“Sounds good,” I say.
He walks outside and crosses to the car, then opens the driver’s-side door and helps Harper step out. My neck goes hot at the way his fingers linger on her wrist, but it could be nothing. Is this flirting? I’ve had a couple of boyfriends, but they were awkward stumbled-into-it-as-friends things. I know zero about the world of lingering eye contact and meaningful hand brushes. It could be flirting—it could be friendly. But Brecken moves slower around her. Speaks softer. And she tucks her hair behind her ear before she answers him, looking left and right, like what she’s saying is for Brecken alone.
“Do you think something’s going on between them?”
I jump, surprised I didn’t hear the telltale clunk of Josh approaching. I shrug, giving a half smile. “Oh, I don’t know. They just met, right?”
“Did they?”
I open my mouth to answer, but then I close it. Josh and I share a look that settles deep in my bones. He sees it, too—this nameless connection between them. I don’t know what to call it, but it smells like a secret. One they don’t want us to know.
Chapter Eight
I shake my head with a laugh, determined not to let paranoia take root. “We could just be jumping to conclusions. I doubt they found their soul mates in an airport rental car line.”
“Some people believe in love at first sight.” Josh shrugs.
I roll my eyes. “People believe all kinds of things.”
He gives a small smile. “It’s the most beautiful thing about humanity, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know,” I admit.
I try to smile, but it feels all wrong on my face. I can’t read Josh. He’s got that heavy intellectual edge of superiority lacing everything he says. Even the way he watches Harper and Brecken makes me think he’s taking notes on how he’d do things differently. Better.
Harper starts heading toward the station, and her movement breaks the spell for both of us. I clear my throat. “I should stop in the bathroom. Should we help Harper with gas?”
“She said she had it, and it might be hard. I only have a card,” he says.
I relax a little. I’d been worried about this. I probably have nineteen dollars in my account right now, so unless I break out Mom’s emergency credit card, and God knows this qualifies, I can’t pay for much. And if I use the emergency card, she’ll know exactly where I am. I can just imagine the level of panic that will descend on Beltzhoover if she finds out I’m near I-80, land of today’s record-breaking pileups. I flip through my wallet and realize I do have a little cash. Not that sixteen dollars is going to change the world, but it’s something.
I would have asked Dad for more cash, except I thought this would be a one-layover flight home. I check my watch with a sigh. It’s going to be dark soon. By now I should be landed, home, and settled at the table with a giant bowl of noodles and ham. Of course this year there won’t be noodles. Daniel made the noodles.
Hell, who cares. Even the divorce is just a thing to move past. Worse things have happened in our world than a couple splitting up. It would be okay if I could just get home.
At the least, we could sit and watch the Thanksgiving Day parade. Mom always records it, and it feels a little silly watching it on Christmas Eve, but since I usually spend Thanksgiving out with Dad, she keeps it every year for me. And we get around to watching it when we’re fed up with cheesy Christmas movies. Maybe we’d be planning some of our other traditions. The bowling trip. Christmas lights and hot cocoa. An all-nighter of baking and board games. We used to do so much with Phoebe. It’s all different now.
I’m not sure what we’ll do when I get there. The only thing that’s certain is standing in this nasty gas station in the middle of Nowhere, Pennsylvania, makes me desperate to be home for Christmas morning.
Kayla barrels down another aisle, not even looking up at me. She heads outside, but Harper stops her at the door. From my angle, I can still see Kayla’s red-rimmed eyes and limp hair.
“I really hope she’s not sick,” I tell Josh. “She’s been shaky and sweaty most of the trip.”
“She’s probably just catching up on sleep,” he says. “She seems okay. A little tired, I guess.”
“A little?”
I laugh and he half-smiles, his eyes fixed on me in a way that I might like if I wasn’t an anxious wreck, trapped in the middle of a snowstorm. If he was a little nicer, I could easily stumble into a temporary crush.
