by Claire Cook
“Yuck,” B.J. said. “Now I really feel like I’m going to throw up. Did he just lick his lips at us?”
“Don’t look,” I said. “It will only encourage him.”
B.J. stopped walking and fluffed her hair. “Well, I suppose in a way it’s a compliment. I don’t know about you but sometimes I feel practically invisible. I mean, you walk past a bunch of construction workers and nobody even glances your way anymore. Not that you want them to, but when they don’t it’s kind of a rude awakening. And at least you have sons—try walking down the street with your beautiful daughter if you want to feel like you don’t exist anymore.”
I grabbed B.J. by the arm. “Keep moving. And don’t look over.”
B.J. looked. “Ick. What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“Uh, I think he’s simulating what he’d like you to do to him. Or us to do to him. Or maybe he just wants to do it to himself.”
“Really? I always wondered what that meant.”
I gave B.J.’s arm another yank. “Come on.”
She shook my hand off. “I don’t know. If you stop to think about it, this is bullying, plain and simple. And the only way to deal with a bully is to stand right up to him. Otherwise he’ll just keep doing it, and the next person he picks on might not be able to take it in stride the way we can.”
Somehow, in the time it had taken us to inhale two super-size containers of McDonald’s fries for dinner, the sun had managed to set completely. Even with a handful of stars and the glow of the golden arches and the lights dotting the pavement, it was dark now, scary dark. There were a few cars scattered across this end of the parking lot, but they were empty.
“B.J.,” I whispered. “I mean it. Let’s get out of here. Now.”
She put her hands on her hips. “In your dreams, jerkface,” she yelled.
“Please tell me you didn’t really just do that,” I whispered.
B.J. rummaged in her purse and pulled out her keys, along with a tiny pad of paper with a mini pen attached. “And furthermore,” she yelled, “we are going to report you for harassment to whomever it is that governs the big wheel truckers’ association.”
The door of the eighteen-wheeler swung open.
I screamed.
B.J. threw me her car keys. “I can’t see the license plate from here. Drive me by fast and then we’ll get the hell away from this loser.”
Two large leather boots appeared beneath the door of the truck. The trucker jumped down and hiked his jeans up over a river of white flesh until they met his T-shirt. He was tall and wide with a high round medicine ball of a belly. The baseball hat was casting a shadow over his face, so I couldn’t make out his expression from here, but he had a mean tilt to his head.
B.J. was halfway to the Mustang before I realized she’d started to run.
I could feel my whole body freeze, the way it does in a dream when someone is chasing you. The trucker stepped under a light and grinned at me. It was an ugly grin, a bully’s grin.
“Run,” B.J. yelled.
I ran. She jumped into the passenger side and pushed the driver’s door open for me.
I bent over and leaned my head into the car. “You drive.”
Behind me I heard a long woo-hoo of a whistle, aimed right at my rear end.
I jumped in.
B.J. reached over and turned the key in the ignition.
“Go,” she yelled. “Now.”
“What an idiot,” B.J. said. “We probably should have held our ground—I hope he doesn’t think he scared us away. At least we got his license plate number. Can you believe the way he looked running across that parking lot after us? I mean, how about try finding a gym instead of harassing hot women, buddy.”
I gripped Mustang Sally’s frayed leather steering wheel and focused on trying to breathe. I’d planned to make B.J. drive once we’d made it safely out of the parking lot and had ditched the trucker. But once I started looking for a place to pull over, suddenly the entrance to the highway was my only choice and before I knew it we were on it.
The traffic was much lighter now. All I had to do was make it to the next exit and I’d be fine. It probably wouldn’t be a bad idea to get out of the breakdown lane, too, just so I didn’t get pulled over for driving in it after seven PM.
“You do realize we’re in the breakdown lane, right?” B.J. said.
“Ha,” I said. “I guess that guy really rattled me.”
I put on my blinker. I checked for cars in the rearview mirror.
