7 Rough Journey

We took a small back road away from the Waffle House, guided only by the traffic warning lights that blinked on and off every other second, cutting a strobing yellow path through the dark. We walked right down the middle of the street, again in that postapocalyptic style. Silence reigned for at least fifteen minutes. Talking took energy we needed just to keep going, and opening our mouths meant that cold air could get in.

Every step was a tiny trial. The snow was so deep and sticky that it took a lot of force to withdraw my foot from my own footprint. My legs, of course, were frozen to the point where they started to feel warm again. The bags on my head and hands were somewhat effective. When we had set our pace, Lee cracked open the conversation.

"Where is your family really?" he asked.

"In jail."

"Yeah. You said that inside. But when I said really—"

"They're in jail," I said for the third time.

I tried to make this one stick. He got the point enough not to ask the question again, but he had to wrestle with my answer for a moment.

"For what?" he finally said.

"Uh, they were part of a . . . riot."

"What, are they protesters?"

"They're shoppers," I said. "They were in a shopping riot."

He stopped dead in his spot.

"Don't even tell me that they were in the Flobie riot in Charlotte."

"That's the one," I said.

"Oh my God! Your parents are in the Flobie Five!"

"The Flobie Five?" I repeated weakly.

"The Flobie Five were the topic of the day at work. I think every other customer brought them up. They had footage of the riot playing all day on the news. . . . "

News? Footage? All day? Oh, good. Good, good, good. Famous parents—just what every girl dreams of.

"Everyone loves the Flobie Five," he said. "Well, a lot of people do. Or, at least, people think it's funny."

But then he must have realized it wasn't so funny for me, and that that was the reason I was wandering through a strange town on Christmas Eve with bags on my head.

"It makes you very cool," he said, taking big, jumping steps to get in front of me. "CNN would interview you, for sure. Daughter of Flobie! But don't worry. I'll keep them back!"

He made a big display of pretending to hold back reporters and punching photographers, which was tricky choreography. It did cheer me up a little. I started playing the part a little myself, throwing my hands up over my face as if flashbulbs were going off. We did this for a while. It was a good distraction from our reality.

"It's ridiculous," I finally said, after I almost fell over as I tried to dodge an imaginary paparazzo

"My parents are in jail. Over a ceramic Santa house."

"Better than for dealing crack," he said, falling back in line beside me. "Right? Must be."

"Are you always this chipper?"

"Always. It's a requirement for working at Target. I'm like Captain Smiley."

"Your girlfriend must love that!"

I only said it to make myself seem clever and observant, expecting him to say, "How did you know that I . . . ?" And I would say, "I saw the photo in your wallet." And he would think I was very Sherlock Holmes and I would seem a little less deranged than I first appeared back at the Waffle House. (Sometimes, you have to wait a little bit for this kind of gratification, but it's still worth it.)

Instead, he just whipped his head around quickly in my direction, blinked, and then turned back down the road with a very determined stride. The playfulness was gone, and he was all business.

"It's not too much farther. But this is where we have to decide. There are two ways we can go from here. The down-this-road way, which will probably take us another forty-five minutes at the rate we're going. Or the shortcut."

"The shortcut," I answered immediately. "Obviously."

"It is way, way shorter, because this road bends around and the shortcut goes straight through. I'd definitely take it if it was just me, which it was up until a half an hour ago. . . . "

"Shortcut," I said again.

Standing in that storm, with the snow and wind burning the skin off my face and my head and hands wrapped in plastic bags—I felt I really didn't need any more information. Whatever this shortcut was, it couldn't be much worse than what we were already doing. And if Lee had been planning on taking it before, there was no reason why he couldn't take it with me.

"Okay," Lee said. "Basically, the shortcut takes us behind these houses. My house is just behind there, about two hundred yards. I think. Something like that." We left the blinking yellow path and cut down a completely shadowy path between some houses. I pulled my phone out of my pocket to check it as we walked. There was no call from Nate. I tried to be stealthy about this, but Stuart saw me.

"No call?" he asked.

"Not yet. He must still be busy."

"Does he know about your parents?"

"He knows," I said. "I tell him everything."

"Does that go both ways?" he asked.

"Does what go both ways?"

"You said you tell him everything," he replied. "You didn't say we tell each other everything."

What kind of question was that? "Of course," I said quickly.

"What's he like, aside from being tangentially Swedish?"

"He's smart," I said. "But he's not obnoxious smart, like one of those people who always have to tell you their GPA, or give you subtle hints about their SAT score or class rank or whatever. It's just natural to him. He doesn't work that hard for grades, and he doesn't care that much. But they're good. Really good. Plays soccer. He's in Mathletes. He's really popular."

Yes, I actually said that. Yes, it sounded like some kind of sales pitch. Yes, Lee got that smirky I'm-trying-not-to-laugh-at-you look again. But how was I supposed to answer that question? Everyone I knew knew Nate. They knew what he was, what he represented. I didn't usually have to explain.

