My foot catches a crack in the asphalt and I trip, crying out, but Jamie’s arm is there to grab me before I can stumble any farther. “Thanks.”
“You all right?” he asks. The concern in his voice fills me with warmth. Or is that just embarrassment?
I look at the shoe on my right foot. The rubber sole has completely come loose from the ratty canvas. I wiggle my toes and it looks like my shoe is talking.
“You should get new shoes,” Cara says.
I glance up at her, folding the front of the shoe down so my dirty sock is visible to everyone. “Amazon’s probably still delivering, right?”
She sets her pack down and pulls out the road atlas. As she pages through, looking for Florida, I tempt fate a bit more. “Did you work for Google Maps before the apocalypse?”
“No.” It’s about what I expected from her. Still, I press on.
“So you just like looking at roads, then?” Jamie says my name in a warning tone. “Fine, I’ll shut up.” That’s a lie, though, because I keeptalking. “I’m just trying to learn about our new friend.”
“You’re being nosy.”
“Yes! That’s how I learn about my new friends. Or have you forgotten?” Jamie actually smiles and it’s so fake, but I can’t help but love him for trying.
Cara’s eyes remain on the road atlas as she scans each page to find our location. I figure she’s going to answer but then she surprises me. “I used to get carsick when I was little.”
I turn to Jamie. “Oh yeah, that definitely explains it.”
Cara looks up from the road atlas at me. “Do you want to learn about your new friend or do you want to keep talking?”
Jamie snorts. “I wouldn’t give him the option.”
I stick my tongue out at him and motion for Cara to continue. She goes back to flipping through the road atlas. “My dad would pick me up from school and without fail I’d be nauseous as soon as we got moving. So to distract me, he would point out street signs as we passed them and say, ‘Look! Down there is the PetSmart. Now we’re passing Madison Street where the library is!’ Eventually I started pointing out the streets on my own and it became a game. Then some days he’d make a wrong turn on purpose and ask me for directions.”
She lets a quick sigh out through her nose and focuses on the page in front of her again.
“The carsickness went away as I got older but after I got my license, I was anxious driving around alone, so I started doing it again. Then it became a habit. It’s just... soothing.”
I turn to Jamie to see his reaction to this but he’s staring at the road, his face completely unreadable. And that’s scary. Usually I cantell what he’s thinking, but not now. He snaps out of it when Cara speaks again.
“Maybe there’s a store in this town.” She points to the small town of Yulee, a few miles north of Jacksonville. “There’s an exit here.”
She puts the road atlas away and we continue down the road, Jamie still quiet. Eventually, through the hazy July air, I can see the exit she spoke of. I do need shoes. And maybe there are a few other stores we can hit up for food. The look on Jamie’s face tells me it’s up to me.
“You could use a new pair of shoes, too,” I say, pointing at his worn sneakers.
“Can you walk?” he asks. “Or do you need us to carry you, princess?”
“You mean that’s been an option this whole time!”
Before Jamie can say anything, Cara says, “No.”
Then, barely looking at us, she continues toward the exit.
“Wow,” I say, nudging Jamie. That’s the closest Cara has come to telling a joke. I... think it was a joke.
Jamie seems to think so as well, because his smile grows into what could almost be considered genuine. Almost.
Yulee, Florida, is quiet and empty. Cara, ever the directional wonder, leads us down a cracked roadway toward a shopping center. And sure enough, there’s a Lowe’s, Wendy’s, Burlington, a nail salon, drugstore, and a place called Sole for Real.
“How do you do this?” I ask, heading for the Sole for Real.
She shrugs. “I saw the Lowe’s sign from the highway. Just thoughtit made sense they’d have other stores around it.”
