The Highway (4 page)

He almost felt sorry for the lot lizard because she had no idea what kind of hell she was getting herself into.

2.

4:48
P.M.
, Tuesday, November 20

E
IGHTEEN-YEAR-OLD
D
ANIELLE
AND
sixteen-year-old Gracie Sullivan were traveling north on I-25 in Danielle’s red 2006 Ford Focus with the green Colorado
PLNTDNL
license plates and music blaring, the wipers smearing spots on rain and snow across the windshield, and the check engine light on.
PLNTDNL
stood for “Planet Danielle” and it was her car.

Gracie was simply along for the long ride to Omaha to be with their dad for Thanksgiving. Their parents had divorced years before and the girls rotated holidays between Denver, where they lived with their mother, and Omaha, where their father had most recently moved with his software engineering firm.

He even sent them a GPS and a road atlas for their Thanksgiving trip to Omaha. The atlas was in the backseat, where Danielle had tossed it after determining their route. The GPS was still in its box in the trunk unopened, because Danielle didn’t want to take the time and trouble to figure out how it worked. Their bags were stuffed in the trunk and the backseat floor was littered with fast-food bags and wrappers and empty plastic water bottles.

Danielle was at the wheel. She drove like she lived—with wild impulsive fits and starts. Gracie would watch the speedometer slow to fifty while Danielle searched for a song she liked on the sound system or texted on her phone, then gritted her teeth when her sister sped up to eighty with the rhythm of the music. It drove Gracie crazy.

“At least go the friggin’
speed limit
,” Gracie said, wide-eyed and pleading. “Don’t you have cruise control? Why don’t you set it so you don’t kill us before we get there?”

“We’ll be fine,” Danielle said. “Stop freaking out.”

“You drive like a crazy person.”

Danielle let up on the accelerator pedal and reset the cruise control at exactly seventy-five. “There. Are you happy now?”

“Yes!”

“This is boring.”

“That’s okay!”

They’d left that morning at nine. It was eight hours to Omaha; north on I-25 to Cheyenne, then east on I-80. Gracie wished she was old enough to have a driver’s license so
she
could drive. Danielle was dangerous. Lanes meant nothing to her.

Danielle was dark-haired, big-eyed, with a full figure and a wide mouth. She was everything Gracie wasn’t. Gracie was pencil-thin with reddish blond hair, freckles across her nose, and of course she wore glasses because contacts irritated her eyes.

“And you need to stop texting,” Gracie said.

“You are such an old lady,” Danielle replied. “You should have blue hair and a walker. And orthaconic shoes.”

“
Orthopedic.
”

“Whatever.”

“Look,” Gracie said, “I was up until two this morning getting all my homework done. I’m tired.”—Danielle rolled her eyes. She
never
did homework.—“and I want to get some sleep. But I can’t sleep with you speeding up and slowing down and weaving all over the road.”

Danielle didn’t respond and didn’t indicate she even heard her. She was looking at her phone.

“He won’t answer,” she said.

“Who, Justin?”

“Of course Justin. Who else?”

“Oh, stop it,” Gracie moaned.

“He always asks about you. He thinks of you as the dorky little sister he never had.”

“God!”

“I tell him how smart you are, how you got all of the brains while I got all of the rest. How all the teachers can’t believe we’re even related and blah-blah-blah.” She wriggled her fingers in the air while she talked because she knew how much the gesture annoyed Gracie and always had. “And he asks, ‘Is she still a flat little plain Jane?’”

“He did not!” Gracie whined. The fact was, Danielle was more than a little correct. Justin was a genuinely great guy, smart and athletic, always positive. He was a reader, too, and Gracie and Justin had discussed books while Danielle stood aside rolling her big blue eyes. Gracie and Justin probably had more in common than Danielle and Justin, Gracie thought. They had both read the entire Harry Potter series, for one thing. But Justin had moved with his mother to Helena, Montana, in the spring. Danielle hadn’t seen him since, although they were in constant contact via cell phone, Facebook, and Twitter.

“Well, no, maybe he didn’t exactly say it,” Danielle said, enjoying the torture of her sister, “but he was thinking it. I know this because the two of us, Justin and me, are like one. I’ll bet you never in a million years would have guessed we’d still be together two years later.”

