5
Five minutes and one awkward end-of-date hug later, I’m sitting alone in my car, glaring at my cell phone.
A, R, F, S.
F, R, A, S.
R, F, S, A.
What the hell is this word?
Exhaling in frustration, I put my phone away and pull out onto the back road that leads from Summerside to Waldon. I drive
a couple of kilometers over the speed limit, keeping a wary eye out for wildlife on the side of the road. The important thing
is not to panic. It’s 10:4 p.m. now. By 11:1 p.m., I’ll be back at home, and I can make a cup of chamomile tea and write
down every possible combination of the remaining letters until I figure out this stupid—
BANG .
I yelp as my car shudders beneath me. I maneuver frantically off the road, pulling onto the slim gravel shoulder not a second
before the whole car just goes dead , no lights, no engine noise, nothing. I frantically twist the key to turn it on again, but absolutely nothing happens.
I put the handbrake on and take the key out of the ignition, and then I just sit there in the sudden silence, my heart thumping
loudly in my ears.
What just happened ?
I put the key in the ignition again, only to take it out immediately. What if I try to turn the car on and something bad happens, like the engine explodes? Is that a thing that engines can do? God, why haven’t I listened to some of the boring crap Dave and John have said about cars?
I rake my hand through my hair and then twist in my seat, taking in my surroundings. I’m completely alone. There isn’t a single
other car in sight. There are deep, dark woods on either side of the road, and as I stare into the bit nearest me, I swear
I see a dark figure moving between the trees. My mind floods with images of bears and coyotes and serial killers.
Okay, no.
This won’t do.
“You’re okay,” I tell myself firmly. “No need to panic.”
I grab my phone and look up “car towing service PEI” and thank the heavens, two twenty-four-hour towing businesses pop up.
They’re both in Charlottetown, about an hour away, but the first website clearly says “Serving all of PEI since 1982.” I don’t
know exactly where I am right now, but I know it falls within “all of PEI.”
I take a deep, steadying breath and click call.
Then I hang up again.
I’m just going to quickly look up how much a car tow costs, first.
“Car towing cost PEI Canada,” I type into the search bar.
Um... hang on.
This can’t be right.
Up to two hundred and fifty dollars? For a tow ?
I keep scrolling through the search results, waiting for one of them to say something different, but for the first time in the history of the internet, no one is disagreeing.
This tow could cost me up to two hundred and fifty dollars.
I open my bank account, which I know for a fact only has nine hundred dollars in it. My rent is due next week, and my student
loan payment is due the week after that, and then my cell phone bill...
I can’t afford this. I can’t afford to pay for a tow. And I can’t even call my parents to ask to borrow money because they’re
off in some beautiful, remote town in New Zealand without any cell service. And I can’t call anyone else, because I don’t
have anyone else to call.
A hot, thick lump suddenly forms at the base of my throat, and my eyes start prickling ominously. I shake my head angrily.
I am not going to cry about this. I’m not . I’ll just have to suck it up and pay for the tow with my credit card, and then pay one of my other bills late. Or I’ll beg
Fred for an advance on my next paycheck. Maybe I’ll offer to do some extra overtime, or to clean up that big nasty stain behind
the fridge that’s been there since I started.
A bright light flares in my rearview mirror. I flinch in alarm—coyotes and serial killers are still lurking at the edges of
my mind—then relax a little when I see it’s just a car.
I mean, it could be a car filled with serial killers. Or a car filled with coyotes, although that would be weirder.
The car is coming closer. Time to make a decision. Get out and flag them down and risk ending up as the subject of one of those awful murder documentaries (I have a vision of our waitress from the restaurant giving a tearful interview to the camera, saying something like, “If she’d only ordered dessert, maybe she’d still be alive...”) or sit still and let them drive past.
I’m leaning toward letting them go by when I realize it’s too late. They’re slowing down and pulling up on the shoulder behind
me. It’s a low-riding car with a long hood, the exact kind of car I imagine a murderer or a drug dealer would drive.
Oh god. My heart starts thumping anxiously. This feels like the start of a very scary movie.
Okay. Focus, Emily.
I’ve taken a few self-defense courses, and the instructor said the most important thing is to take charge of the situation.
If it’s a murderer, I need to get the element of surprise, not sit here trapped in my broken car. I grab my purse—there’s
nothing valuable in it, but I can hurl it at their face and make a break for the woods—and push the car door open determinedly.
The other car’s door swings open—a man’s legs appear—I clutch my cell phone tightly in my hand, ready to dial 911 at a moment’s
notice—
“Emily?”
All of the air rushes out of my lungs.
It’s John .
Oh, man. I have never been so happy to see John in my life . (Although I suppose that’s not saying much, since I’m not usually happy to see him at all.)
“Hey,” I say shakily. “What are you doing here?”
“Driving home.” His footsteps crunch on the gravel. “Is something wrong with your car?”
I nod. “It just went bang and stopped working.” I’m embar rassed to hear how thin and frightened my voice sounds. I clear my throat. “I was going to call a tow truck.”
