Running On Empty

by Colette Ballard

  I did what she said, and after several tries, I felt good enough to try my Bambi legs again. Squinting at the worn-out building, I remembered the last time we were at a gas station—the stark contrast of the look on Mr. Hinkley’s face when Kat walked in his store to when she walked out.

  After Billi Jo came back from the restroom, Kat escorted me inside the store like any good babysitter would. Ugly fluorescent lights flickered at me, and my eyes fought to adjust. Luckily, the store clerk was too busy gawking at the soap opera on TV and eating potato chips to acknowledge us.

  When I opened the door to the single-stall restroom, the stench of urine and peach-scented room freshener overwhelmed me. Gagging, I turned to leave, but my bladder urged me to stay, so I ditched the breathe-through-the-nose technique.

  The faucet squeaked when I turned it on to wash my hands. The cool water rushing over my wrists eased a little of the nausea, so I bent over it to splash some in my face. When I stood straight again, I flinched when I caught the reflection of a stranger in the mirror.

  Only it was me—or a version of me. I leaned in closer to the scratched and slightly distorted mirror to examine my face. It was swollen and bruised on one side, with a black eye to match. Dried blood from a small, jagged cut near the corner of my mouth accented my dry, cracked lips. My hair was a tangled mess, and my eyes didn’t even look blue, just dull with red accents. I looked like a poster child for battered women or a homeless person. It suddenly occurred to me—I was both.

  After splashing more cold water on my face, I wiped the blood off my lip and walked out.

  “You all right?” Kat asked as she exchanged places with me.

  I didn’t offer an answer. She wasn’t expecting one.

  Kat stepped into the bathroom and pointed to the food aisle. “Why don’t you pick out something to eat?”

  Gazing at the store’s meager surroundings, I forced myself down the snack aisle—I would have to eat eventually. My stomach growled, but nothing appealed to me, not even my usual favorites. I was empty inside, and it sure didn’t have anything to do with lack of food.

  When Kat came out of the restroom, she went straight to the refrigerated section, grabbed two Red Bulls, and handed me a Sprite. She picked out a large bag of barbecue chips, then I trailed behind her to the meat counter where she ordered three ham and cheese sandwiches.

  “That all right with you?” she asked.

  “Sure,” I said, not caring if it was a ham and paper sandwich. I was positive I wouldn’t be able to taste the difference.

  The clerk eyed Kat for a few seconds but didn’t budge until she had popped in another bite of her own sandwich, took a swig of Diet Coke, and grabbed a beef jerky stick. Not only had we interrupted her soaps, but her four-course meal as well.

  Keeping her attention on the TV, she waddled off her stool and began a painfully slow sandwich-making process. While Kat waited at the meat counter, I walked across the aisle to look for some Twizzlers for Billi Jo. I tried to stay focused, but I couldn’t help but be distracted by the clerk as she continued taking bites of her own sandwich while making ours.

  When a commercial came on, she kicked it up a notch. Eyes on the TV and still chewing, she walked up to the register with our food. Catching my stare, she said, “Looks like he won.”

  “Huh?”

  “The guy who did that to your face.”

  “A guy didn’t…” I touched my hand to my busted lip like I’d forgotten. “I, uh…I had a bicycle accident.”

  “Yeah,” she grunted, “that’s what they all say.” She smacked her big hog jaws as she punched the numbers on the cash register. I envisioned myself reaching over the counter and snatching her prized pickled bologna sandwich, throwing it down, and stomping it into the dirty floor while she watched helplessly and begged for its mercy.

  My name on the newsman’s lips jolted me out of my sandwich-stomping fantasy, and my head snapped to the TV screen. “…Daniels, suspected of murdering her eighteen-year-old boyfriend, son of prominent businessman Richard Westfield of Winston, Texas.” Then, taking up the whole screen, came a semi-profile shot of me with my eyes half-closed. It was so bad, I almost didn’t recognize myself.

  Cold sweat erupted over my entire body, and the black hole that had replaced my chest widened. I stood frozen like an ice sculpture, my brain struggling to grasp the magnitude of what I was seeing and hearing.

