Reunited

by Hilary Weisman Graham

  Summer got there first, opening the back door and flinging herself inside in one seamless motion. Tiernan was right behind her. Alice ran around the front of the Pea Pod—straight through the pricker bush, again, duh—scrambling in through the driver’s side door. She was breathing too hard to speak.

  “Headlights!” Summer shouted as Alice threw the Pea Pod in reverse.

  When she turned on the lights, Alice half expected to see Michael in front of them, wild-eyed and naked and holding a bloody butcher knife. But the woods were empty and still. She could kill MJ for dragging her to all those stupid horror flicks. Not that she ever watched the really scary parts. Now that she was actually living a horror movie, she still wanted to hide behind her hands.

  It was hard to steer in the darkness with only the dim rear lights, but backing out was definitely faster than making a twelve-point turn. She could only imagine what her father would say if he saw the Pea Pod doing thirty, backward, up the bumpy dirt road, but the wider the distance grew between the van and Michael, the safer Alice felt. Finally, at a bend in the road, she stopped to shift it into drive.

  Up until this moment, Alice’s sole mission had been getting them away from the swimming hole. Now they were finally away. The only question was—where?

  “We came in on that road, didn’t we?” Alice pointed left.

  “I don’t remember taking a turn there,” Summer sounded uncertain.

  “Don’t ask me.” Tiernan shrugged. “I couldn’t see crap.”

  Nothing looked familiar, yet everything looked the same.

  “Turn on Coach Quigley!” Alice commanded, taking the left.

  Tiernan, the de facto copilot, sprang into action. “Still no signal,” she said, holding the GPS up to the windshield.

  “Damn it.” Alice thought she knew where she was going. But the road she’d chosen quickly dwindled away into nothing more than a hiking trail. She backed out, continuing in the opposite direction.

  “Aren’t you supposed to just stop?” Summer asked. “If you’re . . . you know, lost?” There it was. She’d gone and said the L word.

  They’d been driving for at least ten minutes. They had to be close to the main road by now, didn’t they? Up ahead, Alice saw another crossroad and she took it. She was just starting to get a good feeling that this way their way out, when she saw the enormous pine tree lying across the road and jammed on the brakes.

  “Why me?” Alice yelled, lifting her hands to the sky. Just then, the sky answered back as a curtain of rain pelted the Pea Pod’s roof like an audience bursting into sudden applause. It was a summertime downpour. Point one for Mother Nature.

  Alice put the van into park. The rain was coming down so heavily, the droplets on the windshield had merged into a single, thick sheet of water.

  “Why aren’t we moving?” Summer asked.

  Um, maybe because I can’t see anything, Alice wanted to say. Instead, she took a long deep breath, determined not to let stress get the better of her. “I think it’s probably safer to wait out the storm here.”

  Summer and Tiernan were quiet as they took this in, the rain drumming against the rooftop. All Alice wanted was one trouble-free minute in this godforsaken day. Just one tiny moment where they could all get along.

  “We could play Scrabble!” Tiernan said, her eyes all lit up. She sounded more enthusiastic than anyone should ever sound about a board game. And Alice liked board games. But considering that they’d just cheated death at the hands of a delusional maniac, her next thought hadn’t necessarily been Q words that didn’t require the letter U.

  “Come on,” Tiernan whined. “It’ll be a good distraction.”

  “Yeah, the last distraction you had for us turned out great.” Summer glared.

  Alice bit her lip. She needed to find something they could all agree on, something with the potential to be a bonding experience (and that didn’t involve burying live animals or fleeing through the woods from a deranged maniac).

  “How was I supposed to know he was crazy?” Tiernan asked as a flash of lightning illuminated them all in white.

  Summer just shook her head, the din of rolling thunder filling their silence.

  In the two short days between buying the Level3 tickets and now, Alice had done nothing but prepare for this trip. She’d planned their route, precalculated the cost of gas, and cross-referenced weather reports from three different websites. Aside from occasional late-night thunderstorms north of the Alleghenies (cue thunder now), their trip was supposed to be sunny and clear. But the meteorologists gave no forecast for the storm brewing inside the Pea Pod.

