Swerve

by Vicki Pettersson

  Turning the phone over, I try to make myself believe that it isn’t the same phone I left ringing outside the concession stall in my foolish attempt to beat Malthus at his own game. My itchy palm knows this phone though. I’m slipping a nail into the groove gained when Daniel once dropped it, even as I press the HOME button to check.

  I expect the factory icons to flash up at me, small blocks superimposed atop a photo of Daniel and me taken at the beginning of the summer. It’s a great picture, the night of our engagement, and the screen stretches with our smiles. We are cheek-to-cheek, and Daniel still has his whole face.

  That’s not what waits for me on the home screen. Instead, the little square icons are stamped atop a photo of Daniel alone, and he’s seated in the MICU behind me, though it’s pre-blood, pre-Henry. A bandage is draped across his right eyebrow—or where it used to be—and a long, solid stain pops out at me like a red bloom. It’s covering one eye, but the other stares back with unblinking terror. His beautiful lips are stretched into a flat grin by a too-tight gag that digs into his cheeks and effectively divides his face in two. His hands are lifted in surrender, the leather buckles holding them up, just out of frame, and I can’t shake the feeling as I stare down at the photo that it doesn’t just look like he’s pulling away from the camera. It looks like he’s cowering from me.

  I do not cry.

  I fall out of the ambulance from the driver’s side, hit the ground hard, and vomit into the black night. I empty myself out, my soured, cherry retching echoing across the playground, my head pounding with each heave. Afterward, though, I feel light. I float back to the ambulance’s cabin. Bloodied and stinking, I shut myself in tight.

  I can’t stay here. Even if I hadn’t seen Malthus drive away, this photo alone tells me he’s moving on.

  I’ve done this before.

  If I had to guess, I’d say that Daniel was being secured in the Beemer while I was picking my way through the park. The trunk is now likely stained with his DNA, and this returned phone is my warning. Keep going.

  How many hours do I have left? Twenty? Nineteen?

  I thumb the touch screen, looking for more photos. The rest of my body feels hollowed, but nerves crowd my fingertips, and my palms still buzz with that red itch. Then, whoosh! I flick the touch screen again, and it’s like my heart pops into view.

  It’s the photo that Daniel took of Abby earlier today. Was it really only today? It’s actually a terrible image. Abby and Maria ­aren’t smiling as much as fending off the sun’s glare with a squint, but it’s the last photo taken of Abby, and so that makes it meaningful. I flick my finger over the touch screen, maximize it, and yes, even blurred, my daughter is beautiful. She’s a bloom of a child, a strong floret that has blossomed despite being raised in the arid, barren desert.

  Was I ever like that?

  I stare at her knees, too large for her skinny legs, sticking out like doorknobs beneath striped running shorts. I don’t think so, and it’s not just because I was underfed. Her curiosity is a ball of twine. It knots in her gaze, an energy that makes her freckles pulse. She wants to know everything, why bees buzz, what the lines on her palm are for. How water can flow up pipes. I never opened myself to those sort of questions because if I did I’d have to open myself to all the why-what-how’s of the world, including my father’s death: Why is he outside at midnight? What is he doing with the horses? How did he get that gun?

  I’d have to open myself to it all.

  No, I was never like my daughter, but the vitality staring back at me from this image is proof that I’m not my mother either. This child thrives because of, and not in spite of, me. And forget my father. Unlike him, the sight of my child makes me want to live.

  I reach under my shirt and pull out Malthus’s next map. He has thoughtfully laminated this one so that blood didn’t soak through the thin folds. I run my finger around the hole piercing its middle, the concentric circles widening until I finally stumble upon an X. It’s been Sharpie-d atop Barstow, a town best known for a sprawling outlet mall, only sixteen miles away. Not far . . . unless you have to walk.

  I take a minute to compose myself, then use Daniel’s phone to call Maria again. I get the machine once more and hang up and climb from the ambulance before I can overthink it. I’ll call back later. For now, I just sidestep my puke, apologize again to Henry, and begin to walk.

