American Heart

by Laura Moriarty

  “Do you see?” She put her palms to her cheeks and slid them down to her throat. “He knew what I was back in Fargo. But he couldn’t call, because he had something in his truck. He got rid of it so he could call and get the money.”

  “WNDR does not encourage anyone to interfere with police business, but any of our viewers interested in learning the specific location of the suspects can check our website, as WNDR is always committed to keeping our viewers informed on matters of public safety.”

  I shook my head. We were so close, so close to the border, so close to her husband and her little boy. This couldn’t be right, that everything could end like this because of one mistake I’d made. I got up and hurried around the bed to the window.

  “Turn off the lamp,” I whispered.

  The room went dark, and I used just one finger to move the curtain back. Outside, all was silent and still. The almost half-moon glowed above the trees and the two trucks in the lot. But of course she was right. We were in a remote location, and probably about fifty-five miles northeast of Grand Forks. The police were on their way, and worse than that, maybe other people. If they got here before the police, they’d throw rocks through the window. They’d throw rocks at us.

  I let the curtain fall. “Then we’ve got to go!” I whispered. “Let’s go! You can turn the light on. He’s not out there. But we’ve got to move.”

  She turned the lamp back on, but she didn’t get up. She tapped her finger against the diamond on her wedding ring.

  “Move where?” She said it more like an answer than a question, watching me as I hurried back around the bed to grab my boots. I got what she meant. It was freezing outside, and dark, and we were way out in the country. But we couldn’t just wait there with the wood paneling and the mallard duck and the yellow light for the first car to roll up into the lot outside. Not when I was the one who’d gotten her out here.

  “Sarah-Mary,” she said. “You know he is watching for us. He won’t just let us run away.”

  “He wasn’t out there when I looked.” I pulled up the zipper on my boot so fast it bit my finger. “Listen up, Chloe. I’m walking out of here in one minute.” I went over to the closet and grabbed my coat. “Get up and come with me. Okay? Please?” I let my voice break. I’d cry if I had to. I’d pull out all the stops. “Okay? I’m scared to go out by myself.”

  She didn’t ask me where I planned to go, which was good, because I didn’t know. Less than a minute later, we were both ready, coats and boots zipped, hats and gloves on, our bags on the floor beside us as we scooted the dresser away from the door. She was still wearing her pajamas, her wide-legged pants stuffed into her boots. I’d left my toothbrush and comb in the bathroom, and my pulse was a drumbeat in my head, go now, go now, go now, go now, go now.

  But once we pulled the dresser away and Chloe undid the chain lock, she paused to look at me, her hand on the doorknob.

  “You are ready?” she whispered. She had the ice scraper tucked under her arm. “We’ll go right to the trees. A straight line.”

  I held my breath. She turned the knob, opening the door just a crack at first, and then wider, and wider still, until I could see out as well. All was quiet outside, the snow by our door undisturbed except for our own tracks from the afternoon. The stars were out too, twinkling high, but the air coming in was cold enough to sting my cheeks. She held her hand out to me and I took it. Then we ran out into the night.

  I think part of me knew, even as we ran, even as I kept my gaze on the trees beyond the lot like they were a finish line, that Chloe was right about Tyler watching for us. After all the trouble he’d gone to, and all he stood to gain, it wouldn’t have made sense for him to just stay inside, warm and cozy, and assume we’d stay put as long as needed. But the night kept quiet as we kicked through the snow, and I could only hear the crunch of its iced-over surface under my boots and Chloe’s, and I let myself hope as I sucked in cold air, holding tight to Chloe’s gloved hand. But then I heard more crunching behind us, moving fast, and I didn’t even have time to cry out before the sleeve of a down jacket moved fast and tight around my neck. I fell back into a body, padded and wide, as another arm clamped around my waist.

  “Hold on now!” he yelled, but not in a mean way. He might have been talking to himself. “Just hold on!”

