Griffin hits the brakes so hard the car chirps.
He turns and looks at me, his eyes wide.
“Go left.” My voice is vibrating somewhere between a laugh and a sob. “Go left. I want to go left.”
“You’re sure?”
I press my hands to my face. Breathe in. Breathe out. My whole life is to the right. All the guilt and the explanations and the mess—it’s all there, and it willstillbe there tomorrow or next week. I’m only delaying it.
And I am one hundred percent okay with that.
“I’m sure,” I say, dropping my hands. “I’m positive.”
Griffin looks at me for one more second, searching for the crack. Then he faces forward and guns it.
The Camaro takes a sharp left, and the road opens up ahead of us. He cranks the volume until the music fills every inch of the car. I roll down the window until the California morning rushes in.
He says something, but the wind steals it. I look over to see him grinning.
“That’s my girl!” he yells over the engine.
I burst out laughing. Full, genuine, from-the-ribcage laughter.
The road is unwinding ahead of us, and my hair is whipped into a wild tangle across my face, but I don’t bother to fix it.
I let it stay there. I let the wind in. I laugh until Opal Creek disappears in the side mirror, and there’s nothing behind us but pavement. Somewhere in my chest, beneath the fear and exhaustion, something lifts.
Seventeen
Griffin
The gas station is somewhere outside a town called Ridgeback, which consists of three roads, a diner, and a sun-bleached sign advertising a taxidermist.
Piper exits the station with both arms full.
“I didn’t know what you wanted,” she says, dumping the haul onto the center console, “so I got one of everything.”
One of everything turns out to be: two bags of chips, a Twix, a granola bar that neither of us would ever touch, peanut butter crackers, a Reese’s, something called a Choco-Flake, two bottles of water, and a Gatorade in a shade of blue that doesn’t exist in nature.
“Add it to the tab,” she tells me, a real smile finally touching her face.
I laugh and shake my head.
She’s been acting differently for the last two hours. It’s like she finally let out a deep exhale. She’s got her feet on the dash, the window cracked, and she’s munching on chips.
The landscape has fully opened up now. Beyond the coastal density and strip malls, the highway runs through the SanJoaquin Valley with nothing on either side but flat farmland and a clear blue sky. Golden hills shimmer on the horizon.
Tom Petty,Running Down a Dream,is on the radio.
Piper asks something over the music.
“What?”
She turns the volume down a notch. “Your job. Your business partner. Won’t they miss you?”
“I told you, I’m on vacation. My partner has been trying to get me to take time off for months.”
She smiles at the windshield. “I like him. He sounds sensible.” She crunches a chip. “Tell me about the contract.”
