“Are you kidding me?”
“I look like I’m kidding you?” He unbuckled his belt. “Just gimme the cup and look the other way. I gotta go.”
“No.” Not only did the thought of him peeing into my empty soda cup right next to me repulse me, but bending in half to reach it when I had to go as bad as I did would surely put me over the edge. And I was desperate enough now to crouch behind the car myself. “Why don’t you just pull over? Like a normal person?”
Rusty cracked a sunflower seed between his teeth and spit the shell out the window. “Fine.” He looked in the rearview mirror briefly before pulling onto the dirt shoulder. “Then you’re driving awhile. I’m beat.”
We each took a turn with our business out in the hot wind, which wasn’t an easy task. For me at least. When I got back in, Rusty was stretched out across the backseat, hands behind his head, grinning up at the ceiling.
“Get any on your boots?”
“Oh my god, shut up.”
He propped his heels up on the back armrest. “What? I did. It’s windy out there.”
I turned the key and revved the engine, adjusting the mirrors back down to my eye level. “Charming. And I thought girls liked you for your jock status, not your conversational skills.”
“There’s a lot they like about me, H, but it doesn’t have much to do with football. Or conversation.” I couldn’t see his face in the mirror, but I could hear the smug smile in his voice.
“Okay, you can stop now. I don’t need to know anymore.”
“Just sayin’ . . .”
A gust of wind blasted the windshield with sand as I pulled us back onto the highway and gave it some gas.
“Might wanna close those vents. Wind’s picking up out there. And slow down if that sand kicks up. Can’t see ten feet in front of you when it really gets going. And—”
“You wanna drive?”
“Sure don’t.”
“Then leave me alone about it. I’ve been driving this thing ever since Finn left.”
A steady wind sprayed the windshield with dust, like rain, and Rusty’s boots tapped against the window, but there was no answer from the backseat. I brought my eyes back to the road and the sky, which had gotten three shades darker in the space of a minute.
I snapped the vents shut. “You know what I will never understand?”
“What’s that?”
“Why he went in the first place.” When Finn first told me about his decision to enlist, I thought it was a joke. When his face went serious and his tone resolute, I realized it wasn’t, but I wasn’t about to let it go. I’d pleaded with him over and over to explain it to me. To justify it. And some small part of me was convinced that all my questioning and doubt would somehow be enough to change his mind. But every time, his simple answer, which simultaneously frustrated and terrified me, was that it was the right thing to do. And I’d wanted to argue a million different reasons why it wasn’t and why he shouldn’t, but the only one I could come up with was me. I never said it, though, because if I did and he still went, what did that mean? That I wasn’t enough reason to stay? That he didn’t need me as much as I needed him? That he was tired of me needing him?
“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.