Nobody but Us

by Kristin Halbrook

  IT GETS REAL COLD INSIDE AT HER WORDS.

  “What?”

  “They know we’re headed for Vegas.”

  “Who?”

  “The police. The FBI.”

  The FBI. I figured this would happen. I knew they’d come. I knew we couldn’t run fast enough. I figured a fake ID would be enough. I’m an idiot. Nothing’s enough when you’re a murderer.

  “How?”

  I feel like if I keep asking her these stupid questions, then I can keep the answers from reaching me all the way. Like, each sentence that comes out of her mouth stumbles over the one before so they can’t get me, can’t sink in. This ain’t what I wanna hear. But she does answer, saying something about a sister and a video. It don’t matter. All that matters is that they know where we’re going. The slipping feeling of safety that I been clinging to ever since that diner is somewhere down the road behind us now. They know where we’re going. They’ll be waiting there—in Vegas—for us.

  No. They can’t have us. They can’t have Zoe. They can’t take her from me.

  “It’ll be okay.” I ain’t even thinking about what I’m saying, there’s no meaning behind anything. She sighs, all frustrated.

  “Are you even listening to me? They know where we’re going. We can’t go to Vegas now.”

  “We’re in the middle of a desert. There ain’t nowhere else to go.”

  “Anywhere. We can go anywhere that’s not Vegas.”

  “We already got plans.”

  “Listen to me!”

  I rub my face and try to focus on what Zoe’s saying, but her words slide by me somehow. I take her hand. It’s solid, full of life. “Just let me think,” I tell her.

  She snatches her hand from mine, upset that I won’t listen to the important things she’s got to say. But it ain’t like that. I’m listening, I’m trying. It’s like my body won’t absorb the words, though. Like they’re getting deflected somewhere else before they reach my ears. I need to try harder to hear her. But then the road calls and I gotta pay attention to my driving.

  I killed a man. You don’t get away with that.

  Run, run everywhere you can run, but you ain’t getting away.

  “Hey Zoe, just turn the radio on. Let’s listen to some music.”

  She pauses, and thickness fills the car. I look at her, see her eyes narrow at me. Yes, I tell her silently, yes, you can be pissed at me for saying that, for cutting you off, for bringing you here, for putting you in this situation. You can be as angry as you want, hate me more than anyone’s ever hated and yell till you’re hoarse. All you want. I’m so sorry. This is the best I can do right now. Just don’t leave.

  She breaks eye contact with me. Her hand reaches for the radio but stops for a second. She turns to me again. Takes my jaw in her hands. Squeeze it, I wanna tell her. Hurt me all you want, like I’ve hurt you. But she’s so gentle as she brings my face toward hers, just a little. Not enough for my eyes to lose the road, but enough so that her lips can reach my ear, my cheek, the corner of my mouth.

  “I love you.”

  She wipes at a tear that sneaks out from under her eyelash and flips on the radio. She passes station after station until she finds a song that won’t rip us to shreds with darkness or bass or anything like that. Some song everyone knew the lyrics to ten years ago but have mostly forgotten now.

  I slam the back of my head into my headrest and close my eyes for a second. I can feel ghost kisses where her mouth just touched mine. Whispers of Zoe chilling out on my face. I reach my hand up instinctively to scratch at my scruffy jawline, but drop it again, quickly. I won’t touch them, the angel kisses she left for me when she should’ve been getting out of my car and leaving me forever. No one’s ever stood by me this long, through so much.

  I think about what she did there with my demand that she turn on the music. Was it strength or weakness that made her do it? Was she giving in to me or was she rising above me, above everything’s that happened? I look across the car at her. She’s humming to the music like she got no other cares in the world.

  Yeah.

  Above.

  So very far above me.

  ZOE

  I’VE NEVER FELT THIS BEFORE, THIS FEELING THAT I’VE hurt someone. If I hadn’t tried to take something that wasn’t mine, if I hadn’t run off with Will in the first place, none of this would have happened. Will wouldn’t have stolen that money. I wouldn’t have tried to steal anything.

