Five Total Strangers

by Natalie D. Richards

  Harper screams, but Corey ducks down beneath the glass. He’s not interested in us. He just wants to check on his father.

  Brecken knows a chance when he sees it. He starts the car, and the engine purrs to life. Both doors are still open and Corey rises, wedging himself in the open door.

  “You go nowhere you little shit!”

  I want to scream, but the breath I suck in freezes in my throat. Harper yells for me, and we both shrink back, closer to Kayla. Away from the smell of cigarettes and diesel fuel emanating from Corey’s canvas jacket.

  “Get out!” someone growls, and I can’t quite tell if it’s Corey or Brecken. They’re struggling. Josh is leaning over now, smacking at Corey, grabbing for the wheel. The father is up again, looming outside of the door. The air tastes like sweat and gasoline and violence.

  There are punches. Kicks. Terror.

  Brecken is getting the upper hand and the father yanks Corey hard. The boy topples out of the car, groaning, and the father is in, one meaty fist immediately clamped around Brecken’s throat. Brecken makes a strangled, gurgling noise. Josh squirms with a cry, leaning over the console, one hand on the wheel, one hand trying to pull the father’s fingers off of Brecken.

  “Stop, stop, stop,” Harper sobs.

  “Help us!” Josh yells back at us.

  Suddenly, Brecken throws the car in reverse. We lurch backward, dragging the father down to the pavement. He swears and crumples.

  My heart is leaping. Galloping. I scramble for my seat belt.

  Josh’s door is still open. One of his feet is dangling outside again. Brecken punches the accelerator and grabs the wheel. Josh is still holding it, too. The wheel twists and there is a horrifying sound. A thump-thump like we’re going over a speed bump.

  Except speed bumps don’t scream.

  Harper’s shriek rises into a wail.

  “Shit! Shitshitshitshitshit!” Brecken hits the brakes hard, coughing roughly.

  My stomach tumbles end over end as I look out front. Our headlights illuminate the snow-covered lot and the two dark figures near our tire tracks. One of the men is prone and twitching on the ground.

  The father. Please let it be the father. The one who choked Brecken. The one whose bones don’t look like they’d snap under a stiff breeze.

  But it’s not the father. It’s Corey.

  We hit a person. A guy who can’t be much older than us. He’s bleeding into the snow because of what happened. Because of us.

  I want to look away, but I can’t. Corey flails and screams, his upper body writhing in obvious agony. His left leg—jutting at a strange angle—does not move. Slowly my eyes process the scene spotlighted beside our tire tracks. His leg seems pinned to the pavement, his shoe pointing the wrong direction. It’s that sight—that impossibly twisted shoe—that almost brings the contents of my stomach up.

  “Holy shit,” Josh says quietly. He must have seen it, too.

  I turn away as Harper makes a thin, keening noise that cuts right through me.

  “Oh God,” Kayla says, sounding vaguely shocked.

  “What did you do?” Brecken screams. His foot must slip off the brake, because the car lurches backward again. Josh grabs the door handle and I gasp. Brecken finally stops the car near the park exit. We’re maybe twenty yards away. Far enough that I can’t see that shoe anymore, but it doesn’t matter. I can see enough. I see a father curled over his son protectively. I see a boy—because he doesn’t look like a man now—thin and writhing in a way that will be printed on the back of my eyelids for the rest of my life.

  “What did you do?” Brecken screams again, pounding the steering wheel. Harper’s sobs are steady and muffled. Her hand is over her mouth. She’s shaking.

  “What are you talking about?” Josh asks, looking genuinely confused.

  The pieces come together over the backdrop of Harper’s screams and Kayla’s soft swearing. Brecken is somehow blaming Josh for this.

  “You hit him!” Brecken says. “I was trying to get away and you grabbed the wheel.”

  “Brecken, I tried to steer away! You pulled it back!”

  Brecken sputters. “No! I was trying to get away! You hit him! You jerked the wheel.”

