Nobody but Us (18 page)

“Do what, Zoe? Turn ourselves in? We can’t do that. It was an accident. Know what’ll happen if we turn ourselves in? You’ll go back to your dad and they’ll put me away for years. I’m legal. There’s no juvie for me now. And they got me on assault, kidnapping, theft, and now … this. I’m done. Is that what you want?” I grip her to me like she can erase it all. My heart races but I take a deep breath of her scent to slow the panic. No one’s ever helped me hold on to that calm place like she can. If we can just get out of this and get … somewhere, I know she could always keep me right. “I didn’t mean to kill him.”

“I know you didn’t.”

“But they don’t! And nobody will give a shit that I didn’t mean it.”

“They know your car. And—and she has your wallet. She recognized your car, she knows who you are, and they’ll know I’m with you, and there’s nothing we can do now.” She steps back from me. Her hands twist. She’s trying hard to hold on to that place that comes just before hysterical. “We have to explain that it was an accident!”

I grab her shoulders.

“Vegas is a big city. We can get lost there. We just gotta get there. I’ll get rid of the car. Sell it. That’ll give us some money. Change my name and find a job that pays cash. I know what to look for. I’ll do whatever I can until it all blows over. Or we can go somewhere else. California. I’ll pick oranges. We know that it was an accident, but they don’t and they’ll do everything they can to make me out like a—like a … I don’t know what.”
I
know what I am, but I can’t say it. The word burns in my throat.

It ain’t what I am.

“We just gotta keep going. I’ll take care of you. We’re gonna be okay, promise. I promise.”

“You can’t promise that, Will. People have seen us. They know we’re going to Vegas. We can’t get lost there. No one gets lost when they’ve killed someone. They’ll find us. They will.”

Her words cut me. I’ve killed someone. I ended a life. This feeling that I ain’t human anymore, that I’m less than a person because I took someone else’s life—that I owe them part of mine now—it don’t seem to care that I didn’t mean to do it. That it was an accident. And the cops won’t care that I didn’t mean it. They’re gonna be after us now even if they weren’t before.

“Then we’ll keep going,” I choke out, desperate to soothe her and me, too. I can drive. Just keep going until we get to that place where everyone understands accidents happen and people need to be saved. “All the way to the ocean, okay?”

“We can’t run forever.”

“I’ll take care of you. Like you take care of me.”

I kiss her all over, like it can make everything better. I promise, I say, every time my lips touch her cheek or her neck or her mouth. I promise I’m gonna step up and take care of this and of you and it will be okay.

I’M NOT PREPARED FOR THE PHONE TO RING. THE sound cuts through the heavy silence in the car like a drill pressed to my earlobe. I jump as Will checks the screen.

“I don’t know the number,” he says. His voice is raspy as though his throat has seized up on him, refusing to cooperate.

He extends his hand, his fingers loose around the phone. The ringer sounds again. The area code’s North Dakota. What if it’s the cops? I should let it go to voice mail, make whoever it is leave a message, pretend we don’t exist anymore.

No.

Even when everyone pretended I didn’t, when it was easier to look the other way.

I existed.

I exist.

I press the
TALK
button and hold the phone to my ear but don’t say anything. They have to hear my breathing. It’s so loud.

“Hello? Is someone there?”

I know that whispered voice. Lindsay. I swallow.

What am I supposed to say to her? How much do I tell her? How did she even get this number? My fingers shake as I consider hanging up on her.

Except, she might have news. Something about my dad, or Will, or the police.

“Hello?” I gasp out the word, cough, try again. “Hello? Lin?”

I hear her sounds, mewling sounds and fearful sounds and hiccupping sounds. She sniffs, loud enough to fill my ear completely.

“Lin? Are you okay? How did you get this number?”

“Caller ID,” she sniffs. “I erased it, though. Not that it matters. Hardly.”

“What do you mean?”

“Did you hear me tell my mom you were Gabe when you called, day before yesterday?”

“Yes, I heard.”

“And then Blaire was there?”

