Burned

by Meg Watson

  “Yeah, shit, fine.”

  “Fine."

  “That's what I said,” I say, and I don't even know why. I should just shut up at this point. Somehow I can't, though. Do I just like to hear her voice? That's a possibility.

  She takes a couple of steps in one direction, then turns around and looks out at the barren open road. There’s a billboard that says in letters twenty feet high “JESUS SAVE US” next to a billboard for a titty bar that's apparently only twelve miles away.

  “Where the hell are we?” she breathes.

  “Middle of Georgia. About an hour or so from Atlanta. We’ll be out of your hair shortly.”

  I take a look around, wincing, to see it how she sees it. This place looks a lot crappier in daylight, that's for sure. I guess there is a possibility that this motel only actually has one room to rent. We should consider ourselves lucky we got it.

  “You hungry?” I ask, pointing across the lot to a shack about the size of an outhouse with a hand-painted sign. “It says boiled p-nuts, right over there.”

  She glances at it, then turns back to me with a grimace. After a pause, she tips her head kind of sideways. “Wait… Are you making a joke?”

  I'm not sure what to say. “I don't know.”

  She pivots and looks at the sign, the pivots back to me again. Her eyebrows are up and her face breaks into a half smile.

  “You're totally making a joke, Nico. You're trying to make me laugh.”

  I shake my head automatically. I don't want her to think I’m trying to make her do anything. I don't know what I'm doing.

  I don't know what I'm thinking, what I'm feeling, or what I'm going to do next. Everything is all twisted up in my head right now, and at least half of me thinks the smart play is to get in Tek’s Mustang and drive as far away as I can, as fast as I can.

  “You don't seem happy to see me,” she says, her voice tight.

  I shrug. Happy to see her? I have no idea.

  “And Tek… He really does not seem happy to see me.”

  “No, he's not,” I let her know.

  “You know, I only did what I did to protect you guys,” she says, her voice low.

  “Yeah, okay,” I say in a rush. “You don't have to explain anything to me, Charli. I’m sure you did what you thought was best. Let's get some breakfast and get everybody out of here, okay? You can move on to whatever is next for you.”

  “No… We should talk about this, right? We were always really good at talking to each other, right?”

  “Were we?” I shoot back, suddenly pissed. “We were so good at talking, but you decided to just go off half cocked and tell everybody you were cheating on Tek? That was your big plan?”

  “Well, I had to say something! They thought you did it, Nico! They thought you killed your own brother. What was I supposed to do, just let that happen?”

  “But we didn't do it, Charli. That's the point. That would have come out one way or the other. Instead, you took it upon yourself to make Tek look like some chump who didn't realize his woman was sleeping with his twin brother. How did you think that was supposed to help?”

  “He needed an alibi, Nico…”

  “No, he needed respect!” I shout back, now really furious. Suddenly the anger opens up inside me all fresh like I just made it. It hasn't dimmed at all and I'm surprised at just how angry I am all over again. “You made him look weak, Charli! You made Tek and I look like we were keeping secrets from each other. You undermined everything that we had said about ourselves!”

  She takes a step toward me and I put my hands up, more for her protection than mine. I don’t want her anywhere near me right now. This woman ruined my life, I suddenly remember. Even worse. She broke my brother into a million pieces.

  I see her wince as she realizes just how angry I am. She stops coming toward me and folds her arms in front of herself protectively.

  “Well I couldn't tell them the truth,” she says in a softer voice. “I couldn't tell him that we were all together. They wouldn't understand. They never just let us be, like that. Just be happy. Like we were —”

  “— ancient history,” I remind her. “And you didn't have to tell them anything. It wasn't your problem to solve, Charli. You made everything worse. You may think you didn't, but you did.”

  Her eyes are wide and wet, and I swear to God if she starts crying I'm going to lose it. Has this thought never occurred to her? She never even considered for a second maybe she's not the good guy in all this? I’ll bet she thinks she saved our lives. She doesn’t really realize she sent us to Hell.

