Gray consulted the map on his phone. “If we walk north through the woods, we can get to Highway 6 in maybe three hours. Then we can hitch the 6.” He looked closer at the map. “We take the 6 all the way to County Road 5. Then it’s not far to Deerhead — we could walk that part. Once we’re in the area, we can ask around, look for Jocelyn and your sister.”
“Sounds good.” I adjusted my backpack and stepped towards the woods. “Let’s go.”
We headed into the trees together and waded into the brush. Then we tripped over the same hidden stump, stumbled into each other, reeled apart, and burst out laughing.
THE GOING WAS HARD. Surprisingly hard. One minute we’d be hiking up crumbling hills, the next sinking to our knees in a ditch of mushy underbrush. We pushed through the tangled boughs of evergreens, then passed easily through open stands of spring-budding trees. Sometimes we had to cross private property. We scaled wire-and-wood-post fences that marked the limits and prayed we wouldn’t cut ourselves.
We tried to stay parallel to the road so we wouldn’t lose our way. The hiss of tires on pavement as the occasional car traveled by made us feel somewhat less alone. But it also reminded us that we were pretty much alone.
The fragrance of green lifted me in a way I hadn’t expected, binding me to where I was in each moment. This footfall, this cedar copse, this leafless branch, this patch of sky.
“So what’s your message?” Gray said after an hour of hike-focused silence.
“What do you mean?”
“Messenger 93. What’s your message?”
The idea of telling him about the crow intrigued me. What would he say about it?
“You want to know how it happened?”
“Hell yeah.”
I geared myself up. Gray wasn’t Boyd or Remy or Anusha or Trevor.
“It started in a dream — this crow flying to me,” I said. “But when I woke up, there was a real crow in my room. Or it looked real. It talked to me. I heard it clearly. It called me Messenger 93. Said I have seven days to find Krista. If I don’t find her, she’s going to fall.”
“Seven days?” Gray repeated ominously.
“And every night it comes back and counts down the days. She will fall in six days. She will fall in five days. She will fall in four days.”
“Hold up —” Gray said, kind of bouncing his steps as we walked on. “What does fall mean?”
“I don’t know. I thought, you know, like, fall. Like —” I didn’t want to say the word, but this was Gray and I had to. Die.”
“But fall can mean a lot of things.”
I couldn’t think of a single other meaning.
“Fall asleep,” he said, bouncing along, playing. “Fall down. Fall out with someone. Fall prey to something.”
“Fall under a spell,” I said, wanting to play too. Wanting it to be a fun and easy answer.
He leaned dramatically towards me. “You can fall for someone.”
That made me laugh out loud. I wanted to pull him to me, to wonder together about that meaning.
I said, “I know it sounds crazy.” Maybe I’d be repeating that line for the rest of my life. “But I swear that’s how it happened. The crow came to me before I knew Krista had run away. That’s why I started looking into how they were handling her case — the searches and all that. And when I went to the police station to talk to Detective Stanzi — you showed up.” Gray looked slightly amazed. “You were searching for a missing girl too. And you had that crow on your back.” I pointed at the hoodie he was wearing under his raincoat. “And that tattoo on your neck.”
He gave a small astonished laugh. “That is — whoa — that is weird.”
“I know, right?”
We were walking hard, but he watched me too, and his look was so intent, so interested, it made me lightheaded.
“Do you have a message for me?” he said. My answer was a dorky laugh, and he pushed my arm lightly. “Come on, with a name like that you gotta hand out some kind of message.”
I pretended to think, but his message came to me right away. I psyched myself up to say it, to not care if it got me into trouble. “I think you’re really talented and you could be a big star.”
“You mean my music? How do you know about that?”
I cringed. I hadn’t told him about being with him when he was trying to sell his song.
“Ah,” he said, calculating it on his own. “You followed me from the police station that day. That’s how you knew about the knife.” He patted his left forearm.
“Yeah.”
“But I don’t want to be a star.” He turned to observe me. It was like he was analyzing my deepest self. “Maybe you want to be a star. Maybe that’s what this is about.”
