Eruption (Yellowblown™ Book 1) (20 page)

“
Your tampon supply will last thirty percent longer.”

I smirked at Mia
’s dark joke.

She sobered.
“You won’t murder your mom. Your family is awesome. You guys will be like the Swiss Family Robinson, or whoever they were. The ones who lived in the fab tree houses?”

I reached for
scrap paper in the trashcan and scribbled on the back. “Here. I know you already have my address, but keep this safe. If you ever need a place to go—you and your brother and your gramma—you come to us at The Perch. Or call me to come get you. My Dad would come. I know he would. Promise? And promise me you’ll tell me if you go anywhere else.”

Mia bit her
trembling bottom lip as she traced my sloppy printing. She nodded.
 

 

Mia wore bravado and eyeliner thick as armor the next day. She left big red lip prints on both Boone’s and my cheeks and waved her martini-embossed scarf at us from the step of the bus bound for Pittsburgh, the first stop on her trip back to the ghetto. We stayed until the tired silver coach chugged away, a billow of black acrid exhaust hanging in its wake.

The first major Yellowblown break scored my heart.
I didn’t hide my tears as effectively as I thought. Boone wrapped a comforting arm around my waist. I pressed my cheek to his shoulder, glad he didn’t offer any false reassurances about my seeing her again soon.

“Did Cramer cry over you last night?”
I asked, embarrassed.

“Cramer mostly swore at me. He’s pissed as hell. Says he’s not leaving his apartment until Ellis gives him a diploma.”

I had to laugh at my mental picture of Cramer hunkered down on his couch waiting for the president of the college to personally deliver his degree. Something dug into my side as I giggled through tears. I looked down to see a nylon holster cinched on Boone’s belt. “Multi-tool,” he said. He looked cute today, ready for anything in his Copperheads baseball hat and a scuffed pair of hiking boots. Mom would probably drool.

He’d shown up
to get Mia with his gear mostly packed. We were going straight back to get mine. I’d worried about fitting everything and had done my best to organize all Mom’s supplies in empty boxes I’d bummed off the cafeteria ladies. Even my awesome bike rack waited, now resting on the durable mattress. It was such a fixture, I’d been afraid I’d forget it if I left it leaning at the foot of the bed.

When we pulled up to the curb, Boone opened the back door on his side
to flip the back seat forward. I tried to do the same on my side then proved myself a doofus when I couldn’t figure out the latch. He completed the job, opening a cavernous amount of space behind the crumpled box of crackers still riding in the seat pocket.

“This way
, we’ll be able to unload your stuff without moving any of mine,” he said.

I cocked my head. “Is that a big pl
astic tank?” The cylinder lay on its side, with a flattened base to keep it stable.

“Yep
. Twenty-five gallons. I saw it at the building supply store and couldn’t stop thinking about it. I put water in it for now.”

We’d
gone there after the gun store, seeking filter materials and clear plastic sheeting, then to the auto supply for the rest of their inventory on air and oil filters for every model of car anyone in either of our families owned.

After
cramming the interior with all my boxes and bags, he loaded my bike next to his with familiar motions. I hadn’t allowed myself to stare wistfully at the empty dorm room and now pretended we were heading out for another rail-trail ride. The illusion didn’t hold on the silent, empty campus.

We swung by his dorm for his
four gas cans and a bag of road-trip food.

He pulled
the door to his room closed then stood there, staring at the dry erase board where my drawing of a bike, now smudged and flaking, huddled in the bottom right corner. “Hey, let me take a picture of you with your creation.”

“No
way.”

“Yeah, come on
. I don’t have any pictures of you.”

I
couldn’t argue with his wanting a photo of me, so I reluctantly stood next to the board and tried to arrange my face in the welcoming expression I’d always want him to remember. His phone emitted the artificial camera shutter click, and he smiled at the image he’d captured. I made him stand beside me while I snapped a selfie of us, and he did, too.

In an unexpected act of near-vandalism,
he pulled the board off his door. “I like that bike,” he said, tucking it under his arm.

We
dropped our keys at the Housing office.

“Well, I guess that’s that,” he said before he started the motor.

He waved me off when I tried to swipe my card to pay at the gas station. “I’d be driving anyway. Forget it.”

He
filled the gas cans then set the nozzle to auto-fill the truck while he bungee corded the cans to the shelf mounted in the truck’s hitch.

In no time, we crossed the western border of Pennsylvania.
As I surreptitiously set my phone’s wallpaper to the picture of Boone and me, something in my gut told me I’d never be back.

