by Lissa Pelzer
His eyes sparkled. ‘What the hell is that?’
‘It’s my bus ticket to Illinois, if you get what I mean. Hey, I hate to be like this, but seriously, you’re not taking me back there. I’ve got somewhere to go and you can help me get there.’
He didn’t say anything. He was just up in her face, looking her over like he wanted to get a good look to tell the cops that it had been her, Carol Ann Baker, the cop killer from Ohio who he’d seen.
‘Okay,’ he murmured.
‘Okay? So get off me,’ she said. ‘You’re kind of crushing me.’
The kid sat up slowly. His eyes left her face and went to the gun. ‘What is that?’
‘Do you want to find out?’
He pulled away. ‘Uh, no but it works right, it’s not a toy?’
Lilly could have laughed. Hadn’t he seen the news reports? Then it dawned on her. He hadn’t. Then what had he been on about, taking her back to where? She shook her head.
‘It’s not a toy. It fires really well. Better than you’d expect, so don’t get any ideas.’
‘Can I hold it?’
Now she did laugh, but the kid didn’t seem to hear her or notice.
‘I’ll take you over to Illinois,’ he said. ‘That’s as far as this truck is going to go.’
Lilly breathed out. ‘Cool.’
‘But you can keep the cash. I want the gun.’
She blinked. Her mind whirled, trying to see the map of the states that had been pinned up on every classroom wall she’d ever sat in. She took a stab at it.
‘If you drive me to Colorado, you can have the gun.’
‘Colorado!’ He squinted like it hurt him.
‘Yeah.’
‘I’m sorry. My truck won’t make it to Colorado. Illinois, Kansas maybe at a push sure, but Colorado…’
And Lilly closed her eyes for a second. She’d forgotten about Kansas in the middle. ‘Okay, so Kansas.’
The kid wet his lips. ‘How come you’ve got that gun, but you’re too scared to go back to the trailer park? They don’t have guns, I’m pretty sure they’re all on probation for something.’
‘What trailer park?
‘The one where you got in.’
He was talking nonsense, but she had no time to play. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I got in at Dairy Queen.’ And she swung her leg over the side of the back, dropped down and straightened her shorts.
He was still staring at her. She could see the wheels turning in there, but hers were turning too.
‘My boyfriend, my ex-boyfriend drove off and left me at Wendy’s, in the middle of nowhere. I need to get home. Okay?’
‘That sucks.’
Lilly shrugged but still kept the pug gun pointed in his general direction.
He nodded at the pug. ‘Maybe he was afraid to tell it to your face.’
‘Maybe. So listen. How about it?’
Chad
The girl was in the front now. She’d said her name was Chrissie, but from the way she’d said it, Chad knew her name was not Chrissie. But it didn’t matter. They were heading back towards the trailer park and there was no bag of Mickey D’s sitting between them.
He had an idea, a plan. It was kind of a con, but not for anyone who didn’t deserve it. These kids had just got too cocksure and it was time someone showed them how it was.
He’d said to this girl, that he could take her to Kansas, but first, he had to see some people who owed him money. So, he figured they’d go over there and he’d tell Simon Snell that he wanted to get paid. Simon would ask him where his food was and try to hold out, then he’d look at this girl and say, sorry, no money, no ride.
Chad smirked a little. What was she going to do? He reckoned he had a good enough idea. They pulled back into the trailer park and he turned the key and got out.
‘You coming in?’ He asked through the window.
The girl shook her head.
‘It might take a while.’
‘That’s fine.’
He tapped his hands against the roof. ‘It’s probably safer...’
She dropped her chin at him and her eyes got big. ‘I’ll manage. These are the kids you said were all unarmed.’
‘I could be wrong.’
‘Then it’s definitely safer out here.’
‘Girl, just come inside.’
Now her lower lip dropped. He saw a flash of her white lower teeth.
‘What’s up?’ she asked. ‘Why do you need me to come inside so badly?’
