Blink & Caution (23 page)

She laughs. It explodes out of her, too loud in this enclosed place. It makes him jump.

“I’m not kidding!” he says. “There’s nothing
but
trees.”

“I was born in the country,” she says.

“So, not Vancouver?”

“I already told you that was a lie.”

“Oh, right. But I’m supposed to believe you were born in the country?”

She nods. “An ant fart of a place called Wahnapitae, up near Sudbury.”

“Where there are wolves and bears,” he says.

“Yes.” She’s pleased he remembered her saying that. “I grew up on a little farm on a lake. Not a real farm. I mean, we grew stuff, but Dad had a full-time job as a mechanic and Mom was a preschool teacher.”

He’s watching her again. She glances his way, slips him a smile. Is this her way of trying to convince him she’s telling the truth?

“So what happened?” he says.

“What do you mean?”

“Why’d you leave?”

She grips the wheel tight. “I already told you. I murdered someone.”

“Now you’re lying again.”

“I am not.”

“Yes, you are. I can tell. All that stuff about your mom and dad sounded like the truth. The murder sounded different.”

“Well, what do you know about it? Somebody got killed. I killed him. How does that sound?”

He doesn’t say anything for a bit. Maybe because you bit his head off.

“I believe you,” he says.

“Thanks.”

“But those are two different things.”

“What do you mean?”

He lifts his feet up and puts them on the dashboard. He wraps his arms around his knees.

“If I killed my stepfather,” he says, “
that
would be murder.”

She waits, but he doesn’t go on. She wants him to complete the equation, but when she thinks about it, he doesn’t really need to. She knows what he’s saying: that you can kill someone by accident; that it’s only murder when you mean to do it. And she
didn’t
mean to kill Spence. It
was
an accident. Everybody
told
her it was an accident. Nobody
blamed
her. Nobody but herself.

“Was it your brother?” says Blink.

She can’t think how he figured that out. She wonders, suddenly, if this is just the next stage of the nightmare. The part that seems like escape but isn’t. Because you can’t escape. Not ever.

“Yes,” she says.

T
he sun dips below the cloud cover, the first you’ve seen of the sun since early this morning. There are people out on a lake you pass by, people fishing. Sitting on top of their reflections, on a lake so green it makes your eyes water. Green and burning in the sun trapped between the clouds and the earth.

You’re tired, Blink. Reluctantly you admit to yourself that it’s lucky Kitty is driving. You glance at her. She’s closed up again. When she said that about her brother getting killed, you wanted to reach out and touch her, but you were afraid to. Afraid of what she might do. But maybe you could say something.

“I’m sorry,” you say, and immediately wished you hadn’t.

“Not as sorry as I am,” she says. “I am the sorriest excuse for a human being whoever walked the earth.”

“That’s bullshit.”

“Yeah, thanks but —”

“No, I mean it. I don’t know what happened — how it happened. And you don’t have to tell me or anything — I’m not asking you to. But it was a mistake, wasn’t it?”

“Was it?”

“It must have been. I know it was.”

“You do, huh? Suddenly you’re Mr. Know-It-All.”

“Yeah, I am.” You swallow, rub at your eyes. “I’m not stupid. I know you think I am, but I’m not.”

She frowns. “I never said you were.”

“You don’t have to. I can tell. But I don’t care. Because I’m not stupid.”

“Okay, okay, you’re not stupid. And I’m not the sorriest excuse for a human being. There, are you happy?”

“No.”

“No?”

“No. I’d be happy if you let me drive.”

She laughs, and you like the sound of it. You settle back into your seat. You didn’t get much sleep last night in your drop-cloth bed. And today has been like no day you’ve ever even dreamed of — the third day of the weirdness. You yawn — a big one — but keep your eyes on the road, just in case she decides to veer off it and plunge the car into a lake and kill you both.

“Turn left at the T intersection coming up in two-point-five kilometers.”

“Anyone ever tell you you’re hot?” you say.

