AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The next thing she knew, she was jolted awake as the car skidded and started to spin. Her shoulder banged against the door, and her seat belt grabbed her chest. On the radio 50 Cent was yelling, and this billboard was coming right at them. She screamed over the music, and all she could think of was that now she’d never see her brother or own a puppy farm when she grew up.
Right before they hit the billboard, Sal jerked the steering wheel, and the car lurched to a stop. She saw his face in the dashboard light. His lips were open and his eyes big and scared. She didn’t want to die, no matter what she’d thought about her mom’s Benz and the garage.
Outside, quiet settled around the car. Inside, 50 Cent was rapping, but Riley was making these crying sounds, and Sal was sort of gulping to breathe. The interstate ramp was behind them, and the road was dark except for one big light shining down on a billboard for Captain G’s Market. BAIT. BEER. POP. SUBS. As much as she wanted to find her brother, she wished she was home in bed. The clock on the dashboard said 2:05.
“Stop acting like a baby!” Sal burst out. “Just read the stupid directions.”
He turned the car around right in the middle of the dark country road, so she knew they’d spun all the way in the opposite direction. Her armpits were sweaty, and her hair was damp against her scalp. Her hands shook as she smoothed out the MapQuest directions. He turned the radio off without her asking, and she read what they had to do, ending with going 5.9 miles on Smoky Hollow Road, then turn right on Callaway Road for 1.3 miles, which was where the farm was supposed to be.
Sal made her give him another pack of Cheese Nips. She ate one herself and then, because she was still so scared, she ate some Rice Krispies Treats. She had to pee really bad, but she couldn’t tell Sal that, so she held her legs together and hoped they got there soon. Sal wasn’t driving fast like he had before. After almost wrecking, he had both hands on the steering wheel, and he kept the radio off. They missed Smoky Hollow Road because it was too dark to see the sign and had to turn back.
“Why are you jumping around so much?” Sal still sounded really mad, like it was her fault he hadn’t slowed down when he got off the interstate.
She couldn’t say she had to pee. “Because I’m glad we’re almost there.”
She was looking as hard as she could for the sign for Callaway Road when Sal’s cell rang. They both jumped. “Shit.” He banged his elbow on the door trying to get the phone out of his jacket pocket. He looked really scared, and when he answered, his voice kind of squeaked. “Hello?”
All the way on the other side of the car, Riley could hear his dad yelling, asking Sal where the hell he was and telling him if he didn’t get home right now, he’d call the police. Sal was afraid of his dad, and he looked like he was going to cry. When his dad finally hung up, Sal stopped the car right in the middle of the road and started screaming at Riley. “Give me the rest of the money! Right now!”
He looked like he was going sort of crazy. Riley shrank back against the door. “As soon as we get there.”
He grabbed her jacket and shook her. A little bubble of slobber popped at the corner of his mouth. “Give it to me or you’ll be sorry.”
She jerked away, but he’d scared her so much that she kicked off her shoe. “I got the money here.”
“Hurry up. Give it to me!”
“Take me to the farm first.”
“If you don’t give it to me now, I’m going to hit you.”
She knew he meant it, and she grabbed at her sock and pulled out the bills. “I’ll give this to you when we get there.”
“Give it to me now!” He twisted her wrist.
She smelled the Cheese Nips on his breath, plus something sour. “Let go!”
He pried open her fingers and grabbed the money. Then he yanked her seat belt free, reached across her, and threw open her car door. “Get out!”
She was so scared she started to cry. “Take me to the farm first. Don’t do this. Please.”
“Get out right now!” He shoved her hard. She tried to grab the door, but she missed and fell out on the road. “Don’t you tell anybody,” he shouted. “If you tell anybody, you’ll be sorry.” He threw her backpack out, pulled the door shut, and took off.
She lay in the middle of the road until the sound of the engine disappeared. All she could hear was herself crying. It was so dark, the darkest night in her whole life. There weren’t any streetlights like in Nashville, and she couldn’t even see the moon, just this gray place in the clouds where the moon must be behind. She heard scuffing noises and remembered this movie she’d seen where a guy jumped out of the woods and kidnapped this girl and took her back to his house and cut her all up. That scared her so much that she snatched her backpack and ran across the road to where the field was.
Her elbow throbbed where she’d hit it when she fell, her leg hurt, and she had to pee so bad she’d wet her pants a little. Biting her lip, she fumbled with the zipper on her cords. Because they were so tight, she had a hard time pulling them down. She kept her eye on the woods across the road as she peed. By the time she’d finished and found a tissue, she could see a little better in the dark, and no man had come out of the trees, but her teeth were chattering.
She remembered the MapQuest directions. Callaway Road couldn’t be that much farther, and when she found it, all she had to do was walk 1.3 miles to get to the farm; 1.3 miles wasn’t far. Except she didn’t remember which direction they’d been going.
She swiped at her nose with the sleeve of her jacket. Somehow when Sal had pushed her out of the car, she’d rolled a little and gotten mixed up. She looked for a sign through the dark, but because the road was going uphill, all she could see was darkness. Maybe a car would come? But what if a kidnapper was driving it? Or a serial killer?
She thought they’d maybe been going uphill when Sal’s dad called. Even though she wasn’t sure, she picked up her backpack and started walking because she couldn’t stay here. The nighttime was a lot louder than she’d ever imagined. A spooky owl hooted, wind cracked in the trees, and things made slithery noises that she hoped wasn’t snakes because she was very afraid of snakes. N
o matter how hard she tried to hold them back, these little whimpery sounds kept coming out of her mouth.
She started thinking about her mom. Riley’d thrown up in her wastebasket when Ava had told her the news. At first, all she could think about was herself and what would happen to her. But then she’d thought about how her mom used to sing silly songs to her. That was when Riley had been a cute little kid, before she got fat and her mom stopped liking her. During the funeral, Riley kept imagining how scared her mom must have been when she felt her lungs filling up with water, and she’d started crying so hard that Ava’d had to take her out of the church. Afterward, her dad said she wasn’t allowed to go to the graveyard for the burial, and him and Aunt Gayle had a big fight about it, but her dad wasn’t afraid of Aunt Gayle like everybody else, so Ava took Riley home, and let her eat all the Pop-Tarts she wanted, and put her to bed.
The wind whipped Riley’s hair, which was bushy brown, not shiny blond like her mom’s and Aunt Gayle’s and Trinity’s. “It’s a pretty color, Riley. Like a movie star’s.”
