Five Total Strangers

by Natalie D. Richards

  “Seriously?” Brecken snaps. “Why do you just assume we’ve got cash? In case you forgot, Harper lost her wallet!”

  Kayla snorts. “Your Patagonia fleece tells me you’re not hurting for money. I didn’t think it would be a leap. And don’t get me started on that girl’s earrings.”

  “I spent my cash at the rental agency. And lay the hell off of Harper,” he says, a muscle in his jaw jumping. Why is he so defensive about a girl he doesn’t even know? I turn and catch Josh’s eyes from the back. He fires me a look that tells me he’s thinking something along the same lines.

  “Brecken gave me cash for part of the rental,” Harper says. “I had two hundred dollars. I need to find my wallet.”

  “I’m pretty sure Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Creeper are going to be ready to throw down if we don’t get this gas paid in the next ten minutes,” I say. “I paid them like seven. Does anyone else have anything?”

  Josh flips through every pocket. “Nothing. Sorry.”

  Brecken opens a sleek wallet. “I’ve got a ten.”

  Kayla tosses three crumpled dollars. “I’ve got nothing else. And don’t look at me like that, I told you in the airport I couldn’t pay.”

  “Seriously?” Harper says, looking panicked. “We have five people in this car and twenty dollars among us?”

  “It’s not our fault this place is stuck in the Dark Ages,” Brecken says. “I could buy this damn station with the amount of open credit I have in my wallet.”

  “Don’t they have one of those old-school card machines?” Josh asks.

  “Apparently not,” I say. “And the guy wasn’t exactly accommodating when I asked about it.”

  “I wouldn’t mess with that old one,” Kayla says. Her expression isn’t glazed or sardonic or breezy. She is deadly serious. She’s looking at the station, a frown tugging her thin lips downward and I wonder if she saw the same sign I did, about the attendant being armed and possibly ready to pump bullets into people who don’t pay for their gas.

  “What are we going to do?” Harper asks, her voice small and thin. She is so different than the confident girl she was on the plane.

  “Just breathe,” Brecken says, reaching over the seat toward her.

  A conversion van pulls between the pumps and the gas station. I can hear the music blaring from the passenger cabin, even through the closed windows. Wind howls hard against the glass and I shiver.

  Brecken turns on the engine, then tilts his head. “What if we offer what we have? Just explain it to him and offer to send the rest.”

  “It is Christmas,” Josh muses.

  “He won’t take it,” Kayla says darkly. “He won’t settle.”

  She’s afraid. And I think Kayla knows something about men like Corey and his father. She senses something. It makes me believe that what she’s saying isn’t a line of bullshit. I remember what Mom said, about keeping my eyes open. She meant things like this.

  “I think she’s right,” I say.

  Josh sighs. “I can’t say I disagree. They don’t seem overly reasonable.”

  “He’ll call the police and say we were stealing,” Harper states. “I can’t have that happening.”

  My attention catches on that last sentence. Did I hear her wrong?

  “I can’t,” she repeats, looking only at Brecken.

  I stiffen. Why it would be bad to call the police?

  He nods in reply, decisive. Then he scans the parking lot left and right.

  Harper takes a sharp breath. “But I’ll talk to him. I’ll try.”

  “No,” Brecken says simply.

  “It’s the only way. I’ll handle it. I just need to think for a minute and come up with a plan. It’ll be fine.”

  Brecken shakes his head again, still staring out at the gas station. The cars. The road beyond it. His grip tightens on the wheel and my stomach clenches.

  He can’t be thinking what it looks like he’s thinking. It has to be something else. He’s not going to just drive out of here, is he?

  Because that is stealing.

  And if I’ve ever in my life met a person I’d be terrified to steal from, it’s the man sitting on that metal folding chair. Kayla’s face is frozen over. It feels like a warning.

  Brecken shifts the car into drive and inches the tires forward. I gasp, looking back over the seat at Josh. The mix of shock and faint fear on his face matches my feelings exactly.