‘Nothing’s up!’
She was still thinking about it, still staring him out. He’d phrased it wrong. He saw that now. She was suspicious.
‘Okay, fine. Stay out here.’ He tried, and turned to go in and it worked.
The girl was getting out. ‘Come on. The sooner we get in there, the sooner we can leave.’
Chad went up the plank-wood steps first. He knocked even though the door was open, even though the trailer body was so thin, anyone would hear them pulling up. He stepped into the dark pool table room and stood there.
‘About time!’ Simon called out from a couch in the darkness.
Chad turned to check this girl Chrissie was still on his heels. She was there, but with her black hair and black hoodie, you could hardly see her.
He cleared his throat. ‘Hey.’ His voice cracked a little. ‘I have to take a road trip. I need to pick up my cash, the cash you owe me.’ And he stopped talking. He’d let Simon go first.
There was a pause. Somewhere in another room, someone moved and it felt like the whole trailer shifted.
Then Simon said, ‘Dude, where’s the food?’
‘I couldn’t stop for food. The cops were there.’
‘Shitty.’
‘Right, but I needed to come back for the cash. See, my friend here needs a ride out of town and I need to pick up the cash before I can take her.’
For a second, Simon looked the girl over. Chad had the feeling he was going to make a proposal, something like the girl had suspected. That was fine. He reckoned she’d react in about the same way. All he wanted was for her to pull that little gun out again and maybe get so pissed that she fired off a shot – she seemed crazy enough – make a little crack, scare some piss out of this jerk and let him see you couldn’t treat people the way he did.
‘So.’ Chad shrugged. ‘We’re kind of in a hurry.’
Simon looked amused, but underneath there was some surprise. No doubt about it.
‘Dude. You said you were going to go pick up food. I’ve got hungry mouths here waiting for their burgers and fries. What am I supposed to tell them?’
‘Yeah, but like I said, the cops were at Mickey D’s. I couldn’t go.’
‘There are other Mickey D’s. There are other places you can go.’
Chad shrugged. ‘But I don’t have time for that shit. We’ve got to get going.’ He glanced back at the girl, wondering if she would get that this was an act, that he didn’t usually have balls this big. He hoped not. He didn’t want her to think about using her little gun to influence him instead of Chad.
‘Dude!’ Simon opened his hands out slowly. ‘I don’t want to embarrass you in front of your girl but–’
‘I’m not his girl!’ she snapped, and the kid’s eyes slid her way before they came sliding back to Chad.
‘We had a deal. You go and get me my burgers and I give you the money you asked for.’
Chad flinched. He felt that anger flaring up in him again but didn’t want to show it. He didn’t want to tell him again that ‘asked’ was the wrong word. He just wanted Simon to give him the money owed for the damn pills.
‘You don’t have the money, huh?’
Chad’s head swiveled. It was Chrissie talking.
‘Excuse me?’ Simon asked.
‘I said…’ She took a few steps forward, came around so that the pool table was no longer between them. ‘You don’t have the money. I’m guessing that’s what’s going on here.’
‘I’ve got the m
oney! Who-the-fuck-are-you-anyway? I know you from somewhere, don’t I?’
And the girl shut up. She was all offended. She turned her head away like she’d been slapped. And she turned right around and came back to Chad.
What the hell? If she were going to pull out that gun, then now would have been a good time, but she just looked at him like she was scared for her life.
‘We’re wasting our time here,’ she said. ‘These kids are broke.’
‘Whatever. Broke? You call this broke?’ Simon reached back and dropped a wad of bills on the pool table. He reached into another pocket and pulled out some more balled up bills and tossed them down too.
‘We’re not broke. You’re fucking broke. You guys are the ones coming around here, begging for dollars.’
And she turned again. ‘So pay your friend what you owe him.’
‘He’s not my friend.’
‘Just do it.’
