American Heart

by Laura Moriarty

  “That’s not an option.” She looked at me like I’d said something stupid. “Do you think your parents would help me?”

  I rolled my eyes. She was really stuck on this parent thing. She was acting like I was nine or something. I’d be a whole lot more help to her than any adult I knew. Unless they had a car.

  “We live with our aunt,” Caleb said. “And she’d turn you in.”

  He was right. Any adult we knew would turn her in.

  She nodded, looking through the windshield up at the sky. “Then there is nothing you can do.” She turned back to him. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to get you into trouble. Please go with your sister. She is right. And I’m glad you found her.”

  “No,” Caleb said. “Sarah-Mary promised. She’s going to help. She’ll think of something. You’ve just got to give her time.”

  I shook my head. It would be better if I could just tell him, in all honesty, that there was nothing I could possibly think up. But my wheels were already turning. I couldn’t help it. It was like somebody put jigsaw pieces in front of me and said, Okay now, don’t try to put this together.

  “Why don’t you just keep driving?” I asked. “Why you parked out here?”

  She waved in the direction of the highway. “They are showing my face and my car on television. I saw it when I was getting gas just now—my picture up on the screen. That wasn’t happening when I was still in Arkansas, when my car was parked in my friend’s garage. One of the toll cameras must have scanned my plates when I drove through yesterday. That’s how they know I’m driving. I ran out of the gas station and drove here to hide, and here’s where I’ve been sitting. If the police have my license number, I’ll never make it. This car is no good to me now.”

  She was right. If she was out on the highway, they’d get her in no time. Even I’d noticed her Arkansas plates.

  “You could take a bus.” I couldn’t believe I was giving her ideas. But Greyhound stopped in Hannibal. Anyway, I didn’t know how she would get from here to there. It wasn’t like Aunt Jenny was going to come out here and give her a ride.

  She shook her head. “You need identification to buy a ticket.” She looked down. “Same with a train, or a flight, of course. I have a license, and an American passport. But given my name, I’m sure I would be pulled aside.”

  That was true. I didn’t even want to know her name. The less I knew, the better.

  “She’ll think of something,” Caleb assured her.

  But I couldn’t think of anything. We were a long, long way from Canada, and they were looking for her car. But I like to think that every problem has a solution, or at least most of them do. You just have to figure it out. I tried to think what Tess would do.

  “Can you talk normal?” I asked. I tried to say it in a nice way.

  She looked confused.

  “Like without an accent?” I pointed at my mouth. “Can you talk like me?”

  Now she looked like I’d said something funny. I didn’t know what. It seemed to me she better listen up.

  “Let me hear you try it,” I said. “Say, ‘Hi. I’m from Arkansas and my name is . . . Lindsey. I’m trying to get up to . . . Minnesota.’”

  She tried it. She saw I was serious, so she was too. But no matter how many times I corrected her, she didn’t sound normal. She sounded like she had a hook tugging hard on one side of her mouth.

  “No,” I said. “Try to sound like me.”

  “This does sound like you,” she said, like she still had the hook.

  I shook my head. It wouldn’t work. As soon as she said anything, people would know. “How’ve you been getting around up till now?”

  “I have been hiding at a friend’s house.” She touched her ear again. “In a basement. But the neighbor was getting suspicious. He’d seen my car in the garage.”

  “Your friend you stayed with’s a Muslim?”

  “Of course not.” One of her thin brows moved high. “All of my Muslim friends are gone.”

  I knew she might be lying. But the story about the friend hiding her seemed true—I couldn’t think of any other way that she wouldn’t have been caught already with her accent, not if she had a Muslim-sounding name on her passport giving her away. The fact that somebody else, somebody in Arkansas, somebody who wasn’t a Muslim, had already helped her made me helping her, if I really had to, not seem so bad. I was still holding the pepper spray, but I switched the safety cap back on.

  “Are you thinking of something, Sarah-Mary?” Caleb asked. “You look like you’re thinking of something.”