  “What are you doing?” Harper asks breathlessly. “We haven’t paid.”

  “We’ll send them the money,” Brecken says, adjusting his grip on the steering wheel. “If he thinks I’m going to stay here so he can call the cops, he can kiss my ass.”

  I inhale to argue, but before I can get a word out, Brecken hits the gas. Hard.

  Chapter Nine

  The SUV’s tires bite and we fly.

  Harper grapples for her seat belt and shrieks. “What are you doing?”

  I grip the seat as the car’s weight shifts hard to the right, swinging back as the tires straighten. “Stop the car!” Harper shouts.

  “Stop.” I mean to back her up, but my voice is a breathless whisper, lost in the roar of the engine and my pounding heart.

  “You stole it.” Josh says it flatly, shocked. “You’re just driving away.”

  “Calm down.” There isn’t an iota of uncertainty in Brecken’s voice. He accelerates as we begin to pass the gas station. The tires break loose, the car slipping to the right. Kayla’s fear melts into something else, her eyes clouding over. She starts to laugh, and I twist in my seat, my eyes fixed to the gas station windows. They are too cluttered with stickers to see inside. Is there movement?

  Am I imagining it?

  Maybe he can’t see us through all those posters.

  The station door flies open.

  My blood runs cold. It’s the father. He’s pulling on his coat, keys already in his hand.

  “He’s coming after us!” I say.

  “Let him try.” The friendly Brecken from earlier is gone, and I don’t recognize this cold replacement. He is determined to get away with this. “We’ll be long gone.”

  “How?” Josh asks. “We can’t get on the highway. The roads are snowy.”

  “I can’t do this,” Harper says, breathing hard and fast. “I had a plan. I had a plan and it was working.”

  “Calm down,” Brecken says again. “We’re shorting a forty-dollar gas bill. We didn’t light the place on fire.”

  “You think that makes this okay?” Her voice is shrill. “This is stealing! Do you think I can afford—” Harper cuts herself off.

  I turn around, looking for the guy again. I can’t see him through the snow and pumps and clutter of cars around the lot. And then I do. He climbs inside the cabin of a mean-looking pickup truck just as we cross under I-80, the bridge above leaving us in total darkness for the span of a breath.

  We emerge into the waning daylight, and it kicks my voice into gear. “He saw us. He’s already in his truck.”

  “High-speed chase in a blizzard!” Kayla cackles, and Josh snaps his fingers, presumedly in front of her face.

  “Kayla. Not the best time. You got it?”

  Her giggles quiet, but don’t entirely subside. Outside the snow falls in soft, picturesque sheets. Kayla is wrong about the high-speed chase. We’re probably only doing thirty. We can’t go much faster. The road has been plowed once, but it’s still two or three inches deep with snow. Thirty feels way too fast.

  “I can’t believe you’d do this,” Harper says, sounding teary.

  “I’m trying to help,” Brecken barks.

  Behind us, headlights appear. It’s the truck.

  “He’s behind us,” I say.

  Brecken takes a right onto another side road. “Somebody look up a map. Help me out.”

  I
pat my pockets, but my phone must be in my bag. I open the glove compartment, hoping for the best. There’s a folded road map with PENNSYLVANIA printed across the front. Brecken sees it and shakes his head.

  “That’s not going to help unless we know where we are,” Brecken says. “I need navigation.”

  “I’m already on it,” Josh says, his phone casting his face in a blue-white glow. “Make a right in fifty yards.”

  I fold the map and put it back.

  “This one?”

  “Just take it!” Josh shouts. Brecken does, the back end fishtailing hard. A few moments later, Josh does it again. “The next left. And then the right just past it.”

  My stomach is rolling again and my throat is too tight and too full. I grip the seat beneath me, my palms slick with sweat on the leather.

  “I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe.” Harper says it over and over.

  “You’re okay,” Brecken says, twisting left and right, sliding and shuddering around each corner and bend. “We’re doing fine.”