“You’re right,” Gracie said. “How long before he figures out you’re dumber than a box of rocks?”

Danielle ignored that. She said, “We are, you know, like
one being.
Like we had a mind-meld. We can finish each other’s sentences. I bet you didn’t know that about us.”

Gracie said, “Anybody can finish your sentences. All they have to say is, ‘That’s, like, friggin’ awesome.’ See how easy it is?”

“You can be such a little bitch,” Danielle said, stung.

“I’m tired!”

“Then go to sleep,” Danielle said. “Leave me alone.”

Gracie sighed and sat back. She tried not to think about Danielle, or the fact that the moment she closed her eyes her sister stomped on the gas pedal and started texting on her phone.

*   *   *

Gracie slept hard, and when she awoke she sat up and rubbed her eyes. She was surprised to see that it was late afternoon and the sun was slanting shadows across the empty landscape.

“You snore,” Danielle said.

There were distant mountains to the west and it took her a moment to say, “Where are we? This doesn’t look like Nebraska.”

“Really?” Danielle smirked. “It doesn’t?”

“Danielle,” she said, alarmed, “where are we?”

Her sister flipped her hair back and said, “Somewhere between Casper and Sheridan, Wyoming.”

Gracie was suddenly wide-awake. “You missed the turnoff. We’re in Wyoming instead of Nebraska. We’re north instead of east. Turn around!”

“Calm down,” Danielle said. “I know what I’m doing.”

“What?”

“I’m going to Helena to see Justin. He won’t answer my texts and he won’t take my calls. There’s something wrong and I have to see him.”

It took a few seconds for Gracie to comprehend what she’d been told. When she did, she said, “Have you lost your friggin’ mind?”

“No, I’ve found it,” Danielle said theatrically. “Someone has gotten to Justin and I won’t let it happen.”

Gracie shook her head in disbelief. “Turn around or I’m calling Mom.”

Danielle snorted.

Gracie realized why when she reached into her bag on the floor of the car and her phone wasn’t there.

“Give it back,” Gracie said.

“I will when you calm down,” Danielle said. She refused to meet her sister’s eyes, and for once concentrated on the road ahead of her. Gracie had rarely seen Danielle so determined … or so irrational.

“I’ll clear it with Dad,” Danielle said. “If he’s okay with it, you should be okay with it. He’s the one making the call here. Mom will have Thanksgiving with Aunt Susan and it won’t matter where we are if Dad says it’s okay.”

“But he
won’t
,” Gracie pleaded. “He’ll tell us to turn around and now we won’t get there until the middle of the night.”

Danielle said, “So you’ll agree that if he says it’s okay, you’ll calm the fuck down?”

Gracie balled up her hands and pounded them once, hard, on her knees. “This is so stupid I can’t believe it.”

“Hush,” Danielle said, “I’m calling.”

As soon as Gracie heard Danielle say, in her most girlish and syrupy voice, “Hi, Daddy, it’s Danny,” she knew how the conversation would turn out. And she hated her father for it.

Danielle activated the speaker on her cell phone and Gracie could hear both sides of the conversation.

Their dad was a pushover, especially for Danielle’s pleading, and especially since he still felt guilty about the disaster of their back-country trip to Yellowstone Park two years before. He was still trying to make up for it and the only way he knew how was to give in to anything Danielle asked of him and to try to get himself back into her good graces.

“Does your mom know?” Ted Sullivan asked. Gracie could hear the fear in his voice.

“Not yet,” Danielle said. “But don’t worry. I’ll tell her.”

Silence.

Finally, Ted said, “But if I know what you’re doing and I don’t tell her…”

“I’ll handle Mom,” Danielle said with confidence.

Ted obviously wasn’t convinced, though. He said, “She asked me to call her when you girls arrived. I can’t call her and lie. I just can’t.”

Danielle frowned for a moment, then grinned. “I’ve got it,” she said. “Just don’t call at all. Tell her tomorrow you forgot. That sounds like something you’d do. By then everything will be fine.”

“Boy, I don’t know,” Ted said with doubt in his voice.

“Daddy, we all know how scatterbrained you can be. This won’t be the first time you forgot something.”

“That’s true,” he said.

