The Book of Unknown Americans(69)

Outside, the wind howled, and every few minutes a car crept by with its high beams on. The snow will let up soon, I told myself. At least, I hoped so. I mean, I really hoped this wasn’t the start of some blizzard that was going to bury us alive on the side of the road. I got a little freaked out at the thought of it and started wondering whether there was a flashlight in the glove compartment and how long two people could survive on a handful of Starbursts. But then I told myself to relax. We were, like, a few hundred feet from the nearest house. It wasn’t exactly the tundra.

The heaviest part of the storm passed eventually, but I have no idea when. I fell asleep, too, waking myself up when my head rolled onto the horn, which let out a long honk that cut through the night air. At the sound of it, Maribel startled.

“Where are we?” she asked.

“We’re in the car,” I said. My breath tasted sour, and I turned my head so she wouldn’t catch a whiff of it.

“But where are we?”

“We were on our way home, but the snow was crazy, so I pulled over. And then I guess I fell asleep.”

“It’s not snowing now,” she said.

I looked out the window. It was completely dark and everything outside was calm, like the snow had formed a cocoon over the world. Maribel pulled her hair off her face, and I saw an indentation along her cheek where she’d been resting it against the seat belt.

I put the key in the ignition. The car grumbled but didn’t start. I tried again. Nothing. I felt myself start to panic a little, but on the third try, the car came to life. I turned the heat on and held my hand in front of the vent until, after a minute, warm air pulsed through.

“Are you cold?” I asked.

“No,” Maribel said.

The clock on the dashboard said 1:14 a.m. Shit. We were in for it. Really, really in for it.

I was about to put the car in gear so we could nose back onto the road when Maribel said, “He pushed me against the wall.”

“What?”

“He told me he had something to show me.”

I didn’t know what she was talking about.

“He took my coat off and pushed me against the wall.”

And then somehow I got it. A prickle shot up the back of my neck. She was talking about Garrett Miller. “What did he do to you?” I asked.

“He started taking my shirt off.”

“What did he do?” I asked again, even though I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear the answer.

She turned and gazed out the passenger side window, her arms clutched around her.

“Maribel?”

“My mom came,” she said.

“Did he hurt you?”

“My mom came,” she said again.

And then we just sat there. I didn’t know why she was telling me now, after all this time. When she turned back to me, she picked up my hand and ran her thumb against my open palm. I closed my fingers and squeezed, pretending like somehow if I squeezed hard enough, I could hold on to her forever.


MY DAD WAS OUTSIDE smoking a cigarette when Maribel and I pulled into the parking lot of the building. It was the dead of night, and the headlights lit him up in the dark. I got so nervous when I saw him that I stalled a few feet before the space. My dad threw his cigarette into the snow and strode over, yanking open the driver’s-side door.

“Get out,” he said.

I did. Maribel had fallen asleep again on the drive home and she was curled into the passenger’s-side seat.

“Give me the keys,” my dad said.

I handed them over. I couldn’t bring myself to look him in the eye.

“Now get in the backseat,” he ordered.

I didn’t have the guts to ask why, but I thought I should probably just do whatever he asked, so I climbed in the back while my dad got into the driver’s seat and tore out of the lot.

It was a quiet drive. Not a single other car was on the road. My dad was flying—long grooves of slush that ribbed the pavement sprayed up onto the car—and the whole time I was shaking in the backseat like there was an earthquake under my skin. I had no idea where he was taking us, not to mention what might be open in the middle of the night, so I figured maybe he just wanted to drive around for a while until he collected himself. Maybe there was a lecture coming, and he was composing it in his head. Maybe he wanted to get Maribel and me away from the apartment so that none of our neighbors would hear what he was about to unleash on us. Maybe Maribel’s parents and my parents had decided between them that my father would be the one who would reprimand us when we finally came home. But after ten minutes in the car, when we pulled up to Christiana Hospital, I had a sinking feeling that I’d gotten it all wrong.

“Wake her up,” my dad said after he parked. “We’re going inside.”

I tapped Maribel on the shoulder. “We need to get out of the car,” I said.

“What?”

“You fell asleep again. We’re back in Newark. My dad drove us to the hospital and now he wants us to get out of the car.”

“Hospital?”

“Yeah. I have no idea what’s going on. But he wants us to go inside with him.”

I thought, Maybe he’s going to take us to see patients who were barely hanging on after car accidents as a way to teach Maribel and me a lesson about what could have happened to us.