  My heart is beating so hard against my ribs, it’s a miracle nothing cracks. But after a couple of miles, I think maybe he’s right. The truck lights are there, outside the back windshield, but after a few hills and another turn, they’re gone. The road stretches behind us, dim and narrow and clogged with snow. There are no lights. None.

  Wait.

  Headlights appear far in the distance behind us. I fix my eyes on those pinpricks of light, measuring the distance between that truck and ours. If I can see them, can they see us?

  “Turn your lights off,” Josh tells Brecken.

  “I didn’t turn them on.”

  “They’re automatic,” Josh says. “Turn them off manually and your taillights won’t glow.”

  He does and the road goes grayer than gray, a stark reminder that night is coming. Tall trees on either side of the car leave us lost in shadow. The snow hisses softly beneath our tires.

  Brecken heads up a hill and brakes a little at the top. The car slides and my stomach rolls, but I twist around in my seat, searching that back windshield. To the twin pinpricks of light in the distance. I try to gauge things I have no hope of measuring. Distance. Speed. Make and model. Is the truck gaining on us? Is it another car altogether?

  “Make a left just over this hill,” Josh says softly.

  “What?”

  “Here,” Josh says. “Into that campground. He won’t see because we’re on the downslope. Stay in the tire tracks so it’s not obvious.”

  Brecken pulls in, past a battered wooden sign that reads: CEDAR HILL CAMPGROUND.

  The driveway is nearly overgrown, following a gentle upward slope with a sharp curve to the right.

  “Use the hill-climbing button,” Harper says, for the moment sounding steadier.

  The SUV lurches back and forth, tires alternately slipping and biting. My forehead breaks out in a sweat. I can’t sit in this car much longer. I’ll be sick. I’m sure of it. I twist left and right in my seat, trying to find the headlights through the tangle of dead trees. I see nothing.

  Finally, Brecken makes it up to a small lot, pulling to the right where a closed camp registration booth sits between two gated paths leading in and out of the campground. He parks between two thick groves of brambles. A couple of pines create decent cover.

  We will be hidden from the road here.

  He won’t see us.

  He won’t.

  I say it in my mind, desperate to believe it. Desperate to wake up from this awful dream, so I can be with my mom. Does she even know that I miss her? On all our phone calls, when I ramble on about color and shadow and the next show—do I ever stop rambling about my art long enough to tell her that she still matters? That I love her?

  “Tire tracks,” Josh says, his tone clipped and matter-of-fact. “He’ll just follow our tracks where they turn off the road into the driveway.”

  “Shit.” Brecken flings the door open and sprints for the hill. Desperate for fresh air and high on adrenaline, I throw my door open, too, bolting after him. Snow sprays cold against my cheeks, and I drink it in with relief, feeling my stomach settle. My nerves are another story, but I follow Brecken.

  He is trip-sliding his way to the bottom of the hill, already kicking at the snow closest to the campground entrance. He drags a large branch out from the forest, sweeping it in wide arcs. It’s working better than I’d have thought. And the wind is helping, too, howling across the road and up the hill to sting my eyes.

  I try to stamp and shuffle to help the branch. It’s hard. Breathing is difficult out here—every gulp of air seems to drag ice into my lungs. Seeing is nearly impossible unless I shield my eyes. But when I do, I can see that our tracks aren’t just covered on the road. They snow has nearly drifted over them all the way back to the top of the hill. Maybe even before that. We should be okay.

  Through the trees I see the truck’s headlights in the distance before they dip down the hill before ours. He’s much closer now.

  “He’s coming! Hide!” I yell.

  Brecken runs back a little way and then flattens himself against a tree. He’s only fifteen feet away from the road, his face tight and eyes closed. I’m farther up the hill, surely hidden by the dead bushes and clustered spindly evergreens. I curl my fingers inside my red gloves and hold my breath as I watch the truck take another hill.

  He’s getting closer.

