Chapter Seventeen Elsie
Chapter Seventeen
Elsie
As much as she wanted to find out what had really set Grammie off in the parking lot, Elsie needed some time to herself. Impossible in their rinky-dink motel room with two double beds. One for her mom and Dusty. The other for Grammie and Elsie to share.
She scrubbed her toes along the plastic lounger as she listened to Willow. The cell phone connection was kinda spotty, with a roaring in the background.
A shiver rippled through her, in spite of the muggy evening. If only they would let her drive. She had her license. Mom and Grammie could sleep through the night, but no one trusted her.
Ironic. She wasn’t the one who’d lost her cool and started to key a car with a walker.
The whole world was upside down.
On the cell phone screen, Willow’s face was shadowy in the lantern light. “Lucky thing Jareth went with Porter.”
“What do you mean?” Elsie glanced up as a family of five gathered their towels and headed back to their rooms, leaving behind three diving toys at the bottom of the pool.
“Jareth’s house already got totally flooded.” The connection crackled, then steadied.
“Too bad it couldn’t have happened to Porter.” Elsie’s stomach knotted. She didn’t wish him dead. Just maybe feeling some of the same fear she’d experienced because of him. “Are Jareth’s parents okay?”
“Yeah, but the Coast Guard had to come rescue them from the attic,” she said, bringing the lantern closer.
“The water was that high?” Her anger at her dad doubled, that he would have just left them there. Why wasn’t he ever fired up on their behalf, the way Grammie was?
“It’s the storm surge.” The howling wind almost drowned out her voice. “Some people had to climb on the roof, like the family who lives next door to Jareth.”
Elsie felt lower than low for griping about her life when it was so much worse for other people.
And her mom would be devastated if their house had been destroyed.
“Are your animals okay? Dusty doesn’t get freaked out by the weather, but the dog we had before really hated to go to the bathroom in the rain. ”
“Mom put a kiddie pool on the balcony and dumped the contents of two sandbags into it so the dogs can do their business.”
“Ewww.” Inventive. But still. Ewww. Restless, she tugged off her shoes and shifted from the lounger to the edge of the pool, dangling her feet into the lukewarm water.
“Definitely gross. She wanted to use scoopable kitty litter, but we didn’t have enough, so Dad came up with the sandbag idea. Are y’all having fun hanging out in a hotel? I’m jealous.”
“It’s not exactly cushy.” Elsie scanned the faded paint on the pool fence and the diving board that looked far from trustworthy.
“It was hard to find a place with a room left, especially the right kind for Mom. Some of the gas stations have run out of fuel. Others limit how much you can get, and you have to pay cash. The traffic is insane, with all sorts of detours.”
“Wow, sounds like a zombie apocalypse out there.”
A trio of teens pushed open the gate, laughing as they cannonballed into the deep end. Water sprayed and Elsie shielded her phone with her hands.
“Not quite that bad, but it makes you think. People are cranky. I mean scary cranky. Like the kind that you see in road rage shows.”
“Are you guys safe?”
“Whenever we stop, we make sure the area is well lit. As long as nobody tries to pet Dusty, I think we’ll be okay.
” She felt a little more badass about shouting earlier now that she’d seen Grammie lose her cool.
Why couldn’t people understand? Just because a dog knew some tricks or provided emotional support, that did not make him a service dog. “Respect the vest.”
“Dusty’s so chill, I forget he’s around sometimes,” Willow said. “Has it been a pain having to take him along?”
“Not really, other than the regular hassle of dealing with rude people who don’t understand about service dogs.
There are lots of folks out here with cats and dogs.
I even saw a little girl carrying a bowl with her beta fish.
” There’d been a few folks with farm animals in trailers, but she didn’t want to make Willow feel bad.
“At one gas station, this guy had a bird that curses like a sailor.”
“I wish we’d left.” The connection crackled again, worse this time, breaking up. “Gotta . . . Later . . .”
“Bye,” she said, but the call had already dropped.
Fear for her friend doubled, along with a loneliness that pinned her down like one of those weighted blankets Willow’s little brother used. Elsie eyed the trio of teenagers spraying each other in the pool. Two boys and one girl. They looked like siblings.
Elsie scrolled through her social media feed, relieved no one had tagged her or sent a DM alluding to Porter and the photo he’d flashed around. How pathetic to be happy the world didn’t care she’d disappeared.
The splashing grew louder, closer, and she glanced up to find the older of the teenage boys swimming toward her. He stopped beside her legs and grabbed the edge of the pool.
With a flick of his head, he shook his cola-black curls from his face. “Hey, wanna join us?”
She forced herself not to look over her shoulder to see if he was talking to someone else. “I’m not wearing a bathing suit.”
“So swim in your shorts and shirt.”
Why not enjoy hanging out with people her own age for a change? “Sure. I’m Elsie.”
“I’m Kolton,” he said. “That’s my brother and sister. Kellan and Kyra. We’re from Georgia. Evacuating to our aunt’s place. How about you?”