  Josh raises both hands like he’s dealing with an armed man in the midst of an angry breakdown. His voice is calm and soft. “Brecken, I know this is scary—”

  “It’s not scary! I know what you did!”

  He sounds hysterical. Frantic. In contrast, Josh moves slower and speaks more softly.

  “Brecken, you jerked the wheel to the left,” Josh says. “I thought you saw him. I thought you were trying to—” He stops himself. “Look, it was an accident. But it happened.”

  “No,” Brecken says, sounding sick. “No. No, this isn’t happening. It isn’t.”

  “It happened,” Josh repeats. “It was… You didn’t mean to.”

  He doesn’t sound like he believes it. Cold slithers up my spine as I watch Corey in the headlights, his body convulsing in pain. Even over the engine, I can hear his screams, thin and childlike and terrible. Harper clamps her hands over her ears, sobbing.

  “Help him!” she cries.

  “We have to help him,” I say, my voice cracked and weak on my lips.

  “They have guns,” Kayla says simply. She sounds numb. Distant.

  “What?” Brecken turns.

  Outside the window, I see the father has a phone to his ear. He looks up at us and I can’t read his expression, but I don’t need to. He was angry before. He was ready to hurt us before.

  He’ll kill us now.

  He slowly stands, turning toward his truck. He’s going to get something. I remember the sign in the service station, and my heart drops like a stone through still water. Kayla’s right. They probably have guns.

  “Go back,” Harper weeps. “Go help him.”

  “What is he doing?” Josh asks.

  The truck door is open now. He’s looking for something. Under the seat.

  “He’s getting a gun,” Kayla says. She is cold and certain. “I saw one behind the counter. Under the cigarettes.”

  “Lots of people have guns,” Brecken says, but he sounds afraid. “It doesn’t mean anything.”

  “It doesn’t mean nothing,” Josh says. “He said he’d kill me. You heard him.”

  “Guys,” I cry. “He’s coming out.”

  The man is upright again and he isn’t heading for Corey. He’s turning to us. Is he holding something? My throat goes tight.

  “What do we do?” Harper asks, gasping through her sobs. “What do we do?”

  “Go,” Josh says calmly.

  “We can’t go!” I shout. “It’s a hit-and-run!”

  “No, we will stop,” Josh says. “We’ll stop and call a little way up the road. We can say we saw a gun. He threatened us.”

  “Self-defense,” Kayla agrees. “It’s self-defense.”

  “I didn’t see a gun,” Brecken cries, sounding tortured.

  “Are you sure?” Josh asks. “Because he’s getting closer.”

  “We can’t leave them,” I say, my voice small and lost, my eyes fixed on Corey. I think of his patchy facial hair. His lanky limbs. Is he even eighteen years old?

  The father puts down the phone and takes another step toward us. The car goes silent. No one moves. No one breathes. Another step, and now there’s no missing it. He’s holding something metal and he’s coming our way. Harper’s sobs stop abruptly, her breath ragged.

  “Brecken,” Josh says quietly.

  “What’s happening?” Harper asks.

  Brecken lets out a strangled sound and punches the gas. The car sails backward, fishtailing onto the road. The father raises his hand, and Brecken jerks the shifter into Drive. By some miracle, there is no spinning or slipping. The tires grip and we move. But
I watch that man as we drive by. I watch him until a line of trees separates us and we can’t see him at all.

  I hope it’s the last time I lay eyes on him.

  Because if we see him again, I’m sure he’ll kill us.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Brecken stops half a mile down the road. He pushes open the door and vomits onto the pavement. None of us breathe a word. Harper wipes her eyes and checks her purse with shaking hands. The bandage on her finger has come loose and it’s oozing.

  “Your finger,” I say.

  She shakes her head. “It doesn’t matter. I need my phone. It’s on the charger.”

  Josh follows the cord to the charger in the front and hands the phone back to her. She presses the screen. Tries again, turning it faceup to activate. The phone remains dark, and Harper coughs out a noise that isn’t quite a laugh.

  “It’s dead,” she says.