  “It doesn't matter anymore. Let's just get you to Atlanta, to a safe house. And you can do whatever the hell you think is best for you and your kid.”

  I turn back on my heel and head back to the room, my gut in knots. Tek was right. We never should've taken this job. I never should've looked her in the face. We were better off where we were, drinking ourselves to a slow death at the Marina with the old farts.

  I can't tell you how many times I wished to see her again, and just how ridiculous I feel about that now. This is a disaster.

  I open the door to the room and see Tek sitting on the floor with Gus and about 5000 tiny electronic pieces in between them. Tek looks up at me with a quirked eyebrow and his nostrils flared, but his face is carefully arranged into a smile for the kid’s sake.

  “What on earth are you guys… Oh my God, is that my phone?” Charli rushes in, her hands out in a panic.

  “You've had your phone with you? This entire time? With the power on?”

  She falls to her knees, picking up bits of her cell phone and frantically dropping them into a little pile. He shakes his head in disgust and stands up to look at me like he can't believe what's happening.

  “You believe that shit? Can you even fucking believe this?”

  “Language,” I remind him.

  “Can you even F-U-C-K-I-N-G believe this?” he spells out. Gus's eyes flicker toward him and then back down to the shabby, worn carpet and the electronic debris.

  Charli's got bits of plastic and glass in her hands and turns to me, visibly trembling.

  “Did Bruno tell you to get rid of that thing?” I say before she can even start.

  Her mouth opens and then closes. Finally she just nods.

  “Yeah, I guess we just solved the mystery of how people magically know where you are, Charli. They’re tracking you. Through the phone. That you were supposed to get rid of.”

  “That doesn't happen,” she says in a small voice. “It’s just in the movies. That doesn't happen… That’s not real life…”

  Her voice trails off as she glances at Gus who has arranged a thousand tiny, irregular pieces into a perfect rectangle on the floor. Tek reaches forward and plucks the sim card from the mass. He holds it up.

  “This is all you need. All your data and crap are on here, but the phone has been like a big red arrow pointing to your asses this entire time. This is no joke, Charli. I mean Knuckles —”

  He clamps his lip together and glares at me as though I did it personally.

  “Let's just get in the car,” I suggest in a calm voice. “We’re less than two hours away from Atlanta now. Let's try to put some distance between us and whoever knows our location.”

  “No,” Tek growls.

  Charli shoulders her duffel bag and raises her eyebrows, but doesn't dare to say anything anymore.

  “No?” I ask after a few seconds, when I think it might be safe. Tek is shaking so hard it looks like he's vibrating where he stands.

  “We can’t go to Atlanta anymore. They'll know. We’re right here — it’s too obvious. They’ll find her. We gotta keep going. You bring your passport?”

  “What, me?” I ask. “Are you fucking kidding me? No I didn’t bring my passport —”

  “Language,” Charli mutters.

  I ignore her. “My passport is… Wait, who cares where my passport is? I'm not going to Mexico if that's what you’re thinking. You guys want t
o go to Mexico? Go on.”

  Tek looks around, silently cataloguing everything in the room. It helps center him, I know. He likes to make lists.

  “There's no other way,” he finally says. “We’re going to Mexico. We'll figure it out. Get your asses in the car.”

  ***

  Georgia is a lot more hilly than I would have expected, with long lines of asphalt or red dirt road that stretch into the distance, bordered on either side by tall pine trees and mountains of some vine or something. Every fifteen or twenty minutes, a huge semi filled with what must be chickens will pass us, blowing feathers all over the Mustang. Tek is just about fit to be tied.

  Gus kneels on his mom's lap with his hands pressed against the window, squinting against the glass. Every few minutes he asks if we can do something.

  “Mom, what’s a Stuckey's?”

  “Mom, what’s a salvation?”

  “Mom, can we go to the flea market?”

  “Mom, can we dress a deer?”

  That kid. He cracks me up.

