“Put it in your purse though,” she says, objecting to the unsafe back pocket idea before my hand even falls away from my butt. “Lose it and anyone can swipe it wherever they want.”
“I’ll put it in my purse as soon as I go back upstairs.”
She smiles and makes her way into the kitchen and I follow. She opens the cabinet over the toaster and starts taking down a few random things: a variety box of Nabisco snack packs, two packages of beef flavored Ramen Noodles (the only flavor I will touch), among other things. “For the ride and in case you get stuck on the freeway—don’t want you starving to death.”
I don’t say how she’s exaggerating a bit, or ask about how I’d cook Ramen Noodles on the side of the freeway, but instead smile and help her bag the items in a plastic grocery store sack. Lastly, she bends over underneath the bar counter and lifts out a six-pack of bottled water. “And being without water is worse than being without food.”
“She’s just going to Portland!” Uncle Carl says from the den. “She’s not driving all the way to Mexico!”
I lower my gaze and smile inwardly.
Beverlee holds the noodles just over the sack and says in a low voice, “It’s casual-thinking like that, that ends up with a flat tire in a monsoon on a stretch of freeway an hour’s walk from the closest convenience store.” She drops the noodles in the sack and points at me as if underlining the fact.
I laugh softly under my breath and shake my head.
I do the dishes for Aunt Bev, check with Uncle Carl in case he needs anything—he doesn’t, of course; well, he says he doesn’t anyway—and straighten up my room while I wait on Isaac to pick me up. And I make sure to put that credit card in my purse, too. I move over to the dresser mirror and touch up my makeup one more time; a few dabs of powder on my forehead where my skin is beginning to shine and then with a big blush brush, I outline my cheekbones with the soft pink glittery blush that Zia gave to me. She’s always trying to get me to ‘glamour up’ and I admit that sometimes I give in to her a little. Daisy does it too, but Zia likes to ‘hog me’, as Daisy calls it. I love Zia to death, but I have to admit that I like Daisy’s soft, laid-back style better than Zia’s ‘glamoured-up’ beauty; for me anyway. The last time Zia made me over, she did that smoky-eye thing and I hated it. I looked like a raccoon.
Now I get to sit here anxiously, though I don’t do much sitting. I pace my room, looking for something else to do, anything I may have missed and just end up taking my mini suitcase and duffle bag downstairs and set it near the front door next to Beverlee’s bag of roadside emergency groceries.
Harry and Daisy pull into the drive first and I go outside to meet them.
“Right on time,” I say as Daisy shuts her car door and walks toward me.
Harry climbs out after fumbling the seatbelt back inside the car, pulling it a few times trying to get it to tighten. A worn-out seatbelt isn’t the only thing wrong with Harry’s ancient 1970 Monte Carlo. There’s been some kind of issue with it since I met him, but he loves that car and I don’t see him getting anything new anytime soon.
“I can’t wait to get out of here,” Daisy says in her addictive English accent. She moves up the porch steps and I move down them to meet her halfway. The first thing she does when she’s in touching distance is reach out a hand toward my neck.
“So pretty,” she says, gently thumbing the moonstone pendant. “Let me guess—Isaac?” She grins looking up at me as she stands one step lower.
She glances back to see how close Harry is and then whispers to me, “Don’t repeat this because Isaac will kill me, but I’ve never seen him like this before, the way he is with you—I think you have him whipped!”
I’m totally blushing.
“Shhh!” I say, smiling hugely. “That’s not the word I would’ve chosen.”
“Then how would you describe it?” she says and Harry is almost too close. But I use this to my advantage and pause a few long seconds to give Harry enough time to save me from having to answer the question.
“Where’s everybody at?” Harry says. He looks down at his phone as if to check the time.
I hear motors in the distance now, just past the trees at the end of the road. Seconds later and two vehicles are pulling into the drive: Isaac’s Jeep Rubicon and Nathan’s FJ Cruiser with his new girlfriend, Hannah, in the front seat and Zia and Sebastian in the back.
I don’t know what it is with werewolves and off-road vehicles.
As cars begin to pile up in the driveway, Aunt Bev joins us all on the front porch, dangling the roadside emergency sack in her hand.
“Hi Babe,” Isaac says and pecks me once on the lips. “Where’s your stuff?”
I open the front door just as Beverlee steps the rest of the way out and I go to get my bags from the floor. But Isaac gently pushes me aside and gets them for me, shouldering the duffle bag on one side and holding the mini suitcase in the opposite hand. “Sure you got everything?”
I mull it over for a minute. Toothbrush? Check. Extra panties and socks? Check. Make-up bag? Check. Three sets of clothes? Check. My new anxiety medication? Check. The purse on my shoulder? I pat it once as if I didn’t already feel the weight of it. Check. I check off a few more things and shrug, satisfied that I packed everything I needed.
“Well, you did say I wouldn’t be needing a bathing suit.”
“Nope,” Isaac says, “still too cold for swimming.”