  I didn’t answer him. But an idea had already come to me—it was exactly what Tess would do, if she were sitting in this car in the cold rain with a Muslim fugitive, and not in Puerto Rico, probably wearing a bathing suit and walking along a beach, or smiling pleasantly at a painting in a museum. It was exactly what she would try. And if I tried it, whatever happened, at least I wouldn’t be headed back to Aunt Jenny’s. Or Berean Baptist. Not right away. It would certainly be an adventure, maybe free of charge.

  “She’s coming up with something.” Caleb slapped twice on the back of my seat. “I knew you would, Sarah-Mary! You’re the best! You’re the best person in the world!”

  I shook my head. Now there was some irony for you. I looked over at the woman’s face, at the faint wrinkles that branched out from her eyes, and the thin wire frames of her glasses. She didn’t look particularly dangerous or crazy. Then again, she was dressed normal, wearing a blue knit hat and not the headscarf she’d been wearing in the picture. I tried to think of what I should ask her, something that might put me more at ease: Are you sure you haven’t hurt anyone? Are you sure you don’t plan to? You absolutely promise you’re not going to blow anyone up? Or help anyone who’s planning to?

  It wouldn’t matter if I asked or not. If she was lying, she’d just keep doing it.

  “Do you have money?” I asked.

  She nodded.

  “How much?”

  Now she looked all nervous about me. I could see it in the way she pulled her head back a little, her eyes going small behind her glasses. Good for her. I should have been that smart.

  “I’m not going to steal it,” I said. “But I know someone in St. Louis who makes fake IDs. He charges three hundred dollars, and he’s really good. I can get you to him. Maybe tonight. And you’ll need to buy me a bus ticket home.”

  She nodded. “I have that. But . . . he’ll make one for me? A license?”

  I didn’t know for sure. “Yeah.” I’d figure out how to get him to do it. “You have cash?”

  She nodded again. But she still looked unsure. “I don’t understand. Won’t your aunt be upset if you are out so late? What are you going to tell her?”

  I waved her off. “You got a phone?”

  She shook her head. “No. They can use it for tracking.”

  “Then I’ll need some cash now.” I wriggled my toes in my boots. “Sorry. I just got robbed myself. Ten dollars should do it. Maybe fifteen.”

  “What’s your plan?” Caleb asked. I waved him off as she turned away from me, fidgeting in one of her coat pockets. When she turned back, she held out a folded twenty-dollar bill.

  “Okay,” I said, taking the twenty. “Here’s what we’ll do. Up by the highway, there’s a McDonald’s. Right next to that is a truck stop. It’s big. You can’t miss it.”

  “Yes,” she said. “I was just there.”

  “Okay. I’m going to walk Caleb back to the McDonald’s.” I zippered the pepper spray in my backpack. “I’ll meet you at the truck stop in an hour. Just leave your car here and walk over. Take what you can carry. If you stay bundled up, I don’t think anyone will recognize you.”

  “Why can’t I go to the truck stop?” Caleb asked. He usually wasn’t whiny. But he was whining now. “I want to go! Sarah- Mary! I want to help!”

  I turned around, but before I said anything, I took a breath and made my voice soft. “It won’t work, Caleb. If you want to help h
er, you need to listen to me. You’ve got to go back to Aunt Jenny’s. Okay? That’s the only way this is going to work.”

  He nodded, looking miserable. He zipped his coat and put his hand on the door release. Before he pulled it, he gave me a long look. “But you promise? You promise you’ll help her?”

  I nodded. I’d already promised. I was a little insulted that he’d made me promise again. But the woman just sat there looking at me, sort of peering at me through her glasses, like she was trying to see in through my eyes to my brain, to better guess how it was really working. That was fine. If she didn’t trust me, there wasn’t much I could do. If she thought she had a better option, she was free to take it. The best thing for me would be for her not to show up at the truck stop. I could tell Caleb I’d done my best, and it would be the truth.

  I looked at Tess’s watch. It was almost twenty till six.

  “I’ll wait until seven,” I told her. “You got that?”