  Following my convict portrait was a very innocent and handsome looking picture of Logan, wearing a white dress shirt and blue tie that matched his… My legs went weak and I reached forward, gripping the wire frame of a candy rack. Oh God, his eyes; I’d never remember them like in that picture again. That memory had been erased. Replaced.

  I did my best to concentrate on the gum selection in front of me, but the newsman didn’t let up. “Logan Westfield was a recent high school graduate of Winston High, where he was captain of the football team, star quarterback, and class president. He had accepted a full athletic scholarship to the University of Texas and planned to major in business so he could join his father’s oil company.”

  A razor-sharp knot sliced from my stomach to my throat when I focused on the back of my right hand. There were ugly red scrapes on my knuckles I hadn’t noticed before. Battle marks—from a fight Logan lost. A fight we both lost.

  The clerk turned toward us while she loaded our food into a bag. “Ya’ll hear about that?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “Yeah, some dumb girl down in Texas killed ‘er boyfriend, only eighteen. Probably jealous over some other girl. I reckon she’ll get what’s comin’ to her, though. I hear she done messed with the wrong family, some big Texas oil man or somethin’,” she droned on in her heavy hillbilly dialect. “I ‘magine they’ll fry her.”

  Kat gave her a bored glance and countered, “Ah, maybe he just got what he deserved.”

  “Maybe, but they’ll still catch her and fry ‘er up like a cold tater.” She laugh-snorted.

  I wondered if food was the only thing that fat warthog ever thought about, which suddenly made me realize who she reminded me of—Pumbaa, from The Lion King.

  “Ya’ll should be on the lookout for her. I bet there’s gonna be a hefty reward,” she blundered on as she hacked off another piece of her rubberized meat stick. With her back still to the TV, the screen flashed pictures of Kat and Billi Jo, who were wanted for questioning, then back to me.

  My chest tightened like someone was squeezing it with a giant pair of vice grips. This wasn’t just about me anymore. My friends were in this, too. They’d committed crimes in order to help me. They’d put themselves in danger—for me.

  I inhaled, exhaled. Inhaled, exhaled. A continual motion to get me through this moment—to bide my time until I could walk instead of run out of this godforsaken store.

  Kat tapped her fingers on the countertop: a slow, easy rhythm that personified cool and calm. “I probably wouldn’t recognize her if I saw her.” She shrugged.

  “I would. Look at them shifty eyes of hers.” Pumbaa squinted at my TV picture while she polished her tusks on a grease-soaked napkin. “She’s guilty, alright.”

  Kat snapped up a pair of sunglasses off the cardboard rack beside the register and tossed them on the counter with our other purchases. The clerk pecked at the register a couple more times, then plunged her chubby finger onto one final button. When the register screen blinked $23.48, Kat counted out the money, slapped it onto the counter, then turned to leave.

  “Better stay off that bicycle,” the clerk garbled at me through a large gap in her front teeth.

  Demented cartoon images of Pumbaa the warthog and his little friend singing a song danced in my head. “Hakuna Matata,” I said through a tight smirk before Kat hooked her arm in mine. The words meant ‘no worries’, but the truth was, I had every worry in the world.

  Despite the nausea and fear of being a wanted fugitive, I managed to make it back to the car without passing out.

  “We’re on TV.” Kat broke the news
. “River’s in big trouble, and they’re looking for the rest of us for questioning.”

  “You’re lyin’,” Billi Jo said with a little too much enthusiasm. “How did we look?”

  “Like a bunch of criminals.”

  “What else did they say?”

  “Mostly just a bunch of horseshit about pretty boy Westfield and his well-to-do family.” Kat dumped the bag of food in the seat and grabbed the map. After studying it a minute, she pointed in the direction we needed to go. “It’s back roads for us, ladies. No more interstate.”

  My stomach burned like I’d swallowed bleach, and my limbs were numb and lifeless as I listened to them talk about me like I was a passenger instead of a participant. It wasn’t right; this whole situation was backwards. I was the one who’d made news headlines and narrowly escaped the detection of Pumbaa, the warthog super sleuth. I was the one who needed to fix this.