  It wasn’t Tyler. It was the other one, Dale, the lodge owner, smelling of cigarettes, his bristly beard pressed against my cheek. The more I thrashed, the tighter he held me, and out of the corner of my eye, I could see that Tyler had come up behind Chloe in the same way. Or he’d tried to. He had his right arm around her neck, and her left arm pushed down, but her right arm was still free, stabbing at his leg with the ice scraper.

  I pulled up both legs and brought down my heels against Dale’s shins.

  “Hey!” he said, like he was surprised I was fighting, like he’d just expected me to go limp in his arms. “Just settle down, okay? It’s her they want. They don’t even know about you. You stop fighting us and you’ll be okay. We’ll get you back into town. Come on now. It’s over for her. Be smart.”

  Tyler cried out, but he and Chloe had moved behind me, or we’d moved forward, and I couldn’t see them anymore. My hat was gone, the air cold on the tips of my ears. I pulled my head away from Dale’s cheek and brought it back hard.

  “Hey!” he said, louder now, though he only tightened his arms. “Come on now. Jesus! I got a heart condition, okay?”

  I didn’t care about his heart condition. But I got that he was pleading with me when he didn’t have to, and I could feel in the way he held me, with enough space between his arm and my throat that I could breathe, that he didn’t want to hurt me. Chloe cried out behind me, and when I tried to turn my head, my nose pressed up into Dale’s tobacco beard.

  “Be smart,” he whispered. “You’re the reason I didn’t get my gun, and I wouldn’t let him borrow one. There’s no reason for you to get hurt. But he’ll hurt you, okay? I’m your friend. I’m your friend here.”

  “You better let go,” I hissed. I didn’t want to hurt him either. But he wasn’t my friend, not if he wasn’t Chloe’s. I didn’t care if he was going easy on me or not. And maybe some people will think worse of me for what happened next, or think I’m some kind of animal, which maybe I am because here’s the truth: next thing I knew, I’d pushed my nose down a little more so my mouth was right up against his bristly beard, and I clamped my teeth into his jaw like an attack dog, and I kept clamping. Even after he cried out and gripped at my head, and yelled “Oh! Oh, please!” I didn’t let go. He grabbed my shoulders from behind and tried to push me away, and I felt skin give way between my teeth, then warm blood on my tongue, but I was a pit bull, locked on. What happened next was up to him.

  We fell into the snow together, with me still biting down and tasting blood and him clawing at the back of my head. He grabbed hold of my hair with both hands and tried to pull my head away from him. I didn’t let go, and he didn’t let go, and just as I got my hand in my pocket, I felt a giving way above my ears as two fistfuls of hair tore from my scalp, the roots coming out like jagged hooks. His breath caught with the surprise of it, and his hands flew up, newly freed, and in that second I had the safety cap off the pepper spray and the can in his eyes. I unlocked my teeth and turned my own head away before I pushed hard on the trigger.

  His scream, when it came, rattled my heart like someone had reached into my chest and shaken it. My own eyes burned, but I could see his hands were over his eyes, clumps of my torn-away hair still threaded between his fingers.

  I had to step on his chest to get to my feet. Once I was up, I turned in a circle, gasping and coughing until my stinging eyes found Tyler. He was hunched over Chloe, who was down in the snow, writhing and punching and kicking as he tried to grab hold of her. I ran toward them, and his bulging eyes looked up at me just before I pressed the trigger again, harder and longer than I had before. At first, I thought it didn’t work. He grabbed the back of my neck, a
nd I was the one sucking in the stinging heat. But then his chest fell away from my pounding fists, and before I even opened my eyes, I screamed for Chloe to hold her breath and get up, get up, and run.

  17

  THE TREES WOULD have been safer, but the snow was too high to run through. So we kept to the tire tracks in the road, and there was the bad feeling of being in a chute of some kind, like nowhere to go but forward. But once the screams faded behind us, I heard nothing except for our own breathing and the steady beat of our boots. Every time we rounded a turn, I peered back through the trees. I didn’t know how long we had until Tyler or Dale would be able to drive, or until the police, or the people who’d seen the news and were already racing out here to beat them, reached us.