He frowns. “Keys?”
I hand them to him and he gets into the driver’s seat of my car. I take a wary step back. “Are you sure it isn’t going to
explode?”
He stares at me, like he’s trying to figure out if I’m joking. “It isn’t going to explode.”
He turns the key, but nothing happens. I follow him uncertainly as he goes to the front of the car and pops the hood. He stares
at the engine for a few minutes and pokes and prods at random things. I watch in silence, shivering slightly in the cool air.
It’s weird seeing John outside of work. He looks kind of... different. He isn’t wearing his work coveralls, for one thing,
and his hands aren’t covered in grease. In jeans and a dark T-shirt, he looks... well, he looks kind of handsome, actually.
For an emotionless block of wood, I mean.
“When was the last time your battery was replaced?” he asks.
Uh-oh. Is that a thing I’m supposed to do?
“Um... I think the people that owned it before me probably changed it,” I say.
“When did you buy it from them?”
“Er... nine or ten years ago.” I won’t mention that it was already twenty years old back then. I clear my throat. “How
often are you supposed to change it?”
John raises an eyebrow. “More than once a decade. Didn’t the engine light come on?”
My cheeks darken. “There was a light on. But I thought it was just like... a warning.”
“It is a warning,” John says. “It’s a warning that something’s gone wrong with your engine.”
“Oh, you know what I mean,” I say crossly. “I thought I had more time to deal with it.”
“How long has it been on?”
“Er—a few weeks,” I say. (Twelve weeks, if I’m being exact.) “Can you fix it?”
“Yeah. Just get it towed to the shop.”
My shoulders sag. “You can’t fix it here?”
“Nope.” John wipes his hands on the hem of his T-shirt. “My buddy has a truck, you want me to call him?”
“Like a tow truck, you mean?”
John nods.
“Well... I don’t know. I can just call a towing company.” And then miss my student loan payment and eat Kraft Dinner every
day for the next month.
John frowns. “Those places charge too much. Liam won’t charge you anything. He races with me out at the track. Owes me, like,
twenty-four hundred in spare parts.”
“Oh.” I shift awkwardly on my feet. I want to say no, but what choice do I really have? He’s offering me a perfect solution,
even if I do feel really weird about accepting it. “Well... yeah, all right. I mean, if you’re sure that he won’t mind.”
“Lemme call him,” John says.
He heads back to his own car to get his phone. I glance at my own phone while he talks. It’s 11:07 p.m. John’s poor friend
is probably asleep, and who knows where he lives? If he has to drive a long way to get here, he’ll probably be really annoyed.
And I’ll miss the Wordle deadline. Midnight will come and go and my streak will be over.
That’s less important than inconveniencing John’s friend, obviously.
(But my streak .)
“Hey, man,” John says, wandering back to me with his phone to his ear. “Do you still have that flatbed, the one Randy and
I used that time? Ah, sweet. Any chance you can come pick a car up?” He listens for a moment, then laughs at something the
guy says. “No, did I tell you what happened with the radiator?”
The guy on the other end of the phone says something else, and John goes silent for a while. Surreptitiously, I swipe open
my phone and go to Wordle. It’s not too late. I can do this. I already know there’s an F, R, A, and S, and I know that A is
the third letter. I only need one more letter. I’ll just go through every unused letter in my head and see what words I can
make.
Q, R, A, F, S.
QRAFS. SQAFR.
Nope. Nonsense.
W, R, A, F, S.
SRAWF. FRAWS.
Is FRAWS a word? It sort of sounds like it could be. Something from old-timey English, maybe, like a word in a Tennyson poem.
I mean, the only Tennyson poem I know is that one that Anne of Green Gables recites at the start of the movie, and I only
remember a few lines of it, but the word fraws definitely could’ve been in there. It still won’t help me much, because I know the word doesn’t start with FR, but I can’t
think of anything else to try.
With my heart in my mouth, I type it in and click enter.
Crap. Not in word list.
“Emily?”
I glance up. John is off the phone, staring at me.
“Sorry,” I say hastily.
“It’s fine. Liam’s coming.”
I feel a rush of relief. “Thank you. That’s really nice of him. I hope he doesn’t have to come too far?”
“He’s just up the road. You want to wait in my car? It’s kind of cold out.”
“Yeah, thanks,” I say, a little awkwardly. We get inside John’s car, which, upon closer inspection, is some kind of vintage...
something. It’s nice on the inside, though, and much cleaner than my car’s ever been. John gets into the driver’s seat, and
for a moment we sit in silence.
“It was nice of you to stop,” I offer. “I was glad it was you and not, like, a serial killer.”
“Like the start of a bad horror movie,” John says.
“Yes, exactly!” I laugh a little, then the awkwardness descends on us again. My eyes shift to my phone. 11:16 p.m. Forty-four
minutes until midnight.
I clear my throat. “Were you in Summerside for something?” I ask. Then I pause, realizing I don’t know where John lives. “Or
do you live there?”
“My parents live there.”