  “No, Kat, stop right here.” As she began to turn out of the parking lot, I swung the door open. “Let me out right here. This is crazy. I can’t drag you two along on this hell ride; you can go back home, and I’ll go on the run on my own.”

  “What? No.” Kat slammed on the breaks. “Only a few more hours to Vegas.”

  The thought of my friends getting in trouble for me made my insides churn. I didn’t want to go to jail, but I couldn’t let them run away with me. “I can’t drag you guys through this. I won’t. No way. I’m getting out.”

  Kat leaned across the back of her seat and grabbed my left arm, pulling me toward her.

  “I appreciate what you guys have done for me, but it has to end here.” I tried to wrench my arm free. “I care about you guys too much to let you pay for my sins.”

  “We care about you, too.” Billi Jo leaned her torso out the passenger window and grunted as she shoved my back door shut. “That’s why we’re in this with you.”

  Kat simultaneously released my arm and stomped on the gas, then met Billi Jo’s fist with a bump.

  “Oh, come on!” I hit the door with the back of my hand when Kat pulled out onto the main road.

  “We stick together, River.” Billi Jo lit a cigarette and passed it back to me. “It’s our thing.”

  I didn’t smoke, but on stressful occasions, I’d been known to take a puff or two.

  “Give me one good reason why you two would stick with me on this,” I said, then took a really long draw.

  “I’ll give you two.” Billi Jo twisted sideways in her seat to face me. “Remember a few years ago when my parents both got locked up for possession and my crazy-ass uncle moved in to watch over me? Only I was the one watching over him, because every Monday night he’d bring home his buddies after their GA meetings, and depending on who lost the poker game, I’d wake up to find shit missing from our house. I bitched for a month straight until my mom got out of jail. And then I quit bitching because he never left after convincing Mom that he offered another income.” She straightened her baby ring necklace. “You stuck by me that whole time.”

  “That was no big deal,” I said through a coughing fit.

  She snatched the cigarette she’d offered me. “It was a big deal to me.”

  “But—”

  “And number two.” Billi Jo blew smoke in my face. “Remember the last time I got caught with a bag of weed and the police threatened to send me to juvie? I was really scared and planning to run away, but you talked me out of it.”

  “You had a really bad plan.” I rolled my eyes. “Besides, I didn’t have the money to waste on gas driving to visit you every weekend.”

  Billi Jo gave me hound dog eyes. “Aww, you really would’ve driven two hours to see me every weekend?”

  I shook my head and mumbled, “I would’ve driven two hundred.”

  Billi Jo’s face lit up like a firecracker, and she reached for my hand.

  “Alright, you two are forcing me to get sentimental.” Kat ran her nails through her hair. “What about the time I was sick in bed with the pig flu and my mom was out of town? Who the hell else would’ve brought me homemade chicken noodle soup and cigarettes every day?”

  Billi Jo’s mouth dropped open as she stared at Kat. “Hey, I brought you homemade chicken noodle soup every day.”

  Kat glanced over at Billi Jo. “It doesn’t count as homemade if it comes from a can.”

  “Well, it said homemade on the label.”

  “Key word.” Kat fake-smiled. “Label.”

  “If you wanna get technical, you didn’t have the pig flu, either.”

  Kat lifted an eyebrow.

  “I’m talkin’ about how you holed up in your house for three days because you got into it with Drew what’s-his-stupid-face when he told the whole sixth grade class your mom was a home wrecker for breaking up his parents.”

  “You were in a different class that year; I didn’t think you knew.”

  “River and I both knew.” Billi Jo flicked her cigarette butt out the window. “Who do you think snuck into the locker room and put cayenne pepper in his jock strap?”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Billi Jo shrugged and turned to look out the side window, so Kat glanced at me in the rearview.

  I swallowed hard. “Because if we let on that we knew you weren’t really sick, just heartbroken, you wouldn’t have let us take care of you like you needed.”

  Kat’s glassy eyes met mine in the mirror for a second. “That right there, that’s what I’m talking about, River. That’s why we stick together.”

