I was sitting in the parked car trying to find something on the radio that wasn’t some jerk whining about his love life when Cole came bursting out of the mini-mart. “Drive! Drive!” he called in a weird stage whisper. I slid over the shifter and put the little half-electric tin can into gear, wondering what the hell was going on.
“Oh, Atty!” He breathed. “That was close.”
He pulled up his shirt and, like, fifteen packages of beef jerky fell out. He was laughing as he read off all the flavors—original, teriyaki, garlic chili, black pepper, smoked hickory, and something called kung pao (his favorite!).
“No way I was going to pay for this crap,” he said, grinning in that way that I love. I smiled, felt warm and alive.
I looked in the rearview mirror and shuddered. Is this how it ends? Shoplifting snacks from a gas station in East Nowheresville, Wyoming? I glanced at Cole, then back in the mirror. But behind us, everything stayed dark.
Down I-25 to Cheyenne, west on I-80. Laramie. Fort Steele. Point of Rocks. Little America. “As if the big one weren’t enough,” Cole said.
Momentarily lost in some awful suburban beltway, we caught a glimpse of the moon reflecting off the Great Salt Lake and headed south. At a truck stop called Love’s we ate chicken and biscuits.
After a little while it looked like everyone was staring at us.
This isn’t all that unusual. Brown girl, white boy: people from the middle of nowhere don’t see people like us together a lot—and there are always idiots and bigots who want to judge you with their eyes, but something seemed different about it. Like they recognized us, were trying to figure out where they knew us from.
We kept quiet and ate, leaning back in the booth to relax, looking up at the TV. Something wrong in the Middle East. Suspected terrorists arrested in Chicago. Another dumb politician making another dumb speech. And then a news conference in Minneapolis—we looked at each other. I could feel the hair on my neck rising, my heart racing in my chest. I started to get up to leave, but Cole put his hand on mine. Telling me without words to keep cool.
Next: My dad’s boss on the television making a statement. Saying that kidnapping could not be ruled out. And then our pictures flashed on the screen. Fortunately, they were from when we had all our hair. Unfortunately, the chief of police said we’d probably altered our appearances. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. The story they were telling the whole world about me and Cole was a total lie.
I watched our waitress from a distance as she headed quickly to the kitchen, and I had a vision of her calling nine-one-one once she was behind the swinging doors.
We got up. Left money on the table and walked as quickly and as inconspicuously as possible (after a roomful of people just saw a televised police conference about us) out the door. We jumped in the car and sped away, my heart in my throat as Cole drove.
Mona. Nephi. Scipio. So far no one behind us. Utah is nowhere: hopefully it’s nowhere enough. Dirt field after dirt field. Mountains watched us silently from the background as we headed toward Nevada.
On the road ahead, one tiny pair of headlights broke through the darkness and advanced toward us. We watched without a sound. My head felt lighter than air, and I gripped the side of my seat to keep my hand steady while Cole drove at exactly the speed limit, his eyes fixed straight ahead, his lips set tight. The oncoming car got closer and brighter, then suddenly a swirling fury of blue and white spinning lights erupted from the middle of the road between us.
“Holy shit!” Cole shouted. The flashing lights reflected off every surface inside the car and seemed to surround us from all directions at once. Red taillights came on, and a siren broke into the silence of the night.
I was too scared to talk or even move.
The police car burst into motion a few hundred feet ahead of us, made a sharp U-turn from the grassy median, and fell in line behind the car on the other side of the road.
We held our breath as the two slowed down and pulled over on the opposite shoulder. We drove past them without blinking until the lights faded and we were surrounded again by the darkness.
For a long time, neither one of us spoke. Then Cole broke the silence.
“Kidnapping?” he said. “Kidnapping? On top of everything else they’re going to say I stole you? Troubled Minnesota youth steals car and takes his girlfriend hostage? I can’t even. I’m a fugitive? I’m wanted for assault and battery? This is . . . I just can’t.”
“They won’t win,” I said. “They can tell all the lies in the world and they can turn a blind eye to the real criminals, but they can’t win. We’ll get where we need to go. We’ll get rid of this car and find another one.”
Nothing was going to stop us. Nothing.