Second Chance (60 page)

I
take out my
phone, which I realize is dead and
of course Dylan’s doesn’t have I
nternet
.
I use it to
dial Lenny’s number
.
When she answers, I tell her I’m s
tranded.

“You’re stranded?” she asks. “
What happened
?
Did your car break down?”

I stare at the
train still visible
in the distance
.
“Um, not exactly,” I say
.

“Where are you?”

“I’m not sure,” I say
.
I look around at what appears to be a ghost town
.
There’s an RV park down the road, with two ramshackle trailers parked in a field overgrown with weeds and scraggly shrubs
.
Everything looks deserted
.
Dylan’s off taking pictures of
a
dilapidated shed
—she’s
no help at all
.

“I need a bit more detail
than
that, Gray,” she says
.
“Is ther
e a street sign or something?”
I walk
down the road
and look for anything
, even a landmark that could pinpoint our location
.
There’s an
old,
brick church
with the doors and windows all boarded up
.
I
tell her to get online and look up St. Mary’s Church.

Dylan wanders back over to my side
.
“We passed a town called
Magdalena
a while back,” she
offers
.
I tell this to Lenny.

“Where the hell is that?” she asks.

“Southern-
ish
?
”
I guess
.

Lenny’s typing on her computer
.
“How did you end up there?” she asks
.
I explain Dylan kidnapped me and forced me to
ride
on a cargo train with her for a few hours
.

“He dared
me
,” Dylan yells into the phone.

“I’m not seeing any church listing
,
Gray,” Lenny says.

Dylan tugs on my
fingers
.
“Tell her to look up Bill’s
General
Store,
it’s
right down the street.”

Lenny looks
it up and I hear an annoyed groa
n
.
“
You’re
over two hours away!”

I laugh at this
.
“
Please, Lenny
?
W
e’re stranded.”

“Serves you right.”

“I’ll give you gas money.
”
 

“
Damn
right
.
And your
Spinal Tap
shirt.
”

My jaw drops open at this
outlandish
demand
.
“I can’t believe you’re taking a
dvantage of me right now
.”

She isn’t apologetic
.
“What’ll it be?”

“
No way,
not the shirt
.
I’ll buy you beer for a month.
”

“You’re not
even
twenty
-
one you idiot
, and you have a crappy fake
.
How are you going to buy me beer
?
Spinal Tap
or no
ride
.
”

I tighten my lips together
.
“
You can
borrow
it until I buy you your own shirt.
”

“
Deal
.
Try not to get kidnapped out there.
”

She hangs up and I give the phone back to Dylan.

“We have some
time to poke around downtown,” I say li
ke we’re in a tourist hub surrounded by souvenir shops
.
Dylan and I examine the road in each direction
.
We appear to be on a main street of sorts
.
There’s a broken
-
down mill,
half caved in
.
I tell Dylan it
must have been a mining town
.
Probably zinc
or
iron
.
We walk down the street until we come to the last building in sight,
a brick warehouse with a crumbling
roof and boarded up windows
.

“Not a strong local economy,” I observe
.
Dylan’s busy taking pictures of old, faded signs and cracks a
nd weeds growing up through
holes in the brick wall of the abandoned warehouse
.
She asks me to pose in a few
of
her shots
.
I frown in front of the barricaded church and look disappointed next to the
closed
general store
.
I take a few
pictures
of Dylan
.
She holds her face in her hands as she sits in front of the b
oarded
-up
warehouse door
,
like she’s modeling for high school portraits
.
She lies
seductively on her side in front of a stack of car tires
.
She twists a few weeds in
to
her hair and holds a bouquet of tumbleweed
.
I g
et a close
-
up
.
It’s priceless.

We
walk back towards the church
and I
sit
in the middle of the road
and stare up at it
.
Dylan sits next to me and takes out
a
bag of crackers
.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a church closed
down
,” I say
.

Dylan nods
.
“It’s
not a good sign w
hen God goes out of business.”
She nibbles on a few crackers and stretches her legs out
.
“How long would you say we have
to wait
?” she
ask
s
.

“About an hour,” I say and pop a cracker in
my
mouth
.

“That’s a perfect amount of time to write the history of this church,” she says.

I look at her and raise an eyebrow
.
“The history of this place?
”
I
ask
.

She nods and flashes me a smile
.
It makes my heart jump
.
“I’ll start,” she offers
.
“
The church
was built in the year
250 B.C.,
when
King Archibald the 11
^th
ruled
the land
.”

I
study the old church
.
“
The king
had only one son,
”
I add, “who was
born with l
eprosy.
”
Dylan
smile
s
and grab
s
a handful of crackers
.
“But back then, they didn’t know what leprosy was, so
the
King thought his son was possessed by demon
s and banished him from the castle to
live in
this church.”

“Where he was locked up in the basement until he healed
.
He was
never allowed to have visitors,
”
Dylan
says
.