6. Chapter Six
Chapter Six
I stare through our living room window, watching for Mia’s car to pull up. I have a hard-shell suitcase at my feet. It’s part of a luggage set Robert bought me when I turned sixteen. It’s an obnoxious shade of pink.
Mom walks out from the kitchen, already dressed for work: sleek sheath dress, flattering blazer, pearls. Sundays are a big day for open houses and the housing market apparently “heats up” in the spring. “Are you sure Mia’s grandmother doesn’t mind you crashing their visit?” she asks as she fastens a pearl earring.
“Mia said she’s excited.” I hope my nerves come off like excitement too.
“That sounds great. Check in every day and keep your phone on you. I expect you to pick up the moment I call.”
“I promise.”
“Have the best time, honey. Use sunscreen any time you’re outside. It’s cooler, but you’ll burn faster in that altitude.”
I’ve packed sunscreen. But I’ve also packed my parka. After I meet Seth, I have no idea where this trip is going. Maybe back home. But maybe he’ll know how to find the other two possible half-siblings who haven’t responded to my contact request. All I say is “I’ll bathe in sunscreen. I promise.”
She glances down at her watch, a sign she’s itching to get to work. “All right. Tell Mia I say hi and call me as soon as you get there.” She scoops up her purse and leaves with a wave and a final reminder to check in.
My cover story is that Mia invited me to her grandmother’s cabin in Ward for some “nature-bonding.” I counted on Mom’s guilt over lying about my biological father to go my way, and it did. She still hasn’t explained anything after a week, and I’m sure she’s glad to get me out of the house so I can’t stare at her accusingly for another week.
I wait until her car disappears, then I’m too impatient to wait inside anymore, so I roll the Pepto-Bismol suitcase outside. Finally, a car turns onto the street and Mia is in it, but it’s not Pickle, her green Camry. Every Sandoval kid has to drive it until they graduate from high school, and then they get an upgrade. Dr. Sandoval calls driving the old car “a character-building experience.”
Mia is in a Jeep. A white Jeep Wrangler.
Gabe’s Jeep.
Why is Gabe’s Jeep pulling into my driveway?
Why is Gabe climbing out of the driver’s seat?
“Mia?” I call when she emerges from the passenger side.
“Hey,” she says. “Gabe’s coming.”
I take a deep breath and brace myself as Gabe gets out too, trying not to let panic or humiliation or anything show on my face.
Gabe leans against his door, arms folded across his plaid-covered chest, dark shaggy curls falling over the frame of his sunglasses.
There was a time when this douchey flannel-bro look was the reason half the girls at Garfield were in love with Gabe even before he got the Jeep for graduation. With the car, that number approached a hundred percent . . . minus me. I already learned the hard way—Gabe Sandoval is not for me.
He lifts his hand in a small wave. I nod back, praying my cheeks don’t match my suitcase. “Why is he coming?” I ask, not bothering to drop my voice as Mia comes up the sidewalk to get my suitcase. “This is our thing.”
“He’s being overprotective— which is stupid ,” she tosses at him over her shoulder. “He says he’ll tell my parents if we do this by ourselves.”
“They’re on a boat. What are they going to do?”
“That’s what I said. So then he said he’d tell your mom.”
I stare past her to Gabe, who is obviously listening to the whole conversation. He gives me one of those dumb ironic salutes but doesn’t say a word.
“This sucks, Mia.”
“It won’t be so bad. I don’t know why you guys can’t get along, but honestly, he’s a lot more mellow since he went to college.”
I wouldn’t know. I made a point of staying out of his way when he was home over winter break. Mia hadn’t seemed to notice that we did almost everything at my house those weeks.
I kick my suitcase, stare at the ground, and try to think of a way around this. I can’t spend hours in the car with Gabe. I can’t. “Does he know why we’re going?” I keep my voice low.
“No, but I think he’d get it.”
Mia barely does. Gabe definitely won’t.
“This is happening, Barrows.” He says it like he can read my mind.
“Hi to you too, Gabe. This seems like a boring way for you to spend spring break.”
“Better than worrying about what you guys are getting into.”
“We’re a little old for babysitting.” If I have to deal with him face-to-face, I might as well bluff like I don’t care. A muscle in his jaw twitches. I notice the faintest trace of scruff there, like he forgot to shave.
“We’re smart, Gabe,” Mia says with an eyeroll. “You’re being ridiculous.”
“Not as ridiculous as depending on Pickle for this trip. Did you even get it serviced?”
Mia huffs. It’s an admission of guilt. I can’t believe I didn’t think of that either.
“That’s what I thought,” Gabe says. “The Jeep is way more reliable. Get in.”