B.J. half turned in her seat. “You’re fine. Nothing’s coming.”
“Good to go,” she added a few seconds later.
As soon as I turned the wheel my mouth went dry. I pulled us into the slow lane as gradually as I could. Then I concentrated on pushing down on the accelerator.
The baby elephant sat right down on my chest and made itself at home once again. I wanted a sip of something, anything, to unstick my tongue from the roof of my mouth, but when I tried to let go of the steering wheel to reach for my water bottle, I was paralyzed.
I had to get off. I couldn’t get off.
A whistle blew behind us, long and low, like a train announcing the next stop.
“Don’t look now,” B.J. said, “but he’s ba-ack.”
I managed to shift my eyes to the rearview mirror. “Why is he flapping his tongue at us like that?”
B.J. turned the mirror in her direction. “Yuck, that one I know. Trust me, you don’t want to think about it. Although on some level I suppose he almost deserves a minuscule amount of credit for acknowledging that sex is not all about the guy.”
“Eww.”
“Right, I know. It’s not about sex. It’s about power. Ohmigod, he is right on our ass. You don’t think he’s actually trying to hit us, do you?”
My right thigh started to shake.
“Don’t slow down,” B.J. screamed.
“What should I do?” I screamed back.
“Get into the fast lane. I don’t think they allow big trucks there.”
“I don’t think they allow them to hit small cars, either.” I glanced over at the passing lane. It was only two lanes away but it seemed like another planet. A big white SUV with headlights a mile high was barreling down it, followed by a long silver sports car slung low to the ground. These were not my people in the fast lane.
The truck’s headlights were actually lighting up the interior of the Mustang. When I looked in the rearview mirror again, all I could see was glare.
“Melanie,” B.J. said. “Switch lanes. Now.”
I tried with all my might to turn the wheel to the left, but it wouldn’t seem to go. So I jerked it to the right, into the breakdown lane. If the cops stopped us for driving in it, we’d just have to explain. Actually, if the cops stopped us, that might fix everything.
The truck pulled up beside us.
“Genius,” B.J. said. “Why don’t you just invite him over for a drink?”
I turned my head half an inch and looked way up. The trucker made a kissy face down at me. Or maybe it was a fishy face. It was hard to tell.
“Call nine-one-one,” I said.
“Where the hell did I put my phone?” B.J. said.
The truck edged over the white line and into our lane.
I thought I’d fantasized every kind of highway death imaginable, in vivid detail, but never this one. It broke my heart that Trevor and Troy would have to be this traumatized when they identified my mangled body. Unless Kurt could do it, but he’d probably bring Crissy, and the last thing I wanted was to give her the satisfaction of seeing me looking like that. And the truck driver probably wouldn’t bother to stop, and even if he did, it’s not like he’d admit to the real story. He’d probably make it sound like it was all our fault, that he’d tried his hardest to swerve out of the way of these two crazy women but it was too late.
And the funeral, the funeral. How many times had I meant to pick out a decent outfit. And burial or cremation, I’d never re
ally crossed that bridge, either. Music was important, too—the song that played at the services was the song Trevor and Troy would associate with me for the rest of their lives. Was the theme song from Beaches too over-the-top? Maybe Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You” from her funeral?
My eyes filled up just thinking about it.
“Scratch my Mustang and I will sue your pants off,” B.J. yelled. She lowered her voice. “Sorry, bad word choice. Listen, he’s just trying to intimidate us. It’s probably not even his truck—his boss will kill him if he hits us.”
I stared straight ahead and tried to blink my tears away.
“Holy smokes,” B.J. yelled. “He’s going to hit us. Floor it.”
She might as well have asked me to make the car fly. The harder I tried to push the gas pedal, the more my leg shook.
I jerked the wheel to the right and we bumped off the road.
The truck kept going. We slowed to a stop.
“Wow,” B.J. said. “Brilliant maneuver. I knew you had it in you, Thelma. Impressive, really impressive.”
