A Ticket to Ride

by Paula McLain

  “I call it an abracadabra. Try it. It’s perfect.”

  I took a swallow, tasted only my cold and slightly numb tongue. “Mmm,” I said. “Perfect.”

  We never found the Tattered Rose, didn’t really try. At four a.m. we were down by Lake Michigan. It was too late for this, too late to be anywhere except halfway back to Moline, but there we were. Just as the bartender gave last call at Nunzio’s, Claudia had said she wanted to see the water. Or was that me? The seven of us piled into Bruce’s car—Fawn up front with Bruce and Polly, and Claudia in back. Claudia curled easily onto Miles’s lap, and I sat vised between Donald and the door so that my arm received a kissing bug’s kiss from the door lock.

  We had left Claudia’s dad’s car where it was, for “later.” It seemed a good idea at the time, but so much did, like drinking another abracadabra, which had me levitating. Like letting Donald’s hand slip lower between my thighs while we rode along, the streets nearly deserted, lights flashing yellow for blocks at a time. Up front, Fawn tried to find a good station on the radio, but her hands were shaking. Bruce had hosted a tea party with the considerable cocaine stash in his glove box, and Fawn was wired for sound. I didn’t know if Fawn had ever tried cocaine before. She’d certainly never told me about it if she had, but the number of things I didn’t know about Fawn—would possibly never know—seemed to be growing exponentially. Now as she dialed in wash after wash of static, her laugh manic, she looked and sounded like a stranger, like someone I’d only passed in O’Hare, three months before, rather than lived with and slept next to every night all summer. My best friend.

  After a long, blind maze of Chicago streets, we ended up somewhere near Lincoln Park, where an elbow of concrete pushed out into Lake Michigan. Empty park benches seemed to throb under streetlamps. Something was wrong with my vision. Just how high was I? Everything stuttered and threatened to break apart, especially my body. I looked at my outstretched hand as we walked toward the promised water, thinking it was like a dandelion on a stem. One pointed breath and it would be gone, blown like fluff toward Michigan or Wisconsin or the moon.

  Our party was now six. We had left Pauly passed out on the front seat of the car, his cheek nestled against a seat-belt buckle. Claudia and Miles lurched off to the unlit left, becoming bobbing heads, and then bobbing voices, then nothing. The rest of the party toddled down to the water, or what seemed to be water. I couldn’t be sure. There was another strip of grass, then riprap, and then an expanse of soundless black.

  Fawn and Bruce veered toward a wooden bench as Donald led me farther along the shoreline to where a picnic bench squatted beside a fledgling tree. The tree seemed to be listing slowly over. I listed as well, though my ass was wedged against the table. Donald leaned into me, his jeaned legs feeling sandpapery. I noticed he wasn’t talking to me, that he hadn’t said anything in half an hour or more. Did he even remember my name?

  “Hey, wait,” I said, but then his tongue was in my mouth, filling it with a wet push. I couldn’t talk, couldn’t focus, couldn’t stand suddenly. Donald caught me before I tipped or fell, and hoisted me up so that I was sitting on the picnic table. His tongue was everywhere, along my jaw, in my ear. I tried to pull away but he was purposeful and lithe. He was a tangible shadow spreading my knees so he could fit between them.

  I bit my own tongue and I could sense that, the throbbing and the tang of blood in my mouth, but I also felt decidedly outside of my body. Had Donald slipped something into my drink? Had the planet slipped from its moorings? I couldn’t tell because there was very little me left. Someone sat on a picnic table half-pinned. Someone closed her eyes tightly when Donald’s fingertips grazed her thigh, cotton panties, pubic hair.

  Then, in one deft movement, Donald flipped me over. There was brief fumbling, a pushing sensation, and then Donald was inside me. I screamed as his hand prodded hard at the center of my back, my face shoved sideways against the picnic table’s splintery surface. I felt a burning as his body rocked into mine. I screamed again. Pushing Donald off-balance and over, I stood and ran.

  Where was Fawn? Where was the lake?

  “Jamie. Hey!” I heard Fawn’s voice calling me, and then Fawn herself floated out of the dimness.

  “What the hell?” said Bruce, sitting up.

  Then I was running again like a wounded deer, blind and stupid. I’d lost my shoes and my panties, could feel blood sticky between my legs.

