25
WE STOLE A pickup just after dawn, as the sun was rising golden over the mountains.
Isn’t it crazy, how matter-of-factly I can say that?
Well, Your Honor, we ate breakfast, and then we stole a truck. Granola bars and a Chevy, sir, if specifics matter to the court.
If I ever meet that judge, I’m sure he’ll ask me, “Did you two think you were invincible?” And I’ll look him right in the eyes. “No, sir,” I’ll tell him. “In fact, I thought the opposite.”
The engine of our borrowed truck was loud and rattling, and the radio played only AM stations. “This thing needs a new muffler,” Robinson said, frowning. “The exhaust manifold could be cracked, too.”
“Awesome, a broken getaway car,” I said. “And wow, are we listening to Elvis right now?”
“Love me tender, love me true,” Robinson sang. Then he stopped abruptly. “It’s not like I had time to give it a checkup before I stole it.” Was it just me, or did that sound a little … huffy? “Anyway, variety is the spice of life, and we can trade up at the next stop. Would you care to tell the chauffeur where that is, Ms. Moore?”
I shrugged. The next stop I’d planned was Detroit, fourteen hundred miles away. “I don’t know. The world’s biggest ball of stamps? Carhenge? The Hobo Museum?” We were driving northeast, toward Nebraska, heading into what residents of the East and West Coasts liked to call flyover country.
“Carhenge?” Robinson asked, sounding interested. “I bet that’s like Stonehenge, but with cars.”
“Wow, ten thousand points for you,” I said. He gave me a hurt look. “I’m sorry,” I mumbled.
I was irritable because I’d been awake most of the night. And it wasn’t the claustrophobic tent or the hard ground; it was Robinson. What was I supposed to do about him? About us? We’d been through so much together—and our journey had started well before the trip began. Wasn’t it time for me to tell him how I felt (even if I wasn’t exactly sure how to describe it)?
I spent a long time thinking about what I’d say, and revising my lines, but in the end I was about as successful as I’d been with my good-bye note to Dad. As in: Not. At. All.
Sample: Robinson, I think I loved you from the first moment I saw you. (But I was high on painkillers that day, so I loved everyone.) When I look at you, I see a better version of myself. (Wait—so I want to kiss myself?) I don’t know what I’d do without you in my life. (Um … not steal cars?)
It was stupidly, infuriatingly impossible. No wonder I hadn’t written anything decent in ages—I couldn’t even figure out how to tell a boy that I loved him. That whenever I looked into his eyes, I felt like I was drowning and being saved, all at the same time. That if I had to choose between dying tomorrow or spending the rest of my life without him, I would seriously consider picking imminent death.
I was afraid of what I felt. But was that the only reason it was so hard to admit it to him? Or was I afraid that he didn’t feel the same? Yes, I was definitely afraid of that.
Now, as we drove in silence through the wide-open morning, I wanted so much to slide over to his side of the bench seat. I wanted to put my hand on his leg and feel the answering tremor go through him. I wanted to say, Pull over and kiss me.
I took a deep breath. I couldn’t sneak over toward him, inch by cowardly inch. I was just going to have to go for it. All or nothing, Axi. Now is the time.
I closed my eyes, offering a prayer to the gods of young love, Cupid or Aphrodite or Justin Bieber: Don’t let this be a terrible mistake.
When I opened my eyes again, I saw that the truck was drifting to the right.
“Robinson?” I said, my voice rising as we veered toward the shoulder.
He didn’t answer, and I looked over. His face was so pale it looked almost blue. He began to cough—a terrible, racking, wet sound that came from deep within him.
He looked at me and his eyes were full of fear.
And suddenly he was vomiting.
Blood.
“Stop the truck!” I screamed, reaching for the wheel.
We were already on the shoulder, and Robinson somehow managed to hit the brake while still gagging. Cars whizzed past us, shaking the cab with their speed.
“Oh my God, Robinson!” I cried, moving toward him. I was holding out my hands as if I could catch the blood—as if I could stop it from coming out of him and then put it back inside, where it belonged.
The air swam in front of my eyes. I was crying.
After a horrible, endless moment, Robinson stopped coughing. He wiped his red-streaked mouth with the sleeve of his flannel shirt.
“It’s not that much, really,” he said weakly, looking at his shirt. “I’m okay now.”
But I knew this if I knew anything: Robinson is not okay.
Then again, it was possible that I wasn’t, either.