  Charli keeps her hand draped over his hip and follows his fingers when he points at stuff. There are poultry farms and a strangely large number of goats. Houses that slide at such an angle it's amazing that they stood upright at one time. Remainders of houses that are just a chimney and nothing else.

  Nothing really changes when we get into Alabama. We’re like a weird family trip with people that don't talk to each other. It's not the worst thing in the world.

  I hear Charli behind me, rummaging in her bag underneath my seat.

  “Here, take your puff,” she says.

  Gus sucks on his inhaler once, then again. He hands it to his mom.

  “Shit.”

  She rummages some more, shifting things around and then dragging the bag up on the seat next to her.

  “Hey guys? You gotta stop. Next town, we have to make a stop.”

  “We’ll stop for gas in about two hours,” Tek informs her.

  “Look, there’s a sign right there for a town in three miles. Can we stop? Can we please stop?”

  “No.”

  “Tek!”

  I turn around fully, holding my hands up. Things were going so well, and I don't want them starting at each other again.

  “Charli, what's wrong? Kid’s gotta go or something?”

  She holds up the inhaler. “We need a refill.”

  “We are not stopping.”

  Charli rolls her eyes. “I'm not your prisoner, Tek. Please get me to a goddamn pharmacy so I can take care of this!”

  The leather creaks as Tek shifts uncomfortably in his seat. He's not accustomed to changing plans or responding to requests in any way. “The hell is wrong with him anyway?”

  Charli’s lips part in dismay. She closes them, holding back whatever she wanted to say, and says this instead: “There's nothing wrong with him… He has asthma, okay? Allergies. No big deal.”

  I have to admire her tiger-mom instincts. She’s much tougher than she used to be.

  I look Gus over, and he is breathing kind of weirdly. His shoulders pump up and down, and he seems distracted and on the verge of freaking out, but not freaking out. The kid has a lot of self-control, and I can respect that. But he doesn't look at me or anything, just keeps staring out the window like a champ. I feel kind of bad for him.

  “Allergies? Like hayfever? Cats?”

  She presses her lips into a tight line and rubs the back of Gus's head. I can tell she's trying to keep everything as low-key as possible, but there's real concern in her expression.

  “Animals mostly. Birds... the guinea pig at school. Things like that. Dogs especially.”

  I glance at Tek, who has let his head drop back slightly and is staring at the ceiling, working his jaw in frustration.

  “Dogs, you say?”

  She nods. “Yeah, they're the worst, unfortunately. He can go from a little attack like this to something pretty serious in a matter of minutes. Why? There haven’t been any… Hey, wait —”

  “Fine. We’ll stop. Whatever you want,” Tek growls.

  “No, wait, this is serious,” she persists, scooting forward in her seat and trying to catch a look at Tek's expression in the rear view mirror. “You're not saying there was a dog in here, right? You're not telling me that now? Are you kidding me?”

  “He's a really good dog.”

  I try to guide her back to her seat with my fingertips, just imagining the sort of apocalyptic car crash we can get into in this old tank. But her eyes are wide, her eyebrows arched almost to her hairline.

  “No, seriously, get me to a pharmacy like now. This is not a joke, Tek!”

  He doesn't say anything, but I hear him hit the gas hard.

  Two miles goes by really fast, and we barrel through the middle of a town that apparently only has one main street. Everything is conveniently located on the street: car dealership, gas station, department store, beauty shop, and a pharmacy, right there at the end.

  Tek slams the brakes hard and cuts the wheel, careening us into parking space right in front of an old fashioned wooden door.

  “You two get out,” he commands us.

  “Come on, Gussie,” Charli mumbles.

  “No, you can leave him with me,” Tek growls. Charli and I gape at him simultaneously with expressions of disbelief.

  “Don’t make a big deal out of it,” he continues. “Just go get your stuff. Do it.”

