Let's Get Lost (21 page)

6

THE SMELL OF
doughnuts was strong in the air, sweet just below the point of cloying. The boxes were stacked high enough to feel like a fort, and they swayed with the movement of the truck.

“Hey, Sonia,” Leila whispered, using her cell phone to light up the area and finding a place to sit.

“Yeah?”

“Truth or dare.”

“You're serious?”

“Do I seem like the kind of person who would joke about truth or dare?”

“Okay, dare.”

“I dare you to eat a dozen doughnuts before we get across the border.”

“Don't be a jerk. I'll get diabetes.”

“Okay, one doughnut. Bavarian crème, if possible,” Leila said stifling a giggle.

Sonia groaned softly and looked in the nearby boxes. “I can't tell what any of these are,” she said, finding an easy carton to open without knocking anything over. She grabbed the first doughnut she put her hand on and took a bite. “Ugh, coconut.”

“You don't like coconut?”

“You do?”

“Friendship over,” Leila said.

For all the strange circumstances surrounding the ride in the truck, Sonia couldn't help but feel like she and Leila were two girls at a slumber party, up too late and trying hard not to giggle and wake the adults.

“Is it strange that I think this is kind of fun?” Leila whispered.

Sonia shook her head. “I was just thinking that.” She pulled out her cell phone, the screen illuminating the inside of the truck faintly, just enough to reveal their faces to each other. “We might actually get there on time.” She stretched her legs out in front of her. “Your turn. Truth or dare?”

“Truth,” Leila answered quickly.

“Tell me more about that guy.”

“Actually,” Leila started, “I think I may have forgotten all about him. Stoner Timmy is my new dream guy.”

Sonia snorted while trying to stifle a laugh. “I have to hand it to him. I did not think he'd be able to do anything helpful for me.”

“O ye of little faith. Never underestimate the helpfulness of a stranger. Even if he seems borderline insane.”

“Just borderline?”

“I didn't say what side of the border,” Leila said with a smile.

They sat silently for a while longer, feeling the truck rumbling on down the highway, the massive tires spinning beneath them. Sonia started to relax. She leaned her head against the boxes. She imagined that this truck took the same route every day, that, though the American customs agents might search it every morning, its return trip was likely a little more lax. Her eyelids were just starting to droop when her phone went off again.

“Hey,” she said softly. “I can't talk right now.”

“Look, I'm going nuts over here. Where have you been all night?”

Sonia had no idea how to summarize her night into a comprehensible phone conversation. “I'm on my way now. I should be there within an hour, maybe a little more.”

Forgetting for a moment the whole anger business with Jeremiah, Sonia felt the tingly anticipation of seeing him again, of kissing him hello.

“You said that last night, and you're still not here,” he said.

“I promise, I'm on my way.”

That pause again, the one over the phone where she could perfectly picture Jeremiah and what he was doing. Half-naked, she guessed, boxers and socks (maybe even just one), ready to jump into the shower. Even if she was wrong, it was a joy to think that she knew him well enough to guess at his actions.

“Is everything okay?” he said, finally.

“Don't worry about me, Jer,” Sonia said. Through the dark she could see Leila turn her head toward the front of the truck. Sonia cupped her hand over the mouthpiece. “Are we slowing down?”

“Definitely,” Leila said. “You think we're at the border already?”

“Could be.” She brought the phone back to her ear and said good-bye to Jeremiah, feeling optimistic for the first time in hours.

A few seconds later, the transmission hissed as the driver downshifted into park. Sonia brought a finger to her lips, pantomiming silence. Through the metallic walls, Sonia could hear the whoosh of cars on the highway, although it was hard to tell which way the sounds were coming from. She thought she heard a door slam, but it really could have been anything.

Then came the instantly recognizable sound of keys jingling. Sonia felt all the blood rush out of her head.
Not again
, she thought to herself
. If we get caught again, it's over. I'm going to jail, I'm ruining the wedding, and no one will want anything to do with me.

Daylight streamed in through the suddenly open door, and Sonia hopped up to her feet, even though there was nowhere to go. She pressed herself into the space between the columns of boxes as if she could camouflage herself with her surroundings. When the door had been propped fully open, there was a bit of grunting. Through a crack between two boxes, Sonia could see the silhouette of the driver climbing up into the truck.

