by Jo Ramsey
“I hadn’t spent any time on them until a couple days ago,” I said.
“Yeah? You didn’t miss anything.”
“Yeah.” I couldn’t disagree with him. I hadn’t minded the bus rides, but I was just as glad not to have to spend a whole day on one to Chicago.
He didn’t say anything else for a little while, and I dozed off.
“Where are you going after Chicago?”
I jumped again. If Shad had read my mind earlier, he should have been able to tell that I was sleeping now. His tendency to just keep talking when I didn’t expect it was really starting to bug me.
“I don’t know,” I said. “East. Farther east.”
“Boston,” he said. “Boston’s cool. I’ve been to Boston once. Nice big old city. Easy to get lost in.”
I hadn’t thought much past Chicago. I’d planned on doing the same thing I’d done before, read the list of destinations at the bus station until one jumped out at me. But when he named the city, I thought he might be onto something. The name sounded right. “Old” and “easy to get lost in” weren’t bad things either.
“Yeah, maybe,” I said. “I guess Boston’s pretty far east.”
“You can’t go much farther unless you go out to Cape Cod or up to New Hampshire or Maine.” He paused. “I don’t know what you’re running away from. Brent said you aren’t a runaway, but if you’re traveling and don’t know where you’re going, you’re running as far as I’m concerned. I hope you’ll be safe.”
“I will be.” After my prayer and the sense of peace back at the store, I was a lot more confident about my safety.
“I think you should take a train,” he said. “I can’t drive you all the way to Boston. I have people I have to get back to in Denver. Otherwise it wouldn’t be a bad trip. I mean, you’re not completely objectionable or anything.”
“Thanks.” I wasn’t completely sure what objectionable meant, but I figured he was giving me a compliment of some sort. “I wouldn’t expect you to drive that far. I mean, if it’s a thousand miles from Denver to Chicago, it has to be a lot longer from Chicago to Boston.”
“Yeah. I don’t know how far, but it would be pretty hard on my car.”
I had no answer for that. I didn’t know much about cars, but driving one a few thousand miles in one shot probably wouldn’t be good for it.
“You should take the train,” he said. “I mean, unless you have enough to buy a plane ticket.”
“I don’t have any ID,” I said. “They wouldn’t let me on a plane anyway.”
“Yeah. Stupid terrorists screwing up our travel.” He shrugged. “I haven’t been on a plane since then either. So yeah, train. Trains are a little faster than buses because they don’t have to deal with roads and traffic lights and stuff. And there’s more room to move around. Plus they have food. You’re probably still going to need some kind of ID, but we might be able to figure it out more easily than we would for a plane.”
“That would be good.” I hadn’t even thought that I would have been able to buy snacks or even meals if I’d taken a train instead of a bus in the first place. This was the first I’d heard about trains requiring IDs, which wasn’t surprising. I didn’t know a lot about traveling anyway. I didn’t understand what Shad meant by “figuring out” an ID easily, but I was too tired to ask questions. If worse came to worst, I would just get on another bus, but maybe Shad knew something I didn’t.
“Yeah. Being hungry sucks.” He reached over and fished a bag of chips out of the plastic bag on my lap. “Sorry to invade your space, but speaking of being hungry, I am.”
“No problem.”
“I thought you were going to sleep.”
I had to laugh. “I was asleep until you asked me a question.”
“Oh. Go back to sleep, then.” He held the chip bag in one hand and somehow managed to tear it open with his teeth. “As long as crunching won’t keep you awake.”
“I’ll be fine.”
I closed my eyes again, and he started crunching. It didn’t bother me. I had three little sisters, and I was used to sleeping with lots of noise around.
My sisters would never wake me up again. Their little faces filled my mind, and tears welled up behind my eyelids. I was too tired to push away the ache in my heart. I loved my sisters, and I would never see them again. I choked back a sob.
Mercifully I dozed off.
The next time I opened my eyes, we were at another store. A truck stop, I guessed, since there were a bunch of tractor-trailers parked nearby. The lights in the store were on, and several guys walked around inside. I didn’t see any women.
