barely look at the girl. What had she been doing out here, alone, on the road? I opened the door and the damp night air swept into the truck, making me shiver.

  We could hear Jamie’s voice, muted, talking to Beth. Maybe she was asking him about the beer. He’d tell her the whole truth, I was pretty sure. He wasn’t like Kit that way. He wouldn’t be thinking ahead and trying to guess the consequences.

  “Look,” Kit said, pointing. In the distance I could see tiny flashes of red and blue light streaking across the land. In almost the same minute, we heard the whine of sirens. My arms shook. I clutched my elbows to hold them still.

  What would happen to us? People went to jail for things like this. Drunk driving, hitting and killing someone. Wasn’t it murder? But Jamie wasn’t drunk. Kit was right. They didn’t drink much at all. I hoped Kit couldn’t see how I was trembling.

  Beth came back to the truck and rested her hand on the door. “Here they come. You might as well get out.”

  We walked over to Jamie. He was sopping wet, his T-shirt so drenched it stuck to his chest, transparent. His hair hung down over his eyes and he flipped it back, spraying water on us.

  “There hasn’t been one car since you left,” he said. “It’s freaky out here.”

  We could hear the night rustling, close to us, except for the hushed patch of gravel where the girl lay.

  Kit jerked his head. “Can we stand over there? Away from this?”

  “Her,” I said.

  Kit walked a few yards away, and Jamie and Beth followed. I stayed where I was. I crouched down to really look at her. Her eyes were as shiny and light as glass. Her cheeks glistened. She had no expression at all. It was different from the way people looked when they were sleeping. So much blanker than that, with no flicker or twitch, no sign that her face would ever change.

  Her T-shirt was dark blue. Letters stretched across it in big, excited loops: THE ROCKIES ROCK! Maybe she was from Colorado. Or she’d gone there on vacation. Or somebody brought her this T-shirt back from a trip.

  The sirens were getting louder. I looked at her curled white hand, at the bracelet circling her wrist. Shouldn’t it be easier to destroy a bracelet than a person? Shouldn’t that be the first thing that got crushed or shattered? But the bracelet was perfect, exactly as it had been when she was alive.

  It looked like my charm bracelet at home. It had a silver heart hanging from it, just like mine. Someone would take her away soon. This bracelet would be all that was left.

  It seemed so unfair. Something should stay.

  Before I even thought about what I was doing, I reached out and unclasped it, sliding it under her arm. The tips of my fingers grazed her cold skin, and the charms jangled against each other. I knew it was wrong. I could hardly breathe. I didn’t know why I was doing it.

  I shoved it deep inside my jacket pocket just as the police cars came screaming to a stop.

  6

  There were three cops. They got out of their cars all at once, with the ambulance wailing behind them. The paramedics swung open its back doors and yanked a metal stretcher to the ground. It clattered across the road. Then they crouched by the girl, and their hands were quick and confident, lifting her wrist, feeling her neck, shining a tiny, piercing light in her eyes. The police had flashlights. They walked around, looking at the road and the gravel shoulder where she was lying. Somebody took pictures, and the fierce burst of the flash made me blink. They talked to the paramedics. They marked the outline of her body. Everyone seemed to know what to do.

  I watched the paramedics move the girl onto the stretcher. They straightened her out and pressed her arms close to her sides. For a minute, it seemed like they were tucking her in, the way my mom sometimes did when I was almost asleep, smoothing the covers, and if my arm dropped over the edge of the mattress, sliding it back toward the middle.

  But then they snapped the white sheet taut and covered her completely.

  One cop stayed at the ambulance, and the other two walked toward us. Watching them come, with their shiny badges and bulging holsters, I felt a wave of fear wash through me. The girl had been alive, and now she was dead. There was nothing between those two moments but us. My heart started to pound. We’d done something terrible. Even if it was an accident, there was no way it wasn’t our fault.

  A heavy, older man, the one who seemed to be in charge, came up to us. He rubbed his forehead and nodded to Beth. “How have you been, Beth? I haven’t seen you in a while.”

  “Fine, Stan. Busy. How about you?” Beth tossed her hair back, staring at the ambulance.

  “Not too bad. It’s a shame about that girl. She’s young.”

  “I know, I know.” Beth shook her head. “What was she doing out here, by herself? Did you pass any breakdowns?”

  “Nope, nothing reported from here to Kilmore.” He turned to us. “I’m Sheriff Durrell,” he said. “We’ll need to get statements from you folks. Now, which of you was the driver?”

