Before I fell too deep into the sadness of the thought, Rusty turned the radio down. “She’s runnin’ a little warm,” he said. He looked over at me when I didn’t answer. “The car.”
“What’s that mean?” I hoped hard it was nothing. We didn’t need car trouble in the middle of the nowhere. I couldn’t afford it. I’d planned on sleeping in the car and eating cheap. There was no room in my budget for a motel, let alone for the car to break down. And Kyra Kelley wasn’t going to postpone her last show for us.
Rusty chewed the toothpick he’d had in his teeth since we left the restaurant. “I dunno. Maybe just needs some more water.” He shrugged. “Or it could be somethin’ else.”
I looked across the expanse of shrub-dotted desert. The dark outline of mountains stood barely visible in the distance. In between us and them was absolute nothingness, except for cracked dirt and a lone airplane streak across the cobalt sky. “So . . . what are we supposed to do, then?” I watched Rusty for some sort of clue and tried to keep from sounding panicky.
He flicked the toothpick up and down between his front teeth, thinking. “How bad you wanna go to that concert?”
He said it like it was a perfectly acceptable idea now, which I appreciated. Because it still sounded ridiculous out loud. But then it didn’t. I knew it would’ve been near impossible and obscenely expensive to get those tickets here in the States. Yet Finn somehow did it from his dusty base camp in the middle of a war. It felt like I owed it to him.
I tapped my toes on the floor. “Bad enough to wanna keep going.” It came out sounding unsure, more like a question than an answer. Rusty didn’t say anything, so I turned to him directly. “You think it’ll be all right to make it there?” I thought of Finn’s letter in my purse and his one simple request. “It has to be.”
Rusty breathed in deep, like he was about to say something important. Then he shrugged like he couldn’t care less. “Maybe. If not, we can stop off at my mom’s. Work on it there.”
I opened my mouth to say something, but habit kept me quiet. Since Rusty was fourteen and she took off, his mom was a topic I’d always figured it was best not to mention, but now he brought her up like it was nothing at all. He must’ve seen my reaction, because his eyes flicked over to me a second, then back to the road. He shifted the toothpick in his mouth.
“She lives in Sedona. Came to my games once I was at school. I went down to her house a time or two.” I nodded, knowing better than to ask any more than he was willing to tell, but curious all the same. He never talked about her after she left. I hadn’t known where she was or if they spoke or anything. I wondered if, when he’d gotten to school up there, he’d been the one to get in touch with her or if it was the other way around. Maybe he’d gotten homesick for someone who knew him, or maybe she felt guilty and wanted to know her son again. He didn’t leave any room for questions, though. His eyes slid over to me again, and he laughed a little. “She won’t even recognize you.”
I didn’t know if it was his tone or his face, but something caught me in the way he said it, and a little nervous tingle went through me. I straightened up and looked out the window, conscious all of a sudden of his eyes on me. Then I caught a flyaway strand of hair and twisted it around my fingers. “Why?” I asked, a little too loudly.
Rusty smirked and put his eyes back on the road. “Nothin’, H.”
Irritated, I reached down for a package of licorice I’d stashed in my bag. “You shouldn’t do that, you know.”
“Do what?”
“That. Where you say something like it’s some sort of joke or like it means something and then just say, ‘Nothing, H.’” I imitated his nonchalant answer in the worst possible way, mocking myself, really.
Rusty raised his eyebrows and smirked again, not bothering to hide that this was all very entertaining for him. He reached over and grabbed the piece of licorice I’d just pulled from the package, right out of my hand, and took a bite. Then he talked and chewed at the same time. “You just . . . grew up is all.”
I pulled another twist out of the package, bit into it, and rolled my eyes even though I was flattered just a tiny bit. “Well. Nice of you to notice.”
“I didn’t. Not until Willy or Walter or whatever his name was got all stupid over you and your smelly-ass boots.” He laughed.
Oh. I pressed my lips together and nodded, my little bubble of pride burst by the realization of what he was getting at. What else did I expect?
“Wyatt. His name was Wyatt.” I tried to think of something to say in his defense, but I knew whatever I came up with wouldn’t make a difference. Rusty would just make a joke out of him, so I let it go and squinted at the rolling backs of the hills on the horizon. Wyatt was sweet and sincere and had given me a few moments of understanding and kindness. Rusty didn’t need to go on and ruin it.
Out the corner of my eye, I watched him nod slowly, and I knew he wasn’t finished. “Wyatt. That’s right.” I didn’t say anything, and Rusty spit the toothpick out his open window before turning back to me. “Y’all go swimmin’ this morning?” His tone had shifted the tiniest bit—less sarcasm, more curiosity.
I was still wary of the conversation, but it gave me some small satisfaction to tell him. “Scuba diving. We watched the sun come up from under the water.” I paused, surprised that along with the image in my mind came the same sadness that was there before. “It was the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen.” My voice wavered a little. Rusty didn’t say anything, but I saw him look at me in the mirror. I bit the inside of my cheek and turned toward the window, letting the hot wind rush over my face.