Chapter 16 Steffani
I sneak a glance at the man for the thousandth time since we started driving.
It’s impossible not to. He’s like an actor from one of those classic movies my mom used to watch—a rebel without a cause or a wild boy of the road: hair slicked back, dark and sleek as the hood of his car, eyes that remind me of a thunderstorm rolling in from the west. Something crackles and fizzes in the backs of them.
He taps his fingers against the steering wheel.
“Are you hungry? You look like you’ve been on the road a while.
” It’s his turn to glance at me, and I’m painfully aware of the grime coating the hems of my jeans and my ratty T-shirt with a hole under the left breast. I want to lift my arm and subtly sniff the fabric there, but he’s watching, which would make that gross.
I’ll bet I smell, though. I feel like I smell.
I wave him off. “I’m fine.” But he pulls off, anyway, at the next exit, where a glowing neon sign marks a McDonald’s. “I can’t pay you,” I tell him, which sucks because never have I wanted two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun more.
“It’s on me.”
He pulls up to the drive-thru window.
“You’re already giving me a lift—”
“And in exchange, you’re keeping me company.”
I’ve been doing a crappy job of keeping him company.
But then I wonder if “keeping me company” could be a euphemism.
Maybe he’ll be checking out my two all-beef patties, while I’m sampling his special sauce.
(Ew. Steff. You’re disgusting. Also, your patties are more like White Castle sliders—lean wartime rations here, folks.) He rolls down the window and leans out to talk into the microphone.
“Thanks for choosing McDonald’s. How may we help you?”
He swivels around. “What do you want?”
I don’t want to be greedy, but at the same time, if he’s paying… “Big Mac. Large fries. Large chocolate shake.”
He smiles again. If his eyes are a thunderstorm, then fuck me, that smile is a crack of lightning.
He turns back to the microphone, repeats my order, and adds his own small vanilla shake.
I remember a passage from a book my foster mom kept around about how men like women who slam down fast food as long as they don’t gain weight.
That’s me. I shovel all kinds of shit into my mouth and still look like a whippet on crack: tight stomach, flat ass, nips-only chest.
I take a quick peek at myself in the rearview mirror. Greasy. Blotchy. The tip of my nose angry-red, chapped skin peeling off the nostrils. Hot, Steff. Super bangable.
That’s when I notice the blue Ford Taurus pulling into the drive-thru behind us.
My heart stutters.
“You all right?” he asks.
“Yeah, fine.”
It’s fine, I remind myself. You’re fine.
Not every blue Ford Taurus on the road belongs to the psychotic motherfucker hunting you down.
Ford Tauruses are popular, the best-selling car of the mid-nineties, which means there are still a lot of them out there.
You’re fine. We pull around to the front window, where he passes his money to the cashier.
As she fiddles around in the register drawer, making change, I wait for the Ford Taurus to round the corner.
Slowly, it rolls into my field of vision.
The windshield’s tinted, like my dad’s, but that doesn’t mean anything. Lots of cars have tinted windshields, especially on the West Coast, where the sun’s sharp enough to stab out your eyes. The shadow seems to be about my dad’s size—broad-shouldered, thick around the middle.
Our car proceeds to the next window.
The man takes the paper bag from the cashier, passes it off to me. He sticks both milkshakes into the cup holders. “Have a nice day,” he says.
My eyes stay locked on the Ford Taurus. The driver’s meaty hand reaches out of the window, and he deposits a handful of quarters onto the drive-thru’s ledge.
A chill creeps through me. My dad keeps all his change in the center console, counting out the exact amount whenever he goes for fast food. It’s him.
He’s found me.
Fuck.
We steer back onto the highway. The Ford Taurus is still waiting at the second window, but it’s not like we can lose him on a highway that’s a straight line.
I quickly catalogue my surroundings: tarmac in front of us, serrated pines on either side.
How can I be trapped when, all around me, there’s nothing but open space?
A muted cough from beside me. He’s waiting for his straw, still tucked inside the paper bag on my lap.
“Vanilla milkshake, huh?” I push the straw out of its wrapper and stick it through the lid. My hands are shaking; I slip them under my thighs so he won’t notice.
“What can I say? I’m a man of simple tastes.”
The Ford Taurus pulls into the lane behind us.
I start considering possible escape routes.
It’s the middle of the night; nothing will be open except fast-food restaurants and rest stops, and they’ll be empty.
If we can stay on the road until early afternoon, when the tourists and truckers are out in full force, maybe I can disappear into the crowd.
That’s if we can stay on the road. We’re all alone out here.
It wouldn’t be hard for him to run us into a ditch or ram us from behind or—
“Are you going to eat that?” he asks, knocking me back to reality. He tilts his head toward the paper bag.
I feel like I’m going to be sick, but if I want to make it through the night, I can’t be running on empty. I grab my milkshake and suck so hard, my cheeks hollow around the straw.
We drive in silence. I cram first the Big Mac, then handfuls of fries, into my mouth before crumpling up the paper bag with all our garbage inside and tossing it onto the back seat. The burger settles in my stomach like a cement brick.
The Ford Taurus remains in the rearview mirror, but after a while, it splits into two cars driving side by side.
I watch them, trying to figure out what’s happened, before squeezing my eyes shut.
When I open them, there’s again only one car behind us.
I try to remember how long it’s been since I last slept.
As we continue down the highway, the road lulls me into a stupor. My head keeps drooping sideways, then I jerk back to awareness before almost falling asleep again. I pinch the thin skin inside my elbow as hard as I can, but it doesn’t do any good. Wake up, Steff. Wake the fuck up.
“You can take a nap, you know.”
The man glances at me, concern etching lines between his eyebrows.
“That would make me really bad company.”
He laughs, the sound washing over me like summer rain breaking through the humidity. “Don’t worry about it,” he murmurs, and I feel my eyes drifting closed. “You’ve more than paid your way.”
I hadn’t; my chitchat was shit-chat, and we both know it.
But he didn’t seem to mind. He would’ve made a good foster dad, I think, or at least better than a lot of the ones I’d ended up with.
He would’ve been the kind of foster dad with a list of house rules stuck to the refrigerator: no electronics at the dinner table, home before ten o’clock, clean up after yourself because I’ll be checking your room (including under the bed, so don’t even think about stuffing all your junk there).
Those were the best kinds of foster dads because house rules showed they cared.
He still would’ve cut and run when my dad came around, like all the rest, but he’d have been good until then.
“Don’t,” I say, the word coming out as a yawn. “Don’t leave me sleeping in the car. Like if we pull into a gas station or something. Wake me up first.”
“Sure.”
He doesn’t understand how important this is. I grab ahold of his sleeve, tug hard so he looks me in the eyes. “Promise.”
A moment passes. His eyes are so dark, so warm, like pools of oil spreading across the road.
“Promise,” he says, and I believe him.
As the car drifts down the highway, my mind blurs into sleep. I’m safe for now, here in this car, with this man—and that’s all that matters.