by Diane Hoh
It was Ann who came to Travis’s defense. “He wouldn’t do something so slimy,” she said firmly, tossing a handful of sweatshirts into the closet. “Not Travis.”
But Cassidy, remembering Travis’s face burning with anger on that day of their last argument, wasn’t so sure.
Chapter 2
ON SATURDAY MORNING, THE autumn-hued campus was bathed in bright sunshine, but there were dark clouds gathering low on the horizon.
“Let’s hope,” Cassidy said as she dressed in bright red sweats, “that the rain holds off until after the car wash. We’ve hustled our buns pulling this together. No one wants to see it washed out.”
Ann, plucking her eyebrows at the dresser mirror, laughed at Cassidy’s unintentional play on words. Sophie said, “It’s not supposed to rain until later. We should rake in a pile of money for the dance. So relax, Cassidy. All of your efforts will not be in vain.”
Talia, in exercise clothing, came in, telling Cassidy that she had just talked to her mother on the phone. With an impish grin, she said, “She says you probably lost that essay on purpose. Passive-aggression, she called it. You didn’t really want to turn it in, so you lost it instead. Isn’t the human mind intriguing? And that’ll be fifty bucks, please.”
“I’m sure your mother charges more than that,” Cassidy said drily.
“Not over the phone.”
“Well, I don’t have fifty bucks, and I didn’t lose that essay. Travis did.” Cassidy wasn’t wild about the idea of Talia discussing her with a shrink, even if it was her own mother. And she had, too, wanted to turn in that essay. She’d worked hard on it.
Psychiatry was obviously not an exact science.
None of Cassidy’s roommates would be at the car wash. They had helped her set up the event, but Ann was baby-sitting for her economics professor, a widow with three children for whom she often sat, saying she needed the “brownie points” because her grade in that class was “iffy.” Talia was running in a race, and Sophie had left an important paper until the last minute, as Sophie always did, and planned to spend the day in the library.
“Traitors!” Cassidy had accused half-seriously. “My own roommates, letting me down. Can’t count on anybody these days.”
“You’ll have tons of people,” Sophie assured her. “Everyone I know is planning to help.”
Cassidy had no choice but to take Sophie’s word for it.
On the way to breakfast in the Quad’s basement dining hall, Ann asked Cassidy, “So, is the new love of your life going to be there? At the car wash, I mean.”
“Sure. That’s how I met him, remember? We put out a call for volunteers, and blond, gorgeous Sawyer Duncan showed up, almost like I’d placed an order.”
“And the rest is history,” Ann said drily. “Poor Trav.”
“I didn’t dump Travis,” Cassidy replied, glancing up at Ann who, like Talia, was considerably taller than her. “We had an argument, that’s all.”
“You mean a fight,” Sophie said. “I heard you guys yelling at each other. Sounded like a fight to me.”
“Leave Cassidy alone,” Talia ordered. “She’s been sick. Quit picking on her.”
My sentiments exactly, Cassidy thought as they entered an uncrowded dining hall. Leave poor Cassidy alone. She’s not quite herself just yet.
Sometime today, between the car wash and the movie Sawyer was taking her to later, she was going to have to rewrite that stupid psych paper. Dr. Bruin had made it very clear that asthma or not, Cassidy Kirk was expected to turn in the assignment.
“You’re not eating anything,” Sawyer’s voice said over her shoulder ten minutes later. He sat down in the chair beside her. His broad bulk, in jeans and a blue windbreaker, filled the chair. His sun-streaked blond hair was windblown, and a grin creased his strong, ruddy face. “Aren’t you supposed to be rebuilding your strength? We’ve got a busy day ahead of us, kiddo.”
Cassidy poked at watery scrambled eggs with her fork. “Nothing on this plate is going to rebuild anyone’s strength. Anyway, I’m fine. Let’s get started before the rain does.”