  When we reached the main road, Chloe held up her hand to show she couldn’t go any farther. She bent forward, her elbows on her knees, her bag swung behind her for balance. I walked in circles, my throat burning, my watery eyes blurring my vision. The cold seeped in and stayed where my hair had been torn out. I pulled up my hood.

  “Which way?” I panted, as if that were a reasonable question, as if Chloe was supposed to pull out her compass and figure out which way was north so we could just walk to Canada from however far away we were before anyone found us. I knew it didn’t matter which way we went. There was no plan that could save us.

  Chloe straightened and pulled her hat low. She had a cut on her lip, still bleeding, and she’d lost her glasses too. She peered down the road in one direction, and then back in the other. I did the same. In the moonlight, the road looked lavender, fading to gray and then darkness in either direction.

  “I don’t know,” she said, breathing out through chattering teeth. She looked up, so I looked up too. And I have to say, even in that moment when I was so freezing cold and winded and kicked in the heart because I understood now that she wasn’t going to make it to Canada, and that all of this trying and scheming we’d done had just been for nothing, I couldn’t help but notice the stars. I guess the lights of Joplin and even little Hannibal were bright enough to shut most of them out, because I swear I’d never seen so many. It was like someone had shaken diamonds out across the sky.

  One of my teachers in Joplin told me that a long time ago, people used to think that the sky was a dome and the stars were just little pinpricks that let in the light of heaven, and as crazy as that sounds, I could see how they would think that. But in my opinion, it was even more amazing to think what stars really were: big balls of gas so far away that the light took years to get here, sometimes thousands of years. If thinking about that didn’t make a person shake her head and have nothing to say, I didn’t know what would.

  “My family once rented a house by the sea,” Chloe said, still looking up. “Just for a few days. I was six. Maybe seven.” She smiled, her cheeks flushed from the cold. “My father loved the beach. It was too cold to swim, but we’d stay out late, and the stars looked just like this. There were this many.”

  I nodded, the frozen snot under my nose going tight. You don’t think about Iran and the outback of Minnesota having anything in common, but I guess we were looking up at it.

  “They’re here,” she whispered. I followed her gaze to our left, where a pair of headlights, still maybe a mile away, moved steadily down the road. I shook my head, but that was all I could do. Whoever it was was driving fast, like they couldn’t get to us soon enough.

  Chloe grabbed my arm and pulled me back to the edge of the drive. We jumped high over the ridge of snow and staggered into the trees, my boots sinking deep until we reached a thicket that let down what felt like five pounds of snow when my shoulder brushed against it. We fell behind its cover, still as stones until the headlights swept over the thicket.

  The engine roared, then faded. I peeked out to see the back of a white Suburban just before it disappeared around a turn.

  “Was that the police?” Chloe whispered.

  I shrugged to show I didn’t know. I could see how the police would want to drive out in an unmarked car, with no flashing lights or sirens. They wouldn’t want to give us any warning. But it was just as likely somebody who only wanted to watch, who had a GPS and the address from the news station’s blog, and maybe, even on a night like this, lawn chairs in the back. And just thinking about that made me feel so lonely, even with Chloe beside me. Because we were alone. I was the only one helping her, and I wasn’t enough. Too many people were against us, who didn’t care anything about how we were feeling now. I’d thought I was so smart, and so good at scheming, that I’d be able to get her through. But that was just dumb. I was one person. One person wasn’t enough.

  Chloe peered through the thicket. “When it is the police, when we know it is them, we have to go to them, Sarah-Mary. You understand? We will freeze to death if we stay out here. Even if we don’t, they’ll find us in the morning. And if the police aren’t the ones to find us, it will be worse. We are better off with the police.”

  She looked at me, waiting, until I nodded. I knew she was right.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said, and my heart clenched in, because it was such a small thing to say, and not enough in the face of everything she was about to lose. But I was sorry. Sorry that I’d said we should go with Tyler. Sorry that she’d had to run in the first place. Sorry that she wouldn’t be with her husband and son tomorrow, or the day after that, or the day after that.

