He put the phone against his chest and looked at David. “Where are we?”
“Uh. Next exit is Lakeville.”
He put the phone back to his ear. “We’re coming up on Lakeville. Yeah. Okay. Right. Yeah, I can wait. Of course.” He stared up at the roof of the car. “Yeah. Hi. Okay. . . . Yes. Oh, great. That’s fantastic. The CVS on Dodd. In Lakeville. Under my name. Thank you. Oh my God, Audrey. You’re the best. I—” He paused. “Audrey?”
He touched a button, then put his phone back in his shirt pocket.
“Thank you,” I said, even nicer than I’d planned, as it was pretty clear she’d hung up.
Adam’s phone said the CVS on Dodd was only fifteen minutes away.
“Fifteen minutes,” I told Chloe, because I wasn’t sure she’d heard. “We’ll have your medicine in just fifteen minutes. You got that? You’re going to be okay.”
I believed it. Or I wanted to. I at least knew we’d get to the CVS, even with the snow coming down and the taillights in front of us blinking red every time a driver tapped the brakes. We’d passed two cars that had slid off to the side of the road, but the SUV was doing great, and David was a steady driver. I tried not to think about how Audrey Chang might have only prescribed antibiotics, and nothing for the pain. What mattered was that now there was something for Chloe to hold on to, a possibility that she wasn’t going to die without her family in the back of somebody’s car.
But just as we came up on the exit, Adam started shaking his head.
“I’ve got a bad feeling.” He looked at David, not at me. He put his hands on the back of his neck. “I mean it. I just got a real bad feeling about this.”
“Stop it,” David said. “You already called. It’ll be fine. And I’ve got to concentrate.”
Adam shook his head. “Listen to me. Okay? Just listen. Remember that time I got busted? And I knew? Remember? I called you up that morning and told you I had a bad feeling? And what was it, four hours later, there was a knock on the door?”
David didn’t say anything. Good, I thought. Because it was crazy, what his brother was saying. We’d already worked out a plan. All we had to do was pick up the medicine. Was he really thinking we were going to let Chloe keep getting worse because he had a bad feeling? Something his brain just made up?
“I’m telling you, I got that same feeling now, David. I’ve got it bad. What if they’re waiting for us at the pharmacy? They know we’re coming, and they know she’s with us. This is crazy, what we’re doing. We’ve got to stop and think.”
I glared at him, my hand steady on Chloe’s arm. He was the one being crazy. He’d gone from saying “what if” to just assuming it was true.
“What are you saying?” David glanced at him again. “You think Audrey called the police?”
“She might have.”
“Do you think she would do that? Is she that kind of person?”
“I don’t know! I don’t know what she thinks about this kind of thing. And even if she didn’t call them, somebody might have been listening in. You know? She didn’t call me back from her cell. She was calling from the clinic’s line. That receptionist was probably curious what the emergency was. Seriously. Would you just pull over for a second? We need to think about this. We’re talking about prison, David. We’ve got to stop and think.”
“You’re being paranoid.” David made his hand flat, like a wall between them. “We’re just going to a pharmacy. We’re picking up a prescription. There won’t be any police.”
“And what if there is? I’ll tell you what—we’re not talking about a slap on the wrist. We’re getting arrested for treason. Both of us.” His voice was getting louder. “I’m not just thinking about me here. What about Ethan? What about Riley? Huh? What about Stephen? Do they get a say in any of this?”
The fact that he wasn’t saying anything made me think he was getting scared too. I looked down at the coloring book in the seat pocket. There was a ballerina on the cover. Color the Great Paintings of Degas!
“You’d lose everything. And they would too. And my God, what about Mom? I’m just saying we have to think about this. Before we do something we can’t undo.”
The SUV made a sharp right, the back of the car skidding out on the ice. I grabbed David’s headrest to keep my balance.
“Sorry,” he said. He’d pulled into the nearly empty parking lot of a Hardee’s. A man in a Hardee’s jacket was shoveling the front walk. Beyond the roof, I could see the overpass of the interstate that we’d just gotten off, cars flying by in the snow.