  And closer.

  He’s on the second-to-last hill, and my throat is tight and dry. I want to close my eyes. I want to curl up and hide like a little kid afraid of the dark, but I stare even as the snow stings my face and tears stream down both cheeks.

  The headlights appear.

  Oh, God, is he slowing down? Does he see us?

  Brecken looks at me, his dark eyes wide and worried across the snowy drive. We didn’t hide the tracks beyond the entrance. There wasn’t time. The sound of the engine rumbles into my ears and my heart pounds, a rabbit in a box. Snow peppers my face with cold pinches as the truck rolls to the driveway and moves past.

  My held breath comes out in a long heave, and Brecken sags, bending over with his hands on his knees like he might get sick. I know the feeling. Then he looks up at me, grinning, and I go still at the wolfish look of his features.

  Maybe Brecken is a boy I should be careful with.

  He knows how to smile at girls. And I’d bet he also knows exactly how attractive he is and exactly how he can use it. The ice running through my veins now has nothing to do with the cold.

  Brecken pushes off of the tree and the squeal of brakes and sound of hissing snow comes from the road. My stomach clenches again, my throat going dry in an instant.

  I search the road, where snow still sprays in great clouds. Two brake lights glare at me, red eyes in a sea of white. I wait for the reverse lights, for the inevitable return of panic, but they don’t come. The truck turns right, moving down another road. Chasing us down a path we didn’t take.

  I lean against the nearest tree, weak with relief, my breath steaming in the cold.

  The branches crisscross overhead, black jagged lines against a gray sky. It’s either later than I thought or more snow is coming.

  Brecken crunches his way up the mountain, his cheeks flushed, and his dark hair tufted up in spikes.

  “Close call,” he says, looking exhilarated. “We make a good team, Mira. If we stick together, we’ll be fine.”

  “Maybe,” I say.

  He winks. “Don’t worry. Destiny’s on our side.” His smile doesn’t fade when I don’t answer. He looks triumphant, breathing hard and pink-cheeked. “You ready to go?”

  “Are you sure he’s gone?”

  “We’re safe now.”

  I nod and watch him retreat to the car. But I don’t believe a word he says.

  I’m not safe now. I haven’t bee
n safe since I accepted this ride.

  Chapter Ten

  Harper and Brecken take a walk when we get back. And by take a walk I mean Harper drags Brecken off into the trees so she can scream at him. I don’t know why she bothers with the wandering. All of us can hear her tearing him a new one. Also, she’s not the only one who’s pissed about his little felony stunt. This trip has been a nightmare since we started, and having a criminal behind the wheel is making it worse.

  Maybe if someone else could drive, things would calm down. I settle back into the front passenger seat and flex my fingers in front of the heater vents. Josh mentions his phone getting low and asks if I have a charger. For once, I can actually help out with this. Dad always sends me with more chargers than devices. My cordless charger is dead, but I offer up an adapter with two cords. He plugs his into one.

  Kayla is fast asleep in the back seat, her head flung back now that she’s in the middle with no window to lean on. Josh watches out the window with his eyes narrowed. Harper and Brecken aren’t visible from here, but I know that’s who he’s trying to see.

  “There’s something going on with them.”

  I laugh. “Yeah. Probably the fact that Brecken stole gas while illegally driving a car rented under her name.”

  He doesn’t laugh like I’d expected. “No. They have a secret. Can’t you see it?” He meets my eyes and holds my gaze. “I mean, why is she letting him drive? Why should she trust him? She’s not asking any of the rest of us.”

  “I don’t know,” I say, squirming in the seat. I turn off the seat heater, suddenly feeling faintly sick again.

  Josh twists around, searching the ground in front of him and around his legs for something. I bite my lip and watch, trying to assess whether or not he could drive. He seems sort of mobile. Maybe he could take over?

  “Can you drive with your leg like that?”

  He does laugh then, neck going pink. “I can barely use the bathroom with my leg like this.”