Don't Turn Around

by Jessica Barry

  Cait placed a hand on Rebecca’s knee to try to steady her, but it was no good. The truck felt suddenly, stiflingly hot. Sweat trickled down her spine and pooled in the seam of her cotton underwear. The stars pressed down on them through the windshield, suffocating. Her breath turned shallow.

  Cait gripped her knee so hard she let out a yelp of pain. “Look.” Rebecca followed Cait’s outstretched finger to the glowing white-and-yellow sign that loomed ahead: allsup’s.

  Scott turned to them with a smile. “I guess it was further up the road than I thought. Sorry about that.” He swung the eighteen-wheeler into the parking lot of the gas station and killed the engine. “I’ll go in and talk to the guy about a gas can.”

  In the end, all three of them went inside. Scott held the door open for them, and Rebecca had to work to keep her legs from shaking as she walked in. The attendant was waiting for them, one eye watching the TV mounted above the register, the other trained on them. “Evening, ladies,” he said, arching an eyebrow and tipping an imaginary hat toward them. Rebecca knew instantly that he had taken them for a pair of prostitutes.

  “We ran out of gas a few miles back,” Cait said, leaning an elbow on the countertop. “We need a can of regular to get us going again.” She was trying to look confident, Rebecca saw, trying to take control of the situation, as if they weren’t at the mercy of these two men and whatever the night could throw at them.

  “Sure.” The attendant’s eyes drifted back to the TV screen. “But it’ll cost.”

  Rebecca pulled out her wallet, impatient. “How much?” The attendant looked at it, and she felt him immediately reassess his opinion of them—most prostitutes don’t carry Italian leather wallets—and double his price. She didn’t care if he fleeced them. She just wanted out of there.

  “Sixty bucks,” he said. “That includes the can, which you ladies can keep in case you find yourselves in a future fix.”

  Scott stepped forward. “That’s twice what it’s worth.”

  Rebecca shook her head. There was no point in fighting it. They were stuck, and he knew it. She pushed a few bills into his hand and watched him count them.

  “All right, then.” The attendant lumbered into the back and reappeared a few minutes later with a red plastic can. He handed it to Scott with a grunt.

  “I’ll do it,” Cait said, reaching for the can, but Scott shook his head and pulled it out of reach.

  “A gentleman doesn’t let ladies do a man’s work,” he said. “I’ll get this filled up and get us back on the road.”

  She saw Cait was about to argue and put a hand on her arm. “Let it go,” Rebecca mouthed, and Cait had the good grace to look embarrassed.

  So Rebecca and Cait stood outside and watched him pump the gas.

  Cait pulled out a pack of Marlboro Lights, tapped one out, and offered the pack to Rebecca. She shook her head. She hadn’t smoked since her twenties, though watching Cait light up, she felt a familiar tug of yearning in her chest. A curl of smoke emerged from the girl’s mouth, and Rebecca’s fingers twitched. He hated the smell of cigarette smoke. He’d be able to smell it on her, and he’d have questions she couldn’t answer. She moved downwind.

  “I’ll pay you back for the gas,” Cait said, grinding the cigarette underneath her heel.

  “It’s fine. Don’t worry about it.”

  “You were good back there. In the truck. He likes you.”

  “It seemed like a good idea to make friends with him. I figured he’d be less likely to murder us.”

  Cait raised an eyebrow. “I don’t know if it works that way.”

  “Maybe not. But better than making him an enemy.”

  When he was finished, Scott stashed the can behind the seats and sparked the key in the ignition. The attendant was watching them through the window.

  “Now what, ladies?” Scott asked as he steered the truck back onto the road. He looked at Rebecca and smirked. “You know what they say—no favor should go unreciprocated. I hope you have something special up your sleeve for me.”

