Empty

by Suzanne Weyn

  The United States and Venezuela remain at a stalemate, with Venezuela threatening a total oil embargo if the United States does not withdraw its forces from the area. An additional condition set by President Rodriguez is that the U.S. must withdraw troops that stand poised to seize oil refineries that supply American companies. He threatened to attack the 149 oil refineries that remain in the United States should there be any aggression against the Venezuelan refineries.

  “War is inevitable,” international security analyst Wanda Schaffer said in an interview with the North Country News. “It is costing us hundreds of billions of dollars to maintain a military presence in South America—primarily because of the cost of fuel. They’re not coming back until they have their fuel. At eight hundred dollars a barrel, the United States will not be able to have its armed forces—or anything else.”

  CHAPTER 3

  Niki Barton drew up a light blue cotton blanket from the end of her four-poster bed until it reached the bottom of her shorts. The blasting air-conditioning was covering her arms with goose bumps. Once the blanket was in place, she tapped the edge of Brock’s photo with the tips of her manicured nails. There had to be a way to make him see how wrong he’d been to break up with her this past June. All she needed to do was come up with a strategy.

  Brock had gone with his family to their summer home in North Carolina, but she’d heard he was back. He had to have missed her—they’d been going together since the eighth grade.

  Niki inspected Brock’s strong, attractive features in the photo. It had been taken at the bonfire at the end of September last year. She’d gone there with Brock for the last two years. She couldn’t imagine being there with anyone else. And going alone was not an option—what if Brock showed up with some new girl, and she was there by herself? Nuh-uh, no way! She wasn’t going to let herself get into that situation.

  But who should she go with?

  Tossing off the blanket, Niki crossed to the picture window that looked out onto Lake Morrisey. A motorboat pulled a water-skier along. A sailfish with a single sail and one passenger moved steadily on the light breeze, making sure to steer clear of the speedboat’s wake. Speedboats were really rare now. You had to be pretty rich to have a speedboat. Or a summer house that required a long drive.

  The Bartons would leave their lake house here in Marietta tomorrow, to return to their all-year home in Sage Valley. Niki knew it probably seemed funny to some people that they had a vacation home only one town away from where they lived, but the two communities were so different that she felt as if much more than the mere five miles separated them. The Marietta lake house also allowed her father, who commuted to his office on Wall Street in New York City, to have some feeling of summer vacation when he came home every night. And they didn’t have to drive for all that long to get there.

  Gazing down at the public beach off to the right of her family’s property, she saw a group of teens laughing and joking their way to the water’s edge. She recognized the particular shade of deep purple of the Sage Valley football jersey one of the guys wore.

  Niki snapped up her glasses from her dresser and put them on. Now she could see that the jersey was being worn by Carlos Hernandez. She recognized several of the other guys with him. Being on the cheering squad, she pretty much knew all the athletic types from Sage Valley High. These kids were second-stringers, B-team types, but hanging with them would at least break the monotony of late summer at Lake Morrisey.

  Pulling off her glasses, Niki found her box of contacts in her top dresser drawer and inserted them with a deft, practiced touch. She was now glad she’d put the straightening iron to her hair that morning, even though she’d been tempted not to bother. Leaning forward, a few swipes with her brush made the silky curtain of blondness shine. Donning polka-dotted canvas skimmers and tightening the neck knot of her white halter blouse, she hurried out of her room.

  Stepping out onto the elevated cedar deck facing the lake, Niki hesitated. It would be too awkward if she just ran down to see these kids. She was captain of the cheerleading squad, after all. It wouldn’t suit her image at all to come frolicking down like some puppy excited to play with any new company.

  With a quick intake of breath, Niki shifted from eagerness to a breezy nonchalance as she descended the steep stairs to the lake. She glanced out over the lake, setting her sights on the far shore. This gave those below a chance to see her without appearing to notice them.

  At the bottom of the stairs, Niki feigned interest in a hand-built, wooden kayak supported between two sawhorses, its carved-out hull facedown.