“Oh.” Another silence falls. Seriously, could he help me out a little here? This is like part two of my awkward date with
Arjun. “Do they... like living in Summerside?”
John nods. “They retired there.”
“Where did they live before?”
“Montreal.”
“Ooh.” I sit up a bit straighter. “Do they speak French?”
“My dad does. He was born in Toronto, but he mostly grew up in Quebec. And his mom’s family’s from France.”
France! I look at John with new interest. “Have you ever been there?”
“A few times.”
“And?” I press. “What’s it like?”
“It’s cool.”
I try not to roll my eyes. It’s cool. France should put that on tourism posters.
“Wait, does that mean you speak French too?” I ask. “French and Spanish?”
He nods.
“Wow.” Now I’m really curious what language he thinks in. I don’t dare ask again, though. I don’t want to get another incredulous
look. “That must be really helpful.”
He raises an eyebrow. “In Waldon?”
“Er—well, no, maybe not. I meant like, for traveling and stuff...” I trail off into silence, and John doesn’t say anything
in response. Honestly, I don’t know why I keep trying with him.
Oh, screw it. If he doesn’t want to talk to me, I might as well keep working on Wordle. I pull my phone out a little pointedly
(not that John will notice) and open the app. I’ve got two guesses left. I can do this.
A, R, F, S.
F, R, A, S.
What about... AFARS. Is that a word?
I type it in slowly and click enter. And—oh, crap, it is a word. But it’s wrong. The first A is gray, the F is yellow, the A and the R are green, and the S is yellow.
I stare at the screen helplessly. I only have one guess left, and I can’t think of a single word to try. My brain is totally,
utterly blocked.
“Crap,” I mutter.
John glances at me. He doesn’t ask me what’s wrong—classic John—but his expression looks vaguely curious.
“Are you good with words?” I ask him in desperation.
He shrugs. “I dunno.” He glances at my phone. “Is that Wordle?”
I’m surprised he’s even heard of it. I nod miserably and tilt my phone toward him. “I’m about to lose my streak.”
He leans a little closer to look at my phone screen, and despite my frustration with him, a tiny part of my brain can’t help
registering that he smells really nice. Sort of like firewood burning on a crisp fall night.
“You’ve almost got it, though,” he says. “You already know it ends in A, R, F.”
I frown at my phone. Do I know that?
Oh, crap. He’s right. From my earlier guesses, I know that the F isn’t the first or second letter, which means it has to be
at the end.
_ _ ARF.
One of those two blank letters is an S.
“QSARF,” I try. “WSARF. YSARF. Those aren’t words.”
John’s mouth turns up slightly. “No,” he agrees.
“SUARF. That sounds like a word. Like... a combination of SUAVE and BARF. That outfit is totally SUARF!”
John looks at me, and something about his flat expression makes me snort.
“Okay, never mind,” I say. “Not SUARF.” I move through the remaining letters. “ASARF. SSARF. FSARF.”
John snorts. “You’re not very good at this.”
My head snaps up indignantly. “I am too! I have a three-hundred-and-two-day streak, I’ll have you know. I’m just totally blanking.
It’s been a long day,” I add. “My car’s broken, and I just had the most mediocre first date in the history of time, and I’m
broke and destined to die alone—”
“What if the S is the first letter?” John interrupts. “Did you try that?”
“We already ruled out SUARF, and U’s the only vowel left. Unless you think SBARF is a word—”
Hang on.
I swear I hear my brain go click , like something’s slotted into place. Because you know what rhymes with SBARF?
“SCARF,” I say aloud.
John nods. “There you go.”
I start to type it in, then I put my phone down, uneasiness curling in my gut. “What if it’s wrong?”
John’s only response is a shrug, which would usually make me want to throttle him but which right now I feel is probably a
fair response. If it’s wrong, it’s wrong. And it’s not like I can think of any other words to try.
I bite my lip and nod. “Okay. Let’s do it.”
S, C, A, R, F.
I hold my breath, click enter—
I let out a squeal of excitement and dance around a bit in my car seat. John’s eyebrows lift, but not in a mean way. He actually looks kind of amused.
Beaming, I show him my phone screen. “It’s right!” I do another little jig in my seat. “Three hundred and three days!”
“Nice,” he says.
I let out a loud sigh of relief and slump back in my seat, grinning contentedly. “Man, that was so close.”
“Mm.”
Normally, a nonresponse like that would make me want to smack him, but right now I just beam at him appreciatively. “Thanks
for your help,” I say. “I don’t know why I couldn’t get that.”
“No worries,” he says. “I had trouble with it too. There’s Liam,” he adds, as bright lights flash in the rearview mirror.
A truck is approaching, flashing its four-ways as it turns onto the gravel strip behind us. John opens his car door, but my
brain is still stuck on what he said.
I had trouble with it too .
“You... do Wordle?” I say.
John glances back as he gets out of the car, flashing me a smile that appears on his face out of nowhere, like a splintery
burst of lightning.
“Yeah,” he says. “All the time.”