Deep breath. I can get us through this. He’s just going to put the spare tire on and then preen about what a hero he is. Then he’ll get back in his filthy truck and go home to his wife. He won’t remember my face, some awkward teenage damsel in distress that he can fantasize about later. He won’t remember the details. In his imagination, he’ll have saved me. The reality won’t leave any impression at all.
I survey the trunk. It’s just the spare tire, a wrench, and a tire iron, everything shiny and clean because this car is right off the used lot.
“This tire doesn’t look too bad,” the man says, kicking it with the tip of his boot. “You sure it just doesn’t need a little air?”
“That’s probably it,” I say. “I don’t know much about cars. But my dad will know.”
Always say your dad is on the way, even if you’ve never met your dad. They don’t have to know that. Always say there is some man who is older and bigger and protective, every man’s nightmare.
But this one doesn’t seem deterred at all, and I wonder if I’m reading him all wrong. He doesn’t want to fuck me. He has a daughter my age. He goes to church and earns an honest living fixing things. I glance to his truck for a sign—a crucifix hanging from the rearview mirror, a concealed-carry bumper sticker, anything else to tell me who he is—but there’s nothing.
He kneels down beside the car and studies the tire, his bushy brow furrowed as he tries to find a flat that isn’t there.
Moody crawls in silence and I watch her shadow move toward me from the other side of the car. I don’t even hear her breathe.
“I probably just imagined it,” I say.Please just go.I try to will him to stand up and walk over to his truck and drive away. “I’ll put air in it at the gas station. I know how to do that.”
But he won’t let it go. Why won’t he let it go? Men. I wish it had been a woman driving that truck. Women are cautious and paranoid and smart. They see a damsel in distress and they say a little prayer if they acknowledge her at all, but they keep going. Women know that this world is dangerous and there’s no such thing as innocent. Maybe a 120-pound woman in a blue tank top and cutoff shorts on the side of the road isn’t dangerous at all. But maybe she is.
Moody is losing patience. Behind the man, I see her advancing toward the trunk. She’s crouched low like a jungle cat on the hunt. She grabs the tire iron, meeting the sudden anger in my gaze with a fire of her own.
Moody would say that I’m naïve and that this presents a risk for our operation. But I’m the one she calls to clean the messes she makes. I shake my head at her just slightly while the man isn’t looking.
“What?” the man says, and I think that, by some miracle, he’s found something wrong with the tire. We really did go over a nail. But when I look at him, I realize he heard the sound of Moody’s shoe against the loose gravel. She hides behind the open trunk, but he can see her shadow on the ground when he peers under the car. “Is someone else there?” he asks.
I close my eyes for a second. It’s as close as I ever come to saying a prayer. The tire iron is three-quarters of an inch and it weighs two pounds, about as much as a baseball bat. I played softball with my foster siblings, and I think of that now as my sister thunders toward him. There’s a sickening crack. The man lets out a groan and goes still. Blood streams out from his temple.
Moody stands triumphant in the gleaming sun. After only a halfsecond of revelry, she gets to work. She grabs the man’s wrists like it’s the only thing to do. When I don’t move, she looks up with fire in her eyes.
“You didn’t have to do that,” I cry, surprising even myself with my outrage. “I was handling it.”
“You were taking too long,” Moody says, an edge accentuating her words now. “He saw both of us. This was the only way.”
“You took it too far, Moody.” I’m glaring at her, defiant as she waits for me to help her clean the mess she’s made for us. “He was only going to put the spare tire on the car.”
“And what happens in a few months when your boyfriend goes missing and he has a sudden revelation about a pair of identical twins driving a silver Honda?”
“He won’t—”
“Psychic, are we?” She tugs uselessly at his arms, waiting for me to regain myself and help her.
“We don’t have to kill him!” I burst out. I don’t know what’s gotten into me. This man is nothing. A stranger. An obstacle who compromises our safety if we leave him here.
“Let’s at least get him into the trunk before you turn this into an existential crisis,” Moody says. “If anyone drives by and sees this, it’s over.”Over.That word is loaded. We’ll be arrested. It won’t turn into much. We’ll say he attacked us and it was self-defense, and they’ll probably let us go after a day or two. But they’ll find out our real names, the legal ones we never use. We’ll be fingerprinted and in the system forever. That means if a fingerprint is ever left at the scene of our next kill, we’ll be found out. Our clean streak irrevocably ended.
I grab the man’s ankles. His boots are caked with mud, and I wonder where he managed to find mud out in the desert. He’s heavy, butmalleable. He folds into the trunk like a picnic chair. I toss the tire iron in beside him and slam the door shut.
“Did you get any blood on you?” Moody asks.
“No,” I say. The only blood is a collection of droplets that fell onto the road. I grab the water bottle from the cup holder and dump it out, and the red washes away, rolling down onto the dirt and disappearing.
“What about the truck?” I ask.
“We didn’t touch it. Leave it.” Moody gets into the driver’s side and waves impatiently for me to follow.
As we drive off, I look back at the red pickup truck in the mirror, getting smaller until it’s gone from view.
It shouldn’t matter to me, but I hope he was an awful man.