Beside me, Shad yawned. “Pit stop. You need to pee?”
“Yeah.” I didn’t want to go into the building. Thick air surrounded it. Dark air like at the hotel. My legs trembled, and my stomach rolled so violently I gagged. I clutched my gut and breathed slowly through my nose. I couldn’t go in there.
“You okay?” Shad asked. “It’s a store. You’ve been in them before.”
“Yeah.” I didn’t look at him, and I couldn’t say anything more because opening my mouth brought bile to my throat.
One of the men inside walked over to the window, and my mind screamed at me to run. I stepped backward, and my knee buckled. If Shad hadn’t grabbed my arm, I would have fallen on my behind.
“Talk to me,” Shad begged in a high, thin voice.
I opened and closed my mouth, trying to get it to cooperate with my brain to form words. My stomach churned, and I swallowed sourness and thick liquid. “Someone’s in there from back home. Ian. He’s a trucker. He knows the people who are looking for me, and he’ll tell them he saw me. I can’t go in there.”
“Does he know you as a guy?” Shad motioned at me.
“Everyone at home knows me as a guy.”
“Wow. You’re brave. I would have thought you wouldn’t have started dressing like a guy until you got out of there.” He paused. “Actually, I wondered if that was why they were after you. Because of the guy thing.”
“No. Someone tried to hurt me, and I hurt him instead.” That was the most detail I was willing to give on the subject. “You go ahead. I’ll wait here.” With my head down and something over my face in case Ian came outside.
“No way. That isn’t right.” He looked at the store. “Which one is he?”
“The one with the red baseball cap and green T-shirt.”
“But you need to, uh, use the facilities, right?” Shad unfastened his seat belt. “Come on. Just stick with me and I’ll help make sure he doesn’t see you.”
“I don’t know if that’s possible.” Ian was right in the middle of the store, talking with some of the other guys. I might be able to get past him, but I wasn’t confident about it. And even if I did, Ian might go into the restroom while I was in there, or he might see me on the way out.
My instincts started screaming at me, and my pulse pounded through me, echoing in my ears. I ducked below the dashboard. Shad said something that sounded like the beginning of a word. He’d probably seen what I’d sensed. Ian looking at our car, which was right in front of the store window.
And now he was heading outside, if my instincts were right.
I was messed.
“Stay down,” Shad said quietly. “I don’t think he’ll actually come to the car, but just stay down and let me handle it if he does.”
I nodded. This could be handled. I still didn’t know if Shad had powers, but I knew what I could do. If Ian tried to find out who was hiding here in the passenger side of the car, I would use my powers to make him back off. To make him forget he’d seen me.
Shad swore. “Here he comes. How bad do these people want to find you?”
“Bad enough.” For all I knew, Gene would do anything to find me and bring me back to face the church’s version of justice. I wouldn’t be arrested. They wouldn’t risk the court finding out what Gene’s friend had tried to do to me. The church would handle it themselves, and I would lose more
than I wanted to think about.
Someone tapped on the driver’s side window. Heart pounding, I struggled with the impulse to look up. My hands shook too much for me to open the window if I’d wanted to.
I knew who it was. And in spite of the shrieking in my mind telling me to get out of the car and run, I had to keep my head down and trust Shad.
Cool air rushed into the car.
“May I help you?” Shad said.
“Who do you have there with you?” Ian’s deep voice made me shake. I’d been on the wrong side of him at church a couple times when he hadn’t appreciated me showing up in guys’ clothes. He’d almost hit me once because I’d refused to admit I shouldn’t have been dressed that way. I’d ended up against the wall until Gene showed up.
My hands heated up, and my heart was pounding so hard I felt it in my throat. The fire raged just beyond my grip, and I struggled to hold it. If Shad couldn’t get Ian away from us, I might lose the little control I had. If that happened, I wouldn’t be able to stop the flames or direct them. Ian would burn, but so would the car.