“Have you had your car checked out lately?” Beverlee says to Isaac from the side. She holds out the sack for him and he takes that too. “Oil change. Tune up. Tires. Things like that.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Isaac says, “it’s all good to go. Perfectly safe. I give you my word.”
I just look away and pretend to be listening to Harry and Daisy talk. I always look away when a conversation is openly about me, yet some try so hard not to make it so obvious. Isaac’s Jeep isn’t even a year old and probably doesn’t need any of that stuff. It’s Harry’s car that needs it. Or, better yet, that shouldn’t be traveling distances too far out of town.
Beverlee nods, accepting Isaac’s not-so-secret promise to make sure nothing happens to me on the way there, or back. Then he heads down the porch steps and glides toward the Jeep where he slings my bags into the backseat with ease. Thankfully we won’t be riding with the top off the Jeep, as I don’t want my hair slapping me in the face for the next hour.
We pull out of the driveway one behind the other like a small fleet of 4-wheel-drive and 1970’s metal. Harry and Daisy are in the lead since he’s the one who knows exactly where we’re going. It’s easy to pick up Harry’s speakers playing Incubus or something, I can’t really tell; the guitar funnels from the car and carries behind it into our opened windows.
It feels unexpectedly strange, leaving Hallowell. I guess because I haven’t been much outside of Augusta on an actual trip since I left Georgia back in September. Kind of liberating. I think this trip might be the kind of thing I’ve needed all along. A chance to get away from everything; or at least a chance to breathe outside of a place where a lot of devastating things have happened. Because it’s not like things are bad now, or that I’m miserable, hate school and my job and just want to get away. Exactly the opposite. Everything is awesome. I guess sometimes a trip away from awesome can still be therapeutic.
We head east, destination Scarborough, and as we drive farther away and I can smell the salt and fishy ocean on the air, I can’t help but think of my sister, Alexandra, and where she is right now, what she’s doing, if she’s thinking about me.
I doubt she ever thinks about me anymore.
Life in Hallowell has been quiet and I’ve not seen or heard anything of the Vargas family. William Vargas, brother to Alexandra’s boyfriend, Ashe, I know is dead. The one I punched in the mouth at the skate park the first time I met them. Isaac killed William seven months ago. In the chaos I saw his human body lying lifeless and twisted on the floor of the Vargas house that night. I remember briefly seeing his cold, empty eyes, glazed over by a thin layer of moisture that only made his eyes look like glass to me. But Ashe, as far as I know, is still alive.
And Viktor Vargas…well, I’m probably the only one among us who knows that Viktor is still alive. Well, Harry knows now, too.
I glance over at Isaac sitting next to me in the driver’s seat and for a moment all I can see is someone who believes so strongly in a lie. The lie of the century. And every day that passes, by not saying anything, I’m the one telling that lie.
God, Isaac looks so much like his father, Trajan. I see Sibyl in him too, though I would never tell him that because he would take it as an insult, even though Sibyl is beautiful. Malevolent and murderous beyond imagining, but still beautiful. Isaac has her bright blue eyes and dark hair, but he looks more like Trajan with his defined cheekbones and round face. But most of all that dangerous look in his eyes when he’s deep in thought, or when something doesn’t feel right. It’s uncanny how much they resemble each other.
We stay on I-295 for what seems like forever, but having Isaac as my company makes any long drive bearable.
He’s been talking about the trip he took to the Grand Canyon three years ago and the two weeks he spent in Corpus Christi, Texas, tracking a werewolf Turned by yet another rogue clan—as if the Vargas bloodline isn’t enough.
“He Turned two days before the moon was full,” Isaac says watching the road out ahead, “and killed a sixteen-year-old boy. Some of the locals said it was a Chupacabra, but there’s no such thing.” He tilts his head to see me from the corner of his eye and grins widely.
“Oh, as opposed to werewolves?” I joke. “Yeah, believing in a Chupacabra is just insane.” I roll my eyes and laugh quietly to myself.
Isaac puts his eyes on the road again. A white van speeds by in the other lane, followed by a red SUV. A guy hangs his head out the window of the SUV and yells about something exciting, pumping his fist in the air. I mean who does that on the freeway? Probably a drunk college student heading to Portland too. I hope this Higgins Beach isn’t full of crazy like that. Though, Harry did say that his sister’s house was on a private section of Higgins Beach, so hopefully it’s private enough to keep out the uninvited. And thankfully it’s not hot enough for this beach to be packed like the beaches I’m used to in Georgia during the summertime.
“Uh oh,” Isaac says and I look up through the windshield to see what he’s staring at.
The Jeep begins to slow down as Isaac veers slowly toward the shoulder and finally we come to a stop behind Harry’s smoking car. Cars buzz by us on the freeway so fast and so close that the wind moves the Jeep side to side.
“I knew this was going to happen,” I say, shaking my head. I watch Harry get out, carefully opening the driver’s side door enough to make room, but not so much the door will get knocked off by a passing vehicle. He kicks the back tire out of frustration and I hang out the Jeep window and yell at him, “Hey! It’s not her fault you’re driving her far past her expiration date!” He flips me off and I laugh loudly.