He didn’t say it to hurt me, but it was a slap. I tried to walk ahead, but he stuck to my side, sidestepping roots and rocks.
“I mean,” he said, “everyone wants to be special.”
“Do they?” I stared ahead into the woods, hoping he wouldn’t notice my glowing cheeks. I didn’t want to be a star. That was the last thing I wanted to be.
He started playing drumbeats on the front of his raincoat.
“You wanna matter. Wanna be here.
You carve scars here.
Scars, they persist.
I wanna live life.
Wanna be here.
Don’t need a star here, to prove I exist.”
I smiled despite myself. “Ow,” I said, miming a shot to the heart.
“No, no, that’s not about you,” he said, super-casual. “Just trying out some new lyrics. I’m so talented, right?” He grinned at me and it made me warm.
“Message Girl, she a fly girl.
The crow fly by and speak.
Message Bird, catch her eye, bird.
Share the prophecy.”
“You see?” I said, smiling wide. “You’re so good!”
He laughed. Then turned to me and got serious again. “I mean — What if it works? What if the messages actually show you the way?”
A hum started up in my chest. “It would be incredible.”
“Yeah. No kidding.”
As we walked on, I marveled at the possibility. Gray seemed to marvel too.
IT TOOK FIVE-AND-A-HALF HOURS to arrive at the intersection of the 6. We burst out of the woods in the same way we’d entered them, blinking against the change of light and feeling suddenly out of place.
We stopped to drink from our water bottles. Gray pulled granola bars and mixed nuts from his backpack. I was so lucky he’d prepared to camp. Hunger was a bear.
When we were done eating, we made our way to the eastbound shoulder of the two-lane highway and began the next leg of the hike, this time hoping for a ride. The road was mostly straight so if a car or truck passed, we’d have plenty of time to face oncoming traffic and wave them down. But it was deserted, and so we kept walking.
Each bone in my feet was scrunched and pleading. The pain traveled relentlessly up. My calves burned next. Then my thighs. Soon every one of my muscles cramped and screamed at me. My body begged me to stop moving, to lie down, anywhere, even right on the pavement.
I hadn’t trained for this. Had never walked so long or so hard. Had never spent so much time carrying a backpack. But I couldn’t say a word about it. I didn’t want Gray to know what a lightweight I was.
Gray trudged ahead of me, his shoulders pressed forward, his head bowed. He’d changed out of the raincoat he’d been wearing earlier and into his hoodie and tweed cap. His backpack was strapped over the luminescent crow. Exactly like when I first followed him.
Except this time he knew I was there, close behind him. This time, I wasn’t scared.
3
WE WALKED THE HIGHWAY for another half hour — an ever-expanding sponge of grueling time — when a semi rolled i
nto view over the horizon. Gray and I shared a half-smile before we turned to it and held out our thumbs.
The truck trundled through the distance and towards us, slightly dipping and rising over the contours of the road. I tried to shake a growing sense of dread as it neared, tried not to read anything ominous in the way dust swirled up around it and clouded the front grille. I told myself that it was just my usual nerves at anything outside my usual boring experience. Gray didn’t seem worried — he was behind me, mumbling a stream of wishes, “Come on, man, stop for us. Stop. All you gotta do is slow down, pull over, let us in. Come on, buddy. Take us where we need to go.”
As the truck passed by, we waved and called out, cheering, begging, even while the long trailer shook the asphalt and roared in our ears, even as dust and gravel lashed up at our faces. It took us a few seconds to understand that he was slowing down and easing over to the side and rolling to a stop. The rear lights blinked into hazard-mode, and we took it as a personal greeting. Gray and I whooped and high-fived and ran to the passenger side of the cab.
But when we got there, we didn’t know what to do. Was a hitchhiker supposed to go ahead and open the door, or were we supposed to wait for the door to be opened? Wasn’t there a possibility that he hadn’t stopped for us? We checked with each other and hesitated, pacing the narrow space between the truck and the scrub, nudging each other to make the first move. Finally, the passenger door opened from the inside and a soft white face peered out. “You girls gonna stand out there all day?”