“I heard her, too.” She needs to hurry up. Say what she needs to say. It’s too hard to focus on anything but a dead man. “Why?”

Lindsay takes a deep breath before going on. “Blaire picked up another phone. The one in my parents’ room. She listened the whole time we were talking.”

I don’t say anything. I’m too busy trying to remember if I’d said anything that I shouldn’t have. There was no mention of Vegas, no telling her which direction we were headed. Just that I was okay. Not to worry. Not to say I called.

“She wanted to get on and tease me, I know, but then she heard your voice and listened. I didn’t even hear her pick up. I can’t believe I didn’t hear her. I was so excited to hear where you’d gone.”

“But I didn’t tell you anything.”

“She told my mom and dad that I talked to you. And they called the police. And grounded me forever.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault. I’m gonna kill Blaire, though.”

“I shouldn’t have called. That was stupid.”

“I’m glad you called. Except the police came over to ask me a million questions and made me feel guilty. And then … that’s not all. The FBI came, too. Afterward. Kept asking if Will was dangerous, if I thought he made you go with him, like with a weapon. I said of course not, and they kept asking where you were, but even Blaire said you didn’t tell us where you were.”

“The FBI?” I whisper, my thoughts flailing too much to catch hold of. The seriousness—the way Lindsay makes it out to be so grave and terrible—isn’t rooting itself in my brain. The FBI is bigger, worse, than the police. They can follow us anywhere. We can’t get away.

“It’s my fault, Lin. I shouldn’t have called and gotten you involved. And now you could get in trouble if they find out you’re talking to me again.”

“It’s okay. I borrowed Gabe’s phone. They won’t know.” Lin’s voice halts; she clears her throat before starting up again.

“But, Zoe, I think they know where you are. Or at least where you’re headed. There’s footage from this store between here and Nevada. The agents made me watch it. It looked like … it looked like you. Kind of. And Will. They asked if I recognized the people in the video. I saw this big guy shake y—the girl. And then the other guy … but the quality was really bad. I told them it was too hard to tell. That wasn’t you, was it? You’ve never been to Nevada, never tried to—” She took another breath and lowered her voice again.

“That man died, Zoe. And now they think you’re going to Vegas. Now there’s more charges against Will and people in suits are coming over. … Tell me that it’s not true, that it wasn’t you in that video. Are you really okay?”

I press my nose against the cold window and stare at the silhouetted shrub and rock shapes as we speed by them. There’s got to be someplace out there where people who don’t mean to do anything wrong can go and live and make it all right again. A place that doesn’t tear them apart or hurt their friends. Happiness can’t just be a myth.

“I’m okay, really. I don’t know what you saw on that video.” I close my eyes now, fighting the hopeless feeling that is creeping over me like clammy fingers. “I haven’t seen it. But I’m okay. And Will’s okay.”

I know I’m rambling, but I don’t want to say something that’s a lie and I don’t want to tell her too much because it’s not her fault, not at all, and yet things—information—get away from us sometimes.

“I’m okay, Lin. Believe that. And … happy to be with Will. If anyone asks again, you can tell them I one hundred percent went on my own. I want to be here, I need to be here. Everything will work out just fine. I think—I won’t call for a bit, but you can call here on someone else’s phone, if they won’t tell.”

“I’ll call again. In a couple of days. Or if anything else happens here, okay?”

“Okay. Talk to you soon.”

I press the
END CALL
button and immediately begin to despise the phone, want to crush it slowly under the heel of my shoe. I don’t know where else to direct my anger, my sadness. Instead, I hand the phone back to Will, gently.

“They know where we’re going,” I tell him.

IT GETS REAL COLD INSIDE AT HER WORDS.

“What?”

“They know we’re headed for Vegas.”

“Who?”

“The police. The FBI.”

The FBI. I figured this would happen. I knew they’d come. I knew we couldn’t run fast enough. I figured a fake ID would be enough. I’m an idiot. Nothing’s enough when you’re a murderer.

“How?”