I put the Mustang into park and leaned forward against the steering wheel. My whole body was drenched with sweat, and the salt was making my tattoo burn. I focused on my breathing, in through my nose and out through my mouth, and waited for my heart to stop trying to beat out of my chest.
“Uh-oh,” B.J. said. “Don’t look now.”
I raised my weary head and looked.
The eighteen-wheeler was backing down the breakdown lane in our direction.
“Noooo,” I said.
“Ohmigod,” B.J. said. “This guy is insane. I didn’t even know those trucks beep when they go backward. Come on, let’s get out of here. Fast.”
I reached for my door. “Switch seats with me.”
“Melanie, come on, hurry.”
The truck was getting closer. I had a really creepy feeling it was planning to plow right through us. Oops, I could hear the trucker saying when the cops arrived, I didn’t even see the little ladies.
When I tore my tongue away from the roof of my mouth, it hurt. “I can’t,” I said. “I can’t drive.”
“Are you crazy?”
“Yes, I’m crazy,” I yelled at the top of my lungs, for the whole wide world to hear. “I’m crazy afraid of highways!”
CHAPTER 21
I kicked open the door and ran around to the passenger side. By the time I managed to yank that door open, B.J. had already crawled over to the driver’s side and put the Mustang into drive.
“Whoa,” I said as I jumped in. “Wait for me.”
B.J. floored it before I even finished closing the door.
Ahead of us, the truck had stopped, and the trucker was sliding down from the cab.
He was a lot less scary when he wasn’t surrounded by a gazillion-ton fortress of metal. “Hey, Beej,” I said, “could he possibly be coming over to ask us out on a date?”
B.J. headed straight for him.
The trucker’s feet hit the ground. He turned his back toward us and gave his non-existent butt a little wiggle.
B.J. kept going.
The trucker turned around and grinned. Then his mouth opened into a big O.
I screamed.
The Mustang couldn’t have been much more than a foot or two away when he finally jumped out of our path.
“Ch-ch-chiiiicken,” B.J. yelled. She leaned on the horn, then put on her blinker. We pulled out onto the highway without losing much speed. She navigated expertly into the passing lane. “Call nine-one-one. Tell them we just passed a trucker harassing two women. Give them the mile marker and the license plate.”
“Aye aye,” I said. “Wow, you were awesome back there, Louise.”
She didn’t say anything.
I made the call, then I leaned back in my seat and tried to get comfortable. The car reeked of silence.
Across the highway, an SUV with a single headlight heading in our direction reminded me of one of our favorite car games from high school. “Padiddle,” I yelled.
B.J. didn’t say anything.
“Hey, do you remember what it was that you were supposed to yell when it was the back headlight that was burned out?”
“Don’t talk to me,” she shouted at the top of her lungs.
One of the two lights on Veronica’s front porch had burned out. Moths were circling and diving at the other one, which glowed a soft umber. I watched them crash into the glass barrier repeatedly, the same movement leading to the same result, over and over and over again. How many stupid moves did it take for them to catch on?
Butterflies may have been done to death in metal sculpture, but what about moths? And would it even be possible to differentiate between the two in metal? Maybe if I kept them simple and airy, a fine steel mesh pulled tight over thin wire in a matching tone. The trick would be to make the wings look so ethereal they’d flap in the gentlest breeze, but at the same time construct them sturdily enough to hold up to the elements.
Beside me, B.J. shifted in her seat and let out a quick pissed-off puff of air.
The whole rest of the way to Veronica’s house, neither of us had said a word. I wasn’t sure it was a record, but if it wasn’t the longest we’d ever gone without talking when we were together, it had to be close.
Once she’d made it clear she really wasn’t speaking to me, I’d twisted around in the passenger seat until I found just the right position to support my lower back and take the pressure off my tattoo at the same time. Then I’d closed my eyes and pretended to nap while she drove.
