The Bones Beneath My Skin

by TJ Klune

  This.

  This was outside of the order Nathaniel Cartwright knew.

  This was in a realm of chaos, and he couldn’t find his way out of it.

  Art still stared at him anyway.

  He didn’t know if she was reading his mind.

  He didn’t know if she could read his mind.

  He didn’t know what she could do.

  Alex stared straight ahead, the ever-present scowl deep on his face.

  Nate found himself not giving two shits right at that moment.

  So it was surprising when he was finally able to find his voice again. He hadn’t been expecting it. He was still lost in the storm in his head. But then he opened his mouth and said, “Pull over.”

  Alex looked startled. “We don’t have time—”

  “Pull over.”

  “Nate, I can’t—”

  “Pull over!” he bellowed, slamming his hands against the dashboard, fingers grazing the imprints left by the girl sitting next to him. “Pull over! Pull over! Pull—”

  “Do it,” Art said, cocking her head at Nate. “Please.”

  Alex snarled at her but did as she asked. There was a pull-off up ahead on the right, a widening of the road meant for slower vehicles to stop and let others pass. Nate was out of the truck even before it had stopped moving, stumbling a little as his feet hit the pavement. His legs felt numb—hell, his entire body was numb—and he was sure he’d go down. Somehow he was able to remain upright. He sucked in great gasps of air, trying to fill his lungs as much as possible, chest expanding so much that it almost hurt.

  “I think he’s hyperventilating,” he heard Art say from inside the truck, and he struggled to not start laughing hysterically. If he did, he’d probably never stop. “I saw someone do that once in front of me. It was before you.”

  He didn’t hear Alex’s response because he was walking around the back of the truck, squinting against the brightness of the taillights. Nate crossed the blacktop to the other side of the highway until he hit the opposite guardrail. He put his hands on it. The metal was cold against his skin. It was almost shocking, and it grounded him.

  He breathed in through his nose and out through his mouth.

  Below him, he could see the forest stretching out, the canopy blocking his view of the ground. The sun had mostly set, the sky orange and fading toward the darkest blue. Stars were beginning to appear overhead and—

  So later, after we escape the bad men with the guns and the helicopters, we probably should tell you that I’m pretty much not from around here. And by around here, I mean this planet.

  That set him off all over again.

  He wasn’t sure how long he’d been bent over, gagging even though nothing was coming up, when he felt a hand on his back. He flinched against the touch, but it was firm and warm, rubbing in a slow circle.

  It wasn’t the hand of a little girl.

  He opened his eyes.

  Alex stood next to him, a wary look on his face. One hand was on Nate, the other held a water bottle.

  “That for me?” Nate asked hoarsely.

  “Figured you needed it. Bad taste in your mouth.”

  Nate nodded. He took the water bottle but didn’t open it. Not yet. “Art?”

  “In the truck. She’s… She didn’t want to make it worse.”

  Nate appreciated that.

  “Are you attached to the truck?”

  Nate didn’t know what that meant. “What?”

  “The truck. You said… your parents. They left it to you. After they died.”

  “Yeah. Right. I don’t—”

  “We need to get rid of it.”

  “I don’t understand.” He was breathing evenly now, but the world was still blurred around the edges like he was caught in a dream.

  “They know what to look for. The plates. The make and model. It’ll be easy for them to track us. They’ll put out a BOLO to the local cops.”

  That… wasn’t helping Nate feel any better. “You’re saying we have to ditch it.”

  “Yes.”

  “And then… what?”

  “Find another car.”

  “You mean steal one.”

  “Yes.”

  Nate stepped away from him. Alex’s hand fell back to his side. “But that’s illegal.”

  Alex stared at him. “That’s not a priority right now.”

  “Right,” Nate said, feeling the panic starting to rise again. “My bad. I forgot. What’s grand theft auto in the face of a little girl lifting three-thousand-pound vehicles and throwing them at helicopters.”

  “Exactly. I’m glad we’re on the same page. You should drink the water.”

  For a split second, Nate thought about chucking the water bottle at Alex’s head, just to be defiant. It was a close thing.

  He opened the water bottle instead.

  The water felt good going down.

  His mouth still tasted bitter, but there wasn’t much he could do about that now.

  He had questions. Of course he did. Too many of them. He didn’t know where to start. He needed answers. He was rational. He liked things in order. If there was a mystery, he could solve it, because everything could be solved if you went after it long enough. He was tenacious. Once he got that itch under his skin, he would pick at it until it bled just to see how far it went.

  But for the life of him, he couldn’t find the words now. “No. The truck. It’s not—it doesn’t mean anything.”

  “Good,” Alex said.

  “What if I’d said it had? Meant something, that is.”

  Alex shrugged. “I would have told you that you needed to get over it.”

  “You’re an asshole.”

  “I know.”

  He had to ask something. “What is—”

  Alex shook his head. “Not now. We have to keep moving. Later. Okay?”

  No. That wasn’t okay. Nothing about this was okay. But Nate nodded.

  Alex went back to the truck. Nate could see Art watching him through the windshield.