So would Shad, and I couldn’t let that happen. I clenched my teeth and tensed so hard I shook. Shad was my friend. I wouldn’t forgive myself if I hurt him.
The cold night air whooshed through Shad’s window and soothed me a little. It would keep me from burning. After a couple of seconds, believing the air could stop the heat actually began to work.
“My friend.” Shad’s tone hardened until he sounded nothing like the casual, laid-back guy willing to drive from Denver to Chicago solely for something to do. “Is there a problem? Because I’ll tell you right now, I’ve been bashed before, and I don’t take it.”
“He looks like someone I know.” Ian paused. “Why’s he down there?”
“He was trying to sleep. Lights were keeping him awake, so he ducked down.” Still in that hard, un-Shad-like voice. “He’s had a rough time and he needs his sleep. He’s from Denver. You know people in Denver?”
“Not really.” Ian’s voice caught on the second word.
I kept my head down, partly so I wouldn’t see if Shad’s expression matched that cold, sharp voice. I wasn’t in danger of burning now. I was still scared and my heart hadn’t slowed down, but the heat had backed off. It would be good to remember how I’d brought it under control this time. I would need the trick again.
Meanwhile, I needed Ian to go away before I lost control again.
“I don’t want any problems, and I don’t think you do either,” Shad said. “So it’s probably best if you just move on and let me and my friend get back to our trip.”
“Yeah. It probably is. Sorry to bother you.”
“Have a nice night.”
The cool air cut off. I stayed right where I was until Shad said, “It’s okay. He went to his truck.”
His voice was back to normal. Slowly, unsure of what I would see, I leaned back and looked at him. “What was all that?”
“All what?” He grinned. “Some things you don’t need to know, my young friend. The point is, he gave up and went away. And now we’re going to do the same. There should be another stop up the road, if your bladder can hold out that long. I guess we can stop and pee in the trees, but do you have the equipment for it?”
“No.” I’d been taught not to pee anywhere but in a bathroom anyway, and it would take more than a bursting bladder to overcome that.
“Can you hold out?”
He sounded concerned. Knowing he actually cared made me want to cry, except guys didn’t cry. I was just shaky from the adrenaline rush of seeing Ian and hiding.
“Yeah,” I said. “I can hold it another half hour or so, probably.”
“Good, because I don’t think this is the best place to stick around.” He started the car and put his seat belt back on. “If we should stop sooner, say so. We’ll figure out something. There might be a place off the highway.”
“Okay.”
He left the parking lot and merged back onto the highway. I glanced back to make sure none of the big rigs followed us. None did.
“You don’t have to be scared of me,” he said. “I only do that when I have to.”
“You actually are reading my mind, aren’t you?” I hadn’t meant to blurt it out, but since he’d brought it up, I had questions.
“Kind of,” he said. “Not actual words, just the sense of what you’re thinking and feeling. If it weirds you out too much, I’ll keep it to myself. I can’t exactly stop it, but I can shut up about it.”
“It’s okay.” Now that he’d admitted it, I was less bothered. Plus knowing for sure he had powers helped. He wouldn’t consider me a freak. If something else happened, I wouldn’t be the only one dealing with it.
“That guy was kind of pushy.” He changed lanes to go around a camper that was barely moving. “It really freaked him out when I started talking about getting bashed.”
“I think your voice freaked him out. It did me.” I paused, remembering what Shad had said when Ian had come to the window. I didn’t understand it any better now than I had then. “Bashed?”
“Naïve?” He made the snorting sound, again. “Gay bashed. Beaten up because I’m gay. It happens a lot, and it’s happened to me more than once. Beating up anyone is against the law, but you beat up someone because they’re gay, or a different skin color, or a different religion, and you cross the line into a whole other category of illegal. I think your buddy back there might have had experience with the law, because as soon as I mentioned it, he backed up.”
“I think it was because of your voice,” I said again. “I’m sorry that happened to you.”
He shrugged. “Crap happens everywhere. Especially if you’re different. No one ever hassled you about being trans?”
