by Amy McAuley
“What’s wrong?” Kate cries.
With the corner of the blanket, I wipe off my mouth. “I just saw Di and Rick get in a car accident on their way back, near the fruit stand. I came here and now they’re going to die. Again.” My stomach compresses and I barf all over the blanket this time.
Kate paces around in front of me. “How much time do we have?”
I glance at my watch. “About half an hour.”
“We have half an hour,” Kate says. “And we’re stuck in the middle of nowhere.”
16
“We can’t sit here and do nothing. Get up, Pen. Let’s think.”
I hold up my hand and dry-heave.
Kate grabs my hand and pulls me to standing. “We don’t have time for you to barf your ass off now. Let’s move!” Dragging me by the bottom of my T-shirt, she leads me to the flat rock where Emma is stretched out in the sun. “Emma, get up. We need help.”
Emma shields her bloodshot eyes with one hand. “What do you need help with?”
“Do you have a cell phone?”
“Yes,” she says.
“Give it to us!” I cry.
“It’s not here, silly, it’s at home. It doesn’t get a signal here anyway.”
Kate’s bellowed obscenities echo back to us. “Emma, we need to get to the fruit stand in half an hour. Is there any way we can get a boat, a plane, a car? Anything?”
“You want some fruit?” Emma drawls. “I think I’ve got an apple in my backpack. If I do, can you grab it for me?”
“She’s stoned out of her mind, Kate. She’s never gonna be able to help us.”
With the force of two men, Kate reaches down, grabs Emma’s arm, and pulls her to standing. “What’s the quickest way to get to the goddamned fruit stand?”
Emma points to the lake.
“What?” I squeal. “What’s that mean?”
Swatting at invisible flying insects, Emma says, “The road goes all the way around the lake. That takes a long time.” She points to the lake again. “The fruit stand is on the other side of the lake, right over there, straight across, like an arrow.”
Kate and I turn to each other, letting Emma mumble to herself.
“How long do you figure it would take us to swim across?” I ask.
Kate studies the lake. “A long time.”
“Think it will be hard?”
“Does it matter?”
We step off the rock, fully clothed and wearing our shoes, onto the slippery bottom of the lake and wade into the water until it’s waist deep. Together, we plunge in and start the front crawl. Right away, I’m struggling for breath. I flip onto my back, but Kate powers on. I take a deep breath, flip over, and go back to sprint swimming. Water splashes into my mouth. Swallowing and sputtering, I switch to a sidestroke and breathe through my nose to hold back a choking fit. Kate pulls ahead, kicking up big waves that swell over my head and threaten to drown me. Back in a front crawl, I kick hard to catch up. My thighs burn. Finally, on one of my breaths, I lift my head, and the opposite shore of the lake is right in front of us.
“I can touch bottom,” I gasp, starting the run to the shore.
We practically crawl out of the lake, wringing water out of our T-shirts.
“How much time do we have?” Kate asks as we run down the gravel road that leads to the fruit stand.
“Five minutes.”
Our arms and legs pump. My body taps into energy reserves I didn’t even know I had. We can do this. I know we can.
Gravel rolls beneath my shoes like marbles, and my feet skitter out from beneath me. I flip backwards, landing flat on my butt. Sharp pebbles shred the skin on my hands and arms. I cry out, more from anger than pain.
Kate keeps running, gaining a big lead in a matter of seconds. “Get up, Penny!” she screams. “Keep going!”
Ignoring the pain and the blood trickling down my arm, I stagger a few steps and then get back into a sprint. Just as I’m catching up to Kate, the roof of the fruit stand comes into view above the trees that line the road. We’re almost there.
“Run harder,” Kate commands.
I can’t tell Kate that I’m running as hard as I can. That would require oxygen. I’m breathing as quickly and shallowly as I can without dying. My watch says we have about one minute left. The seconds tick away in my pounding head. I estimate there are a hundred footfalls, at least, before we reach the fruit stand.
At fifty footfalls, long stretches of the paved road are visible in both directions. I look to the left and spot my car, far off in the distance. Looking to the right, I see the truck. And not just any truck; it’s an eighteen-wheeler. Both vehicles are about equal distances away from us.