  “Jamie, stop!” said Fawn behind me, but I couldn’t stop. Donald was back there in the park somewhere. That’s when I went down, right over a curb I hadn’t seen and into the road between two parked cars. When Fawn caught up I was still down, stunned and panting, my hands and knees bloody, pocked with gravel. My chin felt dislocated. My teeth rattled.

  “Jamie! Get it together,” Fawn said, kneeling over me. “Now stand up.” She clasped my wrist and pulled me to my feet. “What the hell happened to you?”

  “Donald,” I mewled, and looked over my shoulder where I could see, maybe a quarter of a mile back, the park like a gloaming. Blurry bodies moved toward Bruce’s car, and then the car sped out of the parking lot and away, dissolving.

  “Fuck,” growled Fawn. “Fuck and double fuck.”

  In a Texaco bathroom, a dank and dim six-by-ten concrete box, Fawn pronounced me a “bloody fucking wreck.” There was no mirror, just a stainless-steel rectangle bolted to the wall over the sink, but I could see enough of myself in it to know Fawn was right. I splashed water on my face and dusted my hands with powdered soap. There were no paper towels, so Fawn went into the stall for toilet paper, folded sheets that came out of a metal box and felt like wax paper. I cleaned myself up as much as I could, then went into the stall to pee, the urine hot and searing.

  “I’m going to try and find us a ride,” Fawn said through the stall door. “See if you can stay here and not make things worse.”

  I heard the door swing open and closed and then I was alone with the crosshatched stainless steel, the layers of graffiti. Without Fawn there to tell me to keep it together, I felt myself begin to dissolve. Had Donald raped me? Was it rape or had I wanted it to happen? I didn’t remember telling him no, but he hadn’t exactly asked me, had he?

  Fawn came back in, swearing. “Where is everyone?” she said. “It’s like the whole fucking city’s asleep. We’re going to have to walk up to the freeway, I think, and see if we can hitch a ride from a trucker or something. I don’t know where that is, though. Let me go ask the guy inside the station for a map and then we’ll get going.”

  “Wait. What about Claudia? Shouldn’t we go look for her?”

  “She’s the one with the car, and do you see her looking for us? Fat chance. She’s halfway home by now, you can bet on it.”

  I didn’t think that was true. Claudia wasn’t the type to just run off, only thinking of herself. And even if she were, how on earth would she have found her way back to her car alone? But thinking we had abandoned Claudia on top of everything else that had happened was too much to bear, so I made myself believe it was possible. I conjured a picture of Claudia on the highway home, drunk but purposeful. And when that picture was clear enough in mind, I said to Fawn, “Yeah, you’re probably right.”

  We walked out of the bathroom and into the parking lot. A blinking neon sign under the larger TEXACO read OPEN 24 HOURS, and though there weren’t any cars anywhere, someone sat inside, tending the place. I could just see the dark top of his head near the register.

  “Let me handle this,” Fawn said. “I hate to say it, but you’re still looking a little spooky.”

  I leaned against the cinder-block wall of the building and watched Fawn walk into the gas station like she was walking onto a set or a stage. She had her walk going and the hair. It was incredible, staggering even. I myself felt like the parking lot I waited in, like I was wearing exploded beer bottles and gum wrappers and wadded plastic bags, both outside and inside. And Fawn was flirting. It was unmistakable, the tilt of her head, the way her hair swun
g to one side like a pendulum, and then the laugh I watched through the window as if I were watching a bit of silent film.

  I couldn’t stand it suddenly. Turning away, I noticed, for the first time, a darkened phone booth just down the street, past a ragged line of chain-link fencing. I could run to the phone before Fawn came out, but who would I call? I just wanted to be back at Raymond’s house in my cot that smelled like a rainy day. I wanted to be asleep with no memory whatsoever, the whole night behind me, manageable and benign and revised so that it couldn’t do me any more harm.

  When Fawn finally came out, almost twenty minutes later, I was sitting on the sidewalk on a piece of newspaper I’d found, my legs straight out in front of me. “What are you doing on the ground?” Fawn asked.

  “Waiting for you, of course.”

  “Well you don’t have to wait much longer. I found us a ride. That guy inside, his name is Eddie. He gets off in like an hour and he’s going to drive us home.”