“Something on your mind?” he asks, smiling like he knows exactly what I’m thinking.
The superior edge is back, and that crush is looking less likely. I shake my head fast. “No, not at all. Sorry.”
“Are you sure?” He’s still wearing that smile.
“Very sure,” I say, turning toward Harper.
Harper’s propping the door open with her shoulder, and she’s clearly doing her best to keep Kayla from leaving. For her part, Kayla’s trying to nod and edge away, but Harper keeps talking.
Maybe as the driver she feels responsible for Kayla, too. She could be checking on her. And if so, I hope like hell she finds out whether Kayla’s mystery illness is contagious. I’m super not interested in getting wickedly sick on top of everything. Kayla finally shrugs off Harper’s hand and heads outside, producing a cigarette from her purse and smoking near an ice cooler that feels pretty ironic given the weather.
The door swings open again and I startle. It’s Josh walking out. I hadn’t even noticed him walk away. God, I hope he doesn’t think I like him. I really do not need that. I watch him swing-stumble on his crutches toward the car, where Brecken is pumping gas. They give each other the guy high five, then start chatting like snow isn’t clumping in their hair and whipping their pants against their legs.
It’s bad out there. Bad enough that whatever road we end up on, it’s going to be slow going. And speaking of going—I probably need to stop standing around like a dumb ass.
I head to the bathroom and find Harper inside, furiously typing on her phone. She doesn’t even look at me. She just stands in the corner, eyes locked to the screen and fingers moving comically fast.
I linger at the door, wondering if I should say something. Ask something. She looks up briefly, anguish written on her face. But then she looks down and I remember: she might not want to talk to me about any of this. If she wanted to bare her soul, she would. It’s not like she was shy on the plane.
She leaves while I’m in the bathroom stall, the door closing behind her with a soft creak. I finish and wash my hands. In the store, she’s searching her purse at the counter. Abruptly, she heads back to the bathroom like she forgot something. Keys, maybe?
I snag five bottles of water and five bags of chips from the nearest display. The guy at the register—who can’t be much older than me—holds a carton of cigarettes. My eyes drop to the embroidered letters on his name tag. Corey.
Corey turns around, saying something to an older man behind him. The second guy isn’t wearing a uniform, but since he’s a more weathered, stouter version of Corey, I’m guessing he’s related. Maybe the owner. He’s slouched in a folding chair watching a small television set on a shelf under the counter.
“Dad,” Corey says. “Dad.”
The man doesn’t look up, but reaches to take the carton of cigarettes from Corey. He pushes it into a row of them under the back shelf without ever taking his eyes from the screen he’s watching.
I set down my items and swallow my sudden uneasiness. “Hi.”
Corey doesn’t return my greeting. He looks at me with vacant eyes, ringing up my purchases. He stops now and then to rub the sparse, overgrown stubble on his chin. His nails are ragged and dirty, and I don’t want to look closer. I tap a chip in the counter with my finger and wait for him to give me a total.
“Station closes in twenty minutes.” It’s the older guy. The dad.
Corey reads me the total and I hand over a ten-dollar bill. I don’t want to look at Corey, but looking at his father isn’t much better. He’s got a wad of something dark in his mouth and a cup next to him I don’t want to investigate.
“Your friends better hurry up,” he says, nodding indistinctly.
“My friends?”
“That one,” he says, shooting a gaze at Kayla, who’s come back inside while I’ve been at the counter, and is wandering the aisles. She looks like she’s on another planet. “And the one who can’t find her wallet.”
I turn around in time to see Harper fly out of the bathroom and directly out the door, panic evident on her face. At the counter, Corey is watching me, his lips chapped and eyes heavy-lidded. I force a smile. Everything about these men unsettles me, but it could be me. I’m beyond on edge.
“How about I pay?” I ask, because I’m more afraid of not paying than I am about explaining all of this to Mom. If anything, I’m suddenly eager to have someone know exactly where I am. “I have my credit card with me.”
