Mia shifts next to me, turning in her seat to face me more fully.
“Can you teach me?” she asks, the words singing with excitement. “I want to learn how to drive!”
It’s some kind of bizarre reflex—some conditioning ingrained too deep to rub out—that makes me say, “Not until you’re sixteen.”
“Oh, because you took lessons and you’re all official with a license?” Mia snorts. “Give me a break.”
Good to know Mia’s attitude survived Black Rock. For one sickening second I’m almost jealous of her—that she hasn’t seen enough of the world beyond her camp’s gates to know to be scared of it. She hasn’t seen that nothing is in our control, that there aren’t a set of rules to follow to ensure our survival. I miss rules. I miss stability. I miss feeling brave.
I start to respond to that, but rain—sleet—suddenly patters down on the windshield, which is already fogging up from our combined heat. I fumble for the windshield wiper and only manage to turn on the left blinker, which lets off a taunting little click click click until I turn it off again. I push every button under the glowing clock on the dash—triangle means four flashing lights, good to know—until the right heat vents kick on, and my view of the world is no longer masked by a cloudy gray.
But figuring it out doesn’t settle me, not the way it should. It feels like my stomach is rolling itself up, and I’m half a second away from bursting into tears or puking. I’m not a crier, and I’m not a puker, but right now I don’t feel like myself. Actually, I feel like I’m sitting in the seat behind mine, watching a girl who looks like me. Eyeing the crack that’s forming along the ridge of her spine as it widens, spreads out into a thousand thin veins. She’s barely holding herself together.
Why did I think I could do this? Why did I think I could take care of this girl when I’m barely keeping myself alive?
“Where are we going?” Mia asks again.
I bite my lip. I know she doesn’t have any other family, and I don’t know if any of their parents’ friends would take her in. I didn’t really think this through, beyond getting her away from them—the government. My gut wants me to take her back to the house, but—my whole body clenches as fear slips through me like a knife. It’s so dangerous—it’s too dangerous. But what’s the alternative? Bring her back to have her skull cut open, to be dropped into the lap of a foster family that might not treat her right?
“Why did you even come?” Mia asks, brows raised. “You’re barely talking to me. It’s been like…what, six years? Seven? Why would you even think to look for me?”
“You…” I feel the icy burn of her gaze on the side of my face. I came because of Lucas, but I can’t tell her that; I can’t. Not yet; please….
“What are you not telling me?” she demands.
“I’m just here for you. I didn’t want to leave you there, with those people, alone—”
“Well, I want to look for Luc. Can we do that?”
Several seconds of silence pass. Too long to play this off. I have the heat turned down to try to preserve what little gas we have, but sweat dampens the hair on the back of my neck, and I have to tug my knit cap off. The steering wheel is suddenly too slick to hold. Not yet, please don’t make me tell you….
Mia’s too perceptive to let this drop. I should have known.
“You know something!” Her voice rises and rises, spiking through my sluggish thoughts. “That’s how you knew to get me, isn’t it?”
I can’t get the words to my mouth fast enough. My lips, my face, are numb with panic. This is my new normal—I can’t remember how to get back to the anger, to the unbending strength. Take a girl out of her camp, tip her world over, and she has to figure herself out all over again.
“Sam!” Mia grabs my arm too hard and the car swings wildly to the right. I try to slam my foot down on the brakes, but we’ve hit a patch of black ice, and the locked wheels simply spin and spin and spin to the right.
I can’t tell our screams apart. The steering wheel jumps out of my hands as it corrects itself. The curb checks us hard enough