  And then it came to her. “I have something we can do,” Alice said, trying to make it sound like a casual suggestion as opposed to a desperate plea. “A distraction,” she added, giving Tiernan a nod. “What would you guys think about making a collage?”

  “Hmm.” Summer smiled. “The old standby.”

  Tiernan stood up to review their old masterpieces. “Sure. Let’s do it.”

  Alice hadn’t realized how tense her shoulders were until she felt them relax away from her ears back to their usual position. A collage. They’d always worked so well together when they were making collages, each of them so essential to the process that Alice wasn’t sure if she’d even know how to make one if she had to do it alone.

  Tiernan usually came up with the concept. Alice was the detail person—selecting all the right pictures, then meticulously cutting them out. Summer handled the assembly, arranging and rearranging the pieces to make sure they all came together in the most artistic way possible.

  “What about a map?” Tiernan asked, looking directly at Alice. “I know you’ve got some kind of plan about where we can and can’t stop on our way to Austin. But maybe, between the three of us, we could come up with something more . . . more . . .”

  “Democratic?” Summer offered.

  Tiernan just smiled.

  It was interesting, Alice noted, how Tiernan and Summer always got along best when they were trying to overthrow one of her own well-laid plans. Oh, well. At least when those two were in cahoots against her, it meant they were getting along. And Alice was more than happy to volunteer herself as the sacrificial lamb in exchange for a little peace and quiet.

  “What I was thinking was”—Tiernan looked inspired—“that maybe the three of us could decide where to stop between here and Texas based on places that have to do with Level3. Like the stopping points on our map could come from things mentioned in Level3 songs, you know?”

  “I have one!” Summer said enthusiastically. “You know the song ‘Rock Me To and Fro’?”

  Alice nodded.

  “Well, we could make a collage for that and put it in Little Rock, Arkansas. Get it? ‘Rock Me,’ Little Rock?”

  “Exactly.” Tiernan had a satisfied look on her face. “That’s just what I’m talking about.”

  Alice sighed. She was resistant to change by nature, not to mention the fact that she’d spent hours planning their route. But she could already see that Summer’s and Tiernan’s wheels were turning, and once those two got brainstorming, it was safer to just move aside and let their creative genius flow. Whether or not she actually adhered to the route on this new collage map was a different story. That is, if they ever made it out of the woods.

  “Well, did anyone bring glue or scissors?” Summer asked.

  Had the girl not been her best friend for five years?

  “Don’t let the shovel incident besmirch my good reputation,” Alice joked, pulling a small plastic bin marked “Craft Supplies” out from under the sink. Just one of the many boxes she’d started to organize for Brown. Knock on wood.

  “The only thing is . . .” Tiernan carefully peeled an old collage off the wall. “We’re gonna need to cut up these old collages to make the new one.”

  “But we put so much work into those,” Alice cried. She knew she was probably being overly sentimental, but could she help it if she hated to throw things away? Wh
enever MJ looked inside Alice’s closet, she’d pretend she was making an emergency phone call to the producers of the TV show Hoarders.

  “Think of it as a tribute to the past,” Tiernan said. “It’s not like we’re getting rid of the old collages. We’re just repurposing them. Like an extended remix.”

  Alice shot her a skeptical look. It was a well-known fact that Tiernan got off on destroying things.

  “I say out with the old, in with the new,” Summer said. She held a heart-shaped collage of Travis in her hands, circa fifth grade.

  “Okay, I guess.” Alice shrugged. She had to admit a collage map was a pretty cool idea. And why hang on to faded memories when making a new collage would give them new ones?

  By the time they’d finished, the storm had passed. On the surface, their new collage looked like a map, only without the benefit of being geographically correct or even remotely to scale. But what it lacked in accuracy, it made up for in heart. Most of the stopping points were selected at random, like the snow-cone collage (inspired by the song “Snow Cone”) Tiernan had stuck in the center of Kentucky, implying they’d stop to get snow cones sometime on their way through the state. But where the lyrics or a song title allowed, their stopping points were location specific, like the T-Rex-shaped collage Alice had placed in Nashville, Tennessee, (based on the song “Dinosaur”). “Jeff Goldblum may have died in Jurassic Park, but I swear that I saw him in Nashville.”

