THIRTY-EIGHT
I moved over to the sink to wash the blood off my hands, leaving the blinds drawn in the musty motel room. By the window I checked the front; a young couple dragged a screaming toddler behind a wall of suitcases, an elderly gentleman hovered above his walking stick; but that’s all there was. At least, so far.
In the motel room off I-88, I sat waiting for the cops, until my eyes refused to stay open.
I slept upright in the chair, one hand on my survival kit removed from Evan’s car, and one eye supposedly trained on the window, searching for car headlights, faces by the window, or the clunk of a safety being removed; but when morning came I was surprised, relieved and almost a little guilty, though I knew the last part would waiver soon enough.
After bandaging the wound on my leg with a piece of bed sheet, next door, in Sneckworth’s Diner, I sat by the counter, like I used to in Bemo’s, fanning my face with the napkin, on it my father’s new account details. Next to me sat a grey bouffanted lady, an overly smiley great-grandmother from Iowa City, who was heading to Milwaukee to meet the new addition to her brood. Hope and Serendipity. Twins. Of course she could drop me in the city to collect my suitcase and my dog. She said I looked like a nice girl, even if the hundred bucks I gave her was edged with the faintest traces of blood.
It was hardly Easy Rider, me and Mrs Tulley trundling along in the rickety station wagon, but with Van Halen on her radio (who knew?), we were soon heading east, checking the mirrors all the way through the flat cornfields of Kane County.
THE END
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
With thanks to Laura Kingsley and Rachel Winterbottom.
Cover by Jamie Keenan
Rita Brassington was born in Staffordshire, UK in 1983.
The Good Kind of Bad is her first novel.
www.ritabrassington.co.uk
###
Table of Contents
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Twenty-Four
Twenty-Five
Twenty-Six
Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Eight
Twenty-Nine
Thirty
Thirty-One
Thirty-Two
Thirty-Three
Thirty-Four
Thirty-Five
Thirty-Six
Thirty-Seven
Thirty-Eight
The Good Kind of Bad Page 35