In Honor (12 page)

“You and me both.” Rusty let out a sigh, and I watched in the mirror as he sat up, no trace left of his smile. “We never did see eye to eye on that. Me and him.” He looked out the back window, kept his eyes away from the mirror. “That’s why things got rough with us, I guess.”

I watched him in the mirror a long moment, waiting for him to explain, but he didn’t, and it made me wonder if maybe Rusty had asked Finn why he was going, argued with him over it, and come away not liking the answer. The only other person who needed Finn as much as I did was him. They’d called each other brothers. They were supposed to go to college together so they could play football and stay that way. Always.

“Anyway. Doesn’t matter what he was thinking.” Rusty said. “Nothing was gonna change his mind.”

The clouds that had gathered on the horizon lit up in a quick series of flashes, revealing vertical streaks of gray below them. I instinctively counted the seconds in my head for the thunder, but it must’ve been too far away to hear.

Rusty leaned forward, his arms over the front seat, and let out a low whistle. “Looks like we’re in for a little storm.”

“It’s pretty far off, isn’t it?”

He leaned forward even farther, straining to look out the windshield. “Right now it is. But it’s coming this way fast.” As if on cue, the clouds flashed bright again, and this time, after a few seconds, I thought I heard the rumble of thunder over the steady engine of the Pala.

“You want me to drive?” Rusty asked.

I gripped the wheel a little tighter and looked straight ahead. “No. Thanks. I know how to drive in the rain.”

One fat raindrop plopped on the windshield, and almost instantly, a smattering of them followed in quick succession. I reached for the wipers, and another cloud lit up in front of us, electricity zapping a jagged wire of light through it. “Whoa!” I yanked my foot from the gas.

Rusty leaned in close. “Easy, easy. Don’t slam the brakes. You’re fine. Just let ’er slow down and get your lights on.”

I pulled the knob next to the steering wheel and the lights came on, but they didn’t make much difference in the strange false-dark that the clouds had brought with them. Way up ahead of us I saw another set of taillights come on just as a flash zipped through the clouds again, lighting them up pink. The crack of thunder that followed drowned out the Pala’s engine and boomed in my chest. And then the clouds above us cut loose all the water in them.

I rubbed at the fogged-up windshield in front of me. “Maybe I should pull over. It’s getting hard to see.”

“Nope. Don’t pull over,” Rusty said. “Best way to cause an accident. Or end up in a ditch. Just slow down and keep going. Here.” He climbed over the front seat, got himself settled, and slid the defrost knob to full blast. “That should help.” Hot air rushed in. “Crack your window too, so we don’t bake in here.”

I did, then concentrated on the road and let out the breath I must’ve been holding. For the first time since we’d left, I was actually relieved he was there. The fogginess on the windshield disappeared in splotches above the vents at first, while the wipers squeaked a busy rhythm back and forth. Mildly cool air flowed in from the windows, and I breathed in the smell of wet asphalt and dirt that came along with it. I smiled over at Rusty. “Thanks. I don’t know why that freaked me out so much. I—”

Brilliant light ripped through the sky above us a split second before the crack of thunder that drowned out every other sound in the world. Rain hammered down even harder, in streams of water the wipers didn’t stand a chance against. Through them, all I could see was a blur of jagged lightning and streaky gray.

“Crap!” I lifted my foot from the gas and strained forward against the steering wheel for the lines on the road. “This is crazy. I can’t see
anything
.” But as I said it, I did see. Two red taillights right in front of us.

I slammed the brakes, and the Pala fishtailed across the highway. The steering wheel jerked wildly in my hands until I couldn’t tell if we were sliding or spinning. I froze. Braced myself. Rusty yelled something. Time slowed down, and I got that feeling again like none of it was real. Like there was no way we could be screeching through the rain in Finn’s car. Like I wasn’t just about to finish off the last of my family, and Rusty too. I braced myself for the end. And then I felt Rusty’s weight leaned over on me, his hands on the wheel with mine. He was yelling something I couldn’t understand at first, and then I did and yanked my hands from the wheel. Rusty turned it hard once, twice, three times. And then we plowed smack into something big. The force of it threw my chest right into the steering wheel and knocked the wind out of me. I heard another thud that must’ve been Rusty hitting the dash, and then everything went eerie-quiet, except for the rain that beat down angry against the roof.