  Rebecca’s whole body tensed, every muscle and tendon straining in anticipation, the adrenaline running hot through her veins. She eyed the passenger door. They were up high in the cab, and the truck was gaining speed. If they tried to jump, they’d be hurt, and they’d still be miles away from the pickup. He had the gas, too, stashed in the back. They could run back to the gas station—she could still see the lights in the rearview—but would the attendant be inclined to help? Maybe they’d been working together, the two of them. The truck driver patrolling the roads, the attendant lying in wait.

  No, if that were the case, they would have made their move back at the station. Getting back there would be their only chance. They’d have to throw themselves on the attendant’s mercy and hope he had some of God’s grace hiding behind those mean eyes.

  She saw Cait’s hand reach down toward the door handle. Go, she willed her, just go, we can do it, we can get away from him, there’s still time, but then Cait brought her hand up to where they could see it in the light. Rebecca saw a glint of silver.

  Cait unwrapped the bar of Hershey’s, clicked off a strip, and offered it to Scott, who took it with a grin.

  “Will this make us even?” Cait said, a secret smile playing on her lips. She caught Rebecca’s eye, and Rebecca felt a surge of affection for her.

  Scott pushed the piece of chocolate into his mouth. “You give me another piece,” he said, his voice thick with sugar, “and we will be.”

  Six Months Earlier

  “You guys ready to rock and roll?”

  Patrick gave Rich a thumbs-up while Rebecca worked up a queasy smile. She’d been dreading this for days now: their first official “media training” session ahead of Patrick’s Senate-run announcement. Rich had insisted that the training was for both of them—“We’re in the big leagues now, team, it’s a whole new ball game”—but Rebecca knew it was really for her. Everybody already loved Patrick. It was Rebecca who was the problem.

  “Okay,” Rich said, spinning around in his chair and clicking his mouse a few times. The screen behind him flashed into life: engagement.

  He turned toward her. “Okay, you’re up first. What does this word mean to you?”

  “Um. It means . . .” Rebecca’s palms began to sweat. This was ridiculous, she told herself. Absurd. She was a grown woman. She didn’t need to be trained. “It means connection,” she said, as confidently as she could muster.

  “Good,” Rich purred. “And how do we connect with people?” His eyes stayed fixed on her.

  “By finding common ground, I guess.”

  “Exactly!” He smiled at her as if she were a puppy who’d just peed on command. “In order for people to connect to you, they need to know that you share common ground. We’ve done a few focus groups ahead of the announcement, just to get a sense of how people are feeling about the two of you.”

  About me, Rebecca thought. You already know how they feel about Patrick. I’m the one that’s the problem.

  “I’m going to read out some of the feedback,” Rich said in the soothing tone of a doctor about to give his patient a particularly grim diagnosis. He clicked his mouse a few more times and a new slide appeared.

  “‘Cold,’” Rich read aloud. “‘Bitchy.’ ‘Stuck up.’ ‘Californian.’” He lifted his eyes to hers and smiled. “I’m not sure we can do anything about that one. There’s no changing the fact you’re from California.” He couldn’t quite hide his regret. “‘Snobby,’” he continued. “‘Ice princess.’”

  “But . . . it’s not true,” Rebecca said. Her voice came out as a bleat. “I don’t think I’m better than anyone else.” In fact, she added silently to herself, these days I think I’m pretty worthless.

  “Hey, I know that what that slide says is a load of horseshit. Patrick knows it, too.” Rich leaned forward, elbows on knees, and leveled her with his gaze. “The thing is, it seems like a lot of people think it’s true, and that’s a problem for us
. We’ve all seen how the bitchy-wife narrative plays out in the polls. I know we’re in another wave of feminism”—he smirked—“What is it now, the fourth? Fifth? But people still don’t like a ballbuster. You can be smart, sure, but there needs to be some softness there, too.” He flicked back to the first slide, reached up, and tapped the screen with his finger. “Remember what you said about engagement? You need to make a connection. Find common ground.” He leaned forward again. “They need to see that you’re just like them, with the same problems, the same flaws, the same heartaches . . .” His eyes flicked to Patrick, just for a second, but enough to tell her what was coming.

