After the End

26 MILES

I HAVE TO GET TO A PHONE. TO CALL MY DAD. Have him take her off my hands. I can’t stand this much longer. I’m in way over my head. It’s one thing playing driver for a schizo teen who thinks she’s being chased by dangerous people. It’s a whole other thing when said dangerous people are actually chasing said teen and, by proxy, me.

But I can’t get away from her. She had me pull up to a woman pushing a baby carriage so she could ask where a supermarket was. (She called it a “food shop,” but whatever.) And once we had walked into Walmart Supercenter, she insisted that I accompany her every step of the way while she crammed a cart with food: canned stew, beans, and vegetables; liters of water; a sack of potatoes, a sack of apples; and, yes, a small pouch of birdseed.

She went all out on the flashlights, buying three jumbo ones along with a mountain of batteries. “I saw batteries in Seattle,” she whispered to me as if they were a state secret. I wonder what they would have thought of her pack of size-D Duracells back in hippie camp.

It looked like she was preparing for a monthlong wilderness survival trip from all the staples she was stocking up on. But that was just the beginning. Then we hit the junk food aisles.

She transformed from a middle-aged nature mom into an eight-year-old girl with a serious sugar deficiency in the time it took to fill the rest of the cart with Pop-Tarts, Cap’n Crunch, and cheese puffs. This was followed by a meltdown in the chocolate aisle. The hippies obviously didn’t grow their own cocoa beans back in Alaska, because I’ve never seen anyone load up on so many candy bars in my life.

At the checkout, Juneau digs in her bag and pulls out a leather pouch with money in it. Seriously—a leather pouch tied together with a cord. Like Grizzly Adams, but with major cash. I’m talking a fat wad of bills. She pulls it out and starts counting really slowly in front of the checkout lady, turning each bill over a couple of times and squinting at them like they’re Japanese yen.

The clerk stares at the money kind of scared, like she’s afraid Juneau’s running a teenage counterfeiting operation. And then she looks at Juneau’s face and catches a glimpse of that weird contact lens, and her eyes get a little wider. Finally I grab the cash and slap down enough for the total, jam the rest back into the pouch, and push Juneau out of the store in front of me.

“What’s wrong with you?” I hiss as soon as we’re outside. “You freaked that woman out so much she might call the manager.”

“What are you talking about?” Juneau asks, as innocent as a kindergartner.

“Flashing all that money around. Where’d you get it anyway?”

“That’s none of your business,” she says, frowning.

“Can’t you just try to act normal?” I ask.

“What is your definition of normal?” she asks cautiously.

I’m about to say, Well, it wouldn’t be pulling a fat wad of cash out of a leather pouch at Walmart and then staring with your freaky contact lens at the bills as if you’re hoping the green’s not going to rub off, but I opt for, “Nothing,” and beeline to the car. I pile the bags into the trunk and return the shopping cart to its corral. By the time I get back, Juneau’s feeding the birdseed to the raven, who’s eating it out of her hand like they’ve been best buds for their entire lives.

I get ready to start the car and then pause. “You have to take out that weird-ass contact lens. Not only did it freak out the checkout lady, but the woman in the breakfast place said that your mentor and his thugs are using it to hunt you down.”

She sits there looking like she doesn’t know what I’m talking about. Then, putting her finger under her right eye, she says, “You mean my starburst?”

“If that’s what you call it, then yes.”

“I can’t take it out,” she says simply.

“What do you mean?”

Blank stare.

“You’re not telling me you have a gold iris shaped like a star… naturally?” I don’t bother to downplay my sarcasm.

“Yes, actually,” she replies. “All the children in my village do. It comes from being close to the Yara.” I nod, unwilling to bite if she’s luring me into asking what the hell she’s talking about.

“So you can’t take it out?”

She shakes her head and the sun glints off the gold flecks in her mutant eye, and for a second it strikes me that it’s actually not that weird-looking once you’re used to it, maybe because her other eye is kind of a nice honey color and doesn’t contrast too much.

“Can you wink with that eye?” I ask. She winks. “Can you hold it shut whenever we’re in public?” I prod, and she looks at me strangely, and then her eyes narrow and her face closes down like it does when she’s mad at me, which seems to be more and more often since she found the raven and realized her mentor is playing for the Dark Side of the Force. Like it’s my fault she trusted him.

“Is it essential that we waste time talking about my eye, or can we go now?” she says stiffly.

I try to speak like she does. “Considering the fact that we’re being trailed by a dangerous hippie bird hypnotist and two thugs, I don’t mind continuing the eye conversation later.” Turning the key in the ignition, I head out of the parking lot and toward signs for Highway 47.

As we leave town, I have an idea and pull over in front of a drugstore. “Stay here,” I order, and duck out so fast she doesn’t have a chance to stop me. Two minutes later I’m back in the car. Juneau’s sitting there staring quizzically at me as I pull onto the road and drive toward the edge of town. I let her stare, and we sit in silence until we’re way out in the country, driving past a sea of yellow flowers toward a horizon of low purple mountains.

Juneau’s fidgeting like crazy, and the longer she tries to fight the urge to ask me what I bought the happier it makes me feel. She’s been freaking me out so much for the last eighteen hours or so, it’s kind of nice to finally be getting under her skin. I glance at the clock. Almost an hour passes in complete silence. I’m kicking myself for not thinking to ask to use the phone in the drugstore. But the thought of people chasing us has driven almost everything else from my mind, including the reason I’m driving her. Also, it’s so much fun watching Juneau squirm, I don’t mind putting off contacting my father a little longer.

Finally I reach forward to turn on the radio. Before I can touch the button, she blurts out, “What’d you get?”

“Well, Juneau, I’m glad you asked,” I say in my Dad voice. I hand her the small plastic bag from the floor in front of my seat. She opens it and pulls out a pair of black sunglasses. She stares at them, confused for a moment. And then a broad smile stretches across her face.

“It’s to help you look like a normal person,” I say.

“Thanks a lot,” she replies, but she cracks a little pleased smile.

“No problem.” I grin. “You have to peel this label off before you put them on,” I say, and reach toward the glasses. My hand brushes hers, and something electric passes between us. Juneau looks at me, surprised. I return my hand to the steering wheel and focus on the road and try to ignore the tingling in my fingers.