“From South Carolina. Going to Grammie’s. Same reason.” She angled back to place her cell on the lounger, then slid into the pool. The water felt good after sweating all day.
Kolton’s brown eyes smiling back at her made her feel even better.
“I saw y’all earlier, when your grandmother lost it with that lady in the sports car. Epic. My sister videoed the whole thing. I bet it goes viral.”
Elsie winced. Great. Soon she and Grammie would both be “famous” online. “She’s actually a really good lawyer in DC. She came down to help us drive up.”
That sounded simpler than going into the whole emancipation saga.
“Cool. Cool.” They both held on to the pool edge, almost touching. “How old were you when your mom had the accident? The one that put her in a wheelchair, I mean.”
“Why do you assume it was an accident? How do you know she wasn’t born that way, with something like spina bifida or cerebral palsy?”
“Uh, was she?”
“No,” she conceded. “She did have an accident when she was just a kid.”
His brow furrowed in confusion. “Oops. Sorry, I assumed you must have been born already, since . . . I sound stupid here.”
“You assumed my mother couldn’t have a baby. Well, you’re wrong,” she snapped back defensively. Look at her and Grammie, scaring off people left and right.
Had the hotel search and the parking lot incident made her more sensitive to comments such as this? Her mom had always been, well, her mom. She hadn’t given a lot of thought to those little ways people may have treated her mother differently.
Guilt pinched at the notion she may have been selfish. Even self-centered.
Kolton tapped his foot against hers underwater. “Hey, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to sound like . . . Well, what do I know about that whole childbirth thing?”
“You’re forgiven.” She nudged back. Her mom had never scrimped on the details.
It had been a regular conception—ewww—and a regular delivery.
Other than the doctor recommending an epidural—not for pain, but to reduce the additional risk of a sudden increase in blood pressure.
Her mother had gone through a lot of extra risk to bring her into the world.
“My mom was a really talented ballerina. Like a child prodigy. But there was an accident during a performance. Something to do with lighting not being right and no glow strips on the edge of the stage. She fell off.”
He flinched. “That’s . . . awful.”
Why was she babbling about her mother so much? To a stranger, no less. Because she was nervous. Duh. And she didn’t want him to leave. “She still has some sensation in her legs and she can even take a few steps with braces and a walker, but for the most part, she needs her wheelchair.”
“And the dog helps, right?” he said, seeming genuinely interested. “I’ll let you tell me the details so I don’t stuff my big old foot in my mouth again.”
“Wow, a guy who learns from his mistakes? I must be dreaming.” She could totally talk about Dusty with ease, and enjoyed the opportunity to educate folks so they weren’t idiots like at the gas station and the parking lot.
“Yeah, he’s a mobility service dog. FYI, a service dog helps only one person.
That’s different from a therapy dog that does things like go to a hospital and comfort lots of folks but isn’t allowed inside a place without an invitation—”
The girl shouted from the other side of the pool, “Hey, do you want to play shoulder wars?”
“Shoulder wars?” Elsie called.
“Chicken fights,” the sister answered.
Kolton smiled at Elsie. “I’m game if you are.”
Nerves tingled. The good kind. But fear made her pause. She’d been so stupid to trust Porter.
Except this wasn’t the same. Right? This was just short-term flirting. They would never see each other again.
And she would make sure to keep her top on. No photos allowed.
Elsie nodded.
He slid down in the water so she could climb onto his shoulders. He stood, steadying her with his hands around her ankles.
Squealing, she clung tighter as they charged at the other duo. So fun. So normal. Was this what her days could be like if she succeeded in moving in with Grammie? A regular life. No more feeling mortified every time she met someone’s gaze and they snickered or laughed.
Or felt sorry for her.
Even if they hadn’t seen the images, she knew they were envisioning her naked.
Worse yet, they had a real picture in their minds taken at a summer trip with her classmates going into their senior year, camping and sailing.
She’d been in the campground bathhouse showering.
And because of the underwear photos she’d sent to Porter earlier, he had told everyone she was into that kind of thing.
Which made her wonder all the more if he was responsible for the whole mess.
A jolt startled her back to the present as she slid from Kolton’s shoulders, submerged. Water shot up her nose and she spluttered back to the surface. She coughed, pushed her hair from her face, and hacked again. She could feel the snot building. How embarrassing would that be?
“Hold on a minute,” she said, keeping her hands over her mouth and nose.
She climbed out of the pool and sprinted for the pile of towels beside her lounger. Dropping down to the edge, she scrubbed the bristly terry cloth over her face until she was in the clear. “I demand a rematch.”
The teens in the pool cheered and appeared to be none the wiser. She wadded up the towel and stuffed it under the chair. A chime from her cell phone stopped her halfway.
She thumbed open the text from an unknown number and her heart fell to her stomach. Because even with the anonymous sender, she knew deep in her gut the awful message staring back at her had to be from Porter.
Pay two thousand dollars to this link or everybody will see the real you.