More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Is someone in this car watching me?
“That was crazy,” Kayla says. She’s bleary-eyed when she grins at me, still half asleep and seemingly delighted by the accident. It’s creepy.
“Maybe we all know each other in another life or some shit.” “I like that,” Harper adds. She turns to look over the back of her seat with a smile directed at me. “Maybe this is all fate.”
“Oh, I did,” Harper says. She winks at me. “I saw all kinds of things in Mira.”
“I know she does. I’m watching her,” Brecken says.
I can’t read Josh. He’s got that heavy intellectual edge of superiority lacing everything he says. Even the way he watches Harper and Brecken makes me think he’s taking notes on how he’d do things differently. Better.
I inhale through my nose, smelling tobacco and gasoline and, more distantly, chemicals. Disinfectant. Something that I smelled earlier in the first rest stop, and now I know where it’s from. Hospitals.
I notice someone walking down an aisle near me, toward the back of the store. I’m hoping it’s Kayla, but it’s not. It’s a man in a battered yellow baseball cap.
A chill rolls up my spine with the memory. The man who was sitting in the dark at the tables. This is him. I can’t see his face, only the back of his hat and the cardboard-brown jacket he’s wearing. It’s not possible. That was a hundred miles from here and an entirely different highway.
It’s him.
“He’ll call the police and say we were stealing,” Harper states. “I can’t have that happening.” My attention catches on that last sentence. Did I hear her wrong? “I can’t,” she repeats, looking only at Brecken. I stiffen. Why it would be bad to call the police?
I go still at the wolfish look of his features. Maybe Brecken is a boy I should be careful with. He knows how to smile at girls. And I’d bet he also knows exactly how attractive he is and exactly how he can use it. The ice running through my veins now has nothing to do with the cold.
“No, the fact that we’ve all lost something,” he says. And then he leans in, his eyes bright as he whispers, “It’s scary.”
“I’d be writing cards and letters. I do it every holiday.” “Like real letters?” Brecken says. “Handwritten?” “The best kind,” she says.
“I’ve written letters,” Brecken says softly.
“Mine weren’t too successful,” Josh says, scratching the back of his neck. “But I’ll take it you had a different response?”
Brecken’s face goes red. He pushes a hand through his hair. “I didn’t say they worked. I said I think girls like them.”
“I meant every word of mine,” Brecken says seriously. “Me too,” Harper says. “Well, yeah,” Josh says. “That’s the point, right?”
I take a sharp breath and look at my fellow travelers with new wariness. Someone in this car is lying.
want to ask her why her eyes are red and why she’s sleeping so much, but some part of me thinks I already know these answers.
She smiles that strange, otherworldly smile, but says nothing.
Nothing else can go wrong.
“Also funny coming from the girl who’s currently at my mercy.” It’s a joke. It has to be. But cold runs through my veins in a rush all the same.
For that matter, is she always listening? Has she been asleep at all?
Something isn’t right with these people. With all of them.
Who would even want a map? Someone who doesn’t want us to find our way out of here. Someone who likes us alone and frightened.
“I’m fine,” I say. I learned after Phoebe that if you say it enough, people believe you. Say it even more, and you’ll believe it yourself.
but I’ve got an unreasonable terror of pills and a propensity for puking after anything strange enters my system.
“I’m sorry.” “What do you mean? What for?” She looks up at me and her eyes are colorless. “For everything.”
“You don’t,” he says softly. “Everything has gone wrong.” I snap my head up and the intensity in Josh’s eyes is clear, his focus absolute.
But my head is one hundred percent sure that’s the man I keep seeing.
We’re all trying to get home. Unless we’re not.
What if one of us got in this car for all the wrong reasons?
You should have known me. I stood behind you in line at the gate. Do you realize how close we were on that bridgeway? Even closer on the plane.
You didn’t see me. And I’m going to make you pay.
watch in shock as a long, silver-handled hunting knife emerges from the seam of the seat.
I was sitting right there, in that seat. I was sitting inches away from that knife.
numbness is a gift. It keeps us moving and helps us to survive the things that feel unsurvivable.
Losing Phoebe taught me that when your world falls to pieces, your brain will not keep you moving. Your brain will shut down to a low static hum. Your heart will tear itself in half and ache until you’re sure you’ll die. Until some part of you wishes you could. It’s your instincts that will keep you alive.
died. I knew we’d need caffeine. We had a funeral to plan. Decisions to make. I didn’t even have my wallet, and a stranger in line bought me coffee.
“Digging out of that ditch will be like digging a grave,” Kayla says.
I swallow as I turn it over. I read one line and know I am right to be afraid. I should be terrified.
“She found a stack of letters,” Kayla says. “And all of our shit, except mine. Looks like she has a stalker, and she’s pretty spooked.” She sounds like she’s smiling, which means she’s probably still high. Nothing about this is funny.
“Go with Kayla,” he says.
Something hits me square between the shoulder blades.
“Because sometimes it is easier to force strength for others than to allow ourselves to feel weak and hurt.”
“I think that’s what grief does. It reminds us that we are small. That we are not in control.”
I knew I needed to come home.