  Caleb leaned up between the seats. “You’ve got to do it,” he told her. “You can’t just sit out here in your car. They’ll get you if you do. And Sarah-Mary will help you. She will.”

  The woman nodded. I couldn’t tell if she was nodding like she agreed or nodding like, yeah, whatever, but after I’d opened the door and started to pull my hood up, she touched the sleeve of my coat. “Take the umbrella.” She gestured to where I’d thrown it down earlier, its green so bright I could see it in the dark. “Just take it,” she said, like it was totally normal for her to tell me what to do. “Stay dry. Keep your brother dry.”

  The dark actually made it easier to find our way back to the McDonald’s, as we could see the glow of the lights from the signs and the highway reflected off the clouds. Not long after we started walking, the rain eased up enough that I closed the umbrella and put it in my backpack. At one point, I stopped to ask Caleb why he was walking funny. He pulled up one leg of his jeans to show me one of the pink socks the woman had given him to wear.

  “They’re thick,” he said. “They make my shoes tight.”

  But other than that, we didn’t talk. It wasn’t until we got out of the trees, walking side by side through the field, that I started to tell him the plan.

  “Listen,” I said. “If you want me to do this, you’ve got to do everything just like I say.”

  He nodded. I’d been thinking maybe he would chicken out and say I didn’t have to go help her. But he just kept walking, waiting for me to say more.

  “Okay.” I nodded up at the McDonald’s. “You’re going to go in there, find a manager, or anybody who works there, and ask to use their phone. You call Aunt Jenny and tell her that Mom left you there. Only tell her I went with Mom.”

  When I got to that last part, he slowed his walking and shook his head. “She won’t believe that, Sarah-Mary. She won’t believe you left me.”

  I thought on that. He was probably right. And it was nice to hear that even Aunt Jenny knew me that well. There was no way I would have left him at a freaking McDonald’s by himself. If I would have been in the car with my mom, I would have made her turn around, no matter what. I would have jumped out of the car. That was a difference between me and her. One of many.

  “You’ve got to make her believe,” I said. “That’s your job, okay? Go ahead and tell her that you were so upset you ran out into the woods, but just say you sat out there by yourself for a while. Don’t say anything about the woman in the car.”

  He made a face. “I know that. I’m not stupid.”

  “I know you’re not.” I stopped walking and looked down at him, so he could see that I meant it. I’d already said I was sorry, so it didn’t seem like I should have to keep saying it. But I was still feeling it. So I said it again.

  “Okay.” He held up his palm like he got it, and he’d had enough of it too. But the hurt was still in there, lodged in his brain. I’d put it in, and I couldn’t take it out.

  “But you’re going to have to have one story and stick to it, no matter what.” I started walking again. “Even if you have to say it to the police.”

  Here was where I really thought he would get scared and have second thoughts. His eyes did widen for a second, like he was trying to imagine having to lie to a police officer with a notebook. But then he just nodded and waited for me to say more.

  “Tell everybody the exact same story. Tell them you and I went out to the picnic table together, in case anybody saw us out there. Say we were waiting while she got gas, but we’d already told you we couldn’t take you with us.” I could hear how false it all sounded. “Say you tried to argue, whatever, but I just kept saying I’d call in a few days, and that it would be okay, and when Mom came back, we both gave you a hug and told you we loved you, but only I went with her. Say it over and over, the same way each time. Picture it in your head like it really happened, and then it’ll seem like a real memory. Nobody’ll be able to trip you up.”

  I felt like I was giving him a gift, telling him my best strategy. At Hannibal High, I’d told a couple of girls that my dad died when he pushed a little boy out of the way of a tow truck. I told them I saw it happen, and I remembered how his body had flown higher than the roof of the truck before landing on the curb, and how I knew he was dead as soon as my mom and I ran up because I could see his wide-open eyes staring up at the sky. I’d told them the tow truck had HERE COMES HELP painted on the door, and that the driver kept yelling that it wasn’t his fault, like the only thing he cared about was not getting a ticket. I told them about how the little boy’s mom had come to my dad’s funeral, and how she’d been crying when she hugged me and my mom, and how my mom could barely hug her back because she was so pregnant with Caleb.

