Falling Stars (3 page)

She gave me a dismissive look. “No. You go with Carrie. Everyone…out!”

I didn’t need to hear that twice. I left right on Carrie’s heels, both of us light years behind the younger girls, who had managed to vanish without a trace. And that was no wonder, really. I tried to run away from our mother any chance I could.

I hadn’t been in Carrie’s room since Christmas, but it looked much the same. A huge black poster showed a green planet, apparently sticking its tongue out, if planets could have tongues, with the reminder “DON’T PANIC” printed in large, friendly letters. Her bookshelves were doubled and tripled up, books stacked sideways and in crazy directions. The desk was clear; a close inspection would turn up certain items and keepsakes missing. Her closet, hanging open, was nearly empty. She was obviously ready to leave.

She only had two suitcases, but one of them was very large.

“I just need to get a couple last things in here,” she said.

“Take your time,” I murmured. I leaned against the window, looking to Cabrillo Street below. Crank and Sean had the trunk of the Mustang open and were pulling things out. I glanced at the trunk, then Carrie’s suitcases. We should be okay.

“What’s going on with you and Crank?” she asked.

“What?”

She tugged on the zipper to one of her suitcases, trying her hardest to get it closed. It was resisting her. I walked over and held the suitcase still.

“Don’t try to snow me, Julia.”

I shrugged. “We’ve… It…” I closed my eyes because I didn’t know how to say it.

She stopped with the suitcase. “Julia? Talk to me.”

I shook my head. “We’ve just… It’s been awful. The tour.” To my horror, I felt my throat closing. Tears, unwanted, unwarranted, out of control, were clawing their way out. I forced them back.

“What’s been awful?” she asked.

I didn’t know where to begin. It had started with a stupid argument really. Crank had gotten pissed one day when he saw me talking with Preston Reeve. I found myself shaking my head. “I’ll… It’s complicated. Really complicated. I’ll tell you later, okay? Right now let’s just get going.”

She nodded her head. “All right. But we’re talking before this is all over, okay?”

We got her suitcases closed and headed downstairs to say our goodbyes and load up the car. I’d managed to avoid voicing the one thing I truly didn’t want to say, the thing that would ruin our trip and break my heart, which was I didn’t think I could stay with Crank anymore and that this trip was going to be our goodbye.

“A
re you insane?”

I wouldn’t have asked the question, but Crank had taken a left turn going the wrong way down a one-way street, prompting horns from the wall of cars rushing at us down the extremely steep hill and screams from the back seat.
 
The screams didn’t stop as Crank shouted, “Oh, fuck me!” and put the car into reverse, backing partly onto Geary Boulevard and partly onto the sidewalk. We did, however, come to an instant stop when he hit a telephone pole with the rear bumper.

Crank took a slow breath, then looked over at me. “Sorry.”
 

“Are you sober? Enough to make this drive?” My heart was thumping.
 
I knew my tone was harsh. I sounded like my mother.
 

I’d never been so scared in my life.

“Yeah, I just… This city… Christ…”

Carrie, sitting behind Crank, leaned forward and put a hand on his shoulder. “It’s okay… it’s a confusing city. If you go straight here, then take a right on Van Ness, that’ll get us there, okay?”

He nodded. “Yeah.
 
I’ve got this. Thanks.”

Sean, behind me, said, “I’m not so sure. The residual effects of alcohol can last for days in some circumstances, and Crank isn’t that stable to begin with.”

“Knock it off, Sean!” Crank’s voice was strained, but he also sounded so much like his dad, Jack, that I almost did a double take. Irritation on his face, he put the car in drive and pulled back into traffic, this time going in the correct direction.

I leaned my elbow on the window frame, trying not to look. Trying not to think. Too much thinking took me right back down into the swirling disaster this entire summer has been, so I stared out the window as Crank drove us up I-80 and the Bay Bridge. It was easier not to fight about it anymore. It was easier to not think about it, especially to not think about how afraid I was. Afraid I was going to lose him. Afraid I wasn’t.

All I had to do was close my eyes and think about the after party in Dallas to see disaster after disaster. Crank’s sudden, inexplicable jealousy. How the groupies screamed his name. The pained, sad expression on his face and how he turned away from me. All I had to do was close my eyes to see his hand on that blonde girl’s ass.
 

Holding back tears, I stared off to the side. The girders of the Bay Bridge passed us by, waves and whitecaps far below.
 
To the south, over the bay, I could see clouds in the distance, dark clouds. They looked like rain and I hoped we weren’t headed into a storm. I’d had enough storms this year.

I glanced back over my shoulder. Sean was leaning back in his seat, staring up at the upper level of the bridge above us. He had a nervous expression on his face.
 
His arms were crossed over his chest, and he was squeezed as far away from Carrie as he could possibly get and still remain inside the vehicle. He’d gotten really upset last night when the photographers ambushed us on the way out of the party; upset enough that Crank lost it and punched the photographer and got himself arrested.
 

Sean and Carrie had seemed to hit it off at the party, but now he looked like he was trying to crawl out of the car to get away from her. For her part, she was looking out over the opposite side of the bridge, arms crossed over her chest, a frown on her face. Her hair was blowing all over the place.

“Carrie?” I called.

She looked over at me, an expression of annoyance on her face. “You okay?” I asked.

In a jerky motion, she widened her eyes and crossed them, shrugged her shoulders and threw her arms out to the side as if she were saying, “What the hell is wrong with you?”

“What?” I asked.

She tapped her ears, then leaned close. “I can’t hear you!” she shouted. “It’s loud back here with the top down!”