Something in her tone sent a spark down Chad’s spine. The level of boredom surprised him. It was like she was arguing with her kid brother for the hundredth time about him taking out the trash.
‘Yeah, just fucking do it!’ Chad shouted. ‘And you better do it. She’s got a gun!’ He heard his own voice, shrill in comparison to hers, and stupid as fuck.
And now Simon laughed ‘She’s got a gun!’
Chad couldn’t see his eyes, the green glass light above the table hung down too far, but the bravado in his pose rattled him.
‘Hey Ryan!’ he called out over his shoulder and waited.
But no one came.
‘Hey...Ryan…’
He wanted back up. Fine. This girl did have a gun. One guy or two, it didn’t really matter when you were packing. And Chad felt a surge in his confidence. There must have been five hundred dollars on the table.
‘Come on… Chrissie,‘ Chad said. ‘Let’s go!’ And he reached across the table towards the cash.
‘Hey!’ Simon reached over too.
Chad had a handful of bills already when Simon grabbed his head by the back of the skull and slammed it into the pool table. He lifted his head again, only to have it slammed back down. Now, he stayed down as the room began to spin and the light above his head flickered and flashed. He felt a dull, breaking pain, pulled away from the pool table, and slid to the floor.
There was shouting too. Who was shouting, Simon or the girl? He had to help her. He got back up, his finger latching on to the middle pocket, but a moment later, he saw the cue ball in the Simon’s hand. His fingers wrapped around it like the curled up feet of a dead spider as it came towards his face. Then what, some confused thoughts, that maybe he had to go to school tomorrow morning to take a test over or be held back a year, again. And then darkness.
Chad stood up. The room was spinning like he’d woken up just two hours after getting wasted. He put his hands out and was standing, walking, and looking around but not taking anything in. There was no one else there. Where had Simon gone, and that girl, Chrissie? How long had he been out for? Now he was moving, stumbling, searching around the room for a door, fishing in his pockets for the keys to his truck and coming up empty. He stood on something and looked down. Someone was lying on the ground. Then stuff started coming together.
Simon Snell was on the floor, lying on his back with one leg bent up like he was trying to kick his own ass. Chad grabbed the light above the pool table and tilted it forward. This is what he saw. The whole top of Simon’s face above his nose was blood. The bridge of his nose was speckled with white and shining brightly. What was that, bone? Had someone hit him upside the head with a baseball bat? Chad let go of the light and it swung back across the baize. The chain squeaked. It took a second for him to remember, there had been money there before and now that money was gone, and so was Chrissie.
Lilly
She clung on to the steering wheel of the truck like it was a wild animal trying to shake her loose. The guy, Chad, he said his name was, had told her it was in need of a service, that it wouldn’t get them to Colorado, but now that she was driving it, she didn’t think it would even get her across the state line. She craned her neck up every time she saw the flash of a sign beyond the trees. Somewhere around here, there was a highway ramp and as soon as she was on there, she’d feel a little safer.
But right now, bile and puke were fighting for position in her mouth.
That kid had been going for it, cracking Chad’s head against the pool table like he really enjoyed it. He’d been glad that Chad had grabbed the money. It had given him an excuse to get mean. She’d seen that look on men’s faces before, usually from underneath. Only this time she could stop it. She’d held the gun up to his eyeball and told him to get fucked! One bullet was all she had, so when he’d called out for his friend again, she’d kind of regretted it. But the friend didn’t come and then it was him who regretted it. And he had grabbed her hand, squeezed it so hard, she had thought he would break her fingers. And even in that last moment, he hadn’t thought she would shoot.
The shot happened fast. There was no thinking involved.
It had sounded like a firework going off in a metal trashcan. His blood hit her in the face, sprayed across her hands, not much, but still some. She rubbed the back of her hand against the trucker’s hoodie as she drove.
