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“You’re crapping me.”
“Bridge, you’re a walking blip on Dad’s radar with it. Come on.”
“Fine,” she huffed.
“And don’t contact anyone you know letting them know what’s going on!” I yelled back as I followed the salesman.
“I know, idiot!” she yelled back, making me laugh.
Another fifty-seven minutes later, and I had the keys in my hand. The title I had mailed to Brown and put it in August’s name. I’d told August to expect it.
“We’re done, Bridge,” I said.
She hopped off the tailgate and I began filling the backseats of the cab with our luggage. Bridge lifted the tailgate and hopped into the passenger side. I followed suit and got in the driver’s.
She looked around her, inspecting the interior with her hands. “It’s actually pretty comfortable,” she admitted.
“’Merican made,” I said, exaggerating the drawl a little.
“What now?” she asked.
I grabbed my GPS from my bag and mounted it to the dash.
“That’s not built in?” she said.
I laughed my response.
“We’re done,” I told her, settling into my seat.
“This is it,” she said, an obvious lump in her throat.
I didn’t want to say it but I had to. “Can I have your phone?”
She studied it in her hands and looked sad. I knew she wasn’t unhappy about the phone itself, but the phone represented a lifeline to our mom.
“Bridge,” I said softly, reaching my hand out.
She put it in my hand and I took it with mine to find the nearest trash can. On the way, I rang August one more time, letting him know we were about to head out and I’d ring him at the nearest payphone when I could. He assured me everything was in place and we hung up.
I slipped both phones into a sturdy plastic bag then placed it on the ground. I raised my booted foot and beat the ever-loving hell out of the contents in that bag. When I was done, I peered inside and found nothing but mutilated pieces of glass and plastic, microchips and two batteries. I dug through the mess and found the SD cards. I took the lighter in my pocket I’d brought just for such a reason and burned them into charred unrecognizable pieces, letting them cool before throwing them back in the bag and then into the garbage.
Goodbye, Los Angeles. Goodbye, Dad. Goodbye, life.
It’s for Bridge, I kept chanting in my head over and over as I headed back to the truck.
Chapter Eleven
We’d gotten on the road by noon, just in time for Bridge to feel “starving.” We stopped at some fast food restaurant and got her something. The entire nineteen-hour drive turned into a two-day fiasco of her feeling ill, me stopping to feed her what seemed like every hour, getting a crappy room at a hotel that would take only cash, filling up the bottomless tank (the truck, not Bridge), staying within the speed limit to avoid getting pulled over, getting Bridge clothes when we got to Salt Lake City and all the while driving by myself.
Yet, I wasn’t looking forward to reaching Bitterroot because it meant a life I wasn’t prepared for, a life I didn’t really want. I’m aware how selfish that sounds, but the thought of not being able to return to Brown, despite the fact I didn’t want to go when I first graduated, was brutal. I’d grown to love Brown, the people there, even my professors. I missed my teammates already. I missed the girls. The glorious girls with their short shorts and bright smiles.
I needed to get Brown out of my head. I was never going back there, and I needed to get used to that.
“How much longer?” Bridge asked. I hadn’t known she’d awoken.
“We’re about an hour away,” I told her, the sinking realization that we were too far gone now.
“Mama’s probably panicking right about now.”
