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“You’re a piece of shit,” Miranda snaps at him, her hands balled into fists at her side. She looks like some kind of natural disaster survivor, in her dirty pajama pants, knotted hair and swollen nose to match her swollen eyes. Something in the way she shoots daggers at Will makes me think of Maggie and how she would react at seeing what happened to her daughter since I took her under my wing.
With the imagined image of Maggie’s face burned into my brain, I grab Miranda’s arm and pull her toward the door. We’re not staying here tonight. We’re getting back on the interstate and driving for a long, long time.
I push open the door just in time to see a hooded figure slam a baseball bat through my windshield.
What the hell is wrong with Salt Gap, Texas?
Chapter 7
“Hey!” I yell, my voice choked up and useless because hey is the only word I can manage to think of in my total shock. The man wears jeans and a black jacket, its hood pulled tightly closed around his face. He glances back at me when I yell but then grabs his bat off my hood and slams it into the left headlight.
I want to run, to grab his arms and pull him away from my car, but I’m paralyzed against the door of the diner. Miranda pushes past me, stepping in front of me almost protectively. “What’s going on?” she says, peeking over the hand that covers her nose. The asshole with the baseball bat runs around the passenger side of my sixty thousand dollar vehicle and takes out Miranda’s window, then the back window. Miranda lets out a little gasp. I hear her suck in a deep breath through her mouth. “Oh hell fucking no,” she says, stepping forward and grabbing a handful of rocks from the gravel parking lot.
“What did we do to you, you disgusting backwoods hick?” She spats, the ripped fabric of her pants dragging along the ground as she strides toward him in total confidence. I guess I could be that confident too if I looked like the walking dead. I call her name but she doesn’t listen. He ignores her insults and moves around the back of my car, slamming his bat into each panel of metal like he’s making a home run. Miranda yells louder, “You have a problem with people having nice things?”
My back presses against the wall of the diner. I’m paralyzed with shock. In the back of my mind I know I should try dialing 9-1-1 or run back inside and ask for the police. But I can’t do anything but stand here watching this surreal chain of events unfold, making me question everything about this stupid move.
The guy takes out my tail lights, each swing of his bat causing an equally sized hole in my heart. I’m calculating the cost of my insurance deductible when the guy stops swinging his bat and gets a good look at Miranda. “Fuck you,” he hisses. His throaty voice makes him sound way older than he is. With one expert swing of her pitching arm, Miranda rears back and hurls her handful of rocks right at his face.
He ducks, but not quick enough to avoid them. There’s no mistaking the sound of rock-on-tooth as one collides with his mouth and he cries out in pain. This is bad. The thought of having Miranda get beaten to a pulp by this lunatic is enough to make me peel myself off the wall and march into the parking lot.
Having no idea what I’m going to do or say when I get there, I ball up my fists and square my shoulders. If this were Houston, the cops would be here by now. “Thanks for ruining my car,” I say, trying to sound lighthearted. Do lighthearted people make psychos a little less psycho? It can’t hurt to try. “I guess we can exchange insurance information now?”
He throws his bat in the bed of an old Ford pickup truck parked next to me and pops open the driver’s side door. “Your car?,” he murmurs under his breath, stepping behind the door as if to let it shield him from me. “Guess the bastard has a new family and is sending a woman to do a man’s job. Figures.”
“With all sexism aside,” I say, crossing my arms. “Who do you think sent me here?”
Our eyes meet for the first time. He’s not just too young for his voice—he’s entirely too young in general. A teenager. He spits on the ground and wipes lips with the sleeve of his jacket. “Houston.”
My heart stops cold. Miranda’s jaw cracks as her mouth falls open. I take a step forward. “You know I’m from Houston?”
He gives me a look like I’m a little slow. “Uh, no.” He enunciates each word slowly and with an extreme amount of mockery. “You were sent here by Jared Houston.”
Miranda and I exchange confused glances. “You little shit, you beat up the wrong car,” Miranda says with a delirious snort of laughter. “We don’t know anyone by that name. We don’t even live around here.”
“What?” he asks. Fear flickers across his eyes as he surveys the damage he caused to my car.
A line of blood drizzles out of Miranda’s nose and she winces and smiles at the same time. “You are in so much trouble,” she says between laughing and gasping for breath.
“We’re on a road trip,” I tell him. “Just passing through.”
“Oh, shit,” he says. “I—I’m sorry.” His hard exterior crumbles with each word. His cheeks flush red. “I—I thought you were Jared.” He slumps into the driver’s seat, his head resting on the steering wheel. “Oh God I screwed up. They’re gonna kill me.”
“Not if I kill you first,” Miranda says, but the venom has left her voice. She’s all giggles now.
I step up to my car and place my hand where the glass used to be. Now it’s pooled on the dash in hundreds of little glass shards. I guess my car is still drivable, minus the use of the headlights.
I lean against the cold metal of my precious car, with its leather interior, upgraded sound system and voice activated navigation system. A tear rolls down my cheek, and I’m reminded of this old memory from back when Miranda was a baby. She wasn’t old enough to walk yet and had a fever. Maggie was staying with us at our Mom’s house for the Christmas holidays and had to go to the twenty-four hour pharmacy to get her fever medicine. I was about seven years old. Under Maggie’s strict rules, I was to sit on the couch with baby Miranda and not move a muscle until she came home with the medicine.
After a little while, I ended up falling asleep on my back while lying on the couch with Miranda resting on my chest. I woke up to the sound of her coughing and the feel of warm baby vomit oozing down my neck, into my ears and through my hair. The vomit just seemed to keep coming and coming, covering both of us with the smell of sour milk. I jumped up and held her at arm’s length, crying and coughing and freaking out. I remember thinking at that moment that I had absolutely no idea what to do. I couldn’t clean the throw up out of my hair and neck without putting Miranda down, and I couldn’t clean Miranda without cleaning myself. The situation was hopeless and I had no idea where to s
tart.
The same desperate feeling of hopelessness falls over me now. I can’t stay here because Miranda needs medical help, but I can’t leave because my car can’t be driven. I can’t fix my car without leaving. We’re in the middle of nowhere and our cell phones have no signal.
“What am I supposed to do?” I blurt out to no one in particular.
“We’ll go to the bed and breakfast place,” Miranda says. Her hand touches my shoulder. “My nose is fine, I don’t need a hospital.” Even as she says it, she sounds like her vocal cords are projecting through a fog horn.