  Glancing from the corner of her eye at the raucous group to her right, she attempted to turn the kayak, as if intending to launch it. The activity gave her an excuse to be there, but she suddenly wished she’d found some less strenuous way of looking busy. The kayak wasn’t really heavy, but long and awkward to manage.

  “Need some help with that?”

  Niki looked up at Tom Harris. Before, when she was looking from her room, she hadn’t noticed him there with the others. He was on the football team with Brock, though she’d never paid too much attention to him before this. Still, her casual notice had registered him in her mind as a nice guy. Now, she took in his height and athletic build, his thick, longish, dark curls. She noticed for the first time that his hazel eyes had hints of copper in them.

  “Oh, hi, Tom. I haven’t seen you all summer,” Niki said in a breezy tone. “Don’t you have a place on the lake?” She was pretty sure she’d noticed him around Lake Morrisey before.

  “Naw, not really a place—just a little land with a dock out on the lake.”

  “I knew I’d seen you around here before,” she said. He grinned a little at that; it seemed to please him that she’d noticed. “Is that where you’re going now?” she asked.

  “No.” Tom nodded back toward the classmates he’d arrived with. “Carlos told me some kids were coming down to swim, so I grabbed a ride with them at the last minute.”

  “Why was it at the last minute?” Niki asked.

  “I wasn’t going to go with Carlos at first, but my mom was all freaked out about us going to war and I couldn’t take listening to her talk about it anymore.”

  “Oh, I heard about that. Something to do with oil, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, supposedly they’re going to cut off our supply.”

  “So? We’ll get it from somewhere else,” she said, waving her hand to push away the unpleasant subject.

  “I’m sure they’ll figure something out,” Tom assured her. “They always do. Hot out, isn’t it?”

  “Awful,” Niki agreed.

  “Feel like driving into town to get some ice cream?” he suggested. “I came in Carlos’s car, but I’m sure he’ll lend it to me.”

  “Won’t your friends miss you?”

  Tom shrugged. “They’ll live.”

  Niki smiled, pleased that he was choosing her over them. “Okay, sure,” she said.

  Niki licked the hot fudge from her plastic spoon and cut her eyes to Tom, in the driver’s seat of Carlos’s beat-up hybrid. Tom had a good profile, she decided, and clearly he could afford to pay Carlos back for the use of the car. They’d gotten the ice cream in town and then driven down the long, flat road back for several miles before Niki suggested that Tom pull over to eat his ice cream before it melted.

  Suddenly, Tom swore under his breath and slapped the steering wheel.

  “What is it?” Niki asked, alarmed.

  “We’re on empty! I just noticed it.”

  “There’s a gas station just two miles or so ahead,” Niki remembered.

  “Good,” Tom said, looking relieved. “These cars always have a few miles in them once the gauge reads empty. I wish I’d noticed how long we were riding on empty, though.”

  “We’ll get there,” Niki predicted.

  “You’re an optimist.”

  “I don’t believe in worrying, if that’s what you mean.”

  “I believe i
n Murphy’s Law—whatever can go wrong, will go wrong.”

  “Well, in a couple of miles we’ll find out who’s right.”

  Tom chuckled darkly. “I hope you’re right. I’m not in the mood for a hike in this heat.”

  Niki grinned triumphantly when the Shell station came into view. “There it is! I told you!” Her smile faded as she noticed the scowl forming on Tom’s face. “What is it?”

  “Twenty-nine fifty a gallon for regular? Are they kidding?”

  “Is that a lot?” Niki asked. “I don’t pay much attention to gas prices.”

  “Yeah, that’s a lot,” Tom told her as he pulled up to the station. “But I can afford one gallon, enough to get us back to the beach.”

  Tom pulled up to the gas station entry, but it was blocked by a saw-horse displaying a sign handwritten on white oak tag, attached with duct tape:

  OUT OF GAS!!!