11

I brought a trembling hand to my chest. Reached the other one across the seat for Rusty. Lightning flashed above us, and his hand wrapped around mine. “H—you all right?” The smack of the thunder drowned out my attempt at an answer. I took a breath, and pain rippled across my chest. Rusty’s hands felt their way up my arm until they found my cheeks, and then he was right there, looking me in the face with clear, worried eyes. “You okay? Say something. You hurt?”

A thin trickle of blood made a line down his temple from somewhere up in his hair, and I watched it, barely able to breathe.

“Honor.”

His voice, firmer this time, brought my eyes back to his, and I nodded.

“You okay?”

I nodded again, trying to answer, but my eyes went back to the blood on his cheek, and what little composure I had crumbled. I buried my face in my hands and sobbed. For all of it. For almost killing us, for the blood on Rusty’s forehead, for taking off in Finn’s car on a stupid trip . . . for the Pala being the only thing I had left of anything, because my parents were dead and my brother was dead and—

Rusty scooted closer and turned the car off. I hadn’t even realized it was still running. “Hey, hey. It’s okay. We’re all right.” I heard him suck in a deep breath, and he wrapped a solid arm around my shoulder.

I rested my head back on his arm and looked up at the tiny dots in the upholstery on the ceiling. “I shouldn’t have slammed the brakes. You said two seconds before that not to slam the brakes.” I looked over at him and brought a shaky hand to the blood moving down his temple. “I almost killed us.”

He grabbed my hands and squeezed. “That car came outta nowhere. Anybody would’ve done that. We’re fine, okay?”

I felt my shoulders relax a bit.

He sat back up and looked through the windshield. “Can’t say the same for Pala, though. I think we knocked something loose in there.”

I sat up and saw a faint but steady stream of something white rising from beneath the hood, up through the rain. “Is that
smoke
? Oh my god, should we get out and check it?” Lightning flickered, followed by a loud rumble.

“No.” He rolled down the passenger window and leaned out, stretching toward the hood for a second. When he ducked back in, he was soaked through, the blood washed clean from his face. “Doesn’t smell like smoke. I think it’s steam.”

“What does that mean?”

“That means we’re not goin’ anywhere for now. Not till it clears up and I can get a look in there.” He rolled his window back up, leaving it open just a crack. “We’re off the road, from what I can tell, and whatever we hit wasn’t that car, but I can’t see anything out there. Better sit tight.”

I looked out into the gray for some point of reference but couldn’t make out anything except the steady sheet of rain that now fell around us. We weren’t exactly flush with choices.

Rusty wrapped an arm around my shoulders again, pulling me in a little. “That got a little wild there, but we’re fine. All right?”

I drew in a deep breath that was still wobbly with leftover adrenaline. But I believed him. It baffled me how much I did. And it made me wanna cry all over again, because Finn was the only other person in the world I believed like that. And when that soldier came and told me my brother was dead, I didn’t think anyone could make me feel like anything could be all right, ever. I sat up and swallowed the lump in my throat, trying to figure out a way to tell Rusty all this.

He held my eyes, and a question knit his brows together. “What?”

I looked into my lap. “Nothing. You just . . . you reminded me of Finn just then.” It sounded silly to say it out loud, but I went ahead anyway, eyes focused on my seat-belt buckle. “The way you made everything seem like . . . like it’s okay.” I smiled as best I could when I looked back up at him. “He was good at that, you know?” My hand went to his knee. “Anyway. You are too.” Rusty’s eyes flicked to my hand, and I took it away just as quickly as I’d set it there.