  “You guys just want to sleep here for the night?” Alice asked.

  “You don’t think he might be out there lurking, do you?” Summer nodded toward the window.

  No one had mentioned Michael’s name for hours, but Alice had locked all the doors and closed the curtains just in case.

  “I don’t think we should even start thinking about that,” Alice said. As time passed, the less anxious she felt about Michael attacking them and the more guilty she felt for abandoning Toad and Phred.

  “What do you think happened to Toad and Phred?” Alice asked.

  “Maybe they hitched a ride back on Santa’s sleigh,” Tiernan said. “Did you guys see that dude?”

  “In way too much detail.” Summer yawned.

  “Who knew Santa was packing that kind of heat?” Tiernan said with a laugh.

  Clearly, Summer and Tiernan weren’t wasting their time worrying about Toad and Phred, so why should she? Sure, Alice liked Phred’s attention, but she’d only known him a couple of hours. Sometimes she felt like she spent so much time concerned with everyone else’s happiness, she ended up sabotaging her own.

  “I vote we stay here,” Tiernan offered. “Not that you guys want to listen to any more of my suggestions.”

  “You can say that again.” Alice smiled. She could tell Tiernan felt bad about the Michael incident. But poking fun at herself was about the closest Tiernan ever got to an apology.

  “Fine by me.” Summer nodded. “But first, we make a rule.” She stuck out her hand like she was getting ready to do a soccer cheer. “No more strangers in the van.”

  “No strangers in the van.” Alice placed a hand on Summer’s.

  Tiernan slapped her hand on top. “Ditto.”

  It took Alice a long time to fall asleep that night, but it wasn’t from fear of Michael the Archangel. This was a different kind of nervousness keeping her awake, making her all too aware of the high-pitched whistling sound coming from her left nostril, the creak of the bed every time she shifted positions.

  It should have felt familiar, sleeping in the Pea Pod next to Tiernan, with Summer up on the top bunk in her usual spot. But for some reason the Pea Pod never felt so small as it did right now.

  Had Alice made a mistake coming on this trip with them? After all, knowing who someone was was different than knowing who they are. And what had she expected? That things would be the same as they were four years ago?

  When Alice finally drifted off, she was thinking about the rule they’d all agreed to, wondering if “no strangers in the van” was meant only for outsiders, or if it also applied to the people inside.

  “BURIED TREASURE”

  IT WAS YOUR IDEA

  TO GO INTO THE DIAMOND MINE

  SO I FOLLOWED YOU

  DEEP INSIDE THE EARTH.

  WE WERE LOOKING FOR TREASURE

  BUT ALL WE FOUND WAS COAL

  SO I PUT SOME IN YOUR POCKET

  AND YOU CRIED.

  AND I SAID, DON’T CRY, DON’T CRY

  JUST GIVE IT TIME

  AND THEY WILL BE DIAMONDS

  IN TIME, THEY WILL SHINE.

  —from Level3’s self-titled first CD

  Chapter Ten

  TIERNAN WAS NOT A MORNING PERSON. BUT APPARENTLY THE bird that had been screeching since the butt crack of dawn hadn’t gotten the memo. Not that it was easy to sleep in the Pea Pod anyway, between being crammed in next to Alice (mouth breather), Summer tossing and turning in the bunk above their heads, and the knot tightening in Tiernan’s stomach every time she thought about her mom finding the note.

  She’d been MIA for almost twenty-four hours now. Chances were, whatever worries her mom had yesterday had turned into full-scale panic. Tiernan felt bad she hadn’t called home last night. Not that she was looking forward to Judy’s tirade. But she’d intended to call. Really. At least that was the plan until the party at the field distracted her. A few Magic Hats later she’d forgotten about her mother altogether. Then she’d stumbled into Michael the Archangel playing bongos by the fire. Drummers. She should have known he was trouble right then and there.

