One Week (16 page)

Mr. Mackey releases the brake and the car lurches forward. I am shoved backward into Jess, who wraps his arms around me as tightly as he can. The two of us are sharing a seatbelt, which probably makes it completely ineffective.  The wheels are still screeching and I can smell burning rubber. The rows of corn are flying past in a blur, and it’s only been a few seconds. I’m breathless and terrified, but I have to admit that I can kind of see what Mr. Mackey is talking about.

I don’t think Jess feels the same way, though. “The car is on fire!” he shouts. “It’s burning!”

I squeeze his hand to reassure him, and start to tell him that the smell is just from the tires, when suddenly I see what he’s talking about. There’s smoke coming from underneath the hood of the car. Mr. Mackey doesn’t seem to notice—he just keeps driving. I hear a terrible sound coming from the engine, and then without warning the car dies. Mr. Mackey swears as we skid sideways across the road and I scream and cover my eyes as we go off the road and into the cornfield.

We jerk to a stop and I peer through my fingers. I’m okay. I turn around and check Jess, who is rubbing his neck but seems otherwise fine.

Mr. Mackey lets out a breath. “Well!” he says. “That was sure exciting!”

I feel Jess prepare to explode at him, and squeeze his hand as hard as I can. Jess is shaking, he’s so angry. I think Mr. Mackey is just stupid and harmless, but we are now stuck out here in the middle of nowhere, and I don’t really want to get into a fight with a guy who has so little impulse control that he just drove his car off the road. “Don’t bother,” I hiss at Jess. “Let’s just get out of this in one piece.” After a moment he nods tightly and lets me do the talking.

“I think that was a little more excitement than we needed,” I say, as calmly as I can. “What’s wrong with the car?”

Mr. Mackey gives a disgusted grunt and climbs out of the car. He fights his way through the corn to open the hood. He stands back, waving a hand at the smoke. “Yep, that’s what I thought,” he calls. “Engine blew. It’s been threatening to do that for a while now.” He leaves the hood open. I don’t see any flames, but it occurs to me that perhaps it might be a good idea to get away from the car. Far away. I unbuckle us and practically shove Jess out the door.

We stumble through the corn and out onto the empty road. As we look around, I think about how long it’s been since we passed another car. I pull out my cell phone—it’s a quarter to six already.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Jess asks, touching my arm.

“I’m fine,” I say. “Or I will be once we get moving. It’s going to be dark soon.” I turn to call out to Mr. Mackey to offer him the use of my cell, when to my surprise I hear him talking on his own. I wouldn’t have thought he’d be the type to even carry a phone. Of course, he could be talking to himself.

Jess and I squat down on the shoulder to wait. I look at him sideways, checking to see if he’s okay. “Want to thumb wrestle?” I joke.

Jess rolls his eyes at me, and then Mr. Mackey calls, “Good news!” He emerges from the corn with a big grin on his face. “We’re only about twenty or so miles from Tiffin. My buddy doesn’t get off work for another couple of hours, but when he’s done he says he’ll come out here and tow us back to the garage, and you kids can get on from there.”

Jess and I stand up, and look at each other. “No thanks,” we say simultaneously. There’s just no way we’re staying with Mr. Mackey for another two hours. Surely another car will pass by and we can keep moving for a little while longer.

“We’ll just start walking and keep an eye out for another ride,” Jess continues. “It was, uh, nice meeting you, and…” he trails off.

“And thanks for the ride,” I finish. I’m amazed Jess managed to choke out that much.

“Not a problem,” Mr. Mackey says. “I always like to pick up folks when I can.”

“And I’m sure they are just beside themselves with joy,” Jess mutters. I tug at his arm to get us moving and we wave goodbye to Mr. Mackey.

“Thanks again,” I say, and we walk quickly away. “Are
you
okay?” I ask Jess.

He rolls his eyes. “I’m fine. I mean, I’m not hurt or anything. I just… I really don’t like cars,” he explains.

“Yeah, I kind of picked up on that,” I say, laughing softly.

“Do you know what the statistics are on car accident deaths?” Jess asks defensively. “Somebody dies every thirteen minutes. That could have been our thirteen minutes, thanks to that fake hippie asshole. I know you were right, it was better just to walk away, but think about the next poor bastards that accept a ride from that guy!” Jess shoves his hands in his pockets and starts walking really fast, and I run to catch up.