“Go back to sleep,” says Kitty.

“I was talking to Direction Lady,” you say. “And I wasn’t asleep.”

You feel good. Where’s Captain Panic? Must have jumped ship. You don’t feel one bit of badness inside you out here on this winding highway heading north.

“You are pretty hot,” you say.

“Shut up,” she says, laughing.

“Just not as hot as Direction Lady.”

She laughs. That’s what you wanted. To hear her laugh.

You’ve got this little job to do, right? You get to this place, park the Jeep, make your way down this private road until you get to the end of it, and there’s the lodge. See if anyone’s there, and get the hell out. Done. And, best of all, there’s two of you.

“What if, like, somebody else is there?” you asked Alyson.

She shrugged, and her eyebrows came together, what there was of them, because she’s plucked them right down to narrow gashes. “I don’t know,” she said. “Keep watching, I guess. You know what he looks like, right?”

“Your father? Yeah.”

“Well, if he is there — and if I’m right — he won’t be a prisoner. He’s bound to make an appearance sometime.”

You nodded. Then you remembered something. “Right. He’ll have to come out sometime to use the can.”

“Right.” She frowned, looked away, as if the memory of that outhouse haunted her all these years later. Then she snapped out of it. She looked at you like you were smart — like you’d been paying attention. Hell, yes! You’d been listening and looking and reading the signs like never before.

The T intersection turns out to be pretty well the end of Sharbot Lake, even though Kitty didn’t exactly remember the beginning of it. There is no place to eat except a Petro-Can station at the junction of Highway 7. She pulls the car into the lot, and they get out to stretch and use the restroom. Inside, they stock up on chips and chocolate bars and sodas.

The air is clean out here, even on a major thoroughfare. It’s been a while since Kitty has smelled clean air. But there isn’t time to stop now. Blink is antsy to get going. He pleads with her to let him drive, but she’s not taking any chances. They head off again, west like the lady says. It’s less than an hour away.

“Turn right, two hundred meters.”

“You got it, lady.”

There’s a big stop sign at the corner of Highway 509, and somebody’s attached a yellow balloon to it. The balloon bops around in the wind.

“Huh,” says Blink. He’s looking at it, too.

“Somebody’s having a birthday party,” says Kitty. “That’s how folks know where to turn. Hey, why don’t we crash the party?”

“Very funny,” says Blink.

Above the yellow balloon is gray-green rock face, a craggy bit of cliff with a ghost-eye tree on the top of it.

This is the last leg, and in between mouthfuls of Doritos and slurps of Cherry Coke, Blink has started talking excitedly.

“Where are you going to go with your half of the take?” he says.

“Moscow,” she says.

“No, seriously.”

“Who says I’m kidding? What about you?”

“I don’t know. Hey, maybe I’ll go to Moscow, too. Maybe we could keep the Wrangler and, like, drive there.” Kitty’s mouthgapes. “Kidding,” says Blink.

“Mr. Geography,” she says.

He’s rocking back and forth in his seat like some kid on his way to a paintball competition.

“Knock it off,” she says. But she’s picking up on his excitement, pressing down a little too hard on the accelerator. She catches a look at the speedometer and pulls back to the speed limit, which is good, because it means she doesn’t have to squeal to a stop when three deer burst from the bush at the side of the road. She swerves, and the Wrangler shimmies a bit as the brakes do their thing. Then she swears a whole lot.

“You are so strung out,” says Blink.

“I am not!” she says.

“It’s cool,” he says. “No one got hurt.”

This new enthusiasm of the boy’s is maddening. She liked it better when he was half asleep.

“Are deer always that dumb?” he asks.

“Always,” she says.

Then suddenly he’s yelling. “Look at that!” And she almost slams on the brakes again, but he’s only pointing at a sign: a road to some settlement.

“What about it?”

“It wasn’t like a town or a village,” he says. “It was a ‘settlement.’ Like we’ve gone back in frigging time or something.”