It was strange to think that, as close as we’d been for so many years, I’d never picked up on B.J.’s needle phobia. I thought I might have remembered some vague references, but maybe I was only rewriting our history, because now I knew. I couldn’t even remember her getting her ears pierced, though I remembered getting mine done in vivid detail. I could picture my sister and me carrying our little fourteen-karat gold studs in their identical beige hard plastic boxes into our dentist’s office after our mother had decided that doctor and dentist offices were the only truly sanitary places to get ears pierced. She’d made us wait months until we were due for our yearly cleanings, all in the name of her favorite pastime of killing two birds with one stone. Two daughters who invariably had to do everything together and never quite got over it.
And then when our mother died, her two daughters sprang apart forever, never to be close enough to be killed by the same stone again.
When I’d finally opened my eyes, B.J. was cruising right over the Sagamore Bridge without even hitting the brakes. Relief that I didn’t have to be the one to drive over it washed over me. The only thing worse than driving on a highway was driving over a bridge on a highway. From the corner of my eye I could see boat lights and house lights twinkling on the canal way down below. I gripped the armrest and shifted toward the center of the car so I wouldn’t fall out.
B.J. let out a long, martyred sigh and brought me back to Veronica’s driveway.
“Come on,” I said. “Just fish or cut bait.”
She didn’t say anything.
“Poop or get off the pot?”
She still didn’t say anything.
“Put an egg in your shoe and beat it?” It didn’t quite fit, but I was running out of stupid expressions.
Even in the dark Mustang, I could tell she was staring straight ahead.
“I mean it,” I said. “Either say it or shake it off. I’m not sitting here for the rest of my life. And if Veronica sees us out here, she’s going to think we’re staking out the place.”
B.J. took a long swallow of Tab and put the can back in the console.
“I can’t believe,” she finally said, “you would do that to me.”
“What,” I said.
She shifted in her seat. “I can’t believe you would let me pour my heart out to you about my deepest, darkest fear and let me think I was completely, histrionically, Looney Tunes insane, and never once, not once, even hint
—”
When I rolled down the window, a moth flew into the car.
“Put that window up right now,” B.J. yelled.
I ignored her. The coolest thing about non-power windows was that you had total control of the one on your side. Sometimes progress wasn’t all it was meant to be. If only I’d brought my own iPod. I could put in my earbuds and listen to anything I wanted to. Or maybe I’d just put in the earbuds as a sound barrier and not even bother to turn on the music.
“Believe it or not,” I said, “some things aren’t about you. And if you sigh one more time, I might have to kill you.”
B.J. let out a sigh, long and loud.
I shook my head. “It’s a completely different thing. Mine came out of the blue. It’s not like it was a lifelong fear, like I was always afraid of highway driving. At least not really. And I think it’s only temporary.” The moth flew back out and another one flew in. B.J. rolled her window down, too, maybe to make it go out her window, maybe to catch her own moth. “I hated, hated driving with Kurt. So then Kurt leaves and now I hate driving with myself. It’s like he jinxed me or something.”
B.J. reached for her Tab. “Maybe he’s got a Melanie voodoo doll. You know, you’re driving down the highway and he sticks in a pin and says, Take that.”
“Ha. If Kurt was capable of spending that much time thinking about my feelings, we might still be together.”
“That’s funny. Either that or really masochistic.”
I thought for a moment. “So how come you can handle talking about voodoo dolls? Isn’t a pin just like a needle?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. They’re completely different.”
I let out my own sigh. “I know I’m doing it to myself, but I can’t figure out why I’d be that self-destructive. It’s like I know there’s a whole new life out there for me, and the only thing standing between me and it is this stupid barrier. And I can’t get past it.” I tilted my head back and blinked to keep the tears from spilling out. “It’s so embarrassing.”
“So what does it feel like?”
“Exactly the way you looked in the tattoo parlor.” I closed my eyes. “My mouth gets all dry and it’s like I can’t swallow. And I get this tingly feeling as if my hands and arms are starting to swell.”
