Earthbound

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

I’m not sure why I’m not telling Benson the truth about where we’re going. Why we’re going there—aversion to drama, maybe. I hardly need the guy I’m kissing to spend hours in my stolen car driving to the guy my heart can’t leave alone. Awkward silence much?

Instead, we talk about anything and everything except the last week and Benson does a good job of distracting me when I lapse into silence for too long. When I’m quiet, my mind races, and I can’t help wondering who—or what—I really am.

Part of me is actually relieved—relieved that Elizabeth showed up with a gun, relieved that Sunglasses Guy tried to kill me—because it means I’m not crazy. On the other hand, today I put my therapist and guardian in chains and stole a car to get away from them. There’s something inside me that knows how to do that. Something I don’t understand—a person I don’t know. It makes me question everything—my life, myself, my memories. How much of my life has been a lie? Am I a lie?

But a light touch of Benson’s fingers against my hand, a lame joke, pointing out a funny billboard—those pull me back into the now. Once I get out of this car, I’ll have to think about the disaster of my life. But until then, Benson and I laugh, and talk, and tease, wrapped up in a small, four-door-sedan world of our own.

Due to construction and traffic, five or six hours turn into eight. Every time we have to slow down, I find myself drumming my fingers impatiently on the steering wheel. Benson’s been keeping a watch out the back windshield and, as far as we can tell, no one’s tailing us. With that worry at least temporarily assuaged, all I can think of is getting there.

Camden means Quinn.

And Quinn means answers.

I’m not sure which one I’m more anxious for. I can’t give up the idea of being with Quinn despite the last two days with Benson. Quinn makes me feel alive in a way I haven’t experienced since the plane crash, like a part of me has lain dormant and only he can bring it back into existence.

And there’s that familiarity. I can’t shake it.

Hopefully once we find him in Camden, I can sort it out. Maybe I do know him. Maybe I’ve always known him.

Regardless, he’ll have the answers. I have to believe that.

Jay has tried to call four times. Well, four times before I turned my phone off. I wonder if I need to get rid of it. I hate feeling like I have no good choices. And I hate that I can’t trust Jay. I guess I really was clinging to that thread of hope that it was only Reese and Elizabeth who were involved—that Jay was as clueless as me.

After what feels like an eternity, Benson and I pull into Camden about the time everyone is closing their stores and heading home.

The buildings are all old and fairly short, two floors at the most, and there isn’t a chain store in sight. But neither are there the bright storefronts I’m used to seeing in Portsmouth. Everything has a tidy-but-subdued brick-red hue about it. It’s like the whole town got lifted out of the 1950s. Trees shade clean sidewalks, and all around me shopkeepers are sweeping their walks or pulling in sandwich boards so they can lock up. The closed shops are free of metal grilles, lending the impression that nothing bad ever happens here.

Maybe it doesn’t. Maybe that’s why Quinn sent me.

Quaint, I decide. And classic. If I was here for a different reason, I’d probably start scouring the city for interesting houses and historic markers, the way I did in Portsmouth. But if I should be seeing something special here, we haven’t reached it yet. Quinn seemed to think I would know exactly what he was talking about when he told me to come here.

Have I been here before?

It doesn’t feel familiar. I scan the shops around me, looking for symbols, but I don’t see anything like that, either—though, with as dark as it is already, I might have to check again when the sun’s up.

“We need gas again,” I say, peering at the gauge.

“I’ll get it this time,” Benson says as we pull into a faded gas station. He gets out of the car and walks around to the pump.

“What are we going to do when we’re out of gas money?” I ask as we both watch the dollar signs click up.

“I have a credit card,” Benson says, nonchalant, but I can tell he’s concerned too.

“Can’t they track those things?” I sigh and lean against the driver’s-side door.

“There’s another option, Tave …” Benson begins hesitantly, and I know what he’s going to say. I’ve been avoiding this conversation since I realized how little cash I had back at Reese and Jay’s.

“If we do get desperate, couldn’t you just … you know?”

