Chapter 5 – May 24, 1993 – Camille
Erich made the occasional comment in response to my small talk while keeping his eyes on the road, but he wasn’t what I would consider an animated driver.
Sleep was catching up with me, pulling me away from the horrors of my night from Hell.
My head started to fall forward until I woke in a panic and sat up straight, only to repeat the process.
I don’t remember when I finally let the band Kansas sing me to sleep. It played on the radio in the dim car as my forehead gently rested against the passenger-side window. The blur of trees and hills passing us on the road became the mobile hanging above my crib.
What woke me up was not my new chauffeur, but the voice in my head screaming that I was making a huge mistake.
It jolted every nerve in my body to life as I remembered I was in the passenger seat of a strange car, speeding down the highway at eighty miles per hour.
The bubble of blissful ignorance burst as I remembered home—my family, Reed, running away, Erich.
I sat up straight, brushing back a long, curly section of my hair from the side of my face. In my drowsy state, I tried to stuff it back into place, only to realize my baseball cap was on the floor at my feet, leaving my lie exposed.
“Perfect time to wake up,” Erich said. He ignored the fact I bent down to grab the hat with the stealth of an elephant. I frantically tried to shove my hair back into my cap, but it was too late to hide behind my fake identity.
I must’ve been out for most of the ride. The dashboard clock read 5:30 in block numbers, and the last I remembered seeing it, it read 12:45. The early morning sun was beginning to rise, taking the stage from the moon and stars.
I focused my attention out over the fast-moving hills, a few cows dotting the greenery.
The burnt orange color of the rising sun was breathtaking.
I had never seen anything more peaceful and wondered how long I might have lived without knowing a scene like this existed.
It seemed to stretch for miles, broken only by hay bales and the occasional red barn in the distance.
Erich tapped at the car’s steering wheel, a signal that brought me back to the current time.
“That last sign said there’d be a gas station at the next exit. How are you feeling?”
I was about to answer when I realized how little I had told him about what happened before I got into his car.
I should have had something prepared. He had no idea how sore my arms were, battered from the grip of my older brother, how my neck still tingled and sent chills through my body as I remembered—
“We’re going to stop,” Erich said, a hint of humor in his voice. I wanted to be offended, but I hadn’t exactly given him much to work with. “As long as your hair is down to cover those bruises and you don’t get the cops called on us. That’s the last thing I need—a night behind bars.”
My face burned at the obvious jab. He flipped the turn signal and took the exit. I couldn’t help but wonder how he was still awake and driving after nearly five hours.
I reminded myself how reckless I had been getting into his car knowing little more than his first name.
It hadn’t felt like a choice at the time, but it seemed less logical now as he pulled into the gas station lot and turned the key, cutting off the engine— and “Mary Jane’s Last Dance” on the radio.
His jacket was off, revealing an off-white T-shirt much like the one I was wearing. He must have taken it off while I was sleeping.
After unbuckling his seatbelt, he turned his attention to me, and I shrank slightly under his gaze. I shifted my eyes to the windshield, studying the parked cars along the side of the gas station. A semi-truck sat in the diesel section, its driver filling the tank.
“Do you want to come in?” He asked.
As if I was some child who needed coddling and guidance in public places.
I unbuckled my seatbelt to answer. It would be nice to stretch my legs and see where we were. But Erich didn’t move to get out of the car.
He was waiting—clearly about to lay down some kind of ground rules.
“I meant it about the hair,” he said. “You’ll get a lot of questions from people in there about those bruises, and it’s not going to look good for either of us.”
I hesitated before taking the baseball cap by the bill and plucking it off, sending waves of black hair across my shoulders. I waited for his confirmation, then set the hat back on my head.
With the same devilish half-smile he had shown before I got in the car, he opened the driver’s side door and stepped out onto the pavement.
I took a second to watch, mostly to prepare myself for what I was up against if things turned sideways.
I could see his back as he stretched his arms over his head, rocking on his feet.
After more than five hours of driving, the movement caused his shoulders to flex, showing corded muscles through the white T-shirt he wore.
I knew then and there I was doomed if he decided to snap my neck after his show of humanity back in Belham.
I slowly opened the car door, relieved to find it wasn’t some kind of trap where I’d be locked inside with no handle. I set one foot on the pavement, embracing the feeling of stable ground beneath me, then followed with the other and stepped out of the car.
I forgot I wasn’t wearing shoes until a sharp rock pressed through my sock, piercing the ball of my foot.
Erich had already passed me while I was processing the sharp pain, heading toward the gas station. A few steps ahead, he held the door open after the bell jingled, then paused when he noticed I wasn’t following.
With his one hand on the door and his miffed gaze aimed at me, I stared down to signal I was hostage to the socks on my feet. I couldn’t go inside a store like that.
He let the door swing shut and walked back toward the car, going to the trunk instead of to me. He opened it casually.
A second later, a pair of sneakers landed at my feet, and my would-be getaway driver turned and headed back toward the entrance.
“Thanks,” I muttered, bending down to slip them on. They were worn, close to their end of life, and far too big—but they were something.
He didn’t hold the door open for me this time. My mother would have been silently horrified—a gentleman always gets the door—but I guessed I’d used up that courtesy already.
So, feeling like a clown in Erich’s massive shoes, I opened the door myself and stepped inside, careful not to let my feet slip out.
I had never been inside a gas station before.
As strange as that sounded, I’d never had a reason to be.
I didn’t know how to drive, and I doubted my parents had ever planned to teach me.
There had never been a need—not with the chauffeur at Silent River Plantation filling the limousine during the day.
I was amazed by how much there was. A full section of snacks, a wall of coolers stocked with drinks, a table with coffee and donuts. It was almost beautiful. It could have brought tears to my eyes if I hadn’t been so shell-shocked.
If I tried to speak, my voice would have cracked under the weight of it all, so I stayed quiet, taking everything in until Erich grounded me again.
“Grab whatever you need.”
The amusement in his tone contrasted with the puzzled look he had given me moments before—probably from the awe on my face, like a child seeing a Christmas tree for the first time. I was too overwhelmed to feel embarrassed.
After agonizing over a choice between a Reese’s peanut butter cup and cherry Twizzlers, I ended up grabbing both, along with a bottle of water. Erich waited at the register with a coffee, a pack of cigarettes, and a bottle of Motrin, silently urging me to hurry.
As the attendant rang everything up, my eyes drifted to the newspaper rack beside the counter, searching for any clue about where we were. It was yesterday’s paper, but beneath The Marshall County Tribune read Lewisburg, Tennessee.
A single night of driving had taken us across state lines.
I was far from home.
I couldn’t decide if that made me relieved—or terrified.