“Credit card machine is down,” the father says. “I told your pretty little friend and she was all fine with it. Said she had plenty of cash.”
“Until she didn’t have her wallet,” Corey says. His snicker is broken by the chime of the doorbell and the shuffle of someone else walking in.
“How much is the gas?” I ask, flipping through the not-substantial stack of bills left in my wallet. Six dollars and some change. Plus whatever he gives me back when he finishes the slowest transaction in history.
“Forty-eight twenty.”
I wince. “I don’t have quite that much. Don’t you have one of those backup machines for credit cards during power outages?”
“The backup is cash,” Corey says, rubbing his chin again. He’s clearly enjoying this moment of power. “We got signs outside you could have read.”
“Maybe we missed them,” I say, bristling. Whatever happened to holiday spirit? “There’s kind of an emergency going on outside, and we almost ended up in one of those big accidents, so I’m sorry if we’re a little rattled.”
The father stands up then, the metal legs of the lawn chair scraping the floor. I automatically take a step back from the counter. He’s much broader than his son, with fists that could double as sledgehammers. He looks mean. My animal instinct fires signals through every vein. Danger. This man is dangerous.
The father steps to the counter, and though every cell in my body wants to move farther back, I force myself to stand my ground. I inhale through my nose, smelling tobacco and gasoline and, more distantly, chemicals. Disinfectant. Something that I smelled earlier in the first rest stop, and now I know where it’s from.
Hospitals. Whatever this popular-in-Pennsylvania cleaner is, it’s apparently used in all kinds of institutions. Rest stops. Gas stations. The building where my aunt died.
I shake it off and look up, noting a sign posted on the wall below the racks of cigarettes.
ATTENDANT IS ARMED AND TRAINED.
“Rattled or not, you’d better pool your money together and pay for the gas you already pumped,” the father says, pulling my attention from the sign. “There were plenty of signs. Like I said, I’m closing in twenty minutes.”
“What if we don’t have the cash?” I ask.
“I’ll bet kids like you have plenty of cash between you.”
I don’t know what he means by “kids like you,” but his tone makes it clear it isn’t a compliment.
“I’ll talk to the others,” I say. “We’re not trying to get away with something here. We didn’t see the signs. We didn’t know the machine was down.”
“Not my problem. We got family to get home to, and you need to pay for what you took.”
He doesn’t wait for me to respond. He sits down in the folding chair, the metal legs scraping again. My eyes flick up to that sign about being armed. It could be for show. I hope. But this man has knives in a display case and a promise in his eyes that makes me think he’s not one to throw around idle threats.
“Will there be anything else?” Corey asks, handing me a few coins.
“Can I return this stuff?” I ask. “That will give me some cash.”
“Sorry, no refunds,” he says. He’s practically sneering. I think he likes this—putting me in my place.
I narrow my eyes and put my cash on the table. “Keep the change. I’ll be back with the rest.”
I turn around to look for Kayla, but she must be back in the bathroom. Great. Not that I’m expecting her to hand over a bunch of cash. There’s a creak, and I notice someone walking down an aisle near me, toward the back of the store. I’m hoping it’s Kayla, but it’s not. It’s a man in a battered yellow baseball cap.
A rush of déjà vu washes over me, and my shoulders tense. I’ve seen this before. Something about this—the hat. I’ve seen that hat recently. And I’ve smelled that scent. It isn’t the gas station. It’s him. The man from the rest stop.
A chill rolls up my spine with the memory. The man who was sitting in the dark at the tables. This is him. I can’t see his face, only the back of his hat and the cardboard-brown jacket he’s wearing.
It’s not possible. That was a hundred miles from here and an entirely different highway.
But I swallow hard, throat catching as I take in the faded brown coat with dirty blond hair curling over the collar. He stands at the open cooler door, perusing whatever’s inside. My body goes cold.
It’s him.
But how?
