The temperature is only gonna rise as we get farther south. Maybe we should stay up all night and travel in darkness, so we can rest during the day. I remember hearing somewhere that’s what you’re supposed to do in the desert.
Andrew’s leg is doing much better. I can only see his limp now when Ireallyfocus on it. I wait until he asks me if I want to stop and rest because it seems like he’s worried we won’t make it to Reagan National by June 10. When he asks how I am, I tell him I’m fine, when in reality I’m exhausted. The heat and the walking are taking their toll.
It’s been a week since I left home to come after Andrew and I’m thinking about it again. Most nights while I’m up and Andrew is asleep, this is what I think about. He asked me why I came after him and the question haunts me.
Because I don’t know the answer. No, I do know the answer, it’s just that the answer doesn’t make sense to me.
I told him it wasn’t safe at the cabin anymore, and that might have been true, but it wasn’t the whole truth. After I found Andrew’s note I couldn’t stop picturing him getting hurt again. Falling and breaking his leg. Stepping inanotherbear trap. Meeting a group like Howard’s, only this time they didn’t bother talking first.
Eventually the worrying was too much. It was like the beginning of the superflu all over again—every night I would be up, pacing around the house, trying not to read posts online about the sick and dying, worrying about my mom while she was at the hospital.
“On the front lines,” they kept calling it. As if she was a soldier and that made the fact that she was risking her life mean more.
It was the same worries I was having with Andrew. Picturing him out here on his own. Then finally I couldn’t keep worrying about it anymore and decided to do something about it.
I stifle another yawn and turn to look at Andrew, sleeping soundly, and I can’t figure out what it is about him that makes me feel this way. Maybe it’s the fact that we’ve spent the last several weeks around each other nonstop. Or maybe it’s just that he’s the only person I’ve been able to talk to since October.
I blink, but my eyes refuse to open. My body slips forward and I snap awake, sitting up straight. One look at my watch makes my stomach drop. It’s 2:30 in the morning. I fell asleep for an hour and a half.
I stand up, looking around the store in the darkness. Outside, the clouds have cleared and Viking Lane is drenched in full-moon blue. The light filters through the dusty windows.
The back room is empty. I listen at the doorway for any sounds of someone shuffling around but hear nothing, so I walk back to Andrew. He lies spread out on the sleeping bag, arms and legs splayed wide. He breathes deep and heavy through his open mouth. I step into the light filtering through the window.
Andrew stirs, talking in his sleep. I look back at him and smile—only the talking sound isn’t coming from him.
It’s coming from outside
My heart lurches in my chest, blood pounding in my ears. I turn back toward Viking Lane.
Footsteps scrape across the pavement, the deep voice of a man shouting. He’s singing. Singing something familiar, too—I recognize the lyrics but can’t quite place them.
I see his shadow first, cast across the weed-cracked asphalt by the full moon. I step back away from the window, moving into the shadows of the ice cream shop. I check my feet, making sure the moon isn’t illuminating any part of me.
The moonlight exposes Andrew’s arm. I reach down, the man’s voice getting closer and louder. He’s walkingtowardthe ice cream shop. I reach for Andrew’s wrist, my other hand hovering above his mouth, ready to clamp over it if he cries out. As the man’s shadow falls across the floor, I pull Andrew’s arm out of the moon’s light and put his hand on his chest, then raise the rifle toward the window.
My eyes drop to the handgun on the floor next to Andrew, who remains asleep. The man leans against the store window, his back to us, and I breathe a quiet sigh of relief. But I still keep the gun on him because in one hand he has a half-empty bottle of whiskey, and in the other he has a small hatchet.
The metal of the hatchet clangs loudly against the window as the man takes another swig. Andrew sleeps through the clanging as it reverberates in the empty shop.
“Everyone’s Gone to the Movies.” The lyrics hit me as soon as he starts up again. It’s Steely Dan. My mother had the album back at the cabin. Every time she played it and this song came on she would make a face and say, “Oh, I hate this song.” For good reason, too.
Hearing the drunken singing by the man wielding the ax makes the lyrics even creepier.
Kids if you want some fun, Mr. LaPage is your man, my brain sings the first two lines, sending goose bumps across my body. “Mr. LaPage” takes another swig of liquor and pushes himself off the window. He looks back at the window and stops, looking in at us.
I raise the gun again, my finger at the ready. This time I’ll pull the trigger. It won’t be like the deer. Andrew’s next to me, asleep, and I’m not letting this guy anywhere near him.
I swallow hard but my mouth is dry.
I wait for him to smile at me, to say something, anything. Instead, he closes one eye and fixes his long dry hair. He’s looking at his reflection in the moonlight. He pulls at the beard around his mouth and turns back onto Viking Lane.
I stand and walk toward the window, watching him go. He gets to the body in the middle of the road and stops, standing over it. He drops the hatchet on the ground with a loud metallic thud, then he takes another long swig of whiskey before he reaches between his legs and unloads a stream of urine over the dead body in the street.
My teeth clench and I hold on to the gun tightly. I turn away from the window in disgust and walk back to where Andrew lies on the floor. Mr. LaPage walks back in front of the window and down Viking Lane.
After I’m sure he’s gone, I breathe out a heavy sigh and set the gun down. My palms, neck, and forehead are all sweaty. It has nothing to do with the proximity of Mr. LaPage; it was the way my brain was working while he was close to us that makes me nervous. He was right there, with a hatchet—the same hatchet he no doubt used to chop the head off a man in the middle of the street.
Still, I didn’t pull the trigger. I didn’tneedto, but even if he had seen us and come in, I don’t know if I could have. In the moment I was so sure I would protect Andrew, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized I wouldn’t even be able to shoot a drunk dude withan ax. I could have tried to reason with him first. I could have woken Andrew up and the two of us, guns drawn, could convince him to leave. Then we could run.
