Chapter 8 Amelia
EIGHT
AMELIA
Aknock cracked at the window.
Amelia knew it was coming but still flinched. With another knock, she opened her eyes. A man stared through the glass, his eyes buggy behind thick glasses. A chipped tooth left a small, jagged hole in his smile.
He looked like her high school science teacher—goofy and affable with a flannel shirt stuffed into jeans. The similarities ended there. Something not quite harmless stirred in his eyes.
When he circled his wrist for Amelia to roll down the window, her panicked gaze snapped to the door lock.
“Sorry if I scared you,” he shouted and acquiesced with lifted hands. “I was wondering if you could give me some directions.”
He flashed a hopeful grin, but Amelia tucked her elbows to her side and dropped her chin to her chest.
“Miss, I just need some help. I’m not from here. Where I’m from, folks help each other out. It’s what our good Lord would want.”
Don’t be rude. Isn’t that what he meant? Do what he said or burn in hell branded a bitch?
Fissures formed in his righteous placidity. His smile vanished, and the man abruptly stalked off but only to take a call.
He paced next to his Buick with a smartphone pressed to his ear, and an uneasy pit formed in Amelia’s stomach at the request. No one with an iPhone needed directions from another human being.
Brian hurried from the gas mart to the pump. He fussed with the nozzle and slid into his seat.
“What did he want?” he asked with heavy scrutiny on the Buick and its driver.
“He said he’s lost and needs directions.”
Amelia couldn’t remember if she’d seen him at the party. If he’d been there, he made quick work putting himself to rights.
“How is he lost? We’re right off the highway.” Panic on the rise again, Brian reached in his pocket for his phone that wasn’t there. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!”
“It’s okay,” she said calmly. They couldn’t both lose their shit. “Let’s get off at the next exit. We can make some turns and see what he does. If he follows us, we’ll find the nearest thing open and call the police.”
Though Brian agreed, the plan was swiftly moot. The man climbed into his car and disappeared down the country road. If he meant to find his way again, he was heading in the wrong direction.
They left the station as the clock hit one-thirty.
The numbers burned in the veil of darkness behind Amelia’s eyes.
Leaned against the window, she twilighted in and out of restless sleep and woke worse for the wear with sore legs and a splitting headache.
She’d lost time too, a couple of hours’ worth.
Along the empty, southbound highway, fluorescent signs dotted the service road, every icon of American consumerism standing tall and proud in the night. Columns of light bled through the windshield and refracted through drops of fresh rain.
Amelia glanced at Brian with his eyes trained on the rain-slick road. “Where are we?”
“Medford.”
Medford was the last real town before they ventured into the wilderness, yet Brian barreled past its exits.
“Where are we going?”
“Sacramento. My parents are there for the weekend. My dad will know what to do.”
The stretch ahead wound through hilly terrain. With the rain returning, their travel would only become more treacherous.
“Brian, Sacramento is another five hours, at least. We should stop and get some rest.”
He stirred in his seat as a lone car passed. “Let’s get into California. We can stop at the first town over the border. It’s not that far.”
Not that far, but so far from home. Leaving Oregon felt like leaving behind the known world and the promise of safety.
“Okay,” Amelia reluctantly agreed, “but only if you let me drive.”
Brian put up no fight. On the shoulder of the last Medford exit, he stumbled to the passenger seat. After ten minutes, he was out, but his limbs jerked and head tossed. With every twitch and groan, he surely relived the nightmare in his sleep. Soon enough, Amelia would too.
The suburbs thinned, and Medford’s glow faded. The road curved through craggy slopes, and the hills beyond were black giants in the night. Every so often, passing headlights illuminated the road before disappearing into the folds.
The world around them had gone silent and dark, as if she and Brian were the last souls on earth, running from fleeting shadows and monsters made real.
The rain eased to a drizzle as Amelia crossed into California, but thick fog blanketed the road, and the first handful of exits snaked off into pitch-black hills. A few exits down, Amelia spotted a sign for a town nestled in the valley.
That town boasted only a church, gas station, and school.
At its edge, an abandoned factory loomed with broken windows and graffiti-covered walls.
Piles of scrap metal and decaying cars made up the perimeter.
Across the street, neon lights announced a motel.
Amelia pulled into its parking lot invaded with weeds.
