I haven’t thought about how I’m going to get my mom home. She can’t ride the bike, she’s not coordinated enough to balance on the crossbar, and there’s no way she’ll be able to fit in the carrier. It’s a long, long walk home. Maybe I can leave my bike here and we can take the bus, at least to the Foodland parking lot.…
“I’ll give you a ride,” Dillon says. “I have my dad’s pickup truck. Your bike can go in the back. You live all the way out of town, right?”
I shoot a glance at Jean, wondering if she’s been talking to Dillon about me as much as she’s been talking to me about him. “Yeah, could you? That would be awesome.”
He gives me a grin so bright, so shiny, so cute that I’m smacked into another totally embarrassing blush. “Sure.”
Jean laughs. “Okay, you two, why don’t you take Opal and Malinda out of here. I have work to do.”
From the back we hear the faint shout of raised voices, and Jean frowns with a look toward the door where Carlos took that guy and the cops followed. When she looks back at us, her smile looks a lot like her son’s, only not as bright. Not as shiny. Jean looks worried.
Dillon lifts the bike and cart into the back of his dad’s truck, and, okay, I’m a total girl about the way he’s so strong. I don’t say anything, of course. It wasn’t long ago I had a boyfriend I luuuurved. I’m not exactly in the place to be scoping out a new dude.
Dillon, on the other hand, isn’t shy about giving me the eye while Opal helps my mom get into the truck’s backseat with her. He’s not gross about it or anything, but I notice. And I like it.
“Everyone okay back there?” He twists in the driver’s seat to check on Opal and my mom. “Seat belts?”
I find the fact he’s eighteen and cares about seat belts unbearably cute. I look into the backseat to see Opal helping my mom. She sits back and buckles herself. I put my own on, too.
Dillon grins and starts the truck. “Just give me directions. Spring Lake Commons, right?”
“Your mom must’ve told you a lot.” I stick my feet under the heater with a wiggle of relief when hot air starts blowing out. It feels like I’ve been some version of cold for weeks now.
Dillon shrugs as he pulls up to the stop sign. He looks carefully both ways before pulling into the intersection. “She’s talked about you, yeah. She likes your mom.”
I have to look out the window when he says this, because who could like my mom now, the way she is? I love her because she’s my mother, and I know Opal does. But do we like her? How can we?
There’s something else I like about Dillon. He doesn’t fill the silence with lame jokes or talk just for the sake of having something to say. He turns on the radio and hums along under his breath to songs I don’t really recognize. Static hisses and the station wavers in and out until he tunes it, and then a voice breaks in. It’s not the local station, and doesn’t sound like a DJ. It’s a young kid who identifies himself as “the Voice,” and the station as “Telling the truth they don’t want you to know.”
Dillon makes a face. “Oh, this guy.” He moves to change the station, but I stop him.
“What guy?”
“Ham radio,” he says. “Conspiracy theories. Stuff like that.”
“Wait. I want to hear this.”
“Sure.” He gives me another look from the corner of his eye.
We’ve reached the light in front of the Foodland parking lot, and it turns red, so he stops. The Voice has a low, rumbly voice. He sounds rushed but not crazy.
“Police and localized military units are asking citizens to remember that curfews are still in effect and that suspicious activity should be reported immediately. In other words, guys, stay off the streets after dark, or you might end up in a shock collar. And this just in from sources in the know, a man who lost control of himself in a local grocery store has been taken for questioning. Witnesses say the man, who has been identified but whose name is not yet being released, did not appear to be ill until he was unable to find the brand of frozen peas he was looking for. At that point, witnesses claim he shoved a grocery cart through the glass freezer case, then proceeded to break the others. Nobody was injured during the incident, but the suspect was taken into protective custody at once. No word has been released on whether this was a new case of Contamination, or something else. It’s out there, ladies and gents. It’s still out there.”
With a glance in the rearview mirror at Opal, Dillon clicks off the radio. As soon as the light turns green, a car hurtles through the intersection. Tires and brakes squeal. It doesn’t hit us, but it hits the car in front of us, which had started to go. Both spin out of control, off to the side.
Dillon doesn’t panic. He swerves to the right and passes the crunched cars without even letting out a curse. Traffic’s snarled up, but we shoot past the wreck and pull over to the side of the road. All of us except my mom turn around to look out the back window.
“Wow,” Opal says. “That was close.”
“Yeah.” Dillon sounds a little tense, and no wonder. If the car had hit us, it would’ve smooshed him.
It takes us only a couple of seconds to see that this isn’t an ordinary car wreck when the driver’s-side door of the car that ran the light opens and a woman staggers out. She’s wearing a bathrobe and pink fuzzy slippers. Her hair’s up in a bun, and when the bathrobe swings open, I catch a glimpse of pajamas with flowers on them. Her arms are already swinging, her mouth open with screams we have no trouble hearing from here.
“Oh, no,” Dillon says in a low, sick voice.
Opal hides her eyes, but I can’t look away. I can’t stop staring at the fuzzy slippers. They’re not right. She should be wearing them at home to make a cup of cocoa, sitting with them propped up on an ottoman, reading a book. Pink fuzzy slippers aren’t meant to scuff along through broken glass and bits of twisted metal; they’re not made for the street.
The driver of the other car isn’t getting out. The cars behind the wreck are stopped, but some are backing up, turning around. A few people standing in the parking lot are on their phones, calling the police, I guess. Or just watching. Nobody’s running to help, that’s for sure, even though the driver in the car that got hit must be hurt.
The woman in the bathrobe screams louder. Then she rips open the door to the other car, reaches inside, and hauls out the driver. All I can see are flailing arms and kicking legs. The woman in the bathrobe is tossing the other person around like a rag doll.
“Drive away,” I hear myself say. “Dillon. Please. Drive away now.”
“Yeah.” Dillon puts the car in gear. “Yeah, I think that’s a good idea.”
We pass two cop cars and an ambulance coming the opposite way. The sirens wail, the lights flash. Dillon once again pulls over to let them pass, even though he’s on the other side of the street, and when he moves on, neither of us says anything for a few minutes.
I tense as we pass the field with the memorial, but my mom doesn’t get upset. In another minute after that, we’re pulling through the open gate at the entrance to the development. Dillon glances at me. He’s not smiling anymore.
“Tell me where to turn.”
“Just ahead here, take this first street.” I point.
By the time we get to the driveway, Opal’s started chattering in the back to our mom. She’s not really saying anything that makes sense, more of a running commentary on the scenery and stuff outside. I think she’s just nervous, and I’m more glad than ever that Dillon doesn’t seem to need to talk when there’s really nothing to say.
As soon as Dillon stops at the bottom of the driveway, Opal gets out and then goes around to the other door to open it and help my mom get out. “C’mon, Mama. We’re home.”