  It feels imperative that I don’t move first.

  Malthus’s deadline is now twenty hours away, and I’m on my way to the second-to-last stop. I tell myself this to be reassuring as I cross back through the center of the water park, even though I know now that anything can happen any time at all.

  Using the scant light from the far-off interstate to guide my steps, I imagine rattlers side-weaving away from me in the dark. I hear the sharp scrabble of scorpions skittering away as the gravel of the vast parking lot crunches beneath my feet. I do not look backward at the hunched ruins of the abandoned park. In my mind, Henry’s ghost already wavers there, sadly unable to speak, his questions now living in his eyes as he watches me walk away. Swallowing hard, I wonder instead if Malthus will keep his word that Daniel and I will be reunited if I reach the final stop.

  I try not to imagine what will happen if I do not.

  By the time I reach the feeder road, the wind that swirled so mutinously in the deserted park has died away. Like Malthus, it too seems temporarily sated by the night’s violence. Grateful for the flat surface after the park’s jagged edges, I stick to the road’s center. It is a smooth black ribbon that runs for miles in both directions, and my heart thumps as I look at it, because I’m not sure if there’s an inlet back onto the freeway up ahead or not. So I stop and shine the light from the cell phone’s home screen along the roadside ditch that runs parallel to the feeder. Beyond that, the fence is the only thing penning back the freeway.

  I am just outside the periphery of the headlights of the traffic whisking by, but near enough to feel the dust stirred up by the commercial semis and larger trucks. One of those would be my best bet. A truck driver would be used to seeing hitchers and more likely to stop. If they don’t see all the blood on me, I can catch a ride all the way into Barstow. If they do, I figure I can just play victim. I already know a good story.

  I tuck the phone away, and look for some place to breach the ditch and jump the fence. I’m so immune to the sound of traffic that I don’t pick up the rumble behind me until it’s too late. When I turn, my first instinct is to run, but then I gauge the oncoming vehicle’s size by its headlights, and the big cat motor that takes on a deeper purr as it nears. It’s a semi, for sure.

  I turn my back to the oncoming vehicle to hide the blood staining my front, though my thrust-out thumb is a little red flag. Brakes squeal behind me and I toss what I hope is a reassuring look over my shoulder. I am female. No threat here.

  Just ignore the blood.

  “Need a lift?”

  The voice that rings out is so dulcet and high that I actually jump. I’m so desperate too, that I’ve taken two steps toward the driver’s window before I realize I’ve slipped into view of the side beams. The woman who stares down at me is built as squarely as her truck, though her hair is soft. It frames her face in clean, bouncing tufts. She gives me a night-owl blink from her high seat, as if it’s natural to find another woman hiking on a desert road. Then she gets a really good look and her dark eyes flare and stay round.

  Her gasp volleys right into me. “Holy hell.”

  I surprise us both by laughing crazily.

  She’s reconsidering. I can see it as I cover my mouth, nails digging in my cheeks to press the sound back down into my throat. Gripping the window of the truck hard, she draws back, turns her head, and squints at the road in front of her. I want to throw myself on my knees before the truck, but remain quiet instead, hare-like in those headlights. Somehow it feels imperative that I don’t move first.r />
  She finally sighs and motions me around. “I’ll take you as far as I can.”

  “I’m just going to Barstow,” I reassure her.

  “Good.”

  I get in the truck before she can change her mind, and it’s like climbing into a spaceship. The real world, the orderly one, has become totally alien to me. The AC vents wash me in sweet, cool air, and the dashboard glows with satellite radio listings, a GPS, a clock. I buckle in with a reassuring snap, and notice I was wrong about the time. There are only nineteen hours left to reach Daniel. I sat in the ambulance with a dead man for longer than I thought.

  I can feel the driver’s eyes on me, digesting my appearance and trying to make sense of all that blood. She’s waiting for me to speak, to explain myself, but I wait her out. She doesn’t know what she’s asking with that look. Or maybe she does, because she finally just says, “My name’s Crystal. Crystal Parnell.”