Gray and I laughed. I was the first to jump on the running board and hop into the cab. “Hey sir,” I said in as friendly a voice as I could offer. “Thank you so much for stopping.”
The trucker wasn’t wearing a coat and his arms were bare and sticking out of a worn tee that didn’t cover his belly. A few exposed, hairy inches cleaved the space between his clothed parts. He grinned at me and his cheeks crowded out his eyes. His lips were wet and cherry red. “Pleasure is mine,” he said. His tone was jovial and welcoming, and that was a relief.
I settled onto the bench and dumped my backpack at my feet, and Gray hopped up beside me and did the same. “Thanks, mister,” Gray said. “Appreciate it.”
The trucker’s smile faltered. “Hey,” he said, “I thought you two was both girls.” He looked from one to the other of us and jutted his chin.
“Nope,” Gray said, trying to match the guy’s jovial tone. The lowness of his voice made the mistake almost funny.
The trucker sized us up. “Where y’all headed?” It sounded like he was going to change his mind. “’Cause we’ll see how far I can take ya.” He put the truck into gear and rolled forward.
“We’re only going as far as County Road 5, if that works for you.” Gray gave him a friendly, easy smile.
“County Road 5,” the trucker said, looking ahead as he gained the road and pulled up to speed. “County Road 5,” he repeated.
Gray took out his phone and pulled up the map. He angled it into the trucker’s line of sight. “Don’t know if you can see this,” he said, drawing a line across the screen. “This is where we want to go.”
“Oh, the exit to Deerhead. Gotcha.” The trucker thumped the steering wheel. “That’s not too far. An hour and a half, give or take.” He threw us a knowing grin. “You kids headed down to the national park? Gonna do it under the stars?”
“Yeah,” Gray said, settling back. “We’re camping in the park.”
I refused to get sucked into visions of us doing it under the stars. I could almost feel the warmth of Gray’s mouth on mine, the tingle of our lips connecting.
Gray crossed his arms over his chest and closed his eyes.
Sleep — it was a tempting possibility. The cab was warm and the gentle jostling was already lulling me. The weight of my exhausted limbs released into the upholstered bench. Was it safe to fall under? I glanced at the man beside me, so close we could have bumped thighs. He caught me checking him out and threw me a grin, as if to say we were on the same page or something. I smiled back, then quickly copied Gray’s pose — settled in, arms crossed, eyes closed. I had no intention of falling asleep, but maybe I would pretend and it would give me a place to hide for a few minutes.
“HEY, YOU WANT A beer?” His voice was alarmingly loud in my ear. I jolted out of deep sleep and opened my eyes. The trucker’s arm was knocking against mine, and the neck of an uncapped bottle was gripped in his hand. I noticed there was an empty rolling around at his feet. The yeasty smell filled my nose.
“No thanks,” I said. The clock on the dashboard indicated we’d been driving for over an hour. My head felt woozy. Why had he let us sleep for so long? I noticed a slight splay in my legs and instinctively rammed my legs together and laid my hand over my thighs. I nudged Gray to wake him and he was startled and looked around, blinking his eyes.
“What about you, kid?” The trucker reached the bottle across me and I had to lean into Gray so the guy’s arm wouldn’t brush my chest.
Gray looked at the beer. “You sure that’s a good idea?”
“You judging me?” The trucker’s face collapsed, his grinning mouth and soft cheeks melting into an exaggerated frown. “I offer you a ride and you sandbag the whole way and then you judge me?”
“Sorry,” Gray said, holding his hands up in surrender. He checked through the windshield. Twilight was setting in. Clouds with no beginning or end covered the sky. “You’re making good time though, hey?”
The trucker harrumphed and brought the beer to his lips and took a long swig. When he pulled the bottle away, he was still scowling. “Thumbers never say no to a drink when I pick ’em up.”