  “That’s crazy!” Niki cried. “How can a gas station be out of gas?”

  “I don’t know,” Tom replied. “Are there any more stations down the road?”

  With a sigh, Niki considered the question. “I’m not sure. There’s got to be other stations if we go back to town.”

  “It would be closer to try to get to the beach,” Tom pointed out.

  “Maybe,” Niki hedged.

  Tom turned the key again as the car’s engine sputtered and whined. With a final gasp, it conked out. He pumped the gas pedal hard. The car made a cranking sound as if desperate to come alive. And then, again, nothing.

  “I can’t believe this!” Tom shouted, sitting back hard against the seat.

  “Where’s your phone?” Niki asked. “I forgot mine.”

  Tom took his thumb-sized phone from his shorts back pocket. A holographic message floated in the air: Refuel battery.

  “I guess we walk,” Tom said.

  Niki stared down the stretch of unpopulated country road—trees on the left and nothing but tall grasses on the right side. Gaseous heat waves undulated at the level of the asphalt.

  “Hopefully someone will come along to give us a lift,” Tom said as they set out on the road.

  “Or murder us.”

  “Hey—I thought you were the optimist!” he said.

  He was starting to annoy her.

  They’d walked for five minutes when a spot appeared on the horizon. As it got closer, she detected an ever-increasing mosquito-like drone.

  A motorcycle was racing toward them very fast.

  As it came ever closer, Niki could see the driver. He wore a helmet, jeans, heavy black boots, and a vest with cutoff sleeves that revealed two arms loaded with bright tattoos. Someone smaller was seated behind him.

  Tom waved his arms to hail them, but the motorcycle whizzed past, kicking a cloud of road dust into their faces.

  “Are you nuts?” Niki asked, coughing. “Did you see that guy? We don’t want to have anything to do with him.”

  “Too late now,” Tom said, squinting down the road.

  Niki turned, following Tom’s gaze. She sucked in a sharp, worried breath. The motorcycle was executing a U-turn, and coming right back at them.

  CHAPTER 4

  Luke idled to a stop alongside Tom and Niki. Staying seated on the back of her brother’s motorcycle, Gwen pulled off her helmet and looked at them.

  Why was Tom wasting his time with a phony like Niki Barton? It made sense, in a way—he was a jock and she was the cheerleading queen. Still…didn’t she already have a megajock boyfriend?

  Gwen didn’t bother greeting them. There was not a flicker of recognition in Niki’s eyes, and she couldn’t tell if Tom realized they went to the same school. She might as well spare them all the awkwardness and cut to the chase. “Did your car break down or something?” she asked, speaking right to Tom.

  “Out of gas,” he reported.

  Luke snorted with laughter from beneath his helmet.

  “Why is that funny?” Tom asked Gwen.

  “Everyone’s out of gas,” Gwen told him.

  “Why?”

  Luke took off his helmet, revealing a thin, angular face. “The stations are hoarding, man,” he said.

  “What do you mean?” Niki asked, in a tone bordering on irritation.

  Luke shot Niki a disdainful glance.

  “They want to hold it back to sell at a higher price,” Gwen said. Luke had explained all this to her. “They figure we’re all going to get pretty desperate. And they’re not sure when the next shipments are going to come in.”

  “That’s terrible,” Niki remarked, in the same tone Gwen imagined she would use if she discovered that a sweater didn’t come in the color she’d wanted.

  “Mmm, it is,” Luke agreed with mockery in his voice. “Super terrible.”

  Niki glared at him.

  “But I can get you gas,” Luke added.

  “Great,” Tom said, brightening. “Do you know someone?”

  “You could say that. It’ll cost you, though.”

  Tom’s smile faded. “How much?”

  “Forty a gallon, one gallon minimum,” Luke told him.

  “Forty a gallon!” Niki echoed, outraged.

  “I only have thirty,” Tom told him.

  “Too bad,” Luke said.

  “I have ten more,” Gwen offered, digging in her back pocket to pull out two five-dollar bills.