  “We don’t even know him,” I said, “and he’s going to drive us all the way back to Moline?”

  “I know him. I’ve just spent a half an hour talking to the guy. And anyway, what does it matter? He’s going to give us a ride.”

  “I called Raymond,” I said quietly. My eyes were locked on my knees, on the lacerations that were long and vertical, like bits of broken road.

  “You did not. Not even you are that stupid.”

  “I did. He’s on his way right now.”

  Fawn’s hands were on her hips. Her voice pitched to a sneer when she said, “And what, pray tell, did you say? Um, I’m high and banged all to shit in Chicago, can you come and get me?”

  “I just told him we were in trouble, that we needed him to come.”

  “Correction, you’re in trouble. I’m out of here. I don’t need Raymond and I don’t need you. I told you, I’ve already got my ride home.”

  “If you’re not here when he comes, what am I supposed to tell him? What’s he going to think?”

  “What’s he going to think? You should listen to yourself sometime. It’s a riot.” She paced the patch of asphalt, her cork shoes neatly skirting dips and broken glass, the stumpy end of an abandoned cigar. “We are so busted and you don’t even know it. If you’d have let me take care of everything, like I told you to, we’d have been home before he even woke up. He’d never have known we were gone.” She stopped and looked down at me critically. “And just what were you planning to tell him about our adventure in Chicago?”

  “I don’t know. The truth, I guess.”

  Fawn made a disgusted snuffing sound. “Really? Well good luck with that. I wish you the best.” With that she went inside.

  An hour later, Eddie’s shift replacement showed up, and Fawn and Eddie came out together. He was older than I might have guessed, maybe thirty, and he looked a little seedy, with long blond hair parted in the middle, a handlebar mustache trailing nearly to his chin. He had his arm thrown loosely over Fawn’s shoulder as they walked to his car, a beat-up-looking Grand Torino. Fawn was smoking a cigarette, taking quick drags as she walked. Just once did she look over at me, expressionless, and then they were gone.

  I don’t know how long I waited for Raymond in the parking lot, but as the minutes passed I grew more and more worried that I’d made a terrible mistake. He had sounded sleepy on the phone, and then angry and impatient with me, but finally concern had surfaced in his voice. When he asked me where he could find us, I had to get off and let the phone dangle as I ran up to the corner to get the names off of the street signs. I had let myself feel only relief then, knowing he was on his way, but now it occurred to me that I had no idea what I would say to Raymond when he arrived. Could I really tell him everything, about “borrowing” the car? About the drugs and the drinking? About Donald? And if I did tell, what then? He’d be livid, most certainly. I was busted, as Fawn so aptly put it, we both were, and grounding wasn’t going to be enough of a punishment for our considerable crimes. He would send Fawn away, back to Phoenix, and maybe send me away too. Could I really go back to Bakersfield? I couldn’t stand that. But how could I avoid it? I had to think of something, and fast; something I could tell Raymond that would make this night go away, disappear it altogether—the night, the drinks, the sick feeling in my stomach, my bleeding knees, Donald’s wet mouth and hands—everything waved away. Abracadabra.

  Before long, I heard the rumble of a car pull into the station and looked up to see not Raymond but Eddie’s Grand Torino. He drew alongside one of the pumps, blocking my view, and idled there a few minutes. I couldn’t tell what was happening at all until I heard one of the doors swing open, slam shut. The car roared away and there stood Fawn on the island, leaning to rest a hand against one of the pumps so she could slide her shoes back on. She looked disheveled, the ends of her hair tangled as if she’d spent the last half hour wrestling with Eddie in the front seat of his car, which she likely had. I knew I should be angry at Fawn for having left me there in the first place, but I wasn’t. I was happy and relieved to see Fawn’s face, disheveled or not.

  “Well, aren’t you going to thank me already?” Fawn said when she was nearer. “I mean, I’m making a huge sacrifice for you.”

  “Thank you.” I stood up and went to hug Fawn, but she flinched away. That’s when I saw the new, raw red marks on her arm, the small triangular tear along the left leg seam of her corduroy shorts. “Are you okay? What happened?”