  The problem was, Tiernan had a bad habit of judging books by their covers. Just about every guy she’d ever dated turned out to belong in the category of either Beautiful Poser or Beautiful Loser. But she could never seem to get past the looks part. Like with Michael. At first glance, Michael had appeared to be cool, so, like a total idiot, Tiernan had assumed his coolness went all the way inside. Of course, if she’d just listened to her gut instead of ogling Michael’s rear end, they wouldn’t even be here right now. But when had she ever done that? Even at this very moment, when her gut was screaming.

  She’d been fighting the urgency to pee for the last half hour, deluding herself that she’d be able to just ignore it and go back to sleep. As if that ever worked. And yet, Tiernan just lay there, squirming uncomfortably, trying to sleep, as the crisis in her bladder elevated to Threat Level: Yellow.

  Now she’d waited so long it was hard to sit up. Somehow she managed, scooting out of the bed past Alice, opening the sliding door as quietly as possible so as not to wake them up and start the day off on their bad side. She was actually kind of shocked Summer and Alice weren’t more pissed off at her for dragging Michael the Psycho into their lives. No nasty digs from Summer, no lectures from Alice about using “good judgment.” Either those two had seriously mellowed over time, or, like so many of the people who knew Tiernan well, they’d decided it was easier to just lower their expectations.

  Tiernan tiptoed far enough away from the Pea Pod to have some privacy, but close enough to still feel safe—then squatted behind a large pine tree.

  Oh, sweet relief.

  Now that her bladder wasn’t bursting, she could actually focus on her surroundings, maybe even explore a little. It was an exhilarating feeling to be the only person awake in the woods, so Tiernan ventured in farther while, all around her, rays of watery sunshine flickered through the trees, wet green leaves yawning to meet their light.

  Back home, Tiernan wasn’t exactly the outdoors type. Between the mosquitoes and her mother making her rake leaves every fall, she’d be fine if they paved over the whole unpleasant business. But for some reason these woods seemed to quiet her. Like the only thing more chaotic than her own mind was the anarchy of nature itself.

  She’d call her mother today. Just as soon as they had cell service again.

  The sun was rising so fast now that the forest seemed to be constantly reinventing itself—first in browns and deep blues, then in rust and yellow-g
reens. Farther away, in a clearing, a blanket of purple-white fog whispered over the grass. Screw it. She had to go get her camera before this was gone forever, even if she woke up Alice and Summer in the process.

  Tiernan usually hated nature photos. She preferred the edgier stuff, like the work of her all-time favorite photographer Diane Arbus. Arbus was big in the 1960s for her series of portraits of misfits and freaks—photos so raw and honest that Tiernan wondered if Arbus used some kind of magical lens that let her see beyond people’s poses so that only their innermost selves shone through.

  When Tiernan got back to the van, Alice was awake.

  “You’re alive!” Alice said, spitting a mouth full of toothpaste into the sink. The bed where they’d slept had already been folded away.

  “What time is it?” Summer asked groggily, her hair cascading over the top bunk.

  “Six fifty-three,” Alice said. “I’m just going to wash my face, and then I think we should get going.”

  So much for the early-morning nature photography. Whatever. It was a stupid idea anyway. Every hack that owned a camera took boring nature shots.

  Tiernan had only slathered one pit with deodorant when Alice started up the Pea Pod.

  “It’s seven o’clock,” Alice announced, like it was a race and she’d won. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Summer slid into shotgun before Tiernan had the chance. Evidently, snagging the top bunk last night hadn’t been enough for Her Highness. Guess that meant Tiernan was flying coach.

  “Wake me up when we get there,” she said, flopping onto the bench seat and closing her eyes. Wherever “there” was.

  Apparently, “there” was right here. Alice gunned the engine, but instead of moving forward, there was just the high-pitched squeal of spinning tires.

  Tiernan opened her eyes just as Summer opened her door.

  “Ruh-roh,” Summer said, looking down.

  For three people about to head off to college, they’d failed to remember a lesson they’d learned in preschool: Rain plus dirt equals mud.