I feel like if I keep asking her these stupid questions, then I can keep the answers from reaching me all the way. Like, each sentence that comes out of her mouth stumbles over the one before so they can’t get me, can’t sink in. This ain’t what I wanna hear. But she does answer, saying something about a sister and a video. It don’t matter. All that matters is that they know where we’re going. The slipping feeling of safety that I been clinging to ever since that diner is somewhere down the road behind us now. They know where we’re going. They’ll be waiting there—in Vegas—for us.

No. They can’t have us. They can’t have Zoe. They can’t take her from me.

“It’ll be okay.” I ain’t even thinking about what I’m saying, there’s no meaning behind anything. She sighs, all frustrated.

“Are you even listening to me? They know where we’re going. We can’t go to Vegas now.”

“We’re in the middle of a desert. There ain’t nowhere else to go.”

“Anywhere. We can go anywhere that’s not Vegas.”

“We already got plans.”

“Listen to me!”

I rub my face and try to focus on what Zoe’s saying, but her words slide by me somehow. I take her hand. It’s solid, full of life. “Just let me think,” I tell her.

She snatches her hand from mine, upset that I won’t listen to the important things she’s got to say. But it ain’t like that. I’m listening, I’m trying. It’s like my body won’t absorb the words, though. Like they’re getting deflected somewhere else before they reach my ears. I need to try harder to hear her. But then the road calls and I gotta pay attention to my driving.

I killed a man. You don’t get away with that.

Run, run everywhere you can run, but you ain’t getting away.

“Hey Zoe, just turn the radio on. Let’s listen to some music.”

She pauses, and thickness fills the car. I look at her, see her eyes narrow at me. Yes, I tell her silently, yes, you can be pissed at me for saying that, for cutting you off, for bringing you here, for putting you in this situation. You can be as angry as you want, hate me more than anyone’s ever hated and yell till you’re hoarse. All you want. I’m so sorry. This is the best I can do right now. Just don’t leave.

She breaks eye contact with me. Her hand reaches for the radio but stops for a second. She turns to me again. Takes my jaw in her hands. Squeeze it, I wanna tell her. Hurt me all you want, like I’ve hurt you. But she’s so gentle as she brings my face toward hers, just a little. Not enough for my eyes to lose the road, but enough so that her lips can reach my ear, my cheek, the corner of my mouth.

“I love you.”

She wipes at a tear that sneaks out from under her eyelash and flips on the radio. She passes station after station until she finds a song that won’t rip us to shreds with darkness or bass or anything like that. Some song everyone knew the lyrics to ten years ago but have mostly forgotten now.

I slam the back of my head into my headrest and close my eyes for a second. I can feel ghost kisses where her mouth just touched mine. Whispers of Zoe chilling out on my face. I reach my hand up instinctively to scratch at my scruffy jawline, but drop it again, quickly. I won’t touch them, the angel kisses she left for me when she should’ve been getting out of my car and leaving me forever. No one’s ever stood by me this long, through so much.

I think about what she did there with my demand that she turn on the music. Was it strength or weakness that made her do it? Was she giving in to me or was she rising above me, above everything’s that happened? I look across the car at her. She’s humming to the music like she got no other cares in the world.

Yeah.

Above.

So very far above me.

I’VE NEVER FELT THIS BEFORE, THIS FEELING THAT I’VE hurt someone. If I hadn’t tried to take something that wasn’t mine, if I hadn’t run off with Will in the first place, none of this would have happened. Will wouldn’t have stolen that money. I wouldn’t have tried to steal anything.

I can’t stop doing bad things. Ever since I was a little girl who stood and watched, who never told because her daddy said not to.

It’s dark outside already. A cloudy winter kind of dark, even though it’s spring. Dark enough to close my eyes and pray to the sky or anything listening. I haven’t prayed since I was little and decided God hated me, but now I ask for forgiveness and promise to make it all right. But the only answer I get when I open my eyes is the sound of the pavement and the feeling of Will’s car beneath my feet and the winking of the stars in the black sky and the knowledge that they’re out there, chasing us, about to find us. The knowledge that we can’t run fast enough.