The car wash was being held in the center of campus. Although Cassidy had worried that not enough people would show up, they had plenty of volunteers, anxious to be outside in the sunshine while it lasted. Cassidy decided, after some thought, to ask that only one person work on one car at a time. She suspected that working in groups would cause so much goofing-off with garden hoses and buckets of soapy water, they’d never get done. People who weren’t washing cars could keep the lines of cars in order and the car-wash supplies filled up.
No one complained about working solo.
“This place is a madhouse!” Sawyer, pail in hand, declared as he brushed past Cassidy an hour later. “More people than cars.”
“We’ll just get done faster this way,” Cassidy answered. She was scrubbing the white sidewalls of a blue convertible, using a scouring pad. “And I’ll get out of here in time to work on my psych paper.”
“The one you lost?”
I didn’t lose it! Cassidy thought, irritated. But Sawyer was already on his way to the next waiting car.
The line didn’t seem to get any shorter. As sparkling clean vehicles pulled away, dirty ones sprouted like mushrooms in their places. Seeing the apparently endless line circling the parking lot like a wagon train, Cassidy sighed. That psych paper might have to wait until tomorrow.
In spite of her impatience, she couldn’t help admiring the black TransAm when it pulled up in front of her. Through a thick layer of dust and grime, she could see its clean, sporty lines, imagine it roaring up the highway between Salem University and the nearby town of Twin Falls. She had no trouble picturing herself behind the wheel.
Impossible to see who really was behind the wheel. All the window glass was tinted a dark, smoky color that kept the driver hidden from view. Cassidy didn’t recognize the car. A cool car. Whoever owned it was probably a really cool person.
Two red plastic hearts tied together and fastened firmly to the driver’s door handle bounced about as Cassidy sprayed the TransAm with one of several garden hoses. Thinking Sawyer would love this car, she glanced around, intending to signal him.
She didn’t see him anywhere. And if she called his name, he’d never hear her over this din.
Giving up, Cassidy returned to the task at hand.
When the black TransAm was spotless, the driver rolled the window down a crack and thrust a crisp, ten-dollar bill through the opening. Cassidy caught only a glimpse of a cream-colored parka hood.
She was fumbling in her leather fanny pack for change when the TransAm’s engine roared, gears shifted, and it veered out of line to peel across the parking lot, disappearing from sight.
Weird. Ten bucks for a car wash? The guy must be loaded.
There was a brief lull in customers just then and a sudden, chill spray from Sawyer’s garden hose on her left ear caught Cassidy by surprise, distracting her from the vanished TransAm with its generous, unseen driver. Using her own hose as a weapon she took up the challenge. Others armed with hoses and buckets joined in. Arcs and streams of water cascaded down upon the already-puddled parking lot, soaking jackets and jeans, hair and hands, faces and feet.
“Enough, enough!” Cassidy finally shouted, her own clothes dripping. “Lay down your arms!” A new line of cars had formed, snaking around the parking lot in a semicircle. “Back to work!”
There were groans at an end to the horseplay, but everyone obeyed.
It was much harder working in wet clothes, Cassidy promptly discovered. The sun had disappeared behind the thickening clouds, turning the air chilly. Her sweats clung to her like tissue paper, and her hands felt like ice. Dumb idea, getting wet, she told herself as she approached the third car in line. I don’t have time to get sick again. Dumb, dumb, dumb!
She saw the two red plastic hearts before she noticed the car idling next to her.
The black TransAm.
In line again, and for go
od reason. Although it had been spotless when it raced from the parking lot twenty minutes or so earlier, it was once again coated with a thick layer of dirt.
Cassidy peered more closely at the car. Couldn’t be the same one. That guy had paid ten bucks. He wouldn’t have gone right out and gotten the car filthy again so fast, would he?
But there were the red plastic hearts, dangling from the driver’s door handle.
What were the chances that there were two black TransAms on the campus of Salem University with dark, tinted glass and a pair of red plastic hearts tied to a door handle?
The TransAm honked impatiently.
Cassidy washed the car again. As she moved around it, hose in hand, she thought how eerie the tinted glass made the car look. It gave her a weird feeling to glance at the window and see nothing but darkness, as if there were no one in there, no one at all. Like, she thought as she wiped the hood dry, a futuristic car that drives itself.
