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“Mikey?”
Michael gazed at Oliver for a long few seconds before he finally said, “No, it’s okay. A short stop would do us all good, probably.”
“Depending on where,” Shane said, but shrugged and sat back. “I’m cool if you are.”
Michael nodded. “We cool, Oliver?”
“I told you, it’s not a debate.”
“Four of us, one of you. Maybe it could be.”
“Only if you want to answer to Amelie in the end.”
Michael said nothing. They drove on through the inky night, surrounded by a bubble of backwashed headlights, and finally a faded sign glowed green in the distance. Claire blinked and squinted at it.
“‘Durram, Texas,”’ she read. “Is that where we’re going?”
“More importantly, does it have an all-night truck stop?” Eve groaned. “Because I was serious about that bathroom thing. Really.”
“Your bladder must be the size of a peanut,” Shane said. “I think I see a sign up there.”
He did, and it was a truck stop—not big, not very clean, but open. It was crowded, too—six big rigs in the lot, and quite a few pickup trucks. Oliver took the exit and pulled off into the truck stop, edging the car to a halt at a gas pump. “Top off the tank,” he told Michael. “Then park it and wait for me inside. I’ll be back.”
“Wait, when?”
“When I’m done. I’m sure you can find something to occupy yourselves.” And then the driver’s side door opened, and Oliver walked away. As soon as he was outside of the wash of the harsh overhead lights, he vanished.
“We could just leave,” Shane pointed out. “Fill up and drive off.”
“And you think that’s a good plan?”
“Actually? Not really. But it’s a fu
“Fu
“Fine, rub the resurrection in our faces. But seriously.
Why are we doing this? We ditch Oliver; we never have to go back to Morganville. Think about it.”
Claire licked her lips and said, softly, “Not all of us can walk away, Shane. My parents are there. Eve’s mom and brother. We can’t just pick up and leave, not unless we want something bad to happen to them.”
He looked actually ashamed of himself, as if he’d really forgotten that. “I didn’t mean—” He gave a heavy sigh. “Yeah, okay. I see your point.”
“Added to that, I’m Amelie’s blood now,” Michael said. “She can find me if she wants me. If you want to include me in the great escape, I’m like a giant GPS tracking chip of woe.”
“Whoa.”
“Exactly.”
Eve said, plaintively, “Bathroom?”
And that closed the discussion of ru
At least, for the moment.
The Texas Star Truck Stop was worse on the inside than the outside.
As Claire pushed open the door—with Shane trying to open it for her—a ti
“Wow,” Shane murmured, close behind her as he entered the store. “Meth central.”
She knew what he meant. This was a scary bunch of people. The youngest person in the place, apart from them, was a pinched, too-ta
And then Eve stepped in, in all her Goth glory,bouncing from one Doc Marten-booted foot to the other. “Bathroom?” she asked the big, bearded man behind the counter. He frowned at her, then reached down and came up with a key attached to a big metal bar. “Thank you!” Eve seized the key and dashed off down the dark hall marked as RESTROOMS; Claire wasn’t sure she’d have the guts, no matter how much she had to pee. That did not look safe, never mind clean.
Michael stepped in last, and took it all in with one quick, comprehensive look. He raised his eyebrows at Shane, who shrugged. “Yeah,” he said. “I know. Fun, huh?”
“Let’s get a table,” Michael said. “Order something.” Under the theory, Claire guessed, that if they spent money, the locals would like them better.
Somehow, she didn’t think that was going to work. Her gaze fell on signs posted around the store: YOU DRAW YOUR GUN, WE DRAW FASTER. GUN CONTROL MEANS HITTING WHAT YOU AIM AT. NO TRESPASSING—VIOLATORS WILL BE SHOT; SURVIVORS WILL BE SHOT AGAIN.
“I don’t think I’m going to be hungry,” she said, but Michael was right. This really was their only option, other than sitting outside in the car. “Maybe something to drink. They have Coke, right?”
“Claire, people in Botswana have Coke. I’m pretty sure Up the Road Apiece, Texas, has Coke.”
By the time they’d gotten seated at one of the grungy plastic booths, still being stared at by the locals, Eve finally joined them. She looked more relaxed, bouncy, and more—well, Eve. “Better,” she a
He put his arm around her and smiled. It was cute. Claire found herself smiling, too, and snuggled up against Shane. “How was the bathroom?”
Eve shuddered. “We shall never speak of it again.”
“I was afraid of that.”
“You want a menu?”
“Absolutely. They might have ice cream.”
The last thing bouncy, happy Eve needed was a sugar rush, but ice cream did sound good.... Claire looked around for a waitress and found one leaning against the cracked counter, whispering to the man on the other side. They were both staring straight at Claire and her friends, and their expressions weren’t exactly friendly.
“Uh, guys? Maybe ixnay on the ice cream-ay. How about we wait in the car?” she asked.
“And miss ice cream? Hella don’t think so,” Eve said. She waved at the waitress and smiled. Claire winced. “Oh, relax, CB. I’m a people person.”
“In Morganville!”
“Same thing,” Eve said. She kept on smiling, but it started getting a little strained as the waitress continued to stare but didn’t acknowledge the wave. Eve raised her voice. “Hi? I’d like to order something? Hellooooooo?”
The waitress and the guy behind the counter seemed frozen in place, glaring, but then they were blocked out by someone stepping into Claire’s line of sight—more than one someone, in fact. There were three men, all big and puffy, and with really unpleasant expressions.
Shane, who’d been slumped lazily next to her, straightened up.
“Don’t y’all got no ma
Eve blinked, then said, “I wasn’t—”
“Where you from?” he interrupted her. The men formed a redneck wall between the table and the rest of the room, pi
“We’re on our way to Dallas,” Eve said, just as cheerfully as if the situation hadn’t gone from inhospitable to ominous. “Michael’s a musician. He’s going to record a CD.”
The three men laughed. It wasn’t a nice sound, and it was one Claire recognized all too well—it was deeper in register, but it was the same laugh Monica Morrell and her friends liked to give when stalking their prey. It wasn’t amusement. It was a weird sort of aggression—laughing at you, not with you; sharing a secret.
“Musician, huh? You in one of those boy bands?” The second man—shorter, squattier, wearing a dirty orange ball cap and a stained University of Texas sweatshirt with the arms cut off. “We just love our boy bands out here.”
“I ever meet those damn Jonas Brothers in person, I’ll give ‘em what for,” the third man said. He seemed angrier than the others, eyes like black little holes in a stiff, tight face. “My kid can’t shut up about ’em.”
“I know what you mean,” Eve said with a kind of fake sweetness that made Claire wince, again. “Nobody’s really been worth listening to since New Kids on the Block, am I right?”