"HEY, HEY!" Honk. I heard her wolf whistle before I processed her, crunching closer, a slow, gravelly trawl up to us. I looked away from Dean.
Dean?
I don't know. I might've subconsciously decided it to be Dean Moriarty.
Her head leaning, arm hanging from her open window, a cigarette between her fingers; a pretty lip ring rolled beneath her tongue, hinting at a flirty smile. "Hey, babe," she called in a soft-strained voice, "what, are you leavin' without me?"
Dean leaned out, looked over, snickered to himself. "Guess you do got friends everywhere." His meaty hand reached out to adjust his side mirror, rub a greasy smear across his lowered window, craning to check her out inconspicuously. Its watery silhouette curving across his freight, creeping closer... closer... closer...
Trouble.
"Welp, gotta get going," he said. "Be careful, ladies."
"Okay," she scoffed, jutting a hand up as Dean shackled away, a rickety big rig off to Massachusetts. I approached her tentatively, her leaning from her driver's side window, a Marlboro perched between her lips.
Honestly, you don't even need to know her name.
"Um... what the fuck was that?" she asked when I didn't say anything. "No, who the fuck was that?" Raindrops catching on her lashes, picking up a steady downfall. Her brows scrunched in annoyance; all vague greyness as I cut across headlights, veering for her passenger door. "Hello?"
Night had begun to drape ribbons of blue-darkness.
I dropped in quietly. Cozy. Dry. Everything dimly lit by dull red glow. It was a low-riding Honda Civic, so low we'd called it Dirt Nasty. A VTEC, baby, and a beautifully raspy purr when you gunned it, but I'd never appreciated its illegally tinted windows or its changeling skin—a chameleon color of tan-grey-gold in low-dark-bright lighting—until I needed to. It was nearly as old as us. It had been used and abused, but loved, left with patches of rust, an unsealed windshield, a dead key button, and an odometer pushing 150,000, which wasn't so bad for an '02.
150 thou is it? Wes had asked. Nah, you could drive a Civic into the ground, and keep going, Wes had promised.
"You're late," I finally muttered.
"Sorry, I had to write a note for Wes. I had to... I had to leave Ollie and Rick."
I stiffened. It was for their safety, I'd told her, and she knew, deep down, she knew, too.
"Right."
"Rain is about to pick up, too," she added, flicking at a knob, spritzing her windshield wipers against a heavier spattering. Her reminder was cautious, as if I would—could—change my mind. It wasn't a choice anymore.
"I need to go," I said softly, gazing into my side mirror at an empty rest stop I hoped to never see again. Trees fringing into a hazy sky, rustling gently along I-95. Traffic. "Aim for a state line, babe." I didn't care which or where or why. Furthest I could reach. Massachusetts. Connecticut. Rhode Island. Distance meant your problems could fall away into your side mirror, hauntingly jarring if you watch and wait—
ALL OBJECTS IN MIRROR ARE CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR
My stomach lurched, and I tore my gaze away as I sacked my backpack down, stashing it between my feet clumsily. Dirt Nasty lurched, too, peeling away from a nondescript rest stop, onto I-95, and I was gone.
On The Road. Forever. Perhaps.
"Okay. Okay. What is your pl—"
"Did you see Wes?"
