After the End(24)

“Because. As I said, we have to go to that mountain first,” she insists, nodding in the direction of Mount Rainier.

I just sit and stare at her for a minute until I remember how valuable this girl is to Dad and the fact that my name is, at this very moment, written in his bad books in bold capital letters. The last thing I want is for her to get out of my car and find someone else named Taxi or Greyhound Bus and ditch me.

“You are taking me,” she says, as if I have no choice in the matter. Man, does she have me pegged: I need her as much as she needs me.

“Seat belt,” I say. She looks confused. “If I’m taking you, you have to wear your seat belt.” Still no reaction. I yank on mine, demonstrating what a seat belt is, and she fiddles with hers until she finally gets it attached.

I mash my foot on the accelerator and go. We drive in silence for a few minutes, which is good, because I have to get my bearings. I search for road signs, finally see one for MOUNT RAINIER NATIONAL PARK, and follow it east out of town.

We drive over long bridges spanning large bodies of water, and past ugly urban sprawl until mountains appear in the distance, one capped with snow. We’ve been on the road a good twenty minutes before I notice that the girl is holding on to the dashboard with both hands.

“What?” I ask.

“What, what?” she responds.

“What are you doing? Why are you pushing on the dashboard like that?”

“You’re going kind of fast,” she says, in an accusatory voice.

“Fast? I’m only going fifty. That’s not even the speed limit!”

“It feels fast to me,” she mutters.

“Listen, if you’re going to criticize my driving,” I begin, and then I remember . . . I’m arguing with a crazy person. “Just stop doing that,” I say, glancing at her death grip on the glove compartment. “It’s making me nervous.”

She frowns and lets go, but moves her hands to the edges of the seat on either side of her legs and clutches tight. I decide to ignore her completely until I’m on the highway going out of town, at which point I speed up to sixty and relax. We pass a sign saying 54 MILES TO MOUNT RAINIER, and I see the girl’s eyes flick from the sign to the speedometer and back as she calculates how long it will take us to get there. She looks at the sun, or at least where the faint shape of the sun glows from underneath the rain clouds, and then at the dashboard clock, and finally lays her head back against the headrest and relaxes. And when I say relaxes, I only mean she doesn’t look like she’s going to explode or spontaneously leap out of the speeding car.

I wish she’d take off that contact lens. It freaks me out. One of the goth girls at school has scary yellow cat-eye lenses. Definitely not my scene—the artsy goth posers. And thinking of school reminds me that, however weird she is, Cat-eyes will be attending graduation next month, and I won’t. I step on the accelerator, and the engine roars as I take the car to ninety miles per hour. And when I see the girl’s fingers grip tightly around the edge of her seat, I smile.


We drive the next hour without speaking. As we approach the mountains, city-appropriate sedans are gradually replaced by massive pickup trucks and semis stacked with logs. One-story identical wooden houses are lined up side by side like a countrified version of Monopoly.

After a little while, I turn the radio on—my music is on my dead phone—and all I can find is country. I keep it on—it’s better than sitting in silence with the odd boy-girl.

I can’t help but glance at her every once in a while; she could be part Asian, with high cheekbones and thick black hair. Her clothes look straight from the men’s section of Old Navy. Her hairstyle is truly ugly: It looks like she got a bad crew cut, and now that it’s growing out, she’s spiking it to make herself look taller. Or fiercer.

She’s small. I’d say five-five was a pretty close estimate. When she’s quiet, she looks her size. But when she talks, she somehow gains a few inches . . . becomes bigger than herself. When she first got in the car, I thought, If she’s insane and freaks out in my car, I can take her, but now I’m not so sure. There’s this energy . . . and anger . . . jam-packed into every inch of her.

Dad said that calling her an industrial spy was “near enough to the truth.” When I first saw her, I couldn’t imagine her being involved in anything spy-related. But now she’s sitting inches away from me, I totally can. She seems dangerous.

As if reading my thoughts, she glances over at me, and when our eyes meet, she glowers. “Where are you from?” she asks.

I hesitate, and then decide it can’t hurt for her to know where I live. “L.A.,” I say.