“My stepfather and some of the people from our church gave me a hard time, but my mother stuck up for me.” She must have done more than I’d realized. The church preached long and loud against homosexuality, and just knowing how some of them thought, they probably considered being transgender worse than being gay. But no one had ever done or even said anything to me except Ian hassling me about my clothes. Not until Gene’s friend had tried.
“The person I told you about who hurt me,” I said. “He did it because I was trans. He said he could fix me and make me happy to have a woman’s body.”
Shad swore again. “You’ve got to be kidding me. Did he—he didn’t, right?”
“I burned his hands off.”
This time, he didn’t just snort. He exploded. I took a couple of seconds to realize he was laughing. I didn’t see anything funny about what I’d just said.
“It’s the way you said it,” he said after he settled down a little. “All casual and stuff. You actually burned off his hands?”
“I don’t know if I burned them off completely,” I admitted. “I burned them really badly. I didn’t mean to. It’s just something that happens sometimes when someone threatens me. I did the same thing to this guy back near Albuquerque who didn’t want to take no for an answer.”
“Pyrokinetic.” He nodded like he was agreeing with someone. “That’s pretty rare. Good talent to have if you have to stick up for yourself. You should try to learn to control it. I mean, if you’re on your own, you’re going to feel threatened a lot. You probably felt like I was a threat at some point.”
“Not exactly a threat. Just a little weird.”
Again with the noise. I apparently amused him a lot. “Yeah, I’m definitely weird. Anyway, I’ll find another place to stop, and then you should get more sleep. I’ll probably find a room in Chicago and crash for the night, but you’ll be leaving again right away.”
“Yeah.” This time I didn’t wonder how he knew my plans.
About half an hour up the road, we saw a sign for a convenience store off the highway. We stopped and used the restroom—the place only had one, so I didn’t have to worry about using the wrong one—and bought more snacks and drinks. As soon as we were back on the highway, I
fell asleep again.
The next time I woke up, sunlight shone outside the car windows, and we were in a kind of picnic area. A couple of Porta-Potties sat off to one side, and a few picnic tables were scattered around. Beside me, Shad snored quietly.
I wanted to use one of the Porta-Potties, but I didn’t want to leave the car without telling Shad. I believed now that he wouldn’t take off on me. However, he might worry if he woke up and didn’t see me. I didn’t have any paper or pen to leave him a note, so I opened the glove compartment to find one.
A piece of faded green paper fell out. I picked it up to see if I could use it and saw my name at the top. My birth name. My mouth dropped open, and I kept reading.
Underneath it said, “Clairvoyant. Precognitive. Is afraid of abilities. Transgender male. Puberty and associated trauma may have triggered development.”
Under that, in a different handwriting, it said, “Pyrokinetic.”
Shad had written that word.
My stomach twisted and my heart thudded in my chest. I’d trusted him. Even knowing the danger I could be in, I’d let down my guard. Something I should never have done.
Someone knew more about me than I did, and Shad was working with him.
Praying he wouldn’t wake up, I got out of the car and opened the hatch. I dragged my stuff out of the backseat. Shad didn’t move, just snored a little louder.
I left both doors open, because closing them would have made too much noise. I couldn’t run very fast with my suitcase and backpack, but I ran anyway.
I had no idea which direction to go. I couldn’t run down the highway, and I didn’t see any other way out of the place. There had to be one, so I ran because not knowing was better than what I’d learned. Shad hadn’t agreed to help me out of the kindness of his heart or the weight of my wallet.
He’d helped me because someone else knew who and what I was. I didn’t want to find out what they’d do with me once Shad brought me to them.
Chapter Five
THE PICNIC area was just off the highway, with woods on the other side. Once I reached the far end of the area, I didn’t have too many options. If I walked along the highway in the direction we’d been heading, Shad would catch up to me. Plus the highway had signs prohibiting pedestrians, so if Shad didn’t find me, the police might. On the other hand, I didn’t know how far I’d have to go through the woods to reach another road.