  “Nothing, I’m fine.” She shrugged me off and rifled through her purse for a comb. “We don’t have much time,” she said, drawing the comb resolutely through the worst of the snarls, “but I think I have a plan. What really happened to us tonight was that we were kidnapped.”

  “Kidnapped? How? Why?”

  “Why? Why is anyone kidnapped? We were just walking along the street—on our way home—and some guy picked us up, some freaky guy, and he drove us to Chicago where he was going to rape and murder us.”

  “But we got away,” I added, getting into the story.

  “Of course we got away. We ran away from him and that’s how you got your cuts and stuff, when you fell down. See, it’s foolproof. Am I a genius or what?”

  Either she was a genius or she was insane. “He drove us a hundred and seventy-five miles, all the way to Chicago from Moline? How are we going to say he kept us in the car? I mean, wouldn’t we have tried to escape before?”

  “He had a knife. He threatened to kill us if we moved so much as an inch.”

  “But we ran away when he stopped the car?”

  “Yep, that’s how brave we are.” Fawn tucked her comb away. Her hair was perfect, gleaming. “Raymond’s going to eat this up with a spoon. Just stick to the story, okay? And cry if you can, that always helps.”

  It was nearly dawn when Raymond arrived, and I didn’t have to make myself cry when I saw him; the tears came on their own, hard and fast. My voice was jagged and snotty when I recounted the story just as Fawn had laid it out. Then Fawn, her own tears flowing easy as water, told him what she remembered, adding details about the car—it was a Grand Torino—and the guy himself: he was white, between thirty and forty, and he was crazy. If we hadn’t gotten away, we’d be dead for sure.

  And then something extraordinary happened. Raymond cried too. His face contorting, he pulled us both to him and held us in a vise grip that made me feel like I was suffocating, but I also didn’t want to move. This was the first time Raymond had really hugged me, I realized with a shock. He had rumpled my hair, patted me on the shoulder, fake-punched me on the arm—the kind of touching that passed between brothers, really. And lately, as he’d withdrawn more and more into his own routine, seeming to forget he even had two teenage girls living in his house, who were, like it or not, his responsibility, there hadn’t even been that level of familiarity. This hug, though, I could feel all the way down and through. It made me believe I was safe for the moment, and truly cared for.

  “I’m going to kill him,” Raymond finally said w
hen he was able to release us.

  “You’ll never find him,” Fawn said. “I’m sure he’s long gone by now.”

  “I’ll find him,” Raymond muttered to himself, and then he helped us into the truck, guiding me, then Fawn, gently by the elbow, as if we each were precious, fragile as glass.

  I slept all the way home. When I woke up, Raymond was trying to lift me out of the car in a cradle hold, and rather than tell him I was fine to walk on my own, I sighed and closed my eyes and let myself be carried through the house and into our room. He laid me down gently on the bed and only then did I let myself open my eyes.

  “Those cuts are pretty bad,” he said, his eyes moving over my knees and shins and up to my swollen jawline. “We’ll take you to the doctor later and have them look you over. Maybe you need stitches.”

  “That’s a lot of trouble. I think I’m fine,” I said sleepily.

  “You’re not fine. Something terrible has happened to you.”

  With that, a wave of awareness flooded through me. Something terrible had happened to me, and the tears began to come afresh. Raymond held me as I sobbed, and when I quieted, he tucked me under the quilt and smoothed my hair and said, “Shhh. Don’t worry about anything, I’m going to make this right.”

  When he left the room, Fawn turned to me from her own cot and whispered, “You’re a fucking natural. I had no idea.”

  I ignored her, looking over Fawn’s head where morning light came through the blinds in glowing ribs. It was nearly nine a.m. Closing my eyes, the lenses of which felt scratched, serrated, I tried to sleep. But the same image kept spinning around to the front of my consciousness like a slot-machine lemon. A benign moment in the car, Donald’s hands pushing lower between my knees as we drove through quiet streets toward the lake. That’s when I should have pulled away and told him I wasn’t interested. But I had been interested then—in a dizzy, magic-carpet-ride way. Feeling the pressure of his hand graze my inner thighs, I wondered what it would be like to have Donald inside me. Was it my fault, then, what had happened? Could anyone tell me I was innocent, absolved? Say Shhh in a way that would truly make everything better right now?