She lets out her breath in a long, slow exhalation. She is getting more and more nervous. Less than half an hour ago, she had been feeling good about being out in the open again. But now she feels a bad case of paranoia coming on — the playing out of the nightmare. She feels herself reverting to the girl she became in Toronto. Caution: Watch Your Step.

“A settlement,” says Blink, shaking his head.

“Yeah, and next we’ll be seeing ox carts,” says Kitty. “And guys with flintlock rifles.”

“Whatever.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” she mutters.

“Flintlock rifles?”

“No!” she says. “Whatever. This whole setup. It stinks. You do know that, don’t you?”

He stares at her. “Chill out,” he says.

“No!” says Kitty. “Blink, I’m not sure about what you think is ahead, but I’ve got this really bad feeling it might be . . .”

She can’t think of what to say.

“A chance to make a million dollars?” he says.

“Ha! I was thinking more along the lines of a Date with Destiny.” He doesn’t say anything at first, but she can almost hear him thinking. “What?” she says.

“You didn’t see her,” he says. “Up close.”

“I saw enough. She’s in on this.”

“You didn’t see her when she cried,” he says.

“You think a girl can’t fake cry? A girl can fake a lot of things if it gets her what she wants. What she thinks she wants.”

“She wasn’t faking. I trust her.”

“You trusted
me,
” says Kitty. “Look where that got you.”

“Here,” he says.

“You know what I mean.”

“Okay,” he says. “I trusted you. And I was right.”

She doesn’t know what to say to that. But it doesn’t matter because suddenly Brent is yelling at her again. “Stop! Holy shit! Stop!”

She slams on the brakes, leaving a trail of rubber on the blacktop. Luckily no one is behind her. She eases the car onto the shoulder. “Are you trying to get us killed?” she says.

“Look.”

She looks, sees nothing. He jabs the air with his finger. She looks again, squints. There is a road sign. He’s pointing at the road sign. She reads it. Conboy Road.

“I don’t get it,” she says.

“Conboy,” he says. “That’s my name. Brent Conboy.”

“So you’ve got your own road,” says Kitty.

He nods. “I’ve never seen my name anywhere,” he says. “It’s, like, so cool.”

She wants to say,
So this is why you nearly gave me a heart attack,
but she holds her tongue. She looks at him, sees his eyes shining as if that stupid tilted road sign was an omen or something. And she sort of gets it. “It’s like there’s this place in the world where you’ve got a name they put up on signs.”

“Yeah,” he says.

She stares at his profile until he looks at her. “Sorry,” she says.

“For what?”

She shrugs. She leans her forehead on the steering wheel, closes her eyes. She wills Spence to come down out of the sky and comfort her, lay his hand on her shoulder again. Then suddenly there
is
a hand on her shoulder.

“You okay?” says Blink.

“What do you think?”

He squeezes her shoulder. “I think we don’t have much choice what to do. You know?” She nods. “Like, we’ve come this far.”

She nods again. And she thinks just how far she’s come. How far back in time this car ride into nowhere really began.

“Nothing’s going to happen,” he says. “Trust me.”

“Oh, good,” she mutters. “Now I feel a whole lot better.”

She checks over her shoulder, puts the car in drive, and pulls back onto 509. She concentrates on the road. This boy has such faith, she thinks. She doesn’t. She can only see that it is going to go badly. And here she is chauffeuring him to whatever badness lies ahead. How has this happened? Why has she crossed paths with this odd blinking boy? Then the answer comes to her: to tell him. To tell someone.

“After what happened . . . after what I did . . .” She finds her mouth is dry. She remembers her soda, takes a swig.

“I’m listening,” he says.

“After that . . . what I was talking about . . . I felt like nothing was real. It was”— and this is new to her, the first time she’s thought of it —“it was as if I were the one who was dead. Ikilled my brother. But I killed myself, only I didn’t know it. And all this — everything that has happened since then is just . . .”

“Purgatory?” says Blink. She glances at him nervously. “Right?” he asks her. She shrugs.