She leaned close to Sean, who looked like he was going to jump out of the car. I couldn’t hear what she said, but I could see her lips move. He nodded, then said something in response.
 
She laughed.
 
Nice.
 
At least they could stand each other.

I looked back out across the bay as we drove on. Every once in a while I’d glance back, and at one point I saw Sean and Carrie poring over his tourist attraction book. Crank and I didn’t speak. The dark grey clouds rolled over us, and Crank pulled over to put the top up.
 

We drove on in the rain.

“You’re turning too early,” Sean said.

“Yeah, I know,” I replied. “But I need to get gas, or this is going to be a very short trip.” It was two o’clock in the morning and I needed to find a place to get gas, and a hotel, in that order. Julia was curled up against the passenger side door and as far as I could tell Carrie was asleep in the back seat. Neither of them had spoken in hours… Julia because she was still pissed at me and Carrie in silent sympathy with her elder sister.

So here we were, at two in the morning, headed south on I-5 in southern California, the gas gauge on empty. The sign before the exit said GAS FOOD LODGING EXIT 242, so it couldn’t be far, but as I pulled off the exit, I panicked a little. Warm air blew over me, and all I could see in the darkness was sand, scrub, and flat darkness for miles. I’d stopped hours before, after the rain stopped, to put the top down.

“Shit,” I muttered.

“I think you should get back on the highway,” Sean said. His voice had an edge of anxiety.

“It’s fine, Sean. You saw the sign, it said gas and food and stuff.
 
We probably just need to go a little ways.”

In the darkness, the night was hushed, the only sound the quiet thrum of the Mustang’s engine and the wind blowing through the scrub. No other cars passed.

I could get back on the highway and hope to make it to the next exit and hope it had gas.

I could turn to the left or right on this two-lane road in what appeared to be the middle of nowhere and trust it would take me somewhere.

I could wake Julia, because she had the map, and she could tell me where the hell we were.

I sighed and closed my eyes. I turned left, because that was the general direction of Texas, and began to drive.

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” Sean said.

“Relax, Sean.”

And so I drove. And drove. And drove some more. The road continued, straight, between empty fields that appeared to have nothing cultivated but dust and scrub brush. And twenty-two very long minutes later, I finally saw light on the horizon ahead of us.
 
Bright light. It had to be a gas station, or a town, or something.

I breathed a sigh of relief and sped up a little.
 
Slowly, the light grew brighter and brighter and finally resolved itself, high above the scrub and sand—a 76 sign.
 
I rolled into the parking lot fueled by fumes and optimism and immediately saw the problem.

The lights inside and underneath the shelter were all turned off.
 
The station was
closed.

I groaned. “Really?” I muttered.
 
Maybe the pumps were still on. I turned off the car; in the dead quiet of the night I could hear the faint ticking of the engine in the heat.
 
Julia stirred a little and I
really
didn’t want to wake her up, so I got out and stepped over to the pump. It was turned off too.

I wanted to cry out, “It’s not my fault!”

Instead, I opened the car and slid back in.

Julia shifted position, and in the warmest voice she’d spoken to me in three weeks said, “Hmmmmm… everything okay?”

I leaned close and whispered, “It’s all good, babe. Just getting gas.”

“Don’t call me that,” she muttered, still asleep.

“Where are you going now?” Sean asked in his usual near-megaphone.

“Shhhhh,” I hissed. I cranked the car and pulled out of the gas station. “We’ll just go on to the next station. One has to be open.”

“I don’t think…”

“Give it a rest, Sean.”

It couldn’t be that far to another gas station. It
couldn’t.
I mean, seriously, what did the people who lived around here do? We’d just get to the next major intersection or whatever and get some gas there. I kept thinking that as hard as I could, because I was going about sixty, ten minutes later, when I felt the engine shudder. Once. Twice. Then we were coasting, near silently, running down the straight highway on nothing but momentum.
 
The highlights dimmed slightly as the engine cut out.
 

I tried to think as quickly as I could. I needed to get the car off the road while it still
had
momentum, or Sean and I would be pushing. I eased the car onto the shoulder and it immediately began bumping on the loose gravel, raising a cloud of dust in the darkness. I let the car roll as far as possible, twenty, fifty, a hundred yards before it finally rolled to a natural stop.

It was quiet, nothing but darkness and stars to the horizon, a faint wind blowing through the scrub.
 
Somewhere in the distance I heard the sound of a cricket, then another, and as the car sat there longer, the night became louder and louder with the sounds of nocturnal birds and other creatures. Did they have coyotes in California? Mountain lions? Now that I thought about it, what exactly was a coyote, anyway?
 
I started to ask Sean, knowing that in doing so I was risking having to listen to a dissertation, but I was interrupted by Julia stirring.

“Where are we?” she slurred.

In as confident a tone as I could muster, I said, “Near Lost Hills. Just stopping to get some rest.”

She murmured something under her breath that sounded suspiciously like “hotel,” but I just ignored her until Sean put in his two cents.
 

“I think she said we should stop at a hotel.”

I rolled my eyes and looked at Sean, then spoke in an urgent whisper. “Right. I’m sure she did, Sean. But there isn’t much I can do about that right now.”

“She’s going to be mad,” he observed in his normal, too-loud tone.

“Mad about what?” Carrie murmured from the back seat.

Everybody hates me.
 

Julia stirred again. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” I replied.

“Except apparently you’re going to be mad about something. Or maybe it’s me. Unclear pronouns,” Carrie said.

“I don’t think it’s unclear at all,” Sean commented.
 

Julia stretched and sat up in her seat. “Where are we again?”
 
She looked around in the darkness.