“Glad you think so.” He pulled his arm out from behind my shoulder and leaned back against the door, clearly separating that tiny previous moment from the present one. “But Finn was like that all the way through.” He looked at the ceiling, letting the thought linger a moment. “The rest of us—we just look that way sometimes.” He sighed and reached into his back pocket, then pulled out a small pewter flask. “Anyway.” He unscrewed the cap and held it out to me with a smile that was more sad than happy. “You thirsty?”

One sip of whatever he had in there was enough to make me wonder if the old man in the gas station was actually some sort of guardian angel. I washed the burn down with a long gulp of water from the jug and sat back against the seat. The thunder and lightning weren’t directly overhead anymore, but every few seconds the sky flashed in a different place, and I could hear the low rumble of the thunder. In between, the rain kept at it, a steady shower that blended into the background like static.

Rusty took up his post stretched out in the backseat again, and I did the same in the front, with my back leaned against the driver-side door and my legs across the seat. We sat there quiet, and the seriousness of the situation slowly settled over me.

“This might be the stupidest thing I’ve ever done,” I said finally.

Rusty took a swig from his flask and swallowed hard. “What? Banged up Pala?”

“No, I mean this whole trip. Going to the concert. Taking off. Missing orientation.” I looked at Rusty. “It’s selfish, isn’t it? Even if he did get me those tickets.” He didn’t answer, and I took that to mean he agreed.

I brought my eyes to the streaky window, not wanting to cry again, but awfully close. “I just wanted to do something for him, you know? Something big and crazy, like he would have done. And when he cracked that joke about telling Kyra Kelley about him, I just thought . . .” I shook my head at the ridiculousness of it. “I don’t know what I thought. I don’t even know what I’d tell her if I actually got a chance, or why she’d care. It was a crazy thing to think.” I laughed flatly. “Especially now that I got us stuck out here in a ditch and broke the one thing that
did
mean something to him. Stupid.”

Rusty pushed himself up against the opposite door so we were facing each other. “Runs in the family, then.” I just looked at him. “I mean, your brother did some stupid shit for you back in the day, is all.” Rusty took another swallow from his flask and held it out to me.

I shook my head and he sat back against the door, a slow smile on his face. “Best one was gettin’ you your prom dress when you went with that skinny little cowboy.”

“The red one? Gina got that for me.”

“No—Finn got it. I was with him. He drove our asses all the way to Odessa to get it. Twice. The second time, he brought that cowboy kid, too, and made him try it on.” I must’ve looked confused, because Rusty laughed. “He never told you that one, huh?”

“No. He made Steven try on my
dress
?”

Rusty sat up and leaned his arms on the front seat, ready to fill me in. “Shit,” he said, laughing. “I can’t believe he never told you.” He cleared his throat, but the smile didn’t move from his face. “It was all because you came home cryin’ about how you couldn’t find that dress anywhere and it was all so unfair and you hated living here—all that crap. Gina wasn’t havin’ it, and you came all undone about it, and so he called all over the place to see if anyone had the dress you wanted. And they had two of them. In Odessa. So he got me up early and we drove out there, and sure thing, they were there.” Rusty paused and smiled, and his story hung there like a surprise gift. It made me smile as he went on.

“Only . . . genius had no idea what size you were, couldn’t get ahold of you or Gina to ask, and the girl wouldn’t hold ’em. So, first we walked around the mall looking for someone your size to try ’em on, but nobody would do it. And then I made some crack about your little date, and Finn got all excited, and we drove all the way back to school and yanked ol’ Steve outta practice—”

“Why didn’t you guys just come get me?”

Rusty shook his head. “You know how he was. He had it in his head by then that it needed to be a surprise. Besides. You and Steve were built about the same back then, so . . .” I crossed my arms and tried not to smile, because it was kind of true. Although I would’ve hated Rusty for saying it then.