  I appreciated the stories, but this was so much bigger. “You guys—”

  “Let me spell it out for you, River.” Kat pulled the car over into the emergency lane and threw it in park. She turned to me, her eyes darkened storm clouds. “If you go out on your own, you will get caught. You will never be free. You will never get to be with your friends or family again. You’ll spend the rest of your days alone, locked in a jail cell.

  “As for us, none of us could live with that—especially knowing you’re innocent.” Kat’s forehead scrunched. “That’s why we’re going on the run, River. We’re going to figure something out, figure out a way to find evidence proving your innocence. Until then, we have to stick together.”

  “If I get caught,” my voice was barely above a whisper, “I’ll never see Jamie…or Justice again.”

  “If you don’t at least try, the only way you’re going to see them…” her eyes drifted away from mine, “is through bars.”

  I melted back into my seat and stared up at the vast sky, wishing I was the one with the view from Heaven.

  10

  SIN CITY

  “We’re here,” Kat announced as the bottom of the car scraped against the incline of a parking lot entryway. “Welcome to the Las Vegas strip.”

  I bolted upright. The neon lights and the rush of traffic noise were like stepping into a giant pinball machine. With wide eyes, we checked out the scenery. None of us had ever been out of northern Texas, much less to a big city like Vegas. I relaxed a little, realizing this was the perfect place to get lost. Finding us would be like finding a cold beer in a convent.

  Kat rubbed at her temples. “Now we have to find a motel—a cheap one.”

  After about thirty minutes of price-comparison shopping by way of motel signage, we lowered our standards and drove to a seedier part of town.

  Billi Jo tapped her hand over a yawn as she spoke, “How about we just sleep in the car tonight?”

  Kat rubbed her eyes. “Not tonight. We have some—” Kat jerked the steering wheel to the right, causing the tires to squeal and Billi Jo’s head to thump the passenger side window—“business to take care of.”

  Vacancy. The yellow neon light blinked beneath the Rockport Motel sign like a Welcome Home banner. I didn’t care that the pastel blue building looked like it had been built in the ‘50’s or that there were only two suspicious-looking vehicles in the parking lot—a shiny, white pimp ride and a refurbished ice cream truck that could’ve been doubling as a
serial killer getaway vehicle.

  Kat pulled into a space near the entrance, the front tires bouncing when she hit the sidewalk, and cut the engine. “You two sit tight. I’ll be right back.” She twisted the latch on the glove box, reached in, and pulled out the stack of money she’d ‘acquired’ from Mr. Hinkley’s gas station.

  “Kat,” I said as I eyed a pinch-faced bald man with a name tag entering an ‘employees only’ side entrance, “we’re not eighteen. You think they’ll rent us a room?”

  “Yep.” She got out of the car, slammed the door, and leaned in the rolled-down window. “I have this,” she fanned out the bills in her hand, “and this.” She tugged at her red tank top, exposing more of her ample cleavage.

  My apprehension vanished, and I sat back in my seat and relaxed. If there was one thing I didn’t have to worry about, it was Kat coercing the male species into giving her what she wanted.

  In less than five minutes, she returned with a key card in her hand. She drove the car around back and parked it, and we hauled in our bags. The scent of must and disinfectant spray filled my lungs, but I welcomed it. Actually, I welcomed the sight of a bed and the prospect of a shower, but it was a package deal.

  I dropped my duffle bag in front of the first bed I saw and flopped across it on my stomach, and Billi Jo followed me.

  “Listen up.” Kat dropped a newspaper in front of us and slung her suitcase on the other double bed. “I’m going to check out the grocery store down the street. While I’m gone, you two might want to check out the article on page five.”

  Shit. My lungs froze when I flipped to page five and saw my face. Holy shit, shit!

  The zipper on Kat’s suitcase squalled as she yanked it open. “See if they’re on our trail yet. Turn on the TV, too.” She rummaged through her suitcase, searching for something while Billi Jo and I plastered our faces to the story. “And hey,” the newspaper crinkled when Kat tapped it to get our attention, “get ready for some big changes when I get back.”

  “Whoa, where did you get that?” Billi Jo asked as she watched Kat tuck loose strands of her black hair into a platinum blonde, bob-style wig.