  “Thanks for stopping,” I say, keeping my gaze down and my own name to myself. The silence in the cabin draws out so long I feel like it’ll snap. Crystal could still kick me out. She hasn’t started driving yet, but I wait, hoping she’ll leave it at that. Malthus has made a danger of banter.

  She finally motions to the cubby tucked near the footwell by my door. “There are, uh, wet wipes in there. Use as many as you need.”

  The truck throttles forward as I locate the wipes and begin to scrub the dried blood from my hands as best I can. I deposit the soiled ones into a wastebasket Crystal has pulled between us, hoping she’s not keeping count, not that that’s stopping me. I attack my face and neck next, scrub so hard I feel myself momentarily vanish beneath the rub. When I stop, I smell like an astringent rose. Better. However the cashmere shell Daniel bought me is shot. I could turn it inside out, but it’ll never be the same. Just like me.

  We regain the highway just as I finish, and Crystal gives the basket a shove so that it disappears beneath the dash. A reflective sign winks into view. Barstow is only sixteen miles away, and I need to figure out what the hell I’m going to do when I get there.

  The obvious answer is to call my own phone, but that worries me. Every intended action I’ve taken thus far has set something else into motion, something that will do me—and anyone around me—harm.

  Crystal leans forward to survey traffic through her side mirror as we speed up, and I take the opportunity to look around at her safe, insular world. The overhead cabinets are smooth and locked. A netting ribbons the roofline to keep objects from falling: a deck of cards, a flashlight. Notepads and tampons. She’s fastened fanciful butterflies and ribbons to it too; they have wings that glitter, tassels that swing. There are two bunks behind us, one high and curtained off, likely used as storage, and the other low and smoothed with bed linens. I bet if I lift the comforter I’ll see a Crystal-shaped outline, a dented silhouette like there’s another passenger along for the ride.

  “You’re shaking like a leaf.”

  I realize she’s been watching me, eyes as dark as lava rocks in the glow of the dash. She’s right. My hands wobble uncontrollably in my lap. They don’t even stop when I place one on top of the other. How long have they been doing that?

  “Can you talk about it?” she asks.

  I shake my head.

  “Not even with the police?”

  I jolt, my gaze winging to the radio on the dash. The fingers on my wobbly hands flare.

  “Relax.” Crystal soothes. “You’re not the first young girl I’ve picked up from the side of the road, okay? Here.” She lifts a thermos. “Try some of this. It’s medicinal.”

  “I don’t drink much.”

  “Don’t want to be out of control?”

  Don’t want to be like my mother, I think, but just shake my head again.

  Crystal props her elbows on the steering wheel, unscrews the top, and pours anyway. “I don’t either. It’s too dangerous while I’m on the road, and not worth losing a minute with my girls when I’m at home. This is just green tea and ginger root. I make it myself. It keeps me caffeinated, but without the jitters.”

  I take the cup, and despite the heat that has acted like a second assailant throughout the day’s journey, the warmth actually feels good in my palms. It is reassuring and grounding, civilization seeping back into my pores.

  “Those them?” I ask, nodding at the photo taped to her dash. Two pre-teens gaze back at us, arms thrown over each other’s shoulders, matching gap-toothed grins marking them as sisters, and dusky skin and eyes marking them as Crystal’s.

  Her face transforms as she looks at the photo. It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve seen all day, and thus jarring. “Yeah. LeAnne and Jann. It’s nice to have a bit of home with you on a long haul, you know?”

  She nods at the photo and then at the tea, and so I sip to be polite, though I can’t hide my resultant shudder.

  “I know. It’s bitter. I normally add honey, but . . .” Crystal makes a face and grabs at her belly.

  I nod once, as if that’s my greatest concern in the world too. The tea eases out when I sip again, and its warmth couples with the ginger to relax my knotted muscles. I’m shocked to feel the back of my throat stretch into a yawn, but then give in to it. Just for a moment, I think, stretching with it. We’ll be in Barstow soon enough.