Text to Mom: (10:16AM)

 

We had normal
road trip conversations, inspired by the radio. His musical preferences veered a little closer to country-western than mine. No surprise there. We both had a good laugh at Rod and the Hot Salsas, a singing competition show winner who’d spun its thirty seconds of fame into a whole new genre of music the DJ called salsa fusion. Thank goodness Boone never mentioned Jordan Blue or The Blue Canoes. I’d had enough conversations about them to last a lifetime.

A song from a movie soundtrack sent us off on the Hollywood tangent (I surprised him by liking action movies while
he didn’t surprise me at all by making a choking noise when I mentioned a romantic comedy). That led to books made into movies (always read the book first), and then TV shows (enough with the reality shows already.)

We
ate a fast food lunch at an outside table west of Columbus, near Route 70. The eastbound lanes carried a normal mix of vehicles, while westerly traffic consisted of tractor-trailers and utility repair trucks, with very few regular vehicles mixed in.

As I chewed a chicken tender dipped in honey mustard, I watched a
road-worn family unload from a beat up Subaru. The wiry young father toted a baby in a car seat while the mother held the hand of an inconsolable girl in pink cowboy boots, maybe old enough for kindergarten, if that. When they returned with their food, the kid was still crying. The mother smiled contritely at us, knowing whatever little peace we’d derived from sitting outside near a busy highway was now shattered.

“I…w-w-wa
nt…Fluffy,” the girl said. I recognized her uncontrollable inhalations as the sign of a full-fledged crying jag.

“Look, honey, here’s a new toy with your lunch,” the desperate mom said.

Chubby hands pushed a plastic dolphin figure away. Couldn’t blame the kid. A tiny hard figurine couldn’t possibly console like a beloved Fluffy.

The father distributed paper wrapped food with jerky thrusts of his arms.
“We barely got out with our lives, and I get a twelve-hundred-mile guilt trip about a stuffed animal,” he groused. The mother put her hand over his to soothe him. He shook her off and pointed a stubby finger at their daughter. “You eat your lunch or I’ll beat your bottom,” he warned. “And I better not hear any of this bullshit when we get to Meemaw’s.”

The girl flopped her head down on the table
with renewed sobs. Her despair grabbed me right at the small of my back.

I leaned over to Boone. “Can I have the keys for sec?”

“Um. Sure.”

I
dug through my crap at the side door of the truck. Gloria. I looked at her hard and brushed off a few cheese curl crumbs from last night.

The
despondent girl’s sandy hair floated in wisps around her head, lifted by an insubstantial breeze. She didn’t see my approach since her face was still buried in her arms. I gestured with Gloria and the mom’s eyes widened with understanding. She nodded. Her bottom lip started to quiver. I wondered if this was a bad idea, if I was going to succeed at only creating a second hysterical female.

She got her act together, though, and said “Susie? This nice lady has something for you.”

Susie turned her head, skeptical. I imagine she’d heard every promise in the book since leaving whatever was left of her home. Crystal blue eyes fixed on Gloria. Susie leaned away from me while staring at my hippo. I squatted down a little.

“This is Gloria. I know she isn’t as nice as Fluffy, but she might get there if she had somebody like you to take care of her.”

She withdrew even farther, her child’s body curving away while hunger for Gloria sharpened the expression on her puffy, tear-streaked face.

“It’s okay, baby,” the mom encouraged
.

I rubbed Gloria’s
soft nose on Susie’s thin arm. A big scab adorned her elbow.

“How’d you hurt your arm?”

I wasn’t sure she’d answer, but after a few seconds she said, “Bike.”

“No kidding
. Look.” I tucked Gloria under my arm so I could push up my sleeve and point to the whitish patch on my elbow. “I got this scar last winter.”

After a cursory glance, Susie fixate
d on Gloria again. “She don’t like that.”

“Oh?” I freed the hippo from my armpit. “See, that’s the thing. I kind of stink at taking care of her.”

When I offered the stuffed animal again, Susie checked for a confirming nod from her mom, then gently removed Gloria from my hand. She drew in a final hiccupping breath before inspecting her charge like a mother would a newborn. Four legs, two eyes and two pink ears, tail intact. Satisfied, she settled Gloria onto her narrow lap. She reached for her drink and sucked deep, fortifying gulps through the straw.

The mother dropped her face into her hands. Her shoulders trembled with sobs she
kept silent for the sake of her daughter who petted Gloria with one hand while shoving fries into her mouth with the other. The husband wrapped a consoling arm around his wife as he looked helplessly up at me.