“Come out, or I'm calling the cops.”

Sonia shot a glance at Leila, who'd remained seated, her knees pulled up close to her chest.
What do we do?
she mouthed. Leila shrugged, either because she hadn't understood or because that was the only thing left to do.

“Pulling my cell phone out now,” the driver called out.

“Okay, okay,” Sonia said, stepping out, her hands instinctively raised in surrender. She wondered what she'd done to make the universe so set against her. Of course, as soon as that thought came, thoughts of Sam followed, and Sonia felt that she was getting what she deserved.

“What are you two doing in here?” the driver asked, one hand on his hip, the other holding up a finger at them in a caricature of an admonishing adult. “Stealing?”

“We're not stealing,” Sonia snapped. “We just need to get across the border.”

“And you thought this would work?”

Sonia shrugged, her eyes set on the highway behind the driver. Leila started to say something, but the driver cut her off. “I don't have time for this. Just get off my truck.”

He stepped aside and waited for them to hop off, then he slowly stepped down, wincing as his feet touched the pavement, the aches of what was probably nearly an entire lifetime of climbing up and down the raised platforms of semitrailers. “You might have actually managed to get away with it if you hadn't been chatting away.” He motioned at the phone still in Sonia's hand. Without a second glance back at them, he shut the door, climbed into the cab of the truck, and took off down the road, leaving Sonia and Leila beneath a cloud of dark exhaust.

* * *

It took Sonia and Leila about half an hour to get back to the Tim Hortons. Sonia couldn't stop checking the time on her phone. Leila offered words of encouragement as they paced down the side of the highway, but Sonia didn't think there was a chance she'd be able to deliver the rings in time. What kind of desperate last resort was there beyond Stoner Timmy?

The sun seemed to advance across the sky much faster than it should have, cutting behind gray clouds that would likely bring an afternoon shower. Cars sped by in high-pitched blurs as if mocking Sonia.

Back in Bellingham, Sonia stomped her way across the Tim Hortons and plopped herself down in front of Stoner Timmy. “The answer was not in the doughnuts.”

He was sitting in the same table, smoking another cigarette, doodling on the back of his hand with a Sharpie, though there was a notebook in his lap. He looked at Sonia as if she'd never gotten up. “That's a bummer, man.”

Just as Sonia was about to snap at him, she felt Leila's hand on her shoulder. “We need another way across,” Leila said, her voice soft. “The delivery truck didn't work.”

Stoner Timmy frowned, tucking the Sharpie into the matted nest of dreadlocks on the back half of his head. “Your quest didn't call for a delivery truck.”

If Leila hadn't offered a consoling squeeze, Sonia might have exploded at Timmy. Instead, Sonia sat back into the barely comfortable plastic chair and let Leila take control of the conversation.

“Clearly, our quest did call for a delivery truck,” Leila argued. “Otherwise, we wouldn't have gotten into it. We couldn't have possibly gone against our fate, now, could we?”

Stoner Timmy took a long drag from his cigarette. “Go on.”

“What if our fate was to fail at first so we could meet with you again and have you show us the way? If this isn't exactly what was supposed to happen, how could it be happening right now?” This time, Leila seemed serious, no tongue-in-cheek.

Flicking the cigarette quickly in order to drop the ashes into a coffee cup, Stoner Timmy cracked a smile. “Full of Moxie, are you sure you're not a Time Lord?”

Without missing a beat, Leila responded, “Maybe I will be someday.”

Stoner Timmy smacked his palm down on the table, making the cups jump and people in the restaurant turn in their direction for the first time. “Very well! I will lead you myself. This will require a dozen Bavarian crème donuts and a car!”

“Very well!” Leila exclaimed, taking her turn smacking the table, then rising to buy the doughnuts. When she returned, box in hand, the three of them walked out of the Tim Hortons. Stoner Timmy left all his coffee cups on the table, and Sonia had the distinct impression that, whenever he returned, they'd still be there.

“Should I drive?” Leila asked as they approached her car.