Creepy.
It occurred to her as she gave the driver’s door one last, quick swipe with her rag, that the car might belong to a benefactor. Someone who wanted them to make tons of money and was willing to go through the car wash repeatedly to help out. And didn’t want to take credit for his generosity.
Nice guy.
The window slid open a crack. The bill that slid through the opening was a crisp, new twenty.
“Please wait for your change this time,” Cassidy said quickly, delving into the pack at her waist. But her fingers were so cold, they moved slowly. Too slowly.
The TransAm didn’t wait.
It was gone in a splash of cold water before Cassidy’s fingers had closed around the correct change.
She stared after it for a long time, absent-mindedly fingering the crisp twenty.
“Pretty dumb, if you ask me,” a voice said from behind her.
Travis. In the same blue plaid flannel shirt and blue windbreaker he’d been wearing the first time she ever saw him. With the same intense expression on his lean, bony face.
Cassidy turned around, zipping her pack closed. “Dumb? Oh, not waiting for his change, you mean? Yeah, I guess it is. I think the guy is just trying to help us out. With a car-like that, I suppose he can afford it.”
“I wasn’t talking about a car,” Travis said, his voice as cold as Cassidy’s hands. “I didn’t see any car. I was talking about someone who just got out of the infirmary fooling around out here in the cold in wet clothes. That’s what I meant by dumb.”
Cassidy bristled. So he had known she was sick. Well, not really sick, the way Travis was making it sound. Just an asthma attack. You didn’t get those from being soaked on a chilly day. Anyway, if he wasn’t going to help with the car wash, he should keep his opinions to himself.
But he never did. Travis had told her he was the first person in his family to go to college. His father had lost the family farm to bad debts, moved to the city and worked in a factory, and died an unhappy man. Travis was determined that wouldn’t happen to him. He did go to parties and dances and had joined several groups, but his main purpose in being at Salem was getting a degree.
She had accused him, on that last day, of being too serious, and he had accused her of joining too many activities just to prove a point.
Two opinions that might as well have been left unexpressed.
“A,” she said crisply, “I’m not fooling around, I’m washing cars. B, we had a water fight, not that it’s any of your business, and C, it isn’t any of your business.” Tossing her hair, which was spiralling into rust-colored corkscrews from being wet, she turned her back on Travis and moved toward the next car in line, a blue Chevy.
When she glanced over her shoulder a few minutes later, he was gone.
Good. She already had a perfectly good father. She wasn’t in the market for another one.
Still, Travis had a point. The sky was a dark charcoal-gray now, and the air continued to turn colder. She was freezing.
“Why don’t you go back to the Quad?” Sawyer suggested when he joined her during another lull and found her shivering. “Take a nice, hot shower and get into some dry clothes.” He smiled down at her. “Can’t have you getting sick again.”
Why couldn’t Travis have said it that nicely, instead of calling her “dumb”?
“I’m okay,” she insisted. “I’m running this thing. I can’t chicken out while everyone else is still here.”
“Sure, you can.” Sawyer took off his wind-breaker and draped it around her shoulders. “That’s why you can leave, because there are so many other people here. You don’t have to do everything yourself, Cassidy. Haven’t you ever heard of delegating responsibility?”
Travis had said almost the same thing, during that last lengthy argument they’d had. Irritated, Cassidy said sharply, “Things are starting to pick up again.” She glanced around the parking lot. “Here comes another batch. When this group thins out, I’ll go dry off, I promise.”
They went back to work.
This time, the black TransAm pulled up to Cassidy so slowly, so quietly, she didn’t notice it at first. Busy finishing an old red VW bug, she was backing away from that car, rag in hand, when the backs of her knees collided gently with metal.
She turned to face the familiar black car with its protective window glass.
It was filthy again.
This was ridiculous. Was it a joke? Was he testing her to see if she’d even realize that this was his third car wash of the day? One thing she was certain of, it wasn’t anyone she knew. No one she knew threw money around so carelessly.
