Don't Fail Me Now(45)

“Is that right?” I put my hands on my hips and look at him expectantly.

“I’ll have you know that after junior semiformal I drank three rum and Cokes and ended up sleeping in a stranger’s hammock.”

I grin in spite of myself. “Hey!” I yell to a passing pickup truck, pointing at Tim. “Public enemy number one right here!” The driver, an elderly man wearing a baseball cap, frowns in confusion.

“Is that your sales pitch?” Tim laughs. “No wonder you can’t get anyone to stop.”

“Shut up.”

“Maybe you should show a little leg, like in It Happened One Night.”

“What happened one night?”

“It’s just this movie,” he says, smiling. “It’s old. This reporter and this socialite end up traveling together and—”

“He’s a raging misogynist?”

“What? No! He’s Clark Gable.”

“But he makes her pimp herself out to stop a car?”

“He doesn’t make her. It’s her idea.”

“Yeah.” I shake my head, looking back out at the empty highway. “That’s not my style.”

“I know! I was kidding. It was stupid. I’m sorry.”

I cross my arms and level my eyes at him. The sweat’s slowly crawling down the back of my neck now. “Why don’t you show some skin?”

Tim raises his eyebrows. “What?”

“Show off that a cappella body. And get some color so you look less like end-of-life MJ.”

“MJ?” he asks.

“Michael Jackson,” I clarify. “Please tell me you’ve heard of him.”

Tim puts his hand in his pockets and looks down at the ground, and I’m about to really lay into him when he executes a perfect moonwalk, his face suddenly all kinds of smug. In response, I launch into the “Thriller” dance, which Cass and I taught ourselves the summer MJ died, when Denny was a newborn and all Mom wanted to do was sit on the couch and watch tribute concerts on TV.

Neither of us notice the white SUV pulling up alongside Goldie until it stops a few feet away and a short-haired, middle-aged woman with wraparound sunglasses and aggressive highlights peers out from her window.

“Car trouble, or y’all having a dance-off?” she asks with a friendly smile.

“Oh!” I wipe the damp hair off my face and try to smile through my humiliation. “A little of both.”

“We were driving our brother and sisters to school when we ran out of gas,” Tim jumps in, his dimple in full effect. “My mom told me it was low, but I thought we could make it. We’ve been stalled here for over an hour now, and we’re really late.” He could have more conviction in the delivery, but I have to hand it to him: His body language is great. He’s leaning a little against her car, like he’s so exhausted he can barely stand, even though he’s wisely keeping a nonthreatening distance at the same time. I try to look pained, like the thought of missing school is unspeakably awful, when the truth is that I haven’t thought twice about it since I made that U-turn Wednesday morning.

“Oh, honey, nobody’s stopped?” the woman asks. Her voice has a slight drawl to it, which for some reason makes me think of pie. It’s probably all those cooking shows. “Did you call your mom?”

“Uh . . .” Tim looks at me, and I feel a pang of shame at not having talked to my real mom yet. “We left her a few messages,” I improvise, “but she had a big meeting this morning, so she probably hasn’t checked. Anyway, I called school, and they know and we’re all fine but . . .” I give Tim a look, and he picks up right where I left off, like we’ve been practicing this grift for years.

“If you could let us siphon some of your gas, we have our own pump, and we’d be happy to pay you for it,” he says. “We only need a gallon or two to get us there, and then we can figure it out, call a tow or something.”

I look hopefully into our reflection in her sunglasses, holding my breath.

“Well, no,” the woman says. “I will not take your money.” I feel Tim exhale at the same time I do. “And I will not give you a gallon and then just leave y’all to fend for yourselves. I just filled up, so you take what you need.”

“Are you sure we can’t give you a few dollars?” I ask.

“Please,” she says. “If you were my kids I’d want someone to do this for them, so consider it a gift.” She raises an eyebrow. “And listen to your mother next time!”

“Yes, ma’am,” Tim says and jogs over to Goldie to get the pump. He’s the only one who knows how to work it, so I fall back and watch as he makes charming chitchat with the woman while he fills up our two-and-a-half-gallon container. When it’s full, I see her gesticulate out the window, and he comes back over with a shocked smile on his face.

“She says she won’t leave until I fill up at least two more times,” he says, pouring the gas into Goldie’s tank. I grin into my fists in the shadow of the rear bumper.

Our success puts me in such a good mood that on the way to Oklahoma City I try to make surviving for the next few days into a fun game, more like Extreme Cheapskates than Lord of the Flies. “Each of us has to come up with our own way to score free food or goods,” I say, shouting a little over Goldie’s now constant clanging. “The only ground rules are no stealing—if it has value, it has to be given to you willingly—and no straight-up begging for money.” I have nothing against panhandlers—hey, you do what you gotta do—but I want to save that as a last resort.