  He could run. Right now. While Alex was distracted, he could run. He wasn’t in the greatest of shape, but he could be fast when he needed to. Head back toward where they’d come from. Back toward the soldiers. Because soldiers were good, right? They were good people who did brave things and Nate could trust them. They would take him in, and everything would make sense again.

  He glanced back down the road.

  He wondered what had happened to the helicopters. If they’d crashed.

  Like that helicopter in California. During the training exercise that wasn’t a training exercise.

  Something big happened there, Ruth whispered in his ear. Something that no one outside is supposed to know about.

  So many questions.

  A mystery.

  An itch under his skin.

  He didn’t run down the road.

  He went to the truck.

  Art was smiling at him as he opened the passenger door. “You made the right choice.”

  He didn’t know what to say to that.

  There was a bar, a roadhouse in the middle of nowhere. Nate didn’t know where they were. The sun was long gone.

  A cluster of motorcycles was parked outside the bar. A few trucks. Old neon signs hung on splintered wood, buzzing brightly in the dark. Loud music came from inside, drums and guitars.

  “How quaint,” Art said. “Maybe we should go inside. We’ve been on the trail a long time. I sure could use a sarsaparilla.”

  “We’re not going inside,” Alex said.

  She folded her arms and pouted. “You never let me do anything fun.”

  He ignored her. “That one,” he said. “Near the back. The Chevy C/K.”

  “Why that one?” Nate asked, peering out into the dark. It looked old. It had a black paint job that had seen better days. The hood was rusted. The tires looked a little low. There was a Confederate flag in the ba
ck window. It was everything Nate thought you’d find in a backwoods bar in the middle of the mountains.

  “Dust on the windshield.”

  “And?”

  “It hasn’t been moved in a few days.”

  “Maybe because it doesn’t work.”

  “We’ll find out.”

  “We don’t even have keys for it.”

  “Have you never stolen a car before?” Art asked, squinting up at him.

  “No,” Nate said. “Never really came up.”

  “Oh. Well. We won’t need the keys. I can hotwire it. Alex taught me.”

  Nate didn’t know what to do with that. So he did nothing.

  Alex pulled the truck into the gravel parking lot, turning off the headlights. There was no one outside the bar. They drove toward the back and stopped when they were next to the C/K. Alex put the truck in park. “Art and I will take the Chevy. Nate, you take the truck. Follow us out of here, and we’ll stop farther down the road and transfer everything.”

  “Don’t drive away,” Art said, eyes wide as she stared at Nate. “If you do, there is nowhere you can run where I couldn’t find you.”

  Nate gaped at her.

  “Knock it off,” Alex said, cuffing the back of her head.

  “I was just kidding!”

  “Does he look like he knows that?”

  “It’s not my fault Nate’s mind is being expanded in ways he never expected. The same thing happened to you when—”

  “Let’s go.”

  Art grumbled under her breath as she followed Alex out of the truck, scooching along the seat. Alex helped her down, and she took off toward the C/K. Before he closed the door, Alex looked back at Nate. “She’s just joking.”

  Nate nodded dumbly.

  “But don’t drive away. Because I will find you.”

  Nate nodded again.

  Alex closed the door.

  Nate shifted across the bench seat. He put his hands on the steering wheel.

  He almost drove away.

  Instead, he watched Alex and Art through the windshield. They stood on the driver’s side of the C/K. Alex lifted the handle. It was locked. He said something to Art, but Nate couldn’t hear. He picked her up, lifting her to the door. Art put her hand on the handle. There was a beat where she didn’t move, and then she pulled the handle.

  The door opened.

  She grinned up at Alex.

  Nate almost drove away again.

  Art climbed into the truck through the driver’s door, all awkward limbs as she went from one seat to the other. Alex followed her, closing the C/K’s door behind him. He almost looked too big to fit in the truck. Both Art and Alex bent over the front console, arms moving.

  A moment later, the truck roared to life.

  Art sat back up and gave Nate a thumbs-up through the window.

  Nate didn’t give a thumbs-up back. He didn’t know how to act toward a girl who could stop bullets in midair.

  And yet, when they pulled out of the gravel parking lot, Nate followed the taillights in front of him.

  His skin was itching something awful.

  “Should we say something?” Art asked.

  She was standing next to Nate, who was staring at his father’s truck. Alex was transferring everything to the C/K. The bar was miles behind them. They had stopped outside of a town called Mason’s Corner. There was a bridge that went over a river. The embankments were steep.

  Art tugged on his hand.

  He looked down at her.

  “Should we say something?” she asked again.

  “About what?”

  “Your truck.”

  “Why?”

  She frowned. “Because we have to leave it behind. Like we left the cabin.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “These things were your things. That were given to you. And now they’re being taken away from you.”

  He struggled to find the right words. He wondered if he should be speaking to her at all. “It’s not… that isn’t what—” He sighed. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Why?”

  “They’re just… things. I don’t know if I would have kept them anyway.”

  “Those photographs on the wall. You don’t miss them?”

