Chapter Fifteen
The GPS doesn’t want us to turn back around the way we entered, so we have to take another winding road that supposedly will somehow bring us to the highway, but our old car is struggling on this uneven pavement.
Amelia is obsessively watching the minutes tick up on our arrival time, as if an extra half hour or so is really going to make that much of a difference in the plans with her friends later.
They can just hang out at someone’s house late into the evening; there’s not really any discernable time crunch here, but my sister won’t relax, and it’s stressing me out.
I breathe easier once the highway is in sight.
Except when I pull onto the on-ramp and merge us onto the highway, our vehicle’s shaking only gets worse.
“Is the check engine light on again?” Amelia asks.
“No.” But none of this seems right, and a faint scent of something burning catches my attention.
Smoke billows up from the engine, swirling and obscuring my windshield view.
Amelia reaches forward to slap on the hazard lights. “What are you waiting for? Pull over!”
“On the side of the highway?” I shriek.
“Where else?” She’s whipping her head back and forth, trying to look out the side and back windows, making sure our course is clear.
Fortunately already in the right lane, I pull onto the edge strip, over the warning bumps, and skid to a stop, slamming on the brakes, feeling my heart ready to fly out of my chest. “Um, now what?” I say, watching the smoke continue to pour from under the hood.
Amelia is already scrambling for our phones, shoving them into her bag. “We should get out.” She opens the passenger door and shouts, “Don’t go on that side!”
I climb over the center and join her on the side of the road. The sharp gusts of wind from the high-speed traffic cause my hair to go haywire, getting caught in my eyelashes, which makes the giant looming dragonflies even more terrifying as they circle us among the tall grasses.
Holding my flyaway strands to my head with both hands, I observe our car. The smoke seems to be dissipating, and the whole situation looks much less serious than when we were observing it from inside the windshield, but I’m not exactly eager to get back in.
Amelia says something I can’t hear over the traffic.
“What?” I shout to her.
“Shit,” she repeats. Lee adds a couple other curses under her breath, standing there with her hands on her hips in a very take-charge manner, analyzing the scene and deciding what she’ll do next.
Meanwhile, my eyes are watering. My hair must’ve scratched the cornea or something, I tell myself, but my heavy gasping and pounding heart suggest other factors at play.
We’re somewhere in Iowa along the side of the highway and my brain is setting off all sorts of warning bells and whistles, making it difficult for me to calm down.
Squinting down the horizon, I notice that the SUV has pulled over as well and is waiting alongside the road. Amelia hands me my phone, which is ringing, already with a couple other missed calls from Declan.
I answer, and he launches into a question before I can even say hello. “Are you all right?” Declan says.
“Uh, everything’s either fine or the car might blow up,” I shout over the noise of the highway.
Amelia nudges me farther away from the vehicle. I really don’t want to step into more of this itchy grass and sacrifice myself to these huge prehistoric bugs, yet some of these cars are really driving by fast.
It’s loud on Declan’s end now too. He must’ve gotten out of the SUV. “We’re walking over,” he yells.
“Careful!” I shout back, hanging up as soon as I see him and his brother trailing the rocky edge of the pavement next to the greenery. I turn to Amelia, realizing we should probably alert our parents to the situation, “Should we call—”
She’s already on her phone and pulls it away from her ear to say, “Mom says to stay here out of the car and wait for a tow. Dad’s going to text the number for Triple A for us to call.”
Our family’s other car broke down once before, when Amelia, Mom, and I were on the way to visit our grandma in the hospital.
It is one of the only times I remember seeing my mom cry, the situation compounded by the stress of everything she was going through.
My typically level-headed, always-addresses-a-crisis-head-on mother was reduced to a puddle of tears, mumbling It’s one thing, then another to herself over and over again, her fingers wrapped around the steering wheel as the car stalled out in the middle of a busy road and refused to start back up.
Only nine years old, I stared out the back window, but that was no excuse, because ten-year-old Amelia jumped into action to pick up the slack.
She called Dad at work to come get us, gave Mom her water bottle and made her drink to help calm down, and then, for good measure, my sister flipped off all the annoyed drivers who kept giving our car the bird as they struggled to move around the obstruction during rush hour traffic, which made me giggle and lightened the overall mood as we waited.