  “What do you mean?” Josh asks, taking his own phone off the second cord. His voice is soft and confused. “What the hell?”

  Cold wind gusts from the open driver’s door, where Brecken is still hunched out of view, spitting into the snow.

  Harper’s voice goes high and shrill. “I charged it for the last hour and it’s totally dead!”

  “Mine too,” Josh says, frowning at his own phone while the open-door alarm ding-ding-dings.

  “What the hell is going on?” I ask, checking the cords. I take Harper’s phone from her and try plugging it in. Unplugging it. Then Josh’s. I unbuckle and lean forward between the front seats to check all the connections, jiggling every potential weakness. The charging indicator refuses to light. The charger is broken. It was working fine in San Diego.

  Josh tries them himself. He does all the wiggle, tighten, unplug-replug tricks. We try switching the cords. Nothing works.

  Josh pulls the charger out and fingers the connection to the car. “Something’s chipped here. Did it get kicked?”

  “I don’t know,” I say.

  Brecken leans back into the car, slumping in his seat. I catch a glimpse of his eyes in the rearview mirror. They’re red-rimmed and swollen.

  “Brecken.” Harper holds her hand out. “We need your phone.”

  He doesn’t ask anything, just checks his pockets for his phone and lights the screen to unlock it. He frowns. “It’s at two percent. It won’t call out on that.”

  “Damn it. Something’s wrong with the charging port.”

  “Plug it in the back,” Brecken says.

  I find the port and pull open the flap, but the metal is busted. A fresh-looking gouge mars the plastic and a chunk of the metal inside is broken off. “It’s broken.”

  I touch the scrape in the plastic, which is still sharp. Jagged. Was it like this before? Wouldn’t I have noticed this earlier?

  “Are you kidding me?” Josh asks, sounding desperate.

  “The whole outlet is busted,” I say. “I don’t think it’s going to work with anything. It looks like it’s been tampered with.”

  Josh leans forward, and I suspect he’s checking his own outlet again. He’s quiet for a second. And then he swears softly. “One of the metal things is pried off,” he says. “Was it like this when you plugged it in?”

  “I didn’t inspect it or anything, but it seemed fine,” I say.

  Harper shifts in her seat. “Okay, we need a phone. What about you?”

  She’s looking at Kayla, who, of course, doesn’t answer. Harper reaches over me and nudges her. She isn’t gentle about it and Kayla’s eyes fly open. Her eyes roll, and something white crusts the corner of her mouth. She looks pale. Sick.

  No. I remind myself that she isn’t sick. She’s on something.

  “We need your phone,” Harper says.

  “I don’t have a phone,” Kayla slurs.

  “What do you mean you don’t have a phone?” Harper and Brecken ask at the exact same time.

  “That’s bullshit!” Brecken adds.

  “You went through my bag yourself, Richie Rich,” Kayla says, head lolling.

  “What the hell is wrong with you, you little piece of—”

  “Okay, stop.” Josh holds up his hands in a T for time-out “Everybody stop.”

  “Let’s find a place to pull over,” I say. “We’ll see if any of our chargers will work. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

  “Fine by me,” Brecken says, putting the car into drive and easing forward. “Somebody get that map out of the glove box. See if we can figure out where the hell we are. We can compare the highway numbers or whatever. Just get an idea.”

  Josh opens the glove compartment, reaching for the map. His laugh is hollow. “You’ve got to be shitting me. It’s gone.”

  Brecken reaches over, checking it himself. He swears. Then slams his palm against the dash.

  “It was in there,” I say. “It has to be in there.”

  “It’s not in there now,” Josh says.

  I unbuckle and stand up, leaning between them to check for myself. Because I saw that map. I pulled it out and put it back and I know it was in there. I feel the top of the compartment, the places where the plastic is joined. The soft vinyl area in the back that allows it to open and shut.

  “It’s gone.” I croak out the words.

  I sit back down and I can tell I’m close to tears. My heart is going too fast. Thumping in a way I don’t like. This won’t stop. Why won’t this stop? Everyone starts yelling, and I cross my arms over my chest rocking gently back and forth in my seat.