  Though I am extremely tempted to stay in the car and made babysitting jokes about Tek to his face, I get out with Charli anyway because it seems like this is a matter of some urgency. She is all business as she plucks a paper prescription from a book that she gets out of her purse. Ladies’ purses. Who even knows what they have in there.

  The pharmacy is one of those quaint old things, with a bell on the door and a long counter along one side that I guess you could probably get a soda at or something. The chrome stools are bolted to the floor, pitted with rust but still pretty cool if you ask me. It smells weird in here.

  Charli makes a beeline for the counter with her hand out, holding the prescription to the old man. He pushes half-moon glasses down his nose and stares at her.

  “Can I help you?”

  “Yes,” she says in a rush. “I just need to fill this real quick, please? Just this one thing.”

  He takes the piece of paper from her and looks it over, nodding.

  “This prescription is more than ninety days old,” he says slowly, suspicion tinting his voice. “Did you know that?”

  “Did I know that?” she repeats incredulously. I can hear that old Annapolis sass creeping into her voice. Family girls don't like to get a lot of lip from service people.

  “Yes... did you know that?” he says slowly, way too slowly. Oh man, he's about to get a piece of her mind, and he's not going to like it.

  She taps her fingernails on the counter, leaning on her forearm and squinting at him. I can feel her winding up like a baseball pitcher, ready to throw one right down the barrel.

  “Yeah, honey, didn’t you just get a new one? Is that the right one you have there?” I interrupt. She swivels her head and stares at me with her mouth hanging open, blinking in surprise.

  “I gotta —”

  I slide up to her and cup the back of her arm, hoping to steady her. Smiling down at her, I play the doting husband, and it is disturbingly easy to do. “Yeah, didn’t you tell me that a couple weeks ago? That you got a new one?”

  Her eyes narrow. “Yeah, I suppose I did.”

  “May I have it then?” the old man asks. His voice is polite, and his southern accent is kind of cute. But if he thinks he's going to patronize Charli for another thirty seconds he's got another think coming.

  “I'm afraid not,” she says sweetly and slowly, venom dripping from every word. “Can you just refill it with that? Do you have it in stock?”

  The assistant, a plump little red-cheeked lady with glasses on a chain that loops around her neck, sees us both and slides a box just
out of sight as she peers at us curiously. So I guess that means they do have it in stock.

  “I'm not sure, ma'am, but first there's the matter of this expired prescription. Could you ask your doctor maybe to give us a call?”

  “Maybe you could just call him?” Charli suggests sweetly. “The number’s right there, isn't it?”

  The old man shrugs. I know that Charli's always making a big deal out of this feminist bullshit about how men don't take her seriously and are always talking down her and trying to make stuff difficult just because they can… Personally, I think that Charli overreacts to stuff and is maybe a little bit too sensitive.

  But suddenly, I can see she's really got a point.

  “You can make a call,” I tell him in my politest voice, man-to-man like.

  He sucks his upper teeth. “I can't, actually. He is just going to have to call me. Policy.”

  “Do you think maybe I could speak to the owner? Of the pharmacy?”

  He squints at us, looking me up and down for a long time. For once, I’m really glad I took the time to get dressed and put on a nice shirt. At least he knows who he’s dealing with.

  “You’re not from around here, are you?” he sneers.

  “You can see that from the prescription,” Charli shoots back right away. I wish she’d take a breath. “It says Annapolis, Maryland right on it. Now can I please speak to the owner?”

  “Well, Missy, you are speaking to the owner,” he croaks proudly. “You got a cell phone, right? Everybody’s got one these days. You make that call. I can wait.”

  “My cell phone,” she says slowly, cutting her eyes over to me with a laserlike glare, “was unfortunately destroyed just this morning. Can you just call the number right there…”

  The old man makes apologetic clucking noises and takes a few steps to the left, retreating.

  “That's a long distance call, there,” he explains as though the matter is settled. “I just can't see that happening. Policy and everything.”

  He slides the prescription paper back over, letting it dangle over the side of the counter so that Charli can retrieve it. She snaps it between her fingers and glares at me.