She walked around to the driver’s side. There they were, two little plastic hearts.
Cassidy hesitated. There was something about the car that raised the hairs on the back of her neck. Maybe it was the eeriness of the dark glass. Or maybe it was the elusiveness of the driver. All of the other drivers rolled down their windows after their wash, joked with their car washer. Maybe talked for a minute, said they were pleased with the job.
Not this guy. He barely cracked the window.
Another impatient honk sounded from the TransAm.
What choice did she have? She couldn’t very well rap on the window and say, “I’m sorry, sir, but you’ve had your two turns today. That’s all we allow.” Besides, he was paying.
And pay he did, this time with another twenty-dollar bill so new, it crackled when he pushed it through a tiny opening in his window.
And although Cassidy scrambled to yank change from her pack, he was gone again before she had it unzipped.
The little red hearts flew, banging against the door as the TransAm raced from the parking lot for the third time.
“That is the weirdest thing!” she murmured, slipping the crisp twenty into her pack. Maybe in the future she’d keep a lookout on campus for the TransAm. Creepy though it was, if she saw it, she should thank their generous benefactor.
By the time the clouds split, sending a torrential downpour across campus, Cassidy was safely back at the Quad, showered, dried, and wrapped in fresh, dry sweats. She was lying on the floor, her head resting on her money-stuffed fanny pack, hand in a bag of microwave popcorn sitting beside her. Ann and Sophie were sitting on the beds, each armed with a hairdryer. Sawyer was sprawled on the floor, and Talia, in a black sleeveless catsuit, her hair in a ponytail, was doing calisthenics in a corner.
“We did okay today,” Sawyer said, nudging Cassidy’s foot with his own. “Right? Looked like just about everyone on campus had a dirty car.”
“And some had dirty cars more than once,” Cassidy said, reaching up to pull her pack from beneath her head. Groaning with weariness, she sat up. “I had this guy in a black TransAm, who came back three times. And the really nutty thing was, the car was filthy each time. Even though I’d just scrubbed it from hood to trunk. Couldn’t believe it! But,” she waved the red pack in the air, “I’m not complaining, because we made fifty dollars off this guy!”
Sawyer whistled through his teeth. “Fifty? For
three car washes! Didn’t you give the guy change?”
“He wouldn’t wait. The minute his car was clean, he tore out of the parking lot. Didn’t you see him, Sawyer?” Cassidy unzipped her pack.
“TransAm? Don’t remember. Look, it was a circus over there: After a while, all the cars blurred into one huge, multicolored mass of metal.”
“The windows were tinted. Really dark.” Cassidy pulled her cache of car wash funds from her pack, fingering through it for the three crisp new bills. “It’s a really creepy feeling, looking into a car and seeing nothing. Like there might not be anyone in there.” She moved her fingers through the thick pile of bills, expecting at any moment to encounter the bills that felt so different from all the others. But all of the bills felt soft and worn. They all felt used.
Where were those crisp, crackling new ones?
Although Cassidy went through the pile of bills three times, once rapidly and then twice again, more slowly, there were no crisp, crackling, brand-new bills.
There was no ten from the driver of the TransAm.
There were no twenties from the driver of the TransAm.
The money that had been thrust through the small window opening three different times by the driver in the cream-colored parka sitting behind the eerie, dark glass, was gone.
Chapter 3
WHEN CASSIDY HAD SORTED through the pile of bills for the third time, she sank back on her heels, shaking her head. “It’s gone,” she said, glancing around the room with a perplexed expression on her face. “The fifty dollars is gone.”
“You counted your money already?” Sawyer asked. “I haven’t added mine up yet.”
“No, I didn’t count it. But the money I got from the guy in the TransAm was all brand-new. Three brand-new bills, one ten and two twenties. I could almost smell fresh ink on them.” Cassidy glanced down at the pile of bills on the floor. “Not only are there no twenties in this pile now, there isn’t a single new bill.” She flicked at the pile with a finger. “These are all old.”