  I see a flash of my mother in the hospital doing this exact thing. We sat side by side in scratchy waiting room chairs while doctors delivered a litany of terrible news about Phoebe. Lesions. Nodules. Tumors. No longer singular, these terrible word bullets ended in s now. Plural versions of a tragedy. And my mother sat the way I’m sitting right now, stony-faced and rocking, her arms crossed tight over her middle. Like maybe she could hold in her insides as her universe blew apart.

  I uncross my arms and force myself to tune in. Because that isn’t me. I’m the one who’s fine through all of it, at the hospital. At the funeral home. Even when we put her favorite flowers on the grave this summer. My mom fell apart, but I held on to my art and did what my aunt asked me to do, and I’ve been fine. I’m always fine. Because I can’t let myself be anything else.

  “Mira?” Harper’s eyes are dark with concern. “You don’t look good.”

  “Yeah?” I force a laugh, then swallow it down, because I can’t laugh. What the hell is funny? Someone’s stealing things out of this car. Pieces of our lives are disappearing. A wallet. A phone. A map. Who would even want a map?

  Someone who doesn’t want us to find our way out of here.

  Someone who likes us alone and frightened.

  “Are you okay?”

  Josh this time, his brow creased. Brecken’s watching me, too, eyes flicking to the rearview mirror, dark and assessing. Am I okay? I don’t feel okay. I feel like I’m losing my mind, and the way they’re watching me seems to confirm it.

  “I’m fine,” I say. I learned after Phoebe that if you say it enough, people believe you. Say it even more, and you’ll believe it yourself.

  “Maybe you should drink some water,” Harper says.

  “Maybe you need to stop babying her,” Brecken says.

  “Watch your mouth,” Josh snarls. I startle, surprised that he’d care.

  “Brecken’s right,” I say. “Really, I’m fine.”

  “Wait!” Harper shouts, pointing ahead. “There! Stop there!”

  “What are you talking about?” Kayla asks.

  “Pull in up there,” Harper says. No more scared little girl now. This is her confident all-business tone I heard on the airplane when we were bobbling down to the ground like a yo-yo with wings. She’s pointing to a small parking lot maybe a hundred feet up the ro
ad, with a squat building behind it.

  “Yeah, I don’t think that’s a gas station,” Brecken says.

  “Obviously,” Harper says. “But it’s open.” Red light shines from a neon sign near the door, a four-letter confirmation of Harper’s claim.

  Brecken pulls into the lot, the car crunching over snow-covered gravel.

  There are two cars parked and no windows on the building unless you count the glass door. It’s beige and featureless, with an unlit sign hanging over the door. The wind blows it back and forth, but when the gusts die, Josh reads the name aloud.

  “The Cock ’N Bull Bar? Really?”

  Brecken sniggers. I swallow, my throat clicking.

  We park beside a newer Honda with file folders scattered across the back seat. Even before the engine is off, Harper thrusts a hand between the front seats, her palm facing up.

  “Keys.”

  “What the hell? Do you think I’m going to—”

  “Give. Me. The. Keys.” And then her voice softens. “We can’t afford to have anything else go missing, Brecken.”

  “Let’s just remember we already searched bags. I didn’t steal any of this shit,” Brecken says, but he drops the keys in her palm all the same.

  “Uh,” Josh scratches the back of his neck, looking as uncomfortable with this turn of events as I feel. “Are we sure this is the best place?”

  “It’s the only place. I’m beyond done with this adventure. We need to call the police,” Harper says. “We’re going to tell them what happened. Then we’re going to wait here for them to come and pick us up.”

  “Look, we can do whatever you need to do,” Brecken says, lowering his voice. “But are you sure the police are a good idea? I mean, with everything?”

  With everything? My ears prickle at that comment, but I’m careful not to look too interested. Josh doesn’t play it so cool; he watches Brecken like an armed bomb.

  “You ran somebody over,” Harper says. “It doesn’t matter what I think now.”