  “No,” she said, already shaking her head. She turned toward Patrick, who had the good grace to at least look embarrassed. “Please tell me you didn’t tell him.”

  “Now, look,” Rich said, holding up his hands. “Patrick didn’t mean any harm. He was just opening up to me as a friend. He’s been having a tough time dealing with your . . . difficulties, just the same as you.”

  She snapped back to him. “Don’t tell me what kind of time I’ve been having. You have no idea what the past eighteen months have been like for me. You have no idea.”

  Patrick squeezed her hand. “Sweetheart, please—”

  She wrenched her fingers free of his. “Don’t.”

  “Hey, hey—let’s not get heated,” Rich said. “We’re all on the same side here. Rebecca, you’re right, I don’t have any idea what you’ve been through, though I’m sure it’s been hell.”

  Rebecca softened, just a little.

  “See, the thing I’m trying to get at is . . .” Rich stopped. She could see him arranging the words in his head, like tiles in a mosaic. Making sure they all fit together to form an attractive picture. “We have a unique opportunity here. You have an experience to share—an awful experience, a universal experience. Just think how many women have had experiences similar to yours who are out there right now, hurting, feeling alone.”

  Patrick reached out and reclaimed her hand, and she let him take it.

  “What I’m saying is, you could help those other women by sharing your experience.”

  “You want me to use my miscarriages to make me more likable.” Her voice was flat, affectless. She knew she should feel outraged, but instead she just felt numb.

  Patrick turned toward her, squeezing her hand in his. “I would never ask you to do something you’re not comfortable with, so if this isn’t something you want, just say the word and we’ll drop it. It’s just . . .” He reached up and ran a hand through his hair, something he always did when he was nervous. “I think Rich might be right, that sharing your story might be a good thing. Not because it will make you more likable, or even because it might help other women who are struggling. Becs, you’ve been carrying this weight around with you all on your own, and it’s crushing you. I’ve been trying to help carry it, but it doesn’t seem to be enough, and . . .” He shook his head. “I just think if you shared your story with the world, you’d be sharing that weight, too.”

  Silence. All Rebecca could hear was the faint whir of the computer and the hum of the fluorescents and the rush of blood in her ears. Five miscarriages in eighteen months. Her doctor said it was normal, nothing to worry about. “It takes longer for some women’s bodies to get the hang of it,” he’d said, as if carrying a child in your body were the same as learning to tie a cherry stem with your tongue, or recite the alphabet backward. A cute little knack. All the test results had come back normal. “There’s nothing stopping you from having a baby,” the doctor had added. “Just give it time.”

  Five miscarriages. Five dreams held for a moment, only to be lost.

  Patrick was right: she had been carrying the weight of it on her own, and it was crushing her. She could feel it in the heaviness of her limbs, the way her bed called to her in the middle of the day, the way she flinched in bright sunlight as if burned.

  Maybe her story could help someone feel a little less alone.

  Maybe sharing it would make her feel a little less numb.

  “Okay,” she said finally. “I’ll try.”

  Outskirts of Fort Sumner, New Mexico—165 Miles to Albuquerque

  Cait didn’t know what had made her steal that candy bar.

  First of all, she was pissed at herself for screwing up. She should have had a spare gas can in the back, but as soon as Rebecca asked, she could see it clear as day sitting in Alyssa’s garage. Cait had loaned it to her for a camping trip and forgotten to ask for it back. Stupid of her. Careless. And then the gas station attendant had been such a creep, looking at them like they were trash, and screwing them by hiking up the price of gas. Scott insisted on filling up the gas can. She knew that he was just being nice, but it pissed her off nonetheless, and made her feel even more stupid and useless than she already did. It was her car, her drive: she should have been in control of it, but instead it had been Rebecca who paid for the gas and Rebecca who thought to sweet-talk Scott like that, because she didn’t trust Cait to handle the situation. It had been a little much, Rebecca fawning over Scott like he was some kind of white knight and then saying she’d done it to “save” them, as if Cait needed to be saved.