  She started to say something when another pair of headlights glinted through the trees, this time coming from the right. She touched my arm and we ducked low again, listening as the engine hummed louder. Melted snow seeped in through the knees of my jeans, but I stayed still. She kept her hand on my arm, whispering words I didn’t understand. I held my breath, glad that if she was praying, at least she wouldn’t feel as alone or as afraid as I did. Because soon enough she wouldn’t even have me. I wouldn’t have her either.

  The headlights moved over us. Chloe kept whispering prayers I didn’t understand, Allah the only word I understood. It was a green van, and now I could see the taillights. They were almost at the turn when the brake lights flashed. The van idled, the hum of the engine steady. There was no reason for them to stop out here. Chloe’s grip tightened on my arm.

  “They could not have seen us,” she whispered. “It’s impossible.”

  But the van didn’t move, and I started thinking maybe they had some kind of night-vision goggles, like soldiers used in wars. I sucked in cold air and held it. Maybe they were looking at us now, laughing at us because we thought we were hidden, like Caleb when he was little, hiding in plain sight with his hands over his eyes. Exhaust floated up and fanned out over the van’s back doors. Whoever it was had Nebraska plates.

  Chloe started to pray again, whispering fast and barely moving her lips. I pressed my wet mitten over my nose. My eyes still burned, but I watched without blinking as the front passenger door opened, and a tall, wide-shouldered man got out. The side door slid open, and another person, harder to see, jumped out and took a few steps toward the trees.

  “You stay here,” Chloe whispered. She wiped her mouth, smearing blood. “You understand? Only I will go out now. You stay for now, and go to the police when they come.”

  I tried to yank her back down beside me. They hadn’t seen her yet.

  “Please,” she hissed. “If I can have just one thing. Just one thing left. At least you will not be hurt. Give me that.” She choked on the words. “Let me at least have that.”

  She started to step out from behind the thicket. I lowered my head and stayed still, an ache blooming in my chest. They’d hurt her. But she was right. They’d hurt her whether I was with her or not.

  “Sarah-Mary!” the big man yelled.

  Chloe froze, still in shadow. She glanced down at me, but I could only shake my head. I didn’t understand. I’d never told Tyler my name. He couldn’t have told anyone.

  “Sarah-Mary! Are you out here? Sarah-Mary!”

  A girl was yelling too, harder to he
ar.

  “Sarah-Mary? Are you out here?”

  I was dead, maybe. Or we were freezing to death, falling asleep, and I was just thinking nice thoughts as I died. But I knew the girl’s voice. I knew who that was, calling me.

  “Sarah-Mary?”

  I squinted through the thicket. I still couldn’t see anything but their dark outlines, but now I saw the second person was tall and thin, wearing a hat with pointy ears. And I knew it might be a trick of the mind, a dream of what I wanted more than anything. But if we were already dead, then it didn’t matter. And if this was real, and if by some miracle we were still alive, I would be so grateful, because oh my God, oh my Allah, oh my anything-you-wanted-to-call-it, this meant everything.

  So you’re probably thinking it’s just a little too crazy that Tess Villalobos, seventeen years old and just back from a trip to Puerto Rico, was somehow able to find me hiding behind a snowed-over thicket in Northwest Minnesota in the middle of the night. I can tell you I thought the same thing, and I was still thinking it after the big man hustled us through the van’s sliding door and told us to get in the very back seat and Tess piled blankets over our heads and somebody else slammed the doors shut and whoever was driving did what felt like a nine-point turn and screeched back out onto the main road so fast that my head knocked hard into Chloe’s shoulder and I had to apologize.

  I stayed mystified as we bumped along in the dark like that, me whispering that it was okay, that it was for sure going to be okay now, and that no, I didn’t know who the man was, or who was driving, but I knew Tess and that was enough, and I was sure everything would be fine. I was talking to myself as much as Chloe. The van was warm, even too warm under the blanket, and I had to keep sniffing as all the snot in my nose came unfrozen, and if you’ve never had to keep a blanket over your head as you’re riding along fast on a curving road, try it sometime. You’ll hate it.