“Let’s go!” I shout, and we race toward the intersection.
“Go to your car. Motion for them to pull over!”
At the intersection, we make a sharp left and sprint down the side of the road, waving our arms in the air. My car speeds toward us.
Exaggeratedly pointing to my left, I motion for Rick and Di to pull off the road. Beside me, Kate does the same. But the car keeps on coming.
The road hums beneath my feet. I can hear the truck barreling down on us.
“Pull off the road!” Kate shrieks.
We persist with our arm signals. As our running bodies align with the fruit stand, my car skids, fishtailing onto the side of the road. Huge clouds of dust fill the air.
“Truck!” I hear Kate holler over a deafening rumble.
The suction of the truck careening off the road behind us nearly stops me in my tracks. Ferocious wind whips my hair around my head, blinding me. I run on in the same forward direction.
Wood cracks and shatters as the fruit stand is hit.
“This way!” Rick is shouting.
A large object zings past my head, nearly sending me into a face-first dive to the pavement. Someone wraps their arms around me and hurries me away. I want to keep running, but I’m pulled back. Disoriented, I stop and push my hair back from my eyes.
Rick grabs my arms and forces me to look him in the face. “Penny, are you okay?”
Am I okay? I don’t know. Without warning, my legs give out. Rick catches me as I fall forward.
“I don’t know what to say, Penny,” he whispers in my ear, his voice choked with emotion. “I think you and Kate just saved our lives.”
17
“There must be something really wrong with the driver of that truck,” Rick says, physically vibrating next to me at the side of the road.
Kate takes off running, through the shallow ditch beside the road and across the field, heading straight for the truck.
“You guys stay here.” Rick’s hands clench and unclench. “I’ll go call for help.”
Di opens the passenger-side door of my car and sits sideways on the seat with her legs hanging out of the car. “That was so close.” She puts her face in her hands. “If you guys hadn’t been there…”
Over my shoulder, I look at the truck. I can’t see Kate anywhere.
“Di, I’m going to see if Kate needs help.”
“No, stay here,” she says, wiping her eyes.
I look at the truck again. No sign of Kate or the truck driver. Pain rips through my legs when I squat in front of Di. “I have to go see if she needs help. Rick will be right back. You have to stay here for when help comes.”
I go to stand and catch a glimpse of myself in the side-view mirror. My hair is plastered to my cherry-red face, caked with dirt and sweat. I lick beads of dusty saltwater off my upper lip. All the muscles in my legs are stiffening up, bad, and after a near wipeout in the ditch, I jog across the field, glancing at the demolished fruit stand on my way by. If anyone’s trapped in there, they’re hurt, very badly, or they’re dead. Feeling helpless, I glance back to the road. No sirens or flashing lights yet.
The first thing I see when I round the truck is a pair of enormous boots sticking out through the open door. I run over and climb up beside the boots to see inside the
cab. A burly bear of a man is stretched out on the bench seat. Kate has her mouth over his. I watch his chest rise. She turns her head and puts her ear next to his mouth, noticing me in the open doorway. Putting her mouth over his, she gives him another breath.
Fingers pressed against his neck, she counts to ten. “He doesn’t have a pulse, Pen. I think he had a heart attack.” She places her overlapped hands on his chest. They look so small in comparison to the trucker’s wide body. “Go see if Rick’s back.”
I hop down and run, my stomach aching like I’ve swallowed a pincushion. Rick comes sprinting down the highway, his arms a blur. We reach the car at the same time, and he nearly collapses in front of me, pointing at his chest.
“His inhaler!” Di rifles through the glove compartment. She jumps out of the car and hands it to him.
The faint wailing of sirens grows louder by the second. We stand back from the road and wait. Lights flashing, an ambulance, an EMT vehicle, and a police car swarm the scene, followed soon after by a green hatchback. A woman gets out of the car, her features stricken with panic. An officer gets out of his squad car and follows her as she hurries over to us.