  I can’t stop doing bad things. Ever since I was a little girl who stood and watched, who never told because her daddy said not to.

  It’s dark outside already. A cloudy winter kind of dark, even though it’s spring. Dark enough to close my eyes and pray to the sky or anything listening. I haven’t prayed since I was little and decided God hated me, but now I ask for forgiveness and promise to make it all right. But the only answer I get when I open my eyes is the sound of the pavement and the feeling of Will’s car beneath my feet and the winking of the stars in the black sky and the knowledge that they’re out there, chasing us, about to find us. The knowledge that we can’t run fast enough.

  I can’t believe it took me this long to figure out what we were really running from. The ID, the way Will always looks in the rearview mirror, little checks he doesn’t realize I see. I saw them, and I didn’t get it. I get it now.

  This thing we’re running from is huge.

  Despite how tired we are, we can’t slow down. I feel frozen. Thinking too much makes me want to run, and we’re already running. We trade yawns and worried looks and pats on the hand to pass the time. Will checks the gas gauge and taps the steering wheel.

  “What?”

  “We’re a little under half a tank. We’ll be okay to Vegas and getting around for a couple days.”

  I picture Will in the knit hat from the store in Elko and want to cry because he hasn’t smiled since then.

  I picture Will in handcuffs and wonder if I’ll ever smile again.

  The landscape starts to change under the glitter of neon lights. The freeway widens and traffic picks up as we head into a valley. I sit up in my seat and wipe my face with the back of my shirt. I feel grimy, but it’s not just my skin that’s crawling. A part of me is excited to see Vegas, the gaudy casinos and the masses of people. But another part of me is scared to go there. A bigger population means more police. Probably an FBI office or something. And I’ve seen it in the movies, the way they block off the highway when a criminal is on the run.

  They’ll take Will from me and send me home.

  A sweat breaks out on my upper lip and I wipe it away with a nervous tremor. The traffic is moving, flowing at breakneck speeds. Cars fly around us, semi trucks take up the whole of the right lane. There can’t possibly be a checkpoint, police stopping cars to look for us, at this speed.

  Will is staring straight ahead. I clasp his hand and squeeze.

  He jumps as though I’ve shocked him. “I love you,” he says. Automatically, as though his thoughts are as far away as possible from loving me.

  “Where will we stop?”

  He drags his palm across his eyebrow and looks at me.

  “I don’t know.”

  I love him so much. How did I not realize this before, the way love grows over time, over experiences?

  “How long can we go on the gas we have?”

  “Maybe another three or four hours?”

  What will I do without him? They’ll never understand what happened. They’ll take him away.

  “Keep driving, Will.”

  “Huh?”

  “Just keep going. To California. To Mexico. Wherever. Anywhere you want. They know where we’re going. We have no money, no family, nothing here. Just keep going until we find a place that’s safe.”

  “We can’t drive forever.”

  “Yes we can. You said we could. You said so. Just keep going. We’ll figure this out. We just need a little bit of money to get us through. We’ll find a small town. I’ll distract the
person at the register and you can—”

  I can’t finish. The fullness of my plan swirls in my head like a bad TV drama, but I can’t say the words out loud. Think it, do it. But talking about it makes it real, realer than action.

  “I can’t let you do this.”

  “We have no money, no gas, and they know who we are. You don’t have a choice.”

  “Yeah, I do. I can keep you out of this mess.”

  “Don’t you get it? It’s like what you always tried to make me understand with the money. Everything is ours. There is no your mess and my mess. It’s us. Everything we do, we do as one.” I swallow back fear, thick as tar. “I’m not leaving you, I’m not letting anyone take you away from me. I’m not going anywhere and neither are you. We’re in this together. Every mistake. Every accident.”

  My words slur at the end, my hands grip his. I search the smallest movements on his face, desperate to read his expression, to know if I’ve made an impact on him.

  “I ain’t doing this to you.”

  “Will. You and me.”

  The sky blazes unnaturally. White and red and blue and neon colors dance through the windshield. We’ve entered Vegas and I didn’t even notice when.