  Only Tess knew the real story: when Caleb was just a baby, our dad had been walking home from a bar by himself in the middle of the night, maybe too drunk to be careful, and he’d been hit by a car.

  We got to the edge of the field, just out of reach of the McDonald’s security lights. It was cold enough that I could see my breath, but Caleb kept standing there, looking up at me, and I realized he was trying not to cry.

  “Hey,” I said, poking his shoulder. “This is your idea, remember? Do you want me to help her or not?”

  He nodded, but he turned away from me, rubbing the back of his neck. “How long will you be gone?”

  “I don’t know.” I looked up at the sky. There were no stars. There was no moon, even. “I’ll probably get back tomorrow. But if I don’t, you still can’t tell anyone. Just sit tight and wait. You gotta promise me, Caleb. I could get in a lot of trouble for this. And not just with Aunt Jenny.”

  “I won’t tell,” he said. “I promise.”

  We nodded at each other, and I wasn’t worried anymore. I leaned down to kiss him on the top of his head, and then I backed away, watching him walk out into the light.

  The Muslim woman wasn’t at the truck stop when I got there, but it was only six thirty. After I used the bathroom and did what I could to dry my hair with the hand dryer, I waited by the counter, looking at maps in a spinning rack until there wasn’t a line. The clerk behind the counter had little dreamcatcher earrings and called every customer “honey”—male or female, young or old. Okay, honey, thank you. Mm-hmm. You have a nice day now. Her voice sounded friendly, even a little musical, but everything she said came out with the same tune, so it sounded more like the fake voice you can use when you have to get through a long shift of saying the same thing over and over, and you know very well somebody could be rude to you any second and you can’t say anything back if you want to keep your job. I know. I’ve used that voice at Dairy Queen. When I came up to the counter, the clerk smiled and used the singsongy voice on me.

  “Honey, you look like a drowned rat. Did you get stuck out in the rain?”

  “I’m all right.” I smiled back. “But is there a phone I could use?” I got out the twenty. “I could pay.”

  She turned her head and looked at me from the side, so I was looking at the wing of he
r eyeliner. It was like all of a sudden she didn’t have to be so friendly just because I didn’t have a phone.

  “We got a booth.” She nodded toward the back of the store. The music in her voice was gone.

  “A booth?” I stood on my toes, but I couldn’t see anything over the shelves. “Like a phone booth?”

  “With a lock.” She lowered her voice. “Some of our customers prefer not to use their own phones for certain numbers, and they still want the video component that the disposables don’t have.” She gave me a knowing look. “And they usually want privacy.”

  I wrinkled my nose. She was talking about sex calls.

  “I’m just trying to make a regular call,” I said. “I’m calling an arcade in St. Louis. I don’t need any privacy.”

  She held up her hands. “Not my business. You buy the card up here and tell me how much you want to put on it. First minute is a dollar. After that, every minute is fifty cents.”

  “Can I get change back if I don’t use it all up?”

  “Nope.”

  I got a card with five dollars on it and headed back. The booth was at the end of a long hallway that went past the bathrooms and the changing rooms for the showers. I kept my head down as I moved past people, like I was so worried some truck driver I was never going to see again would think I was headed to make a sex call.

  The door to the phone booth had a slide thing for the card I’d just bought and a dial that read VACANT over the knob. After I slid my card, I heard a timer start ticking, and I peeked my head in. The booth was a little bigger than my closet at Aunt Jenny’s, and there was a touch screen and a plastic seat to sit on. Everything looked clean, and I smelled something lemony that I hoped was disinfectant. But after I closed and locked the door, I didn’t sit.

  It was easy enough to ask the screen for the number, though I typed in Bobo’s Good Times instead of saying it, as I didn’t want anyone to overhear and think I was making a sex call after all. Tess and I had laughed about the name of the arcade when we’d called last September.