“What happened?” she cries. “I was only gone an hour!”
“Ma’am, do you work here?” the officer asks.
“Yes. But I closed up and took an early lunch to visit a friend who had a baby last night.” Over the roof of my car, she looks at the ruined fruit stand and bursts into tears.
The officer takes her by the arm and leads her to his car. I stand with Di and Rick, not knowing what we’re supposed to be doing. A siren screams in the distance. In no time at all, a red fire-and-rescue truck rumbles toward us. From the other end of the highway, another police cruiser comes speeding in. There are a lot of people here now. Are all these people and trucks and cars and flashing colored lights necessary? I spin in a slow circle, taking everything in. I go back to standing still, but my head keeps on spinning.
One of the paramedics jogs over, scanning us from head to toe. “Hi, I’m Lisa,” she says. “Come with me and I’ll check you out.”
“We didn’t get in an accident,” I try to explain. “My car pulled over before the truck went off the road. We’re all okay.”
Lisa tilts her head, staring at my arm. “Come on over anyway. I want to make sure.”
We trail along behind her to the back of her vehicle.
“How’d you get those nasty scrapes?” Lisa says to me.
“My friend Kate and I were running up the road.” I point out the gravel road. “And I slipped.”
“You weren’t in your car?”
Unable to stop myself from fidgeting, I say, “Um, no.” I point to Di and Rick. “They were on their way back from town, and Kate and I decided to run out to meet them.”
That sounds so moronic. I’m still damp from head to toe. As if Kate and I would choose to swim across the lake fully clothed and run up to the highway. Just for something to do. For fun! Lisa probably thinks I’m high on crack.
The ambulance that was attending to the trucker speeds off down the highway again.
Lisa washes and bandages my shredded arms, asking us lots of normal questions that don’t seem to have anything to do with the accident. Everything about her is perky, her voice, her mannerisms, her nose, and her cute orange ponytail.
A police car pulls up beside us. In the front passenger seat sits Kate. She waves.
The officer gets out of the car, six feet of muscles packed into a uniform. “Your friend Kate is a hero.”
Kate shrugs and rolls her eyes at us.
“Hey, how come you guys were soaking wet when you pulled us over?” Di asks, tugging on her bangs. “You didn’t swim across the lake, did you?”
“We sure did,” Kate declares, leaning out the window of the cruiser. “Emma dared us fifty bucks to do it, but Pen and I were hot anyway. Pretty cool that we ended up being in the right place at the right time, isn’t it. We must be psychic!”
I stare at Kate as she leans out the window of the cop car, a big gleaming smile on her dirty face, and I don’t know whether to cry, burst out laughing, or both.
We ended up being in the right place at the right time. And this time, I wasn’t too late.
* * *
When I woke up, I had a few spooky seconds where I honestly wondered if yesterday was just another one of my nightmares. But my bandages reminded me that yesterday was real, as did the dehydration hangover I woke up with. My tongue was like a dried loofah sponge.
“Here are your bacon and eggs,” Mom says, placing a heaping plate of food on the table in front of Kate.
“Thanks so much, Penny’s Mom.”
Since the accident, Mom’s been feeding us nonstop. I don’t think she’s cooked this much in the seventeen years I’ve known her.
“We’re driving back to Kincardine this afternoon.” I stab a fried potato with my fork.
“Oh, no, you’re not,” Mom says. “I called your father last night. He’s coming to pick you up.”
“What?” I guzzle my milk to dislodge the potato from my throat.
“You heard me. You’re not driving that death trap. He’s coming here to sell it.”
Kate’s hunched over her plate, shoveling in forkfuls of scrambled eggs. She raises her gaze to look at me, shrugs, and goes back to eating. So much for moral support.
“I barely even got to drive it, though,” I whine. “All summer I used my own legs to get around, like a sucker.”
“Uh huh,” Mom says, buttering a row of hot toast.
“I didn’t get to cruise around Kincardine with the windows down and the music cranked. That’s a teenage rite of passage, Mom.”
“Would you like some toast, Kate?” Mom says.
“I’d love some. Thanks.”