  He kisses my fingers and shakes his head at nothing.

  WILL

  JUST THIS IDEA THAT SHE FEELS LIKE SHE HAS TO DO this thing makes me grit my teeth and flex the muscles in my neck until blood pounds hard inside my head. She ain’t done nothing wrong. Not yet. It’s stupid of me to let her do this, to get her involved at all.

  But I can’t see no other way.

  We pass through Vegas, all those lights and casinos and the fake Statue of Liberty and the fake Eiffel Tower. The things that were supposed to be our future, our home. But now we have to find signs to California. There are so many millions of people in California that I figure, sure, we can get lost there. And if nobody knows we’re headed farther west, we’ll be better off.

  “I’m gonna make this up to you.”

  “Stop.”

  “I will.”

  “I’m so in love with you. Understand?”

  The way she says it—it’s different this time. Love and In Love. I don’t know what to think. I struggle with my breathing, and my heart races in my chest. Those words, coming from her, aimed at a person like me, are … incredible. A miracle.

  I begin to shake my head at her, not to say no, I don’t understand, but in disbelief. That anyone could feel this way about someone as worthless as me. As much of a nothing as me. I ain’t got nothing to give her, nothing at all. No job, no family, I didn’t even finish high school. She’s smart and beautiful. She deserves all kinds of good things, and I can’t figure what it is that draws her to me. But if I did know what it was, I’d bottle it up and become a freaking millionaire.

  I take my eyes off the road and kiss her instead.

  “First small town.”

  “First one. With a store or gas station.”

  If there was anything else we could do, anything that wouldn’t put me in jail and take her away, I’d do it.

  I take whichever highway leads to California, and now we’ve passed through Vegas and are heading to Barstow. I wonder if the dreams I have, we have, can be met in a place called Barstow. It sounds seedy or Wild West or something like that, but I’m willing to try it.

  The first town’s got more casinos and hotels. It’s like Vegas never ends. I keep going even though she protests. I’m thinking we shouldn’t be so close to Vegas. And suddenly there’s this one gas station in the desert. Nothing around it. I slam the wheel to the right to make the off ramp.

  I park the car at the farthest edge of the parking lot and pull the key out. The leather seat squeaks as I move, like it’s warning us, Don’t be stupid. Zoe fidgets next to me. We haven’t slept right in the longest time. I’ve got a constant thump behind my eyes. But even though she’s got dark circles under them, her eyes don’t look tired at all. They look determined.

  I choke. “I can’t do this to you.”

  Her response is a long, lingering kiss that melts my insides and her fingers move to the door handle. “Watch for the right moment.”

  And then she’s gone.

  I watch her stride across the parking lot and pull open the door to the store. She don’t look back at me. We talked about what we would do here, planned out some ways to get the bare minimum of what we need and get the hell out.

  “We don’t want no one to get hurt again,” I’d said.

  “I’ll go in and ask to use the restroom.” She’d gone over the plan again. Repeating it so I knew she had it down. “I’ll plug the toilet with a whole bunch of toilet paper—or paper towels if they have them—then come out and tell the cashier the restroom’s out of order. He’ll go clean it up.” She placed her hand on the side of my face. “All we need is a minute for you to run in, get what we need, and get out. No one’s going to get hurt this time, Will.”

  I wait in the car for my part in her plan. After a minute, I see her walk outta the store and around the far corner. I hear a door close, and seconds later she’s back. My heart speeds up. This is when she gets the cashier outta the store. I get out and walk silently toward the entrance, hide behind the ice machine. It smells like burned oil here and the smell keeps my senses alert.

  It’s taking too long.

  We don’t got a plan if this don’t work, and we won’t get very far on the gas we got left in the car. She’s gotta hurry. My pulse throbs in my chest, in my wrist, behind my eyes. My fingers are freezing cold, but there’s sweat across my forehead. I wipe at it with my forearm and mutter her name under my breath.

  “Where are you?”

  Then I hear it.