“Sorry,” David said again. The snow had covered the lines in the lot, but he eased the car into what seemed like a space and took the keys out of the ignition.
I held my breath, hoping he just meant sorry for turning fast and making the car slide. I knew he might have meant more than that.
Chloe moaned again. I don’t think she did it on purpose, but David put his face in his hands.
“Oh my God.” Adam stared up at the roof of the car. “This is a nightmare.”
“I don’t know what to do,” David mumbled. He was hard to hear through his hands.
Go get her the medicine! I wanted to say. They had to go get it. What would happen to her if they didn’t? I was thinking I’d go myself, no problem, but the prescription was under Adam’s name. Then again, if there really was a chance that the police would be waiting there, then I didn’t want to be the one to convince Adam he had to go give his name to the pharmacist and then see if he’d be arrested. Plus we’d be out in the parking lot. They would get us too.
“Leave us here,” Chloe said. She was wincing, but she’d sat up a little. “We can wait in the restaurant, the Hardee’s. You can get the medicine by yourselves, please, and if there is no problem, you can bring it back to us here. If the police are there, you can say you lied to the doctor. Say there was never any hitchhiking woman, that you pretended to have my voice.” She paused, blinking slowly. “Say it was a test, to see that she still loved you.”
Whoa, I thought. That was good. I was a little jealous that she was the one who thought of it. Of course that was what we should do.
“Is that illegal?” Adam asked. “Lying to a doctor like that?” He looked at his brother, and then at me. “I’m just curious. I don’t care. It’s not like treason. That’s fine with me. Okay. That’s a deal. That’s workable. But that’s where it ends. We’ll drop them off, get the medicine, bring the medicine back here, and then we’ll be on our way. Alone. Okay? I’m good with this new plan. But we can’t do any more.”
“Okay,” David said, his voice so quiet I could barely hear. He put the keys back in the ignition and drove up to an entrance of the Hardee’s, which was considerate, making it so Chloe and I wouldn’t have to walk across the lot in the snow. But now I was the one with the bad feeling. I wanted to see his face.
“Hold on a second,” I said, picking up my backpack. “I’ll get out on my side and then come around to help her out.”
But after I got out and shut my door, I moved up to David’s door and gave his window a tap. The glass rolled down slowly, and I could feel the heat coming out, mixing with the cold around me. His face was more narrow than his brother’s, and his eyes looked kind, though that didn’t necessarily mean anything. That was just the way some eyes looked.
“Um,” I said, because I still didn’t know how to say it.
He lifted his eyebrows like he meant to listen. But he didn’t look at me, and I knew then I was right to be worried. He’d wanted to help. He’d wanted to help from the start. But his brother had gotten him nervous, talking about prison, and his family, and what they would do if he got arrested.
“Do you know how long you’ll be?” I asked.
“No idea.” He still had his hands on the steering wheel, and he seemed to be staring at my flag pin. I was thinking he didn’t want to meet my eye.
“You’ll come right back, though? With the medicine?”
He nodded. Snow was falling in
through his window, landing on the front of his peacoat and catching in his hair.
“Okay,” I said. “We’ll be inside. Waiting.”
I suppose I could have asked him to promise to come back. But if he’d already made a decision, a promise wouldn’t make any difference. For some people, that’s just a word.
When we got up to the front of the line, the boy behind the register took a deep breath.
“Smiles-are-free-get-yours-today-may-I-take-your-order?” He smiled with his mouth, but his eyes gave Chloe a worried look. I didn’t think he recognized her face, or even thought she was suspicious. It seemed more like he could tell something was wrong. She wasn’t holding her ear, but her cheeks were still tearstained, and she kept her gaze on the stainless steel counter.
“She okay?” he asked.
I nodded. “She just went to the dentist.” I tapped the side of my cheek. “Still numb. Could I get two sodas? Mediums are fine.”
