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“Like you say, the reservation is not a nice place,” I say in a soft voice that I know will infuriate him even more. But he deserves it for telling me nothing of this before. “Lily needs me to watch her back.”
This time he does leap to his feet, the force sending his chair flying a good three feet out. The lady in gold shrieks in fright and hides behind her son.
“Don’t go after her! I forbid it!” my father yells, his authoritative voice filling the room and pulling me to obey. Black Thunder indeed.
Two guards are already approaching, one holding his baton, the other yelling, “What’s going on here?”
I hate this vivid display of just how little actual authority my dad has over anything in this world.
“It’s alright,” I say and stand up too, blocking the guards from reaching my father. As if I can stop them.
“Respect my wishes,” he says in a quieter voice, as the guards simply come around me, and grab one of his arms each. They’re both shorter and skinnier than my dad and if this was a fair fight he’d win. But it’s not a fair fight.
I wish I could promise him what he’s asking. I really do.
“This visit is over,” one of the guards tells me as they begin pulling my dad away. He goes obediently enough but keeps staring at me over his shoulder.
“I won’t do anything stupid,” I tell him. It’s the most I can promise him.
As for not going after Lily, I don’t think that’s an actual possibility.
7
LILY
I only stoppedto sleep when I absolutely couldn’t keep my eyes open anymore, and that was a good twelve hours into the drive. The forest and rolling hills around Pleasantville soon gave way to wide open plains, and at dawn the sun rose on a vista of prairie lands just like my people used to roam. I think. Tall grasses covered it all, growing greener the farther away from the desert I drove. The sky seemed huge above it all, pristine light blue and cloudless, shining pale gold at the edges. I drove fast down the arrow straight road cutting across the eternal and endless beauty of it all, not just because I could, being the only one on the road for hours at a time, but because I wanted to get to my destination faster.
Now I’m almost there.
The sparkling beauty of the world has started fading the closer to the reservation I drew. Not because the sun isn’t shining anymore, or because the wide open plain isn’t as breathtaking as ever. It’s something else, an air of oppression that seems to hang over everything.
The nearest city is already forty miles behind me and I have at least forty miles still to go. The landscape bordering the pothole ridden road I’m on is an ever growing patch of dried mud, covered by tufts of dead grass. In the distance, rolling hills and fields of grass look more alive, but washed out, as though someone let too much dust collect on a beautiful thing. It’s still beautiful, but not as much as it could be. As it should be.
There are no trees anywhere in sight and the road is just as straight as the ones that brought me here, but for some reason, my excitement to finally get there is fading instead of growing stronger.
Strong gusts of wind are blowing dust and debris—mostly large pieces of unrecognizable trash—across the road, and I’ve already been overtaken by three rusty pickups going so fast they nearly drove me off the road.
My grandparents were killed in a car crash by a drunk driver on a road just like this. Maybe it wasthisroad. And maybe remembering that is the reason my excitement is fading.
I pull up on a patch of rutted dirt at the side of the road and get out, the wind hitting me square in the face like a slap.
My phone has no signal. Why did I even think I needed it?
I haven’t spoken to Eagle yet. I didn’t even send him a text. And I shouldn’t now. The only reason I’d be doing it is to tell him about all the mud and trash lining this road, and how even the air doesn’t seem as fresh as it was on the rest of my ride here. I’d be calling him to complain, in other words. Because he’s always the one I call first whenever I have a problem I can’t solve on my own. A problem I need to talk out with someone. And that’s not fair to him. I have to let him go.
Though there is a slight possibility that I’m not calling him because I really liked that kiss and I want another one. But I can’t see how that can ever happen now.
Another gust of wind slaps me in the face, and I definitely needed that. I climb back in the truck, toss the phone onto the passenger seat, and speed off. I’m here, there’s no more time for second guessing or looking back. It’s time to look all the way to my childhood and everything I was forced to leave behind. I’m finally home. Or I will be, in about half an hour.
* * *
The situation with the pitted road and dead-looking, trash-infested fields lining it just kept deteriorating the further I drove, and it’s absolutely abysmal as I reach a tiny town right at the edge of the reservation. I don’t even know what it’s called because the once grey sign was so weathered down, rusted and twisted by the elements that the writing on it was undecipherable.
Up ahead, I can already see the checkpoint—a couple of white metal cubicles and a boom barrier gate—that I need to pass to get into the reservation proper. This town is made up of about ten run down houses with missing windows and doors, while a few are even missing roofs and walls. Everything is overgrown by the same dried grass that followed me for the past forty miles.
The only place showing signs of regular repair is a large wooden, one-room building set on a concrete block. The double door leading into it is wide open, and the huge sign above it—red letters on a dirty white background—proclaims it to be a liquor store. There’s a massive amount of cardboard boxes, empty I assume, that used to contain beer of all brands, types and sizes. Mostly large sizes.
And the reason I assume the boxes are empty is because there are people everywhere. My people, wearing shabby, worn down clothing or lack thereof, either stumbling around drunkenly, passed out or leaning in doorways, porches, along the sides of the building and lawns so free of vegetation they might as well be just patches of dirt. A man and a woman are lying smack in the middle of the road, face down. I was gawking so hard at all the rest of this sorry sight that I almost hit them. But I manage to brake just in time, sending the back of the pickup sliding out towards the sidewalk, but it thankfully comes to a stop before hitting a small group of men standing there. They didn’t even leap out of the way. Instead they just stood there gawking at my dusty black pickup bearing down on them. Do they want to die?