"Good résumé," he said, not sounding all that impressed. "But what's he like?" Oh, God. This conversation was going to go on.

"He's . . . like what I just said."

"Personality-wise. Is he secretly a poet or something? Does he dance around his room when he thinks no one is looking? Is he funny, like you? What's his essence?"

Lee had to have been playing with my head with this essence stuff. Although, there was something about how he had asked if Nate was funny, like me. That was kind of nice. And the answer was no. Nate was many things, but funny was not one of them. He usually seemed relatively amused by me, but as you may have noticed by now, sometimes I can't shut up. On those occasions, he just looked tired.

"Intense," I said. "His essence is intense."

"Good intense?"

"Would I date him otherwise? Is it much farther?"

Lee got the message this time and shut up. We walked on in silence until it was just empty space with a few trees. I could see that far off, at the top of an incline, there were more houses. I could just make out the distant glow of holiday lights. The snow was so thick in the air that everything was blurry. It would have been beautiful, if it didn't sting so much. I realized my hands had gotten so cold that they'd rounded the corner and now almost felt hot. My legs wouldn't last much longer.

Lee put his arm out and stopped me.

"Okay," he said. "I have to explain something. We're going over a little creek. It's frozen. I saw people sliding on it earlier."

"How deep a creek?"

"Not that deep. Maybe five feet."

"Where is it?"

"It's somewhere right in front of us," he said.

I looked out over the blank horizon. Somewhere under there was a small body of water, hidden under the snow.

"We can go back," he said.

"You were going to go this way, no matter what?" I asked.

"Yeah, but you don't have to prove anything to me."

"It's fine," I said, trying to sound more certain than I felt. "So, we just keep walking?"

"That's the plan."

So that's what we did. We knew we'd hit the creek when the snow got a little less deep, and there was a slight slipperiness underneath us instead of the thick, crunching, solid feeling. This is when Lee decided to speak again.

"Those guys back at the Waffle House are so lucky. They're about to have the best night of their lives," he said.

There was something in his tone that sounded like a challenge, like he wanted me to take the bait. Which means I shouldn't have. But I did, of course.

"God," I said. "Why are all guys so easy like that?"

"Like what?" he said, giving me a sideways glance, slipping in the process.

"Saying that they're lucky."

"Because . . . they're trapped in a Waffle House with a dozen cheerleaders?"

"Where does this arrogant fantasy come from?" I said, maybe a little more sharply than I intended. "Do guys really believe that if they are the only male in the area, that girls will suddenly crawl on top of them? Like we scavenge for lone survivors and reward them with group make-out sessions?"

"That isn't what happens?" he asked.

I didn't even dignify that remark with a comeback.

"But what's wrong with cheerleaders?" he asked, sounding very pleased that he'd gotten such a rise out of me. "I'm not saying I only like cheerleaders. I'm just not prejudiced against them."

"It's not prejudice," I said firmly.

"It's not? What is it then?"

"It's the idea of cheerleaders," I said. "Girls, on the sidelines, in short skirts, telling guys that they're great. Chosen for their looks."

"I don't know," he said tauntingly. "Judging groups of people you don't know, making assumptions, talking about their looks . . . it sounds like prejudice, but—"

"I am not prejudiced!" I shot back, unable to control my reaction now. There was so much darkness around us at that moment. Above us, there was a hazy pewter-pink sky. Around us, there were only the outlines of the skinny bare trees, like thin hands bursting out of the earth. Endless white ground below, and swirling flakes, and a lonely whistle of wind, and the shadows of houses.

"Look," Lee said, refusing to quit this annoying game, "how do you know that in their spare time, thearen't EMTs or something? Maybe they save kittens, or run food banks, or—"

"Because they don't," I said, stepping ahead of him. I slipped a little but jerked myself upright. "In their spare time, they get waxings."

"You don't know that," he called from behind me.

"I wouldn't have to explain this to Nate," I said. "He would just get it."

"You know," Lee said evenly, "as wonderful as you think this Nate is—I'm not all that impressed with him right now."

I'd had it. I turned around and started walking the way we had come, taking hard, firm steps.

"Where are you going?" he asked. "Oh, come on . . . "

He tried to make it sound like it was no big deal, but I had simply had it. I stamped down hard to keep my gait steady.

"It's a long way back!" he said, hurrying to catch up with me. "Don't. Seriously."

"I'm sorry," I said, like I didn't really care very much. "I just think it would be better if I . . . "

There was a noise. A new noise under the whistle and the squeak and shift of ice and snow. It was a snapping noise that sounded kind of like a log on a fire, which was unpleasantly ironic. We both stopped exactly where we stood. Lee flashed me a look of alarm.

"Don't mov—"

And then the surface beneath us just went away.