I figured she wouldn’t be able to eat, and even though I’d only had another pack of mini-doughnuts at the convenience store in Sherburn that morning, I knew I wouldn’t be able to get anything down either. I didn’t even want caffeine—I was wide-awake, jittery, and my eyes felt dry. I’d only bought the sodas so we wouldn’t be loitering.
“Sorry,” I whispered once we were over by the soda fountain. “Did you want coffee?” I was on the side of her good ear. “Or food? I can go back and get whatever.”
She grabbed my arm. I mean, she really grabbed it—I almost spilled my soda. She was still breathing hard, her mouth open, but her grip on my arm stayed tight. For a second, I thought she was getting ready to faint, and I was about to tell her she couldn’t do that. She just couldn’t. Somebody would call an ambulance, like they’d done for me at the Arch. I looked behind each of my shoulders. The lobby of the restaurant was almost empty, as it was the middle of the afternoon, and also maybe because of the snow. If I could just keep her upright, I could get her to a chair without anybody seeing.
“It’s okay,” I said. “Let me help you.”
She shook her head. “I want you to go,” she whispered. “To the hotel across the street.” She paused to swallow, and I could see by the look on her face that the pencil was still jamming in. She let go of my arm and closed her eyes. “It’s just across. Wait for me in the lobby.”
“What?” I waited for her to open her eyes, and I shook my head. I didn’t like this idea at all.
She reached into her bag. “Go.” She swallowed again, looking around to make sure no one was watching. “Check in.” She slipped me a wad of bills. “I’ll come as soon as they bring the medicine.”
“I can’t leave you here,” I said, maybe too loud. Nobody was around, but I turned on the ice machine and leaned in close to her good ear. “What if somebody tries to talk to you?”
She pushed my shoulder. Kind of hard.
“I said go! Go, Sarah-Mary. They could be followed back. I don’t know. And even if they’re not, there is no reason for you to sit with me. It does me no good, and it is dangerous for you.”
I shook my head. She pushed my shoulder again, and I almost lost my balance, my backpack heavy behind me. I stepped back and looked around. Nobody had seen, but if she kept this up, somebody would probably get concerned.
“Please,” she said. I could tell by the way she said it how much it hurt for her to talk. “Please. Just go.”
An old man walked up with an empty soda cup. He stood behind us, waiting. Chloe stayed where she was, staring at me.
She was all business. That was clear. There was nothing to do but go.
I stood just outside the door we’d come in, watching snow fall in front of the drive-thru. The hotel across the street was a Sleep-n-Eat, with a sign promising a free breakfast buffet with WAFFLES. I passed my soda from hand to hand so it wouldn’t feel so cold.
I supposed Chloe was right, or a little right. I’d be safer if I waited for her at the hotel. But then again, did she really think that if the police showed up, I’d just watch it all go down from across the street like I was watching television? Was I going to stay in a room she’d paid for, and wake up and get myself some WAFFLES in the morning? I knew she didn’t feel well, but it was a little insulting. I’d already said, very clearly, that I would see her through.
I walked around the back of the restaurant. One of the drivers waiting in the drive-thru clicked her locks down as I went by, like she was anxious I was a criminal, just trying to look like a high-school girl with her backpack. Which I guess was what I was. When I got around to the other side, I peeked in through one of the windows. The lobby was empty enough that Chloe was easy to spot, sitting by the windows that faced the street. She would have seen me probably, but she was hunched over, her hand on her ear again. Her soda sat on the table in front of her, and her straw lay beside it, still wrapped in its paper sleeve.
I slipped inside and found a seat behind her, with a little divider between us. If I leaned out and stretched my neck a little, I could see the edge of one of her boots.
My gym teacher in Joplin once spent about half an hour telling us we should be careful trying to save a drowning person, and that it wasn’t like in the movies, where you can swim up and grab them and bring them back to shore, both of you coughing a little but otherwise fine. He said that when a body is really getting ready to drown, it gets so frantic that it tries to use anything coming near it as a raft, including you if you swim out to help. So maybe you die and they live, or both of you die together. It doesn’t matter if the person you’re trying to save is a nice person or not. The body takes over, he said. It’s a survival thing.