  Anyway, Cait had been pissed, so she’d told those two she had to pee and she’d swiped a candy bar and a pack of gum on the way out. She hadn’t stolen anything since high school, when she and her friends had run rings around the poor security guard at Walmart. They stole makeup, mainly. Tubes of sticky lip gloss, shimmery bronzer, bottles of nail polish. Nothing that was worth much, but more than she could afford.

  It wasn’t her parents’ fault that they were poor. They both worked, and worked hard, her father out on the telephone lines and her mother as a receptionist at the local dentist. They had tried to get ahead—they’d tried so hard—but every time they made a little headway, something happened to set them right back to zero: the boiler broke, or the roof started leaking, or her father’s car needed a new transmission.

  Her brothers never seemed to notice that they had nothing. They were good at sports—all three of them on the varsity football team—and that meant nobody cared that they bought their clothes from Walmart. She was the youngest, though, her parents’ little “surprise,” and by the time she got to high school, the Monaghan boys’ sporting glory had faded from memory. A few of the teachers would sometimes reminisce with her about the time Kyle rushed a hundred yards in a single game, or the time Ben sacked the Liberty Hill QB in the final seconds of the fourth quarter, but none of the kids cared about that. All they cared about was the fact that she carried an army-green backpack rather than a leather Coach bag, and wore jeans bought from the discount store rather than at the mall, and liked reading books more than cheering on the football team.

  She didn’t care much about what the other kids thought about her, not really. She knew she was on a trajectory that would send her far beyond Waco. She loved her parents, but she didn’t want their life, and she didn’t want the lives of her brothers, either, four years at Baylor followed by jobs at the oil company. She knew she could have more, if she wanted it badly enough. That was how it worked, right? If you worked hard and got in to a good school, you could make a better life for yourself.

  So she worked hard and got offered a full ride from UT, and when September rolled around, she drove herself halfway across the state in the used Jeep she’d worked all summer to buy, the trunk filled with a shower caddy and a study buddy and all the other crap that Target had told her she needed for her first year of college.

  She left four years later with a degree in English lit and not a single goddamn clue about what she was going to do next.

  She could have gone to law school and become a corporate shill defending oil companies for big money, but even that wasn’t the safe option it had been a few years before. She knew kids who had law degrees from good schools and still couldn’t get a decent job. The 2008 crash had been more like an earthquake, wiping out all the grand avenues to weal
th and security and leaving behind a barren wasteland of scavenging and self-created, multi-hyphenated job titles. Basically, unless you could code, you were fucked. Cait couldn’t code.

  What she wanted to do was write, so that was what she did. She wrote for nothing during the day and slung drinks to assholes for cash at night, and after a few years, she finally felt she was getting somewhere. Editors knew her name, answered her emails. She even got a couple of commissions. She still wasn’t making much money from it, but she thought that maybe, in a few more years, if she landed a couple of big pieces, she might be able to call herself a writer without feeling like she was playing pretend.

  So far, it hadn’t exactly worked out as she’d planned.

  She was going to get there, though. Swear to God, she was going to get there, and she didn’t care what she had to do to make that happen. Cait thought about the tape recorder stuck under the dash that had been running since she pulled up to the curb outside Rebecca’s house, before that creep had scared the tar out of them. She had screwed up, sure—she’d let herself get distracted, and the nerves had made her sloppy—but she’d get her head back in the game. She’d get what she came for, whatever the cost.

  Deep down, she knew exactly why she’d stolen that bar of chocolate. Because the world wasn’t going to give her anything. She would have to take it herself, whatever way she could.

  The sign for Fort Sumner hove into view, snapping her out of herself. Time was running out. She needed Rebecca to start talking. She thought back to her journalism professor back in college. “Build a bond,” he used to say. “If they like you enough, they’ll give you anything you want.”

  She tossed Rebecca a rueful smile. “It felt like it took longer to get here when Scott was driving,” she said. She could still smell his cologne on her hair, in her throat. She could admit now that she’d been scared.