  “Thanks,” Tom said, taking the fives from Gwen. “I’ll pay you back.”

  Had Tom noticed her eyes flash at his words? Gwen had felt that inadvertent spark of excitement and was embarrassed. If he paid her back, he’d have to come looking for her. They’d talk again.

  Plus, he now officially knew she was alive.

  Not that it mattered. They were way too different for there ever to be anything—even a friendship—between them. It didn’t make sense, this strange attraction she felt. Tom was not her type.

  “Where do you live?” he asked her now.

  A red flag went up inside Gwen—she didn’t want him coming there.

  “You can catch me in school,” she offered.

  “Okay.”

  He didn’t ask what school, so he was aware of her, at least a little.

  “Gwen, you want to wait here while I take this guy to get the gas?” Luke asked.

  Not really, Gwen thought, and from the look on Niki’s face, it was clear the other girl was equally horrified at the idea of spending time stranded with Gwen. There was no choice, though, but to get off the motorcycle and hand Tom her helmet.

  In minutes, Luke was carrying Tom away down the road.

  “Where’s he getting the gas?” Niki asked.

  “I don’t know,” Gwen replied. Which was mostly true. Gwen wasn’t exactly sure. He was probably in touch with someone who had access to this hoarded gasoline—or, just as likely, one of his pals had broken into a closed-down gas station and stolen some.

  Luke knew people who sold all sorts of things that had become hard to come by as more shipping and manufacturing had stopped—everything from car parts to cigarettes. Luke also seemed to have some kind of inside track on other hard-to-get items. Gwen had never realized how many things were made from oil. Ballpoint pens had become a luxury because they were made from plastic! Everyone used pencils now. Little kids couldn’t get balloons or crayons. Girls in school were hoarding lipstick, shampoo, and even toothpaste—all made from oil-based products. And even if they could get these things, the prices had skyrocketed.

  “You’re wearing nail polish,” Niki said, looking down at the chipped, black polish on Gwen’s fingers.

  “Yeah.” Gwen sat down on the side of the road as Niki continued to stand. What was there, really, to say? She didn’t want Niki to know how many things her brother could get her.

  Gwen slapped a mosquito.

  Niki examined her manicure, rubbing a bit of white polish that had chipped. Her eyes darted to Gwen’s black-painted nails. “Sage Valley Nails closed down, you know. They couldn’t get supplies. I’m going to hav
e to peel all this off if I can’t find any nail polish remover in the stores. And there’s none around anywhere. Your manicure looks fresh. Do you have polish or remover? Where’d you get it? Nobody’s been able to find any for weeks. I’d be glad to buy some from you. I don’t care what it costs.”

  Gwen had some. Luke had come in with a bag of the stuff one night and tossed the bottle of black and some remover onto the couch beside her. He’d been in a good mood that night.

  Gwen studied Niki for a brief moment, deciding what to do—and then she shook her head and said, “No.” She didn’t want every girl in school seeking her out for nail care products and every other line of cosmetic. In fact, she decided to take the stuff off as soon as she got home. It would mark her as someone with access to black market items, and that was the last thing she needed.

  “Then where’d you get that?” Niki pressed.

  “A friend.” Gwen evaded the question. “It was the last she had.”

  “Sure,” Niki replied sulkily. “What friend?”

  “You don’t know her.” Gwen hoped Niki wouldn’t insist on getting the name of this friend, and she didn’t. It was obvious from her scornful expression that she realized Gwen was lying to her.

  A few more awkward moments passed.

  “How long have you been seeing Tom?” Gwen dared to ask.

  “I’m not seeing him,” Niki answered. “We just went for ice cream.”

  “So you’re just hanging out for today?”

  “I suppose.” With the right side of her lip quirking up slightly, Niki shot Gwen a look that asked, What’s it to you?

  Gwen looked away. “Oh.” Good. She understood Niki’s confusion. Why should it matter to her? But still…for some reason…it did.