“It disappears in five minutes, Benson. It’s still stealing.”

“I did say desperate. I’m not talking about now.”

I look down at my shoes as Benson replaces the gas nozzle after the tank is full. Full of gas he paid for from his own—likely meager—student funds. For me.

“It’s not really even the stealing,” I blurt, and considering the ownership status of the vehicle we’re both leaning against, I think the clarification is necessary. “Everything began when I started using my … powers—whatever you want to call it. Even before I knew what I was doing. Like with the ChapStick. Everything has gone to hell since then. Not you, obviously, but pretty much everything else. I just don’t think it’s a good idea to use my talent”—I whisper the word—“unless we have no other choice. It’s unpredictable and dangerous.”

“It’s your call,” Benson says, draping his arm lightly around my shoulders. “I won’t push you.” He glances around the gas station parking lot, then leans close. “Let’s get out of here, though. I don’t like being out in public when, for all we know, our names and faces could be on the evening news.”

I sigh, hating that appearing on someone’s Most Wanted list seems an only too likely ending to our little “adventure.”

“You want me to drive a bit?” Benson asks, and the cramps in my legs insist I accept his offer. He gets into the driver’s seat and looks at me for a minute before I realize he’s waiting for me to give him directions.

But I don’t have any. Now that we’re here, his guess is as good as mine. Eventually he pulls back onto the road and continues in the direction we’d been going.

Within a few minutes, I realize that the last two houses we passed were a good two blocks apart and there’s nothing in sight ahead of us. We were in the town, and then rather abruptly, we were out of it. “Uh, Benson?”

“Yeah?”

“I don’t think we’re in Camden anymore.”

He looks around at the thick grass on either side of the road and the dense forest beyond, outside the range of our headlights. “I guess that was it,” he says, sounding uncertain for the first time since he decided to come with me.

“What do we do now?”

He looks over. “You’re the one who wanted to come. I thought you had a plan.”

“Not really,” I say, suddenly interested in the scenery outside the window.

“Well, we can’t just leave, right?”

“I don’t think so.”

His eyebrows scrunch up for a few seconds, then he turns on the blinker and steers carefully onto a dirt road.

“What’s down here?”

“A hiding place for the night,” Benson says, peering into the rearview. He pulls Reese’s car off the dirt road and right up alongside a copse of trees. “There was no one in sight behind us, and the trees will hide us from cars on the road.”

“Do you think the guy with the gun is still following us?”

He’s quiet for long seconds that tick off in my head. “I think anyone who’s motivated enough to shoot a gun at someone isn’t going to give up without a damn good fight,” he says in a steady, even tone that makes fear ripple through my whole body. “But after everything that’s happened today, I’m exhausted. And if you actually let yourself feel anything for a minute, I bet you are, too.”

I don’t have the energy to try to argue with the obvious.

“If we don’t sleep, we’ll be useless tomorrow, and that’s no way to outrun someone who wants to kill you,” he says, more gently this time, lifting a hand to stroke my face.

I look down at the backpack between my feet and realize what I forgot—pillows, blankets. I didn’t exactly have much time to plan. “We have to turn the car off, don’t we?”

“Can’t waste the gas.”

“It’ll get cold.”

“Our body heat will keep the small space warm enough.”

I nod, numbly. I’ll be the first one to admit that I wasn’t feeling very optimistic about my life this morning, but even I didn’t expect to be spending the night in a stolen car, in the middle of nowhere, wondering if I’d be warm enough to sleep at all.

Benson gives me dibs and I go for the passenger seat laid down almost flat while he stretches across the back, his body perpendicular to mine. He’s right—even wrapped in a coat I’m starting to feel his body heat rise from where he lies, inches from my face.

Making me feel rather un-sleepy.

“Everything will look better in the morning,” he mumbles, half-asleep already.

“Certainly couldn’t look worse,” I whisper, but quietly enough that he can’t hear me.

After Benson’s breathing deepens and slows, I let the tears come. Quinn! I shout in my mind. I’m here—I did what you said. Where are you?