  I leap out from behind the ice machine and yank open the door to the store. She’s at the counter, her face buried in her hands. I’m off balance, lost. The cashier watches her from behind his counter, but there ain’t no one hurting her. Why’s she crying like that?

  “I really have to go,” she weeps. “Can’t you fix the toilet?”

  “I told you, you can use the men’s.”

  Her hands fall to her sides. The tears leave black-edged skid marks down her cheeks and her eyes are already pink and puffy. I cringe. She looks like an addict.

  “That’s gross!”

  “Look, kid, I’m not running a rest stop here—”

  I sidle up to the counter and look Zoe square in the face. It’s an act. I think. I hope.

  “Hey, man. It don’t hurt to take a look.”

  The cashier glares at me real quick and looks back at Zoe.

  “C’mon, princess, I’m not supposed to leave the store.”

  “Obviously! When’s the last time you cleaned the bathroom?”

  I lean in. Like I ain’t got nothing to do with this. “Sandwiches in the back?”

  “Yeah, refrigerated section, next to the beer.” He points down an aisle and I nod my thanks before heading to the back.

  I’m checking out the soggy plastic-wrapped bread on the ham and pastrami when he finally leaves the store with Zoe. I drop the sandwich on the floor and bolt for the counter. Leap it in one flying movement. I’d hoped for a button marked with the word DRAWER. That button don’t exist.

  I glance at the entrance. Nothing.

  I slam my fist onto the keys. No luck. I’m gonna throw the whole thing on the ground. Beat the fucking money out of it. I just can’t make that kind of noise. Blood pounds in my ear. This is taking too long. Longer than it can take. I push buttons. The damn things beep at me, but no open drawer. Shit.

  I look up again. Where are they? Slam my fists into the sides of the machine. It’s too noisy. There’s gotta be a hammer. Something heavy. Pound this fucker into oblivion. I check the counter, the shelves beneath it. There ain’t nothing.

  “Damn!”

  But there’s packs of gum and some other crap in front of me. I grab a pack and scan the barcode on the wrapper. Eighty-nine cents. I hit the FIVE and CASH buttons.
The drawer slides open. There’s paper sacks and the flash of something else under the counter. I grab a bag. Stuff the cash in. There ain’t a lot, not as much as I was hoping for. But it’s enough to get us outta here.

  He’s yelling at her and Zoe’s still crying. I slam the drawer. Duck down. I see the top of his head above the magazine racks against the front window. He’s coming, just a couple of steps from the door. He grips the handle. I peek over the top of the counter. See Zoe through the glass of the door. She’s backing into the parking lot and he’s calling her names. She raises her arm and something goes sailing through the air. The keys to the bathroom. She threw them in the bushes.

  He’s cussing over his shoulder as he runs to the bushes. I close my eyes against the rage building in me, but I don’t got time for none of this, don’t got time to feel any emotion at all. I gotta be cool and fast. Get the hell out of here. She put herself on the line for me. Let this guy say these things to her. Now I gotta hold up my end of the bargain.

  I whip my fingers into the shelf under the counter and wrap my fingers around cold metal. It makes sense I’d find a weapon at a lone gas station like this one. That goes in the bag, too. Then I dart out, pause, and swipe the pack of gum off the counter. I grab a pack of cookies from a rack near the door. Stuff the bag half in my pants. I hope my sweatshirt covers the bulk enough. It’ll get me out of here, buy us a few minutes.

  “Girl, you gotta get it together,” I toss out as I leave the store. “Hey! I didn’t pick a sandwich. They’re soggy as shit. You might want to check on that when you get back in.”

  I can’t believe how calm my voice is. Like it’s someone else saying everything.

  I wave in the direction of the bushes. The cashier pauses in his yelling to wave me off. Zoe’s already in the car when I slide in, and the cashier’s still looking for the key. I wonder when he’ll realize what we’ve gone with. I hope it takes him awhile to figure it out. We need time.

  ZOE

  SOME OF IT WAS AN ACT AND SOME OF IT WAS AN unexpected emotional outburst I couldn’t control. I can tell Will’s worried about me, about how much was real and how much was put on for the robbery.