I believed him. And his main point—that we should try to grab some kind of flotation device before setting out to save someone—seemed like good advice. At the same time, I was thinking that if I were ever drowning, and someone was swimming out to help, I would try hard not to let my body take over and kill them. My gym teacher made it sound like it wasn’t even a choice you could make, but probably a few people had it in them to keep their heads, and turn away from help so as not to take anybody else down with them.
Apparently, Chloe was one of those people. She wasn’t actually drowning, not yet, but she still had that pencil pushed in her ear, and she must have known that the chances of her seeing her family again weren’t looking so good. And here she was, pushing me away, thinking about my safety.
I didn’t know if it was an Allah thing or just a Chloe thing. Whatever it was, all it did was make me know I couldn’t leave her there alone.
Most of the other tables stayed empty. The drive-thru was busy, but not too many people seemed to want to get out of their cars in the snow, though the same guy had to keep going out to shovel the walks. For at least a half hour, if anyone did notice Chloe sitting by herself, hunched over and holding her ear, they didn’t say anything.
But then a man pushing a dust mop through the lobby stopped near her table. I could tell he was a manager, or at least he was dressed like my manager at Dairy Queen, wearing a tie over a button-down shirt. Only this manager looked old enough to be my manager’s dad. He didn’t have any hair except for a couple inches of gray curving around the back of his head.
“Ma’am? Are you okay?”
He sounded nice, like he was really worried about her.
“Are you sure?” he asked. She must have nodded.
“Is there someone I can call for you? Are you not feeling well?”
I held my breath. I should have given her the marker. She could have used a napkin for paper. She would have been smart, writing out that she’d just gotten back from the dentist, and that she was waiting for a ride. But even that might not have helped for long. I’d never seen anybody sitting by themselves in the lobby of Dairy Queen hunched over and holding their ear, and maybe crying, too. It seemed like the kind of thing a manager wasn’t supposed to ignore.
Even when I leaned forward, I couldn’t see anything of her but her one boot. But I could see t
he manager as he turned around and waved somebody over from the counter. I hoped it would be the boy who’d taken our order, so he could tell the manager what I’d said about Chloe’s cheek being numb. Then again, the boy might recognize me, sitting over by myself, and that would seem pretty strange to him if he remembered we’d come in together.
Anyway, what I was hoping for didn’t matter, as it was an older blond woman who walked into the lobby, her gaze moving over the manager’s face like they were using ESP to talk.
Even with my backpack, I got there before she did.
“Hey there,” I said, sliding into the seat across from Chloe. “Sorry that took so long.” I held up my soda cup to both the manager and the blond woman like it was proof of admission. “Everything okay?”
“That’s what I was wondering,” the manager said. “She seems to be not feeling so well?” His voice was friendly, but the blond woman kept her gaze on Chloe. She wore dark red earrings that matched the shirt of her uniform, and she had small, smart-looking eyes.
“She had a rough day at the dentist.” I looked at Chloe and clicked my tongue. “My dad was supposed to pick us up, but he got stuck in the snow. He’ll be here soon, though.”
“That’s too bad.” The manager gave Chloe a sympathetic look. “I hate going to the dentist.”
“What dentist was it?” the blond woman asked. Now her gaze was on me. She’d asked it in a pleasant way, but I was thinking wow, how lucky for us that a person who maybe should have been working as a gotcha district attorney happened to come out from behind the Hardee’s counter. For a second, she had me stumped.
“Oh no,” I said, waving my straw at her. “Can’t say. I don’t want to give him a bad name.” I laughed, I hoped just enough, wrinkling my nose at the manager. He laughed too, but only like he wanted to be polite. “Seriously,” I said. “My dad should be here soon, and she’s already doing better. Thanks though.”
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