  “So, what’s your story?” Crystal tries again, both hands back on the wheel. “Looks like a doozy, if you don’t mind me saying.”

  I know she thinks she can help. She thinks she’s already heard it all, as evidenced by her non-reaction to picking up a woman covered in blood. I wonder how unimpressed she’d be if I told her that almost everyone who has helped me today has ended up dead.

  “It’s more of a cliché,” I tell her instead. “I met a man.”

  “Husband?” Crystal presses, nodding at my ring.

  “God, no.” I shudder, and cup my mug more tightly. “This is someone who’s . . . taken an interest in me. We—I ran into him on the road.”

  I glance over to see if she caught my slip, but her eyes are on the road, face cut in hard profile as she lets out a hard puff of air. “Yeah, isn’t that the way it happens? One person bumps into another, and off they go, their lives spinning in totally different directions.”

  Lives spinning like tops. I see hard red swirls behind my eyes and think maybe she can understand. I yawn again.

  “You can sleep, you know,” Crystal says, catching it. “It’s only a few more miles to Barstow, but a ten-minute cat nap can do wonders.”

  Yes, I take power naps at the hospital all the time, so I slide lower in my seat before I even know I’ve agreed and nestle my head into the space between it and the window. A perfect fit. The rumble of the rig’s motor vibrates through my body and my cheek is cool against the glass.

  I am just drifting off when Crystal’s soft whisper slips around me. “I’m sorry, Kristine.”

  It takes three tries to lift my eyelids. When I finally do, Crystal’s profile wavers like she’s floating in a fishbowl. I try to frown, but my eyebrows don’t move. I lift my hand and feel the burn of hot tea sluicing over my thighs. Crystal nimbly plucks the cup from my limp and open hands.

  “No—” But my voice sounds only inside my head. On the outside, Crystal says my name again . . . and I know I never gave it to her.

  “I don’t know what you did to him,” Crystal is saying. She’s been talking this whole time, her lava-stone eyes hard, her voice rippling around them so that each syllable widens before being pushed away by the next. “But I have a family too.”

  The tea is working. I don’t know exactly what was in it, but I know I’ll be out soon, and then Crystal—and Malthus—will be able to do whatever they want with me. “Please,” I mumble. “He’s . . . an animal.”

  Crystal doesn’t ask who. She just lifts her hand and pushes on a panel behind the cabin lights. It springs open, and suddenly
there’s a gun in her hands. A secret compartment. “I know he’s an animal. That’s why I have this.”

  I want to warn her. I want to say that he knows more about her than she could ever believe and that no matter what we do he’s always two steps ahead, but my tongue is swollen and dry. I breathe through my nose, and all I can manage is, “He’ll kill . . .”

  You. Me.

  But so what? Crystal has turned out to be his ally, and I’ve been waiting to die since I was nine years old anyway.

  Daniel.

  That’s what I think instead. He’s the one I care about. So my final thought is of him as the red swirls behind my eyelids shift. They wheel suddenly in the opposite direction. They ripple out and expand, and then they wash me away in a dark and sweeping tide.

  Daniel . . . Daniel . . .

  “Why the fuck is she saying that?”

  The voice is a snake, its scales made of razors. They slice through my brain, tunneling down.

  “Don’t worry. She’s out.”

  “She’d better be.”

  I am. That should worry me. That should . . .

  And I think—

  Daniel . . .

  Who knew I had room for one last shock?

  Daniel.

  His voice, his touch, his smile as he gazes down on me in the hours of early morning—this is what floats through my thick mind first upon waking. They are foggy images, soft and memory-­filtered, and I linger on them like an observer, like I’m spying on someone else’s dreams.

  Then I smell the blood.

  My heart thumps so hard it grazes my spine. I open my eyes, but my vision is semi-blurred, and it takes a moment to orient myself and realize that I’m not staring at an abstract painting on the wall. I’m on my back, and that’s blood splatter on the ceiling. I bolt straight up at the waist and rise to run in one motion, but the drugs in my system send me spiraling to the floor.