He begins to turn, like he can feel my eyes on him. I see the barest hint of a fleshy chin. A bulbous nose—
“Mira!”
I whirl to the door, where Harper is standing, eyes wide with panic.
“Help me find my wallet?”
“Of course.” I loop the handles of the plastic bag with my water over my hand and head for the door. I spare one glance at the coolers, but the man in the yellow hat is gone. Vanished.
Restroom. He’s in the restroom. And he’s just a guy on the road like us. It happens. But all the same, I feel like he’s somewhere in that station watching me. I follow Harper back to the car, because I can’t think about some weird man I’ve run into twice. That’s a coincidence, not a problem. Paying the creepy guys in this gas station, though? That’s not negotiable.
I pull open the passenger door. Josh is in the back, clearly searching, so I start on the front compartment.
“She’s already looked here,” Brecken says from the driver’s seat. He’s contorted, searching the console carefully. “Harper, did you check everywhere back there?”
“It won’t be back here.” Harper says. She’s leaned into the trunk, sorting through every bag. Then she unzips hers. “I don’t even know why I’m checking my bag. I had it up front! That’s where I got the business card with the rental place number.”
“Try to breathe,” I say. “I’m sure we’ll find it.”
“We should have found it already! I had it on my person.”
“Try to close your eyes and picture the last time you touched it,” Josh says.
Kayla laughs, announcing her return to the car. She’s definitely looking more spry. She slings her backpack into the back. “Way to make it sound pornographic, Joshie.”
“It’s not pornographic.” Josh sounds annoyed. “It’s a psychological trick. It can work when you’re trying to remember something.”
“I agree with that,” Brecken says. “Try to picture it. It might help.”
“I don’t need to try,” Harper snaps, zipping her bag shut. “I had it in my right coat pocket when I called the rental agency. I haven’t touched it since.”
“Maybe you’re remembering wrong,” Brecken says. “You’ve got a lot on your—” He cuts himself off, and she shoots him an alarmed look.
“We could check the station aga
in,” I say.
“I checked every inch of the bathroom and the aisle where I walked,” she says. “I had it in the car. I’m sure of it. I remember putting the card back.”
Wind blows in through the open trunk, spraying snow onto the seats.
“Close that and get in here,” Brecken says. “Let’s just sit and think for a minute.”
Another blast of wind comes in, and this time Josh and Kayla swear, turning their heads away from the shot of icy air. Harper closes the hatchback with a thunk and moves to the passenger door where I’m searching. She opens the back.
“I can ride back there,” I tell her.
“No, you should be up front,” Harper says. “It helps with car sickness.”
“We’ll be partners in crime, Mira,” Brecken says, winking at me. I think he means to be friendly, but my laugh comes too late and lands flat.
The last thing I want is to sit near this poster boy for old-school fraternities, but what argument can I use? No thanks, I’d rather be nauseated in the back seat. I relent, sliding into the front seat and closing my door against the cold.
The leather is warm thanks to the seat warmers. Heat seeps through my coat and into the backs of my thighs, and now that I’m not nauseated, it’s nice. I put my bag on the floor and buckle my seat belt. The man with the yellow cap still hasn’t come outside. The parking lot has emptied some; travelers moved on, I guess. I look at the station, but it’s hard to see who’s inside with the snow picking up again.
“We need to pay those assholes. Who has cash?” I ask.
“Don’t look at me,” Kayla says. “I have like three dollars.”
Josh shrugs. “I have nothing. I don’t carry cash.”
“Right, because you’re in the twenty-first century,” Harper says with a sigh.
I gesture at the gas station. “And we’ve slipped into a gas station from 1978, where everyone fishes and the gas stations only take cash.”
“Don’t you have some money squirreled away somewhere else?” Kayla’s question is clearly directed to Brecken and Harper. I get it—they definitely look like they come from money—but it’s a ballsy ask.
Five Total Strangers Page 8