“No way.” I hate that he’s trying to call the shots. “This is my trip, and we’re taking it in Pickle. You don’t get to show up and tell us how it’s going to be.”
“You don’t want to take the Jeep because you can’t drive a stick.” He says this in an incredibly annoying “de-escalation” tone that Mom uses when she’s trying to placate a difficult client. It’s a tone of “I understand you, and as the adult in the room, I’m here to make everything all right.”
It’s enraging that he’s right; the stick shift is absolutely the second biggest reason why I don’t want to go in his Jeep. “The stick shift has nothing to do with it.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll drive.”
“No. Go home. Better yet, go back to Boulder. Take a week off. Byeee.”
He straightens. “Mia is not going off by herself. You don’t count as adult supervision. Therefore, I have to go on this idiotic road trip I didn’t sign up for. If I have to go, we’re not going in a car older than you two combined. If you try to take Pickle without me, I’m calling your mom.”
I hate his tone, like he’s trying to reason with a child. I won’t give him the satisfaction of throwing a tantrum and acting like one.
I open the Jeep’s tailgate, toss the suitcase in, and slam it closed.
“Watch it,” Gabe says. “You don’t have to shut it so hard.”
The Jeep is a four door and I answer by climbing into the back seat with Mia and slamming that door too. “Let’s go. We have to cover seven hundred miles today.” I slump down, like I’m ready to sleep all the way there, like he doesn’t have my nerves stretched to the snapping point.
“Seven hundred ?” His voice goes up in pitch with each syllable, and he turns to his sister. “Are you screwing with me, Mia?”
I grin at her. “You really didn’t tell him anything.”
“Nope. Not a word.” She gives me a fist bump.
“Where are we going?” he asks.
I plunk a Dolly Parton bobblehead on the center console instead of answering.
“What is that?” he asks.
“That’s Miss Dolly,” Mia explains. “She watches over all misdeeds and mischief. And hey, I brought her some company.” She reaches into her monogrammed softball duffel to pull out a jar about the height and width of her Starbucks tumbler. But it’s clear. And it’s not full of coffee.
A strangled whimper escapes me and Gabe yells, “What the hell!”
It’s a pig embryo.
Mia pats the top of it. “I stole it from the school lab.”
I snatch Miss Dolly away so she’s not eyeball to eyeball with the weird floating thing.
Gabe takes off his sunglasses to stare at Mia. He blinks his brown eyes twice. They’re the color of bitter chocolate, and I feel a familiar urge to stare at them too long, so I look back at the pig. “You stole it,” he repeats.
Mia only shrugs. I lean closer. “Why?”
“We’re supposed to dissect it next week. I can’t do it. I want to give it a proper burial.”
I nod. “Approved.” But when I set Miss Dolly down, I make sure she’s facing away from the pig.
Gabe slides his sunglasses back on. “Either of you have any other dead stuff I should know about?”
“My hopes for a cool trip now that you’re here?” I say.
“Funny, Barrows.” Gabe taps his GPS. “Where am I going?”
I give him an address in Tempe.
“Tempe?” He looks back at Mia again. “You have got to be kidding me. Mom and Dad are going to kill you when they find out.”
“They’re not going to find out unless you tell them, which you can’t, because they’ll kill you too.”
He shakes his head and sets the pig jar in the cupholder behind the console, which means Mia and I get to stare at him. She smiles and pats his lid. Gabe puts the Jeep into gear and as it surges forward, my stomach jumps with it. We’re doing this. We’re really doing this.
Mia leans through the seats to mess with the dash screen’s Bluetooth settings. A minute later, a classic rock anthem blares over Gabe’s speakers, the singer wailing about a highway to hell. I recognize it from a cell phone commercial.
“Really, Mia?” Gabe calls over the music.
She grins at him in the mirror and stabs the volume up higher. Gabe shakes his head, but as he signals to ease us onto the main road out of town, I notice his thumb tapping along to the heavy bass.
In early spring, it rains in Adobe almost as often as it’s sunny, but as the speedometer climbs to seventy-five, the sky is a bright blue, the music is good, and the signs all point south.
I can’t resist. I roll down my window and stick my head into the wind. My hair whips around my face, the strands sticking to my ChapStick and catching on my eyelashes. Mia turns to me, her eyebrows high. Then she rolls down her window and sticks her head out too.
For a moment, I hesitate. If Gabe weren’t here, I wouldn’t think twice about the thing I want to do next. Everything I do when I’m around him is designed to control how he thinks of me. To erase the memory of that night. To tell him a different story of who I am.
But right now, I just want to be me. I want to drink in the whipping wind and let all of me out.
I yell. It is wordless and full. Of escape. And freedom. And all the things I never say when I’m home doing exactly what I should. And the wind catches all of it and blows it behind me.