Page 67 of So Thirsty

“Okay,” I say, doing what I do best. Giving up. “Okay.”

She offers to drive again, and I acquiesce. She slips a lollipop into her mouth out of habit, and she promptly gags.

“Tastes like ass,” she says, throwing it in the garbage can in front of the rest stop as we pass by.

“Good. Be sure to leave your DNA all over the crime scene.”

“The cops aren’t gonna look in the trash for incriminating candy,” she says as we climb into the car.

“Go the speed limit,” I say, and she rolls her eyes. “I’m serious.”

“I know,” she says as she speeds out of the parking lot.

If she has any remorse for what happened here, she’s doing a stellar job of hiding it. But I don’t think she does. I really don’t think she does.

And that just might be my biggest problem.

“Music?” she asks.

“Yeah. Okay.”

She puts on some old-school Arctic Monkeys, and I lean against the window and close my eyes. All I can think about is what it felt like to have that man’s blood go cold in my mouth. The weight of him. The sound he made as he fell down the hill.

“You shouldn’t sleep,” she says. “We’ll sleep tomorrow. During the day. When it’s light out. Otherwise we’ll just be bored, cooped up in some motel room.”

“Right,” I say, yawning. “Right.”

But I don’t take her advice. I allow myself to drift off, to disappear into a gentler consciousness.

22

W hen I wake up, it’s in the parking lot of the seediest motel I’ve ever seen in my life.

“Good morning,” Naomi says. “I forgot you have the cutest little whistle snore.”

“Where are we?”

“Somewhere outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,” she says. “At the Quality Star Motel.”

The exterior is either brown or that dirty. The doors to the rooms are powder blue, scuffed, and dented. There’s a death trap of a playground in a weedy patch of land on the other side of the parking lot, which crumbles beneath us.

“It’s cheap enough that I can pay cash,” she says, putting on a pair of sunglasses and a black beanie. She tucks her hair into the hat, then pulls down the driver’s-side sun visor to check the mirror. “Goddamn it. I keep forgetting. How do I look? Inconspicuous?”

“Hard for me to say. I’d recognize you anywhere.”

“Aw,” she says, opening the car door. “I’m gonna go get us a room. Two nights? Just in case?”

“Yeah,” I say, queasy at the idea of spending two nights in this place.

“Cool,” she says, stepping out.

I stop her before she closes the door. “Wait. Are you okay to talk to someone?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

I raise an eyebrow.

“I’m not super thirsty,” she says. “We drank enough last night. I think.”