“Hey!” I call. “It’s okay! We’re okay, it’s over.”

“This is so stupid!” Jess responds furiously. “You could have been really badly hurt, Bee, and I would have been responsible! I should never have let you do this!”

I stop walking. The highway stretches out in front of us, and Jess keeps walking, his head down and his shoulders hunched up tight. “What’s stupid?” I call after
him. “Fighting in the middle of the street over nothing, or you suddenly deciding that you’re somehow the boss of me?”

Jess turns around and opens his mouth to yell at me again, but then he turns at looks out into the cornfield for a moment, breathing deeply. When he’s a little calmer, he walks back over to me. “Sorry,” he says tightly. “You’re right, I said that wrong. I meant, it’s stupid to be hitchhiking and we should have just taken the money from Martha and Herbert and I
knew
that we should have, but you’re just so…” Jess starts getting agitated again. “You have absolutely no sense of self-preservation, and it drives me fucking
crazy,
because somebody has to protect you if you’re not going to protect yourself, and I swear to God, Bee, if anything happened to you I don’t know what I—”

I grab Jess by the shoulders and kiss him. And for
once, he doesn’t push me away. He wraps his arms around me and pulls me to his chest, and I wind my arms around his neck, and I feel like I can’t breathe but I don’t care.

We stand there in the middle of the road paying no attention whatsoever to whether or not a car is coming and are probably in more danger than we ever were with Mr. Mackey, but when Jess lifts his head and I try to catch my breath, I don’t want us to ever move.

And then it starts to rain. At first it’s just a few drops, and I laugh softly and wipe one off of Jess’s eyebrow. He kisses one off of my temple. But then the rain gets heavier…and then it gets biblical. I gape up at the sky, and within moments, we’re completely soaked.

Jess reaches down and takes my hand. “Come on!” he yells over the roar of the rain.

We start running up the road—running where, I don’t know, since there’s nothing out here—but we can’t just stay out in this. And then I see where Jess is headed. About five hundred yards away, there’s some kind of RV trailer over at the edge of a dirt road that heads up in to the cornfield. We run over to the trailer, shielding our eyes, and Jess yanks on the door. It’s locked.

“You’re the expert on breaking-and-entering,” Jess yells. “How do we get in?”

I stick out my tongue at him and look to see if there are any windows open. I run around to the other side of the trailer and find a small window over the back that looks like maybe the lock isn’t in place. “Come lift me up!” I call.

Jess hoists me up, holding my hips as I try to shove the window open. It’s pretty small—I’m not even sure I’ll fit. I punch the window with my elbow. It swings open, and I gesture for Jess to lift me higher. He shifts his hands to my thighs and I pull myself through the window, and promptly fall in headfirst. Thankfully, I land on a bed—the back of the trailer is apparently the bedroom—and jump up to go let Jess in.  He slams the door behind him, and we stand there in the middle of the trailer, dripping.

I start to giggle from the absurdity of it all, and Jess leans in and gives me a quick kiss. “I’ll go find some towels,” he says, and heads off into the bedroom to see if there are any in there.

I take a moment to look around. Although it obviously hasn’t been used in a while, the trailer is clean and neat. There’s a kitchen, a little table to eat at, a living room complete with couch, chair, and TV, a bathroom, and the bedroom I dove into. Altogether, it’s probably only about the size of two roomettes, but it feels like an entire house, just in miniature. I love it.

I go to the little window next to the door and look out at the rain. It’s beating so hard on the roof I can barely hear Jess moving around as he looks in the cupboards tucked into the walls. Every moment of the past five days has been strange, but this feels outside reality. I’m in the middle of Iowa somewhere, and I’ve broken into some stranger’s trailer, and I don’t want to be anywhere else in the world.

I jump as Jess wraps a towel around my shoulders. I pull it tight around me, and grab his hands and wrap them around my waist. He kisses the back of my neck. “Are you hungry?” he asks.

I smile and shake my head. “Are you?”

I feel him shrug. “Not really. But we left Martha’s snacks in Mr. Mackey’s car.”

“No!” I turn around to face Jess. “Are you okay? When did you last eat?”