I want to channel that energy, to be good in a crisis, but I’m hiccupping, still fighting back tears.
“It’s all right,” Amelia says, pulling away from the phone once more, hearing me sniffle. “Triple A will be here soon.”
“You called them already?” Reaching out, I drag my sister’s arm to move her away from another circling dragonfly.
“On the call,” she mouths, nodding toward my phone and putting the speaker of hers under my chin. “Can you read the card number that Dad just texted?”
Consulting the group chat, I read aloud the number for the AAA representative waiting on the other end, then Amelia puts the phone back to her ear. “Did you get that?” She nods and continues arranging our tow.
“What happened?” Grady calls out. The guys are finally nearby and watching the smoke emit from the car’s hood.
“No idea. It started shaking and then all this smoke,” I say, gesturing to Amelia as she wraps up the phone call. “We’re getting it towed.”
“Dang.” Declan shakes his head and looks from the car to all the vehicles speeding by on the highway before swatting at what must’ve been the sound of a bug buzzing by his ear. “Good spot to wait…”
“You guys don’t have to stay,” I insist, feeling like it’s somehow my fault that we’re all going to be stuck here. “I don’t know how long it will all be. You can head on home and—”
Declan gives me an angry look, his brow furrowed in a way I’ve only seen once before, when he was wrapping up that call in the Roll Again storage closet. “You seriously think I’m going to leave you here on the side of the highway?”
“No, it’s just—”
“That’s never going to happen.” He wraps his arms around me, and I no longer care what our siblings may or may not have picked up on as I lay my head against his chest, listening to his heart beat just as fast as mine is.
“We can all go sit in the SUV,” Grady offers.
Amelia hangs up the phone. “I’d rather wait here.”
The look on my sister’s face right now is downright murderous, but Grady doesn’t seem deterred. “Isn’t that the whole point of having a support vehicle on this journey? So you don’t have to stand on the side of the highway?”
“They said it’ll only be about ten minutes,” Amelia counters, shaking her head as a bug flies too close to her, causing her to growl and wave her hands around in commanding frustration.
“I guess ten minutes isn’t too bad,” Grady replies, undaunted.
He’s doing his best to channel his cheery voice, the one that has a tendency to feel fake, but right now it has an air of reassurance and stability.
Like we could all scream and cry and rage yet he’d still be here, with that ridiculous smile on his face, ready to make the best of the situation.
He reaches forward to guide the persistent dragonfly away from my sister while handing her his water bottle. “Here. Have something to drink.”
I know this mood of Amelia’s all too well and half expect her to slap the bottle away, but she accepts it and takes a sip, looking back up at Grady with a warm, grateful smile. I blink from the roadside debris in my eye…and from the feeling of déjà vu.
.....
The big tow truck arrives, pulling off the highway ahead of our car.
Even though I know they’re coming to our rescue, it’s frightening to watch a giant vehicle veer in our direction.
The mechanic who hops out is younger than I expected, close to our age, with spiky blue hair and a tailored jumpsuit with a name tag that reads Sam.
They walk around our car, checking it briefly to make sure there’s no imminent risk, before heading over to us. “Hey, you all all right?”
“We’re okay,” Amelia says.
“It’s not going to blow up?” I ask, feeling ridiculous for asking while also needing verbal confirmation.
Sam chuckles. “Not typically.” Then they hold out a finger, counting the four of us. “Though I’ve only got room to drive two. I thought you said—”
“Don’t worry,” Grady reassures, gesturing farther up the highway. “We have another car parked down that way and just walked back to make sure everything was okay.”
“Oh, good.” Sam nods. “Do you have the keys?”
I’m reluctant to admit this in front of my sister, but, hey, we had to evacuate quickly. “I think I left them in the car. It should still be unlocked.”
“Not a problem,” Sam says. “Y’all can wait in the truck while I load this all up.”
We walk over, and Grady opens the large side door, offering a hand to help me, then Amelia up into the truck. “We’ll drive along behind you guys?”
“Sounds good,” my sister says, squeezing Grady’s palm in appreciation before letting go.