“No,” Stoner Timmy said, snatching the keys out of Leila's hand with an unnecessary flourish. “In fact, I need the two of you to climb into the trunk.”

“You're joking.” Sonia tried to guess at the roominess of the trunk from the outside.

“Do I look like a joking man?”

“I'd better not answer that,” Sonia said, mostly to herself.

Stoner Timmy popped the trunk and motioned for them to get in, a little too enthusiastically for Sonia's liking. But at this point she was willing to forgo rational behavior if it would get her where she needed to go.

Fortunately, Leila hadn't entirely given up, and she made Stoner Timmy give his word that they would have a safe journey across the border. “You should know,” Leila added, one foot already in the trunk, “I tried crossing late last night, and they may have flagged this car as suspicious.”

Stoner Timmy put a hand on the open trunk. “Full of Moxie, the answer is in the doughnuts.”

With that, the girls climbed inside, curled up against each other head-to-toe, their knees bent to avoid kicking each other in the face. “Hey, Leila?” Sonia said into the eerie, enclosed darkness. “You said you'd had plenty of adventures on your trip. Anything that matches this?”

Leila laughed, a sweet laugh that, oddly, made Sonia wish they were actual friends, not just acquaintances brought together by bizarre circumstances. “This is my first ride in a trunk during all my travels. I've seen and done plenty—passionate making out on an island, jail, vomit—but I hadn't yet been smuggled across an international border by a man who sees himself as a cross between The Dude and Gandalf. So, thank you for that.”

“You're quite welcome.”

Sonia closed her eyes, falling quiet to avoid giving her presence away yet again.

Since Sam died, Sonia hadn't been able to deal with total darkness. It felt textured, like the dirt piled onto a coffin. She needed the gentle glow of a screen, or at least the sound of music to fill in the air around her. Even with Jeremiah sleeping next to her, she'd leave her computer playing TV shows all night, a sort of lullaby to keep her from thinking about wherever Sam was, the nothingness he was experiencing.

She could yell an apology to him as loudly as she could, yell how sorry she was that she'd found someone to love who wasn't him. She could yell the words over a megaphone, scribble them into a book for the whole world to read, and still Sam would not hear them.

Sonia wiped at the tears slipping down the bridge of her nose. The car slowed, and soon there came the sounds of muffled voices. Sonia held her breath and heard Leila do the same. The moment seemed to hang in the air, like that split second when a swing reaches its highest point right before pulling you back down. Then came footsteps, and before it happened, Sonia could see it happening, another heartbreaking setback in her efforts to not ruin Liz's wedding.

The lock on the trunk clicked, and in a flash of daylight, Stoner Timmy and a Canadian customs agent looked down into the trunk, twin blank expressions on their faces. No one said anything, and for a second Sonia almost laughed, imagining the agent's point of view: two girls curled up in a trunk, hoping to sneak across the border, a madman at the wheel holding a dozen doughnuts. Then the agent shut the trunk, and the sounds played themselves in reverse: the locking mechanism clicking, footsteps, muffled voices, and the engine roaring into first gear.

Ten minutes later, the car stopped, and the trunk popped open. Stoner Timmy's face was the only one that greeted them. He reached in, offering a hand to help them out of the trunk.

“Welcome to Canada, ladies.”

He'd pulled over at a gas station where the prices listed were per liter, not gallon. Next to the gas station was another Tim Hortons, almost identical to the one in Bellingham.

“What the hell? How did that work?”

Stoner Timmy showed his empty hands. “Like I said, the answer was in the doughnuts. Don't be surprised by the effectiveness of bribes. Especially when Tim Hortons is involved.”

“That's all we had to do? Bribe the guy with doughnuts?”

“Admittedly, my presence helped. The business I run has certain stockholders. Agent McGee may or may not be one of them.”

Leila, taming her trunk-matted hair into a ponytail, looked curiously at Timmy. “If a bribe was all it took, couldn't we have just ridden in the car?”

Stoner Timmy smiled, pulling a cigarette pack from his hoodie pouch. “Truth be told, Full of Moxie, that part
could
have been avoided. I just thought it was funny.”