The place probably hailed from the sixties and had changed little since. Painted in faded pastels, twelve rooms—six to each floor—opened to the outside. Out front, a rusted fence encircled a small pool, its sagging cover green with algae. She parked next to the only other car and killed the engine.
Brian rubbed his eyes and squinted at the vacancy sign.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”
“You said the first town in California.” Amelia motioned to the featureless horizon around them. “This is it. The first real town.”
Brian pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. “Shit. Alright. Let’s go.”
Out of the car, Amelia winced as she stretched, the glass nagging beneath her skin. Brian shucked out of his suit jacket and rummaged through the backseat.
“To hide the bloodstains,” he said and offered Amelia his blue and grey striped sweater.
Amelia yanked it on and followed him into the motel office. A door chime trilled off tune as they entered but didn’t rouse the young clerk behind the counter. He puffed on a cigarette and swirled the antenna of a tiny TV as “I Dream of Jeannie” bounced in and out of signal.
Everything about the place was frozen in time. Their steps squelched across a pus-colored linoleum floor, and an old calendar hung on a wood-paneled wall.
At the counter, Brian cleared his throat. The clerk’s eyes drifted between Brian and Amelia. A tawdry implication was baked into his sly grin, though his voice remained impassive.
“You want the hourly rate?”
Brian glared at the clerk, but before he could reply, Amelia handed over her last twenty. “How long will this get us?”
The clerk cupped his chin and mulled it over. “Two hours, but I’ll give you three.” He took the cash and slid a room key across the counter. “You’ll be in six, other end of the lot.”
“Thanks. I appreciate it,” Amelia said and collected the key. “Also, do you have a pair of tweezers, by chance?”
With a sidelong glance, the clerk examined the dried blood on her fingertips. Unfazed, he sifted through a drawer of random junk.
“No tweezers,” he said but waved a pair of needle-nose pliers. “Will these work?”
Amelia didn’t rightly know. The ends were blunt and not made for picking out glass. With no other options, she took the pliers and thanked the clerk.
Outside, Amelia scanned the empty lot and discerned the factory through the fog. Beyond that, she couldn’t see the road and listened for passing traffic, but heard nothing, just moths flitting against the light outside their room.
Amelia unlocked the door and switched on a floor lamp. Stains splotched the room’s mauve carpet, and an air freshener did little to mask stale smoke. A room was a room, though, and they needed to sleep.
Brian must’ve had the same thought. He flopped to the bed, unbothered by the pilled comforter dusted in crumbs. Amelia peeled off the sweater and tossed it next to him.
“I’ll be back in a bit,” she told him and disappeared into the bathroom with the pliers.
A fluorescent light above the sink buzzed as she studied her reflection in the mirror—skin wan, hair tangled, mascara smeared beneath exhausted eyes. Blood and wine stained her white dress.
With trembling hands, Amelia flipped on the water that gushed from the spout.
She dunked a sliver of soap beneath the stream and scrubbed the dress’s skirt.
She dunked again, scrubbed again. Water sloshed from the sink and flooded the counter.
All that mess and the soap didn’t help. It just made it worse.
The stains were set. They’d never wash out.
Hot tears spilled down Amelia’s cheeks. She hadn’t cried yet. What kind of monster doesn’t even cry?
With a gasping breath, she scrubbed harder, the skirt soppy and sudsy and the stains stubbornly refusing to lift.
Mom will know how to get them out.
Amelia stopped. The thought surfaced so casually cruel. Water babbled in the drain and the soap crushed in her fist. She went down hard with sobs deep and keening.
On her hands and knees, she cried like a child. Like the time she lost her mother in the grocery store. Like the first day of kindergarten waving from the school bus with a backpack twice her size, those see-you-soon moments of gone momentarily.
She cried because there was always a last goodbye, and the lucky ones saw it coming. She cried because she knew in her heart she wasn’t so lucky, and no one expected the end to come like that.
Brian hurried into the bathroom and blotted out the vanity’s garish light. He pulled Amelia from the floor and held her against his chest until her cries lulled enough that she could breathe again.
“We should get the glass out,” he said, his breath humid against her temple. “You’ll feel better.”
Amelia nodded, though better was relative. Maybe it was catharsis for them both. The pliers met Amelia’s skin with pain and left with relief as Brian meticulously pulled the glass free.
When he was done with her arms, he crouched to the floor and started with her calves. Amelia steadied herself against the edge of the counter until he was done.