  Jamie nodded slightly, biting his lip.

  “And where’s your vehicle?”

  “It’s at my house,” Beth said. “Let me talk to you for a minute, Stan.”

  She pulled him away from us, speaking softly. I could hear Kit swearing under his breath. Jamie shook his head. “Cut it out, Kit. We’ve got to tell them what happened. Okay? Everything that happened.”

  Kit frowned. “I don’t even know what happened. Do you?”

  Then the sheriff came back, and he was different, bristling and curt. “I understand you boys have been drinking. Can I see your licenses? We’ll need to run a few checks. And how about you, young lady? Did you have any alcohol this evening?”

  “No,” I said quickly, but I couldn’t look at him. I could feel the weight of the bracelet in my pocket.

  “Are you aware the legal drinking age is twenty-one?”

  “She didn’t have any,” Jamie said.

  When I raised my eyes, the sheriff was still watching me. “Walk that way, toward the squad car, in a straight line,” he ordered. “Heel to toe, arms at your sides, count the steps out loud.”

  I felt my cheeks get hot. I did what he said, placing my feet carefully. “One, two, three…” My voice was thin and high.

  “Louder,” he said. I swallowed. I couldn’t stand all of them watching me. “Eight, nine…”

  “Okay, that’s enough,” he called. “Come on back. What’s your name?”

  “Lucy Martinez.”

  “Roy!”

  I jumped.

  “Take Miss Martinez back to the car and get her statement.” He turned to Jamie and Kit. “You boys stay with me.”

  I followed the younger cop to the police car. As we walked away, I glanced back and saw Jamie and Kit standing like statues, arms pressed to their sides. It seemed not real and too real at the same time, like a dream. The sheriff was making each of them raise one leg out in front and hold it there. Another time it would have been funny—they looked like storks—but not now, with their faces stiff and scared. There was no way they were drunk. But I was afraid for them, even so.

  * * *

  The police car was dark inside, with a sharp, sour smell. What was it? Sweat? Blinking screens and gauges crowded the front panel. It looked like the controls for a spaceship. Staticky voices burst over the radio, making me flinch. The clock said 10:38.

  “Is it that late?” I asked, and then felt stupid when he didn’t answer. I realized I didn’t have any sense of the time. I had no idea when we had the accident, when we got to Beth’s, when the police arrived. Of course he would ask me that. And I wouldn’t know.

  The cop turned down the radio and took out a clipboard with a printed form on it. He asked questions without looking at me—my name, my address, my age—scribbling across the page in quick, dark lines. I watched the side of his face in the dim light of the car. A muscle in his jaw twitched under the skin. “Okay, tell me what happened.”

  I pressed my
lips together and stared out the window, thinking hard. I would be careful, like Jamie said. I wanted to tell him everything. “We were driving—”

  “Who was driving?”

  “Jamie. My brother, Jamie.”

  “And you were in the front seat?”

  “No … no, Kit was in front. I was in the back, behind Jamie. We’re driving to Phoenix to see my dad, and we were trying to get to Albuquerque tonight, to break up the trip. It started to rain really hard.”

  “What time was that?”

  I bit my lip. “I don’t know. I didn’t look at the clock.”

  “Roughly what time? Seven o’clock? Eight?”

  “It was dark. I don’t know. It could have been dark because of the storm, but I think it was after sunset. Maybe seven-thirty?”

  “And how would you characterize the visibility?”

  “Uh…”

  “How well could you see the road?”

  I thought of that ocean swirling around us. “It was raining hard,” I said.

  “So the visibility was poor?”

  “Yes.”

  “And did your brother adjust his speed? Did he slow down?”

  I thought of us racing through the dark, watery night. “I don’t know. I wasn’t paying attention.”

  “And then what happened?”

  “We hit something.”

  “What did you hit?”

  “I didn’t see it. I just felt the bump.”

  “You didn’t see it because you weren’t looking out the front? Or because you were looking but you couldn’t see what it was?”

  I tried to think. Had I been looking through the windshield when we hit her? I couldn’t remember now. The rain blurred everything.

  “I don’t know. I don’t think I was looking out the front.”

  “Did your brother brake? Did the car skid?”

  “No, no, it happened too fast. There wasn’t time to brake.”

  He stopped writing. “But you weren’t actually looking in front of the car. Is that right? So you don’t know if there was time to brake.”

  I pushed my hand deeper inside my pocket and touched the bracelet. For a minute, it made me feel more scared. But then, somehow, safer. I closed my fist around it and took a deep breath.