  He shook his head. “That was… an old life. One that’s not mine, not anymore. It didn’t—I don’t know that it ever belonged to me. It wasn’t real.”

  “Because it’s just… things.”

  “Yes.”

  She nodded slowly. “I think I get that.” She glanced at Alex. “He’s not just a thing. He’s not a photograph. He’s real. He’s mine. That’s why I take him with me.” She tugged on his hand again, her hand so small in his. “And that’s why we took you with us. Can I tell you a secret?”

  Nate didn’t know if he could handle another secret. He was struggling with the last one. “Uh—”

  “I took some of your books.”

  “Oh… kay?”

  “I put them in my bag.”

  “That’s… fine.”

  “I felt bad about it.”

  “You… can feel bad?”

  She grinned up at him. “Oh sure. I can feel lots of things. I feel so bad right now. But I really wanted the books, and I knew if we had to leave fast, there wouldn’t be time, so I kept putting books in the bag Alex got for me. Sorry. Wow. I feel better. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome?”

  Alex finished transferring everything they had left to the C/K. He told them to get in the truck, but Art shook her head. “We have to say something.”

  “About what?” He was scowling again.

  “About the truck. Nate is sad because we have to leave it behind, and he doesn’t have anything left besides us.”

  Alex got a strange look on his face.

  “I’m not sad,” Nate said, pulling his hand from Art’s.

  “Kind of sad,” Art said. “If you don’t want to, I can. Dear Truck, thank you for helping us escape the bandits trying to take over our valley—”

  “And that’s enough,” Alex said. “We need to move. Nate, put the truck in neutral.”

  “Why?” Nate asked. “Aren’t we just going to leave it—”

  “We’re going to crash it,” Art said gleefully.

  And that’s exactly what they did. Nate, against his better judgment, put the truck in neutral. He pushed against the open door. Alex was at the rear of the truck, hands flat against the tailgate. Art helped by pushing Alex’s legs.

  The truck rolled forward.

  It was easier than Nate expected it to be. One moment the truck began to roll, and the next, it was gone over the edge. They watched as it bounced down the hill, knocking down young trees. Somehow, it didn’t flip. It ended nose down in the river below.

  “I thought there’d be an explosion,” Art said mournfully. “I set my expectations far too high.”

  “Are you okay?” Alex asked him.

  “I have no idea,” Nate said, staring down at his father’s truck.

  They didn’t stop until the sky was beginning to lighten the next morning. And even then, it was only because Art told Alex that if he fell asleep at the wheel and killed them all, it’d defeat the purpose of running away from the soldiers and the helicopters. Alex looked as if he was going to try and argue but ended up yawning instead.

  “See?” Art said. “Nate doesn’t want to die either. Right, Nate?”

  “Right,” Nate said.

  “Fine,” Alex muttered. “I’ll find something.”

  There was an old motel that had seen far better days, but the VACANCY sign was lit up, and Nate’s eyes felt as if they were filled with sand. He didn’t think he’d sleep, but he needed to get out of the truck for a little while before he cracked in two.

  Alex told them to wait in the truck.

  “Do you even have money?” Nate blurted. “You can just take my card and—”
<
br />   Alex snorted. “You can’t use your cards. Ever. In fact, you need to get rid of them. Everything is cash only from this point on.”

  Nate blinked. “Why?”

  “Because a credit card can be tracked,” Alex said slowly, as if he thought Nate was an idiot. “And the whole point of this is to not be tracked. I have money. It’ll last. For now.”

  He shut the door behind him, leaving Art and Nate in the semidark.

  What happened when this was all over? He could go back to… whatever his life had been before, right? Yeah, he’d been living a half life the past couple of months. But the whole goddamn point of coming to Oregon was to find his way again. When he couldn’t sleep back in his last days in DC, he imagined how things could be. He’d move to the cabin at Herschel Lake and find some way to grieve. For himself, his parents, the remains of a once-promising career. And when he’d finished, maybe he’d make his way back down to Roseland. He’d find a job in one of the shops. He’d become a townie. Or maybe he’d go a couple of towns over and work at the local newspaper, a weekly thing whose biggest stories were about Roseland getting a new traffic light or how a local 4-H club member raised a goat that won the blue ribbon at the Douglas County fair.

  They were small dreams. They were the dreams of a man who couldn’t fall asleep and thought about the best possible ending for himself after all that had happened.

  “He’s very good at this,” Art told Nate after a few minutes of silence. “So you don’t need to worry.”

  “I’m not worried.”

  “A little worried. You keep twitching.”

  “I’m not—it’s fine.”

  “I like motels.”

  “Great. Wonderful.”

  “Do you think anyone has ever committed suicide here?”

  Nate closed his eyes and wondered if there was any going back.

  The room was… well. The nicest thing Nate could think to say was that it had four walls and a ceiling. There were two twin beds, one of which had a metal coin slot and a sign that promised MAGIC FINGERS for a quarter. There was a bland painting of a bowl of fruit on the wall, a TV with a layer of dust on the screen, and bright blue carpet with a large stain in the far corner that Nate decided he would ignore for the duration of their stay.