After a long moment, he did something that surprised me. A small thing that just about did me in, coming from him. He wrapped a warm hand around the back of my neck and squeezed gently. And for the first time since we’d left, he said something right.
“Finn woulda loved that, you know. That you did that.” He paused a beat, looked right at me quick, then away again. “He’d be proud of you, H.”
The yellow line I’d been watching out my window blurred, and I swallowed red licorice over the lump in my throat. Rusty squeezed my neck again, and when he pulled his hand away I wished for a sliver of a moment he would have left it, warm and sure on my bare shoulder.
I looked at him then and said the only thing I could. “I miss him.” Rusty’s jaw tightened, and he shifted in the seat. “I miss him so much.”
He glanced at the side mirror, then back to the road. “Me too, H. I miss him too.”
We didn’t say anything else for a long time. Just kinda let it hang there that we were actually together on something. After a while, my eyes got heavy and I leaned my head on the seat. Sleep was closing in fast, the kind you know is going to take you under deep, and I was running out of fight.
In between long blinks, I watched Rusty sit back in the seat, one easy hand on the wheel, and more than once thought I felt his eyes on me. But I could’ve been dreaming by then. Either way, at that moment, in the rumbling cab of the Pala, he felt like the only other person in the world who might be feeling the very same thing as me. And that in itself was a comfort.
10
I had to pee in the worst, gut-clenching, leg-crossing kind of way, and no amount of distraction was gonna help. I glanced over at Rusty, trying to gauge if he’d drunk his whole soda and might need to stop soon. I didn’t want to be the one to make us stop twice in a row. I’d already made him pull into a dusty little gas station when I woke up over an hour ago, and the stop that was supposed to be a quick run-in-and-out ended up taking over fifteen minutes while the crackly old guy behind the counter schooled me on the dangers of driving the highway in the middle of monsoon season. I assured him I wasn’t alone and even bought an extra jug of water along with my other road snacks because he insisted it was important to have. Which made me laugh, since it seemed to me the last thing you’d need more of in a monsoon was water.
When I got back, Rusty took one look at the gallon of water and giant sodas and shook his head. “You drink all that, we’ll be stopping every damn hour for you to pee.”
“I’m not gonna drink it all. One’s for you. Here.” I handed him a Coke and set the water jug in the backseat. “The water’s in case we get caught in a monsoon.”
He just looked at me like I’d said something stupid as I ducked in out of the swirling wind and yanked the door shut.
“Long story. Never mind.” I clicked the seat belt across my lap and reached for the wrinkled map on the floor. “How far do you think we can make it today if we go without stopping?”
Rusty put the car in gear and shrugged. “If I keep driving and you don’t need to stop eight more times?” He took a long gulp of his soda and pulled back out onto the empty highway. “We could go forever.”
“Could we?” I looked up from the map momentarily, then felt a little ridiculous. I hadn’t meant it to sound so . . . like every other girl who talked to him.
Rusty didn’t answer. Just put his eyes on the road and let the hint of a smirk cross his face, which brought me right back to irritated. I turned up the radio, grabbed my Kyra Kelley magazine from the gas station the day before, and did my best to look occupied while resolving not to make a fool of myself in front of him for the rest of the trip. And to make sure that the next time we stopped, it wasn’t because of me.
That was almost two hours ago, and now I was gonna burst. I’d spent the time eating and drinking and fiddling with whatever I could to pass the time and make it not so awkward while Rusty drove along silently. We’d given up on music after a while, since there was nothing but static on the radio and I wasn’t about to plug in my iPod again. Every so often, Rusty would run a careless hand through his hair or stretch his legs out a bit, but that was it. He seemed like he was off in his own thoughts, so I let him be.
I glanced out the window, hoping for a sign saying it was only a few miles to another little podunk town, or a rest stop—even a bush would have sufficed at this point. But there was only flat, brown desert and a horizon rimmed with clouds. And wind. I could see it sweeping over the ground, kicking up miniature dust devils off in the distance. It made me think of clips on the news or bits in the newspaper that told all about how harsh the weather was over in the deserts where our troops were deployed. How sandstorms would tear through, blasting everything in their paths, making it difficult to see or even breathe. I’d asked Finn about it once in an e-mail, and he downplayed it, saying it wasn’t that bad, and whenever it happened they just had to hunker down and wait it out. I looked over at Rusty, who seemed tired, and the thought occurred to me that maybe that’s what we were doing together in the cab of the Pala, on the dusty highway. Riding out the storm Finn’s absence left behind. Maybe that’s why Rusty was so quiet. I glanced at him again out the corner of my eye, and he must’ve felt it, because his eyes flicked over in my direction.
“Hand me that cup down there.”
“It’s empty.”
“I know that. I gotta take a piss.” He motioned with his head at the Coke cup by my feet.