He Started It(59)

“Three hours,” Felix says.

“Thanks.”

Eddie does not answer me. Instead, he says, “We’ll stop once more before we get there, so figure out now what you need to pick up.”

Portia pokes her head up to give him a dirty look. She lies back down without saying a word.

In the rearview mirror, I see Eddie smile. He switches the music to an annoying song from the eighties. We’ve listened to this before and we’ve complained about it. Now he not only turns it back on, he turns it up.

All of a sudden, I realize what he’s doing. He’s done it before.





What do you most fear?

Nothing. Most of the time, anyway. I really don’t have time for deep introspection right now, I’m a little busy.

But I’m a little tired of that guy following us. I don’t know if I’m scared, but I’m definitely annoyed. What I’d really like to do is pull over and ask him who the hell he is and what he wants, but I won’t. Not with Portia and all the others around. If I was alone, I’d do it, though. I swear I would.

Nobody ever gives me credit for that—being brave, I mean. They always say I act without thinking and I’m impulsive and blah, blah, blah. How about brave? Why can’t I ever be that?





On the first trip, I sat up front with Nikki on the second half of the drive through Montana. She needed a navigator she could trust, and Portia was too small. Eddie slept too much.

Nikki and I talked a lot during that long drive, and listening to her was my favorite thing. She was talking to me again, just like when we were younger. After a while, whatever thrill she got from taking over the trip started to fade. I was the one she told.

“I’m so tired of driving,” she said.

I wondered if she was tired because she was pregnant. Mom wasn’t overly tired when she was pregnant with Portia, but that was her fourth child. This was Nikki’s first.

“You sure you’re okay?” I asked.

“I just said I’m tired.”

I waited a second, then said, “Have you talked to Coop?” Cooper, also known as Coop, was her on-off boyfriend. When they were on, she talked about him. When they were off, she would only say he was a big dick—“and not the good kind.” I didn’t understand that at first.

“Coop? He’s a dick,” Nikki said. She glanced over at me. “Why are you asking me that?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. I just thought you might have called him or something.”

“I haven’t.”

“Okay.”

We were both silent for a minute, and then she said, “It’s just all this driving. I hate it.”

“Lie. You love driving.”

“Not anymore.”

“You sure that’s all it is?” I asked.

“Yes. Jesus.”

No matter what I said, or how many ways I tried to ask, she never told me about the pregnancy test. And I didn’t want to tell her that I snooped.

“Seriously,” she said. “I think this is it.”

I sat up and leaned in toward her. “What’s it?”

“After we’re done with the theme park, we have to call Mom and Dad.”

I shook my head. “No way.”

“We have to go home sometime,” she said. “We can’t stay out here forever.”

No one said anything about forever. It was just supposed to be until we got to the Pacific Ocean.

I didn’t want to go home. For once, we were free, or as free as we ever had been. We could sleep, eat, and watch TV whenever we wanted. We could go anywhere, pretend to be anyone, and we weren’t really doing anything bad—it’s not like we had killed anyone. Nikki and I were in it together. We were partners. That was all I ever wanted.

“They’ll come get us,” Nikki said. “We won’t have to drive home. I mean, you heard how angry Mom sounded last night. She’ll fly here in a second.”

That was true. I did miss Mom and Dad and my friends. I missed my bed, my room, my window. I even missed eating healthy food.

But I missed Nikki even more. At home, we weren’t like this. She ignored me most of the time.

“Think about the stories you’ll get to tell in school,” Nikki said. “Everyone will be so jealous we did this.” She looked over at me, a big smile on her face. “You can even say we did it together.”

I think my jaw dropped. No, I know it did. Nikki had a rule that I was never supposed to talk about her at school or what she did. She said I’d only get her in trouble.

So I wasn’t sure if I should trust her. “You’re lying.”

“I’m not. Promise.” Nikki held out her pinkie. I couldn’t remember the last time we pinkie-swore. Even then, we were a little old for it.

I fell for it anyway. That’s how badly I wanted attention from Nikki. Maybe she was telling the truth. Maybe she just wanted me to help with her plan to get home. Doesn’t matter now and it didn’t matter then, because Eddie stepped in and ruined everything.



* * *



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I should’ve known, should’ve listened, should’ve seen it coming. That’s what Nikki said. It was all my fault that Grandpa and Eddie had staged a coup and forced Nikki out of power.