“Dad!” Gracie shouted. She couldn’t remain silent another second. “Did you
forget
you have
two
daughters?”

“Hi, Gracie,” he said sheepishly.

“Maybe I don’t want to go, did you think about that?” Gracie said. “Did you think maybe I don’t want to spend Thanksgiving with Danielle’s boyfriend?”

Before Ted could respond, Danielle switched off her speaker and pulled the phone up to her ear. “Daddy, you really like Justin, don’t you? Remember when you told me that?”

Gracie was so angry she could barely hear the rest of the conversation. It went on for another five minutes before Danielle said, “Goodbye. I love you, Daddy,” and dropped the phone into her lap.

“He says he might fly to Helena for Thanksgiving to be with us,” Danielle said. “So will that make you happy?”

“Not really,” Gracie said. “He’s such a wimp at times.”

Danielle told Gracie Dad seemed to enjoy being in on the deception because it was something he could share with his girls.

“He can be such a limp weenie.” Danielle laughed.

Gracie didn’t like to think of their dad like that. She wanted him to be brave, tough, admirable, and stoic. But Danielle was right.

*   *   *

After an hour of angry silence, Gracie pointed at the red
CHECK ENGINE
light.

“Hey, what’s with this little engine thing that’s lit up?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Danielle said.

“Shouldn’t we get it checked?”

“By who? We’re in the middle of friggin’ nowhere if you haven’t noticed,” Danielle said, gesturing outside toward the darkening mountains in the distance. They’d just entered Montana. The last sign they’d passed said they were entering the Crow Indian Reservation. “Just don’t worry about it. It’s been on for hours.”

“Danielle!”

“We’ll ask Justin to check it out when we get there. He knows something about cars, I think. Just quit worrying about everything all the time.” Her sister noted the time on her phone and changed the subject. “It’s four. Time to text Mom and tell her we can see Omaha from here. There’s no reason to make her worry.”

Gracie winced. “You mean, other than you’re lying to her.”

“Better that than spending her whole holiday worrying. And I promise to call her when we get to Helena. I’ll take all the blame, don’t worry.”

Danielle sent the text and threw back her head and laughed. “I can talk anybody into anything,” she said, looking over and batting her eyes, letting her voice take on the syrupy tone she’d used on their dad. “It’s just this thing I have. This gift. This wonderful skill.”

Gracie clamped her jaws tight and fumed. But it was true, and it was unfair. Her beautiful and oh-so-popular older sister had the ability to manipulate people in amazing ways and she had no qualms about doing so.

*   *   *

“I can’t believe you’re doing this,” Gracie said, shaking her head. “I can’t believe I’m letting you.”

“It’s because you love me,” Danielle said. “And who can blame you?”

“God!”

“Justin loves me, too,” Danielle sang. “He said I’m the best thing that has ever happened to him. And you know what? I am. He might have forgotten it a little or gotten, you know, distracted. But once he sees me again, and remembers what it’s like to be on Planet Danielle…” she saw no need to finish her thought.

“You can be such a—”

“Wonderful sister,” Danielle interjected. “That was the word you were looking for. We’re here because of love. You love me and you want to support me in my relationship with Justin, even though you are a little jealous because he’s so hot and sweet and sexy.”

“I’m worried about this engine light,” Gracie said.

“Forget about it.”

“I can’t forget about it. What if the car breaks down? Then what do we do?”

“It won’t break down,” Danielle said, petting the dash with both hands, “it loves me, too. My car would never let me down.”

Danielle interrupted her monologue long enough to hand Gracie’s phone back to her and open her own. Gracie watched her sister speed dial a number.

“He won’t pick up,” Danielle said to her in a stage whisper. Then, on Justin’s voice mail, she said, “Guess who is driving right now to Helena to spend Thanksgiving with her boyfriend? Call me.”

Danielle closed her phone and beamed.

3.

5:23
P.M.
, Tuesday, November 20

C
ASSIE
D
EWELL
SAT IN A
hard chair across the desk from Sheriff Tubman in the Law Enforcement Center and became proportionately more alarmed as his mounting glee became apparent. She found herself squirming in the chair, trying to find a comfortable position. She wasn’t even aware at first that her hands ached because she was squeezing them together between her thighs.