“I’m fine,” Jess chuckles, and rubs my shoulders. “We’ll need to figure something out by breakfast, probably, but I should be okay until then. Maybe there’s something in the kitchen.”

“So,” I say slowly. “We’re staying here tonight?”

“Well, I don’t really want to go back out into that,” Jess says, nodding at the rain. “Do you?” He moves away from me and into the kitchen. He opens a few cupboards but doesn’t find anything. I’m not surprised—the trailer definitely hasn’t been used in a while, but Jess looks frustrated. “Well, shit,” he says. “I’m sorry. If you’re really hungry I could try and get something in Tiffin, I guess, but it might be a while…”

I walk over to Jess and grab his hands to still them. “I’m not hungry,” I say.

Jess takes a breath, and then smiles at me. He runs his hands up my arms and my towel drops to the floor.

It’s hard getting wet clothes off under the best of circumstances, but I discover that trying to undress somebody else wearing wet clothes is next to impossible. Jess starts laughing when it becomes clear that my jeans are so tight they cannot be removed without lying down, but then he is very quickly not laughing anymore. And oh God, neither am I.

I open my eyes and it’s light out. And it’s stopped raining. I roll over to see Jess awake and watching me.

“Good morning,” he says. “Did you sleep okay?”

I rise up on my elbows and lean over and kiss him. “Mmm-hmm. You?”

He runs a hand along my collarbone and down the center of my back. “I slept some.” His hand dips along the side of my ribcage and I twitch involuntarily. I’m very ticklish. Jess grins, and I roll away in self-defense.

“I can’t believe you carry a condom in your wallet,” I laugh, looking up at the ceiling of the trailer. “Who does that?”

Jess shrugs. “Hey, I’m just glad I had one. But what about you?” he asks, sounding slightly worried. “Are you glad?”

I roll back over onto my side so he can see my face. “I’m a little sore,” I admit. “But I’m glad too.” Last night, as he was digging his wallet out of his jeans, Jess asked me if I was sure. I was then, and I am now, so very sure.

Jess reaches a hand and pulls me in for a deep kiss, one that makes me wish he had an entire pack of condoms in his wallet. And I can tell he feels the same way. But then again there are other things we can do, and I discover that those things are pretty wonderful too.

We fall back asleep again, or I do anyway, and when I wake up Jess is half-dressed and moving around the trailer, trying to be quiet as he picks up our still-damp clothes. I sit up and he tosses me my bra and shirt.

“We should probably get going,” he says. “It would be just our luck to have whoever owns this trailer show up today.”

I know he’s right, but I never want to leave. I wind my fingers in my bra strap but don’t put it on just yet. I’m having those morning-after jitters. I know it’s completely unnecessary, but I can’t seem to help myself. “So when we get to New York, are we going to, uh, go out to that dinner like we talked about?” I try to sound casual, but I know I’m failing miserably.

Jess pulls his T-shirt over his head. “Sure,” he says after a moment. He turns his back to me, and looks out the window. “Bee,” he says, his voice sounding tight, “you do realize you have to go home at some point, right?”

I look at him blankly. This seems wildly off-topic right now.

He turns around and looks at me and sighs. “I know
why you want to get to New York, and I swear, I’m going to make sure you get there, but after that I think you need to figure things out with your father. What are you going
to do in New York anyway? You have to go home.”

I gape at him, feeling completely blindsided. This isn’t at all the way the conversation was supposed to go. I
look down and clench my fingers around my bra strap. “Is this because I turned out to be a virgin?” I ask, and my
voice sounds small and very young.

“No,” Jess says carefully, and comes over to sit on the bed next to me. “I knew that already. It’s not about
that.”
 “Knew that already? How?” I say, my voice rising.

“Well, it was kind of obvious," Jess says, sounding awkward.
 “
Obvious?
What the hell does that mean? Did I have some kind of Presence of Hymen indicator light blinking on me somewhere?” I can’t believe this. I scoot away from Jess and pull the sheet up over my chest. 

“No!” Jess says. “It’s just…I just know you, that’s all, and I…” he sighs. “It doesn’t matter anyway. Bee, this was...this was great.” He takes a breath. “It was really
great, but it was probably a mistake.”

 My throat clenches, and my face grows hot. “A mistake,” I choke out.