I kick Kate under the table, prodding her to help me.
“I don’t think your dad should sell the car either, Penny,” she says in a stilted voice. “It’s like a demented killer car out of a horror movie. Isn’t that cool?”
Mom’s glare strikes me between the eyes. “See? Kate agrees with me. The car goes.”
After Kate and I finish eating, we do the dishes while Mom raids Super-Saver to restock her empty cupboards. I can barely dry the dishes without grimacing in pain. My arms and shoulders are fried, but my legs are even worse. All morning, I’ve been walking around like I don’t have knees. Guess it’s a good thing Dad’s picking us up.
“Almost time to say good-bye to Rick and Di,” Kate says.
“I’ll call Di in a minute to say good-bye.” I dry my hands on a dish towel. “I sure wish you could have met Ryan.”
Scrubbing a plate, she says, “I will. Some other time.”
* * *
Everybody in Dad’s car is cloud-gazing. Kalli’s seeing stuff like horses and castles and mermaids. Dad sees airplanes and turtles. Every cloud looks like food to Kate.
The clouds outside my window look like a big, soft, squishy mattress. I’d love to snuggle into it for a few days of dreamless comatose sleep. No dreams at all. Not even good ones. Just sleep.
“Kalli, can you turn the radio up?” Kate says.
Exaggerated rolling of the eyes. Check. Put-upon sigh. Check. Disgusted glance into the backseat. Check.
“It’s a country song,” she says.
“Where am I from?” Kate says. “Kincardine. Everybody in my hick town loves this music. It’s inbred.” With a squawk, Kate gives me a shove. “Get it? Hicks. Inbred.”
The atrocious country song gets louder.
Kate slouches in her seat. Below the music, she says, “Think it’ll bother you to see Di and Rick together?”
“I don’t think so.” My answer surprises me. But it’s probably true. I loved the men Rick was before. I barely know him this time. “There’s no way I could ever like him more than I like Ryan.”
“You know, you should have let me keep the money Emma gave me.” Kate shakes her head, smirking. “You big, honest jerk.”
“Just because she had a hazy, pot-induced recollection of actually daring us fifty bucks to swim across the lake doesn’t mean you get to take her money.”
“Does too.” She sticks her tongue out.
There’s so much more I want to say to Kate that I don’t know how I’d say it out loud. I open my bag and pull out my dream journal. On a page near the back, I write, Can you imagine if I’d stayed home this summer?
I hand the book and pen to Kate.
She hands it back with an answer scrawled beneath mine: Mind-boggling, isn’t it? Think about all you did!
I cringe when I read the last sentence. The “you” part is all wrong. It wasn’t me who succeeded. It was the two of us, together. We’re a team. Getting choked up, I write, What if I hadn’t met you, Kate?
The pen dangles from Kate’s hand for a while as she decides what to write: Ah, how quickly Psychic Penny forgets that I’m the one who suggested the trip home in the killer horror movie car in the first place.
I stare at the empty space below her answer, unable to get what I want to say down on paper. The words are bumping around in my mind and slipping out of my grasp. I think about all the things Kate helped me with this summer. Geez. What if I hadn’t met her?
Finally, I write a huge reply in only two words: Thank you.
She reads it and goes back to staring at clouds. After a few minutes, I feel the book slide onto my lap. It reads, No problem.
When I look over at Kate, I catch her in the midst of wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. I give her a perplexed look, and she snatches the book off my lap again.
What? I’ve got an eyelash in my eye!!
18
Dear Dream Journal:
Could this be my very last journal entry? I’ll probably continue to use you, even if I don’t have any psychotic dreams to record. I’m kind of attached to you now.
We returned to Kincardine in time for their weeklong summer festival, complete with a Highland Games competition, fish dinners in a gigantic tent at the beach, a beach dance, and two Pipe Band parades. I thought I’d died and gone to Scottish heaven. It was the most fun I’ve ever had. And Kate met a guy. A sweet, not to mention extremely good looking, guy named Owen, from a neighboring town, who she had an instant connection with. It was almost like they’d met before, she told me.