In The Afterlight

“Amazing, right?” Liam said. “I didn’t know he was capable of thinking of anyone other than himself for two seconds without killing himself in disgust.”

“Huh.” Chubs held up one of his broken lenses and peered through it like a magnifying lens, ignoring Vida’s snicker. “Kids actually made it all the way out here from Virginia?”

We did, I almost said. But our circumstances had been...different, to say the least.

“I bet...” He took my arm, leading me away from the others, walking to the corner where the house’s fence met the fence running along the end of the parking lot. Down the street on the opposite corner was some kind of church. Painted there in bold, black strokes were two inverted Vs, one on top of the other like arrows, surrounded by a circle. “That’s a directional marker to show them which road to take.”

“Wow,” I said, “I’ve been seeing those since we left Los Angeles. I had no idea—I just assumed it had something to do with road construction.”

“What’s funny is that I remember them from before—when we were driving through—” He hesitated. “Through Harrisonburg?”

I looked up at him, confused. But it hit me soon enough, and the question in his tone registered like the sharp ache of a repeat injury.

“We did drive through there...together, I mean? I’m not—I’m not remembering the wrong thing, am I?”

What killed me, almost more than the frustrated expression on his face, was that there was no accusation in his voice. I knew that what I had done to his memory had mostly been—undone, I guess. But he still had moments of overlap between what had really happened, and the story I had planted in his mind. I’d overheard him asking Chubs for clarification a few times, but this was the first time I’d ever been so directly confronted with it. My whole chest ached. If I’d had the option of melting into a puddle and letting myself be carried down into the storm drain, I would have taken it.

“No,” I managed to get out. “You’ve got it right. We drove through on the way to that Wal-Mart.”

I started to turn back to the motel, but he caught my wrist. I braced myself for whatever he was about to say.

Which, apparently, was nothing. He looked down, his thumb stroking the soft skin on the inside of my wrist.

Finally, Liam said, “I remember the other motel—it looked almost exactly like this one, but the doors weren’t red.” He rubbed the back of his neck, a rueful grin on his face. “I acted like an idiot trying to give you a pair of socks.”

In spite of myself, I smiled. “Yeah. What about serenading me with The Doors? Come on baby, light my fire....”

“I probably would have put on a whole song-and-dance routine if you hadn’t started laughing,” he said. “That’s how badly I wanted you to smile.”

My heart hurt in a completely different way now. I rolled up onto my toes, pressing a soft kiss onto his cheek. There was a sharp whistle from the parking lot. Cole waved us back over from where he stood next to a compact white sedan. Liam rolled his eyes at the sight of it, but started toward the driver’s side. Cole shook his head and pointed to Vida.

“She’s driving.” He cut Liam’s protest off before he could get a word in. “No attitude. Your shoulder needs to rest. Trade off later.”

“You’re such an ass**le! I’m fine—”

“Is this what they call brotherly love?” Chubs wondered aloud.

“Hey, this works for me,” Vida said, ignoring him. “Maybe now we’ll break forty miles an hour. Laters—try not to drive us directly into another military patrol, ’kay?”

“Be careful,” I called after her, pointlessly.

“Ready, Gem?” Cole asked. Instead of heading back to the red truck, he turned me in the direction of a new, blue one. “I got us new wheels. Someone probably reported the red one. The Little Prince is already inside and secure.”

I noticed he was already walking toward the passenger side. “Don’t you want to drive?” I asked.

“Why? Do you need a break, or are you okay to go a few more hours? I could use a second to close my eyes. We can switch when it gets dark.”

It startled me a little bit to see how quickly Cole crashed once we were driving again. One minute he was leaning his head against the window, telling me to take the next right and turn up my windshield wipers, and the next he was dead to the world.

I could do this. The truck was new enough to have an electronic compass on its display, and I really just needed to keep heading north until I started seeing signs for Lodi or Stockton.

But the only signs I was seeing now were the ones spray-painted onto the sides of buildings. Along walls. On marquees and storefronts in shopping centers. Once my eyes were open to them, I saw them everywhere. They dragged my eyes over to them again and again, screaming for my attention.

When I saw the next set in the distance, I felt a reckless thought sneak up on me. I hesitated, looking over at Cole, trying to weigh how angry he’d be. We were flying toward the road symbols, and if I didn’t turn now, I might lose the trail completely—

Does it matter? You don’t even know these kids....

It did. Because I knew what it was like trying to survive on the road, and if they needed help, I wanted us to be the ones who gave it to them.

I made that first right turn when the arrows suddenly shifted. They took me away from the two highways that would have gotten me over and through the mountains to Oak Creek Road, which in another life might have been the scenic route to take through these parts. Another right turn, onto Tehachapi Willow Springs Road, which skirted the city of Tehachapi. All of the signs announcing the approaching city were marked with a large X with a small circle around the letter’s center. The shape reminded me enough of a skull and crossbones that I didn’t want to risk ignoring it.