My arm was aligned against Gray’s and I could feel him tense. Gray said, “You pick up a lot of girls out here?”
“Some.” The trucker drew his bottle in a circle. “The pavement princesses, the ones hustling for cash, I stay away from those.” He nudged me and I tried not to shrink back. “But the Alice in Wonderlands, those I pick up.”
“Alice in Wonderlands?” I said.
“The sweet ones,” he said like it was obvious. “Like you.” He winked at me and thumped my thigh with the bottom of his beer.
Gray said, “Runaways?”
“Sure.” The trucker nodded. “Trying to get someplace nice.”
Gray and I exchanged a glance. “And where’s nice around here?”
The trucker eyed us. “You two running away?”
“Maybe,” Gray said. He was mesmerizingly calm. “If we were, where would we go?”
The trucker grunt-laughed and shook his head. “Most of ’em wanna get to a city. North, south, east, west, pick one.” He took another long slug of beer and contemplated the road ahead. “Just don’t get an Alice crying though. Because if you do, man, she don’t stop.” He grinned at us, unfurling the red, wet inside of his bottom lip. “But they’re eye candy,” he shrugged, “so who am I to say shut up?” He let out a howl of laughter and Gray and I pretended to laugh along.
I waited until our merriment dropped off. “Do any of them ever go to Deerhead?”
The trucker frowned. “Nothing in Deerhead as far as I know.”
I glanced at Gray to warn him I was about to show my hand, and he blinked in agreement. I tried to keep my voice steady. “You pick up a girl in the last few days? A bit taller than me. White. Dark blond hair.”
He looked me over. “You lose someone?”
“Her name is Krista. She’s young, pretty.” I hesitated, almost gave him the wrong information, then said, “She’s my sister.”
“You got a pretty sister?” He grinned at me. His pupils dilated, his tongue darted over his lips. I tried not to recoil. “That I’d like to see.”
“So you never ran into her?”
He raised his beer-holding hand. “Think I’d remember.”
I was unreasonably disappointed. Because
it was possible that Krista had hitchhiked from one city to another. It was infinitesimally possible that I was following her escape route and had stumbled into her mode of transport. Messenger 93 and all.
“I guess you wanna find her?” he said, turning to me again, grinning again. I tried to keep my expression innocent. “You really do. I can see it.” He was grinning so hard his eyes almost disappeared into the pods of his cheeks.
Gray searched through his phone until he found the picture of Jocelyn. He made sure to zoom in on her face to avoid showing her frilly top or her bare legs on the bed. “What about her?” he said, angling the screen so the trucker could see it.
The trucker slammed his back against his seat. “Bingo!” He pointed his beer bottle at Jocelyn’s face. “That’s bingo right there!”
Gray pulled his phone back so quickly it was like a recoil button. I could feel him shudder, like he’d shown something he shouldn’t have. “So you’ve seen her?”
“I’m saying I’d pay to see her.” He thumped the steering wheel with his beer-less hand.
“So, you haven’t?” Gray said, barely masking the anger in his voice.
“I’ll tell ya something, if a bunch of pretty girls are partying in the woods right now, that’d be worth a late slip.” He took a slurp of beer, then wiped his mouth. “For the right price, I’d help you look for ’em.”
“That’s okay,” Gray said, playing nice again, speaking as if we were just having an ordinary conversation. “But thank you.”
The trucker pointed his bottle at the remote landscape outside the windshield. “Get ’em where they wanna go. Take care of ’em. That’s what I do.”
“Yeah?” I said, trying to keep it friendly.
“No one protects ’em,” he said. Fumes of his beery breath wafted over me. A snare I couldn’t get out of. “That’s the lie they tell Alice.” He was serious now, getting worked up. “That Daddy is gonna protect ’em.” He shook his head mournfully. “Daddy never does. He turns his back is what he does.” He thumped his beer against his chest. “But I do. I protect ’em.”
A buzz of apprehension jolted through me. “Nice,” I said, trying to ignore it.
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