And it had creeped her out. He had gone stiff like a plank, his hand too, almost pulling her across before his head hit the pool table on his way down to the floor. She remembered looking over the side, seeing the putrefied grey-red brains of the kid on the floor. It was like someone had dropped a mixed berry pie on his head. It was fucked up. It was way worse than what had happened when she shot Gary Madison in the forest yesterday. Gary just bled, crumpled and seemed to wilt into the pine needles. This guy had lost his whole face.
She would have pulled over to puke except she knew there was nothing in her stomach to throw up and she could live with dry retching. And when the lurching in her stomach faded, she felt in her back pocket for the crumpled up wad of cash grabbed from the pool table and felt better, immeasurably better.
She was on the interstate already, and had been for twenty minutes, which was good because she was just about done and sometime soon she intended to crawl up in some deserted corner to try to sleep. But then the next sign looked familiar. She almost braked right there. She was going in the wrong direction. How the hell was she going in the wrong direction?
She glanced at the digital figures of the clock in the dash. Three-twenty in the morning. Okay, she needed to go west, but didn’t want to go past that town again. She’d take some county roads for a while and keep low. She got off, felt the truck rattle as it slowed, prayed it would keep going and then just fixed her eyes on the road.
This worked for a time, but who was she kidding? She was tired, lost and freaking out and had seen that same church ten minutes ago. She needed daylight and a new ride. That was all there was to it.
She glanced down a tree-cloaked road, but knew she didn’t want to go down there. And then an old strip mall showed up ahead. Paper obscured the store windows, all the lights were off and the parking lot was deserted. Lilly swung in, circled around and pulled up underneath one of the half fallen down awnings. She turned the key and put her head on the wheel.
The dash clock showed ten after four. A pain ran from her ear to her toe. Had she just fallen asleep sitting up and not noticed it? She got out in a daze, stepped up on the back wheel and lay her body down in the bed of the pickup. The Mexican blanket nestled up beside her and Lilly pulled it over her whole body. Then she stretched out on the hard metal, as straight as a fence post, and passed back out.
Chad
When he realized his truck was gone, Chad panicked. He dug his phone out of his pocket and started scrolling through the numbers, looking for people he could call at four in the morning. But there wasn’t anyone. Or at least, there was no one who could get here quickly enough, who he wanted to drag out to a murder scene. He came down the plank stairs. His foot mis
sed the last step, he stumbled and would have carried on stumbling straight out to the road, but stopped when he saw a Blue Camaro with the driver’s side window rolled all the way down. Simon’s Camaro, he knew it by reputation.
The key was in the ignition. He could hardly believe people still did that, except he did it sometimes. It was easier than losing them some place. And then he remembered that was why his truck was missing right now too.
The engine started up with a roar that scared the hell out of him. Shit. Someone must have heard that. He thought of cops and sirens, dragged his sleeves down, wiped his prints off the wheel and put his foot to the floor.
Within a minute, he had a plan. He’d dump the car at the junkyard off the North County Road. From there, he’d walk the two or three miles back to his house, cutting across the fields he knew from when he was a kid. After that, he’d just try to forget he was ever there. Because seriously, what the fuck had just happened? It had nothing to do with him. And who the fuck was that girl? She was obviously crazy. He rubbed his head. But also kind of hot. Simon must have really hit him hard. He couldn’t think straight at all.
Chad avoided the strip of food places. He cut another five miles down a road he knew and turned right coming at the junkyard from the north. A quarter of a mile later, he was passing the old Watkins’s Strip Mall when did a double take. His pickup was sticking out from behind a torn up billboard and the nose of the Camaro practically hit the tarmac as he jumped on the brakes. No matter where you are or how fucked up, when you see your own vehicle, you know it. He eased off the brake, jerked the wheel around and came to a stop ten feet from his truck. He got out quietly and slowly and walked the perimeter.
The cab was empty. The girl must have dumped his truck, hit the road, and found a ride with some other sucker. Chad sucked on his bottom teeth. It was probably for the best. Now there wasn’t anything connecting him to what had happened. Now he could just drive home.