Don't Fail Me Now(41)
Since we have no way to get hot water, dinner tonight is an assortment of cheese and peanut butter crackers washed down with the last of a half gallon of grape Gatorade from Family Dollar. We eat sitting pretzel-legged on the beach, knee-to-knee in a tight circle to keep the wind from blowing sand onto our meager feast.
“We’ll get better food tomorrow,” I say, wiping my mouth with my wrist. “We’re not far from Oklahoma City, and they’ve got to have a mall.”
“Why do we have to go to the mall?” Leah asks, perking up.
“The food court,” I say. “You can get all kinds of stuff from the trays people leave behind.”
Leah wrinkles her nose. “So we’re, like, stealing people’s leftovers?”
“We have to eat,” Tim says.
“What about going to a Whole Foods and just eating the free samples?” Leah asks.
“We can do that, too,” I say. “Good thinking.” She smiles.
“They have free cookies at church!” Denny says. “But you have to sit through the boring part first.”
“Come Sunday, if we still need food, we’ll get some church cookies,” I promise.
“What day is it now?” Denny flops back onto his elbows and stares up at the moon, his eyelids starting to droop.
“Thursday,” Cass says.
“What do you think Mom and Jeff are doing now?” Leah asks softly, drawing her knees up to her chin, her question punctuated by a reedy chorus of literal crickets. With her hair tucked behind her sticking-out ears, she looks especially vulnerable. Just like Cass, she puts up such a tough front that it’s easy to forget she’s still a child.
Tim shakes his head. “I don’t know.”
“We should call them,” she says. “I don’t want them to worry.”
“I think it’s too late for that.” Tim’s jaw tenses, and he swigs the dregs of the Gatorade and then tosses the bottle like a football back onto the grass.
I wonder if Mom’s worrying about us, for reasons other than the bail money. I wonder if Aunt Sam will even tell her we’re gone. If I could call my mom in jail to tell her we were okay, would I? Or would I let her sweat it out, give her a taste of what it feels like to think the one person you’re supposed to count on might not be coming back?
“You can call them,” I say, standing up and rubbing the gooseflesh on my arms. “Be vague, but let them know you’re alive. Try to stall.” I actually feel sort of bad for the Harpers, alone in their giant house, their fancy home alarm blinking away, oblivious that any sense of security they had has been shattered.
I kiss Denny goodnight, promising that Cass will tuck him in and sing him to sleep with our “safe” song, Mom’s favorite oldie, the one she still has on vinyl tacked up to the living room wall years after she sold her parents’ record player, by the band with the impossibly ironic name the Mamas and the Papas. I try to hug Cass, but she darts out from under me before I can touch her. Typical.
? ? ?
Even though I’ve been acting like it’s no big deal, I’m not looking forward to sleeping in the car. I’ve never done an overnight before, just occasional naps between classes or back when I was much younger and Mom and Buck would take us on long, circuitous drives that featured lots of random stops but no identifiable destination. The vinyl upholstery on the backseat is ripped in three places; two are patched with curling silver duct tape, plus the surface of the seats are ribbed in this weird way that makes your butt hurt if you sit on them for too long. I never sleep well anyway, but this is a new low. I pull a sweatshirt off the floor, give it a sniff test (old French fries and body odor, check), and roll it into a makeshift pillow, then lie back and try to let the sound of giggling from inside the tent help me feel right again—as right as I can feel, anyway. Does anyone ever feel really great, or is that just a lie we all agreed to keep telling as a species?
There’s a knock on the window, and I look up to see Tim standing with a toothbrush jutting out of his mouth. I bet Denny gave it to him. That kid never met a cootie he didn’t like.
The front door handle lurches up and down a few times before Goldie finally lets him in with a metallic squeak.
“Hey,” he says, dropping the toothbrush in the cup holder, and then just kind of stands there frozen, bent awkwardly at the waist, half-in and half-out of the car. After a few seconds I realize I’m watching him realize that we’re basically sleeping on top of one another. Unless he folds himself into the trunk, which would require the removal of a number of ribs, he’ll have to recline the front seat so that his head is separated from my waist by just a few inches. Gasoline smell aside, a twin bed might be less intimate.
“It’s okay,” I say. “I know it’s tight, but if it’s any consolation, the sleep will be terrible.”
Tim’s face reddens as he breaks into a bashful grin. “Great,” he says. “Whenever I travel cross-country to see an estranged invalid, I like to arrive as unrefreshed as possible.” He sits down and slowly cranks himself to a semi-horizontal angle. “Sorry,” he says, looking over his right shoulder so he has the most flattering possible view of my chin and nostrils. “I know I don’t have any right to talk about him like that.”
“‘Estranged invalid’ isn’t trash talk; it’s a fact,” I say.