After the End(32)

Because I knew what to expect, I answer. I don’t know this place where friends are the bad guys and even this boy sitting next to me can’t be trusted. The rules are different. I have faced bears, wolves, snakes, and ice storms. And for the first time in my life, I’m truly scared, I admit.

Survival. That’s all that’s important. My own survival, and that of my father and clan. I will do anything to guarantee it. And I will use whoever I need to achieve it, I think, glancing at Miles, who is concentrating on the sharp turns. I formulate plans in my mind, but most fall one way or another into the “not allowed by Whit” category. I remember him driving off with those army-looking guys and feel my heart turn to stone. To hell with his rules. I’ll make my own rules now.

Miles slows down as we approach an old, battered building with a Coke sign hanging out front. MAMA’S DINER AND GROCERY is stenciled in black letters in the space beneath the red swirls. Besides some empty forest ranger stations, this is the first place that’s had its lights on since we came down from our mountain camp.

“Do you think it’s open?” I ask.

“There’s a truck parked around back,” Miles says, pointing to a rusted-out pickup truck with a paint job matching the decrepit state of the store. We step out of the car. Miles hesitates before shutting his door. “Is the bird staying in the car?” he asks.

I lean down to peer in the window. The raven looks pretty content with the pile of dirty clothes it is nestled in. “It should stay with us until we’re farther away,” I respond.

Miles shuts his door softly, as if the raven is a baby he’s trying not to wake. He clears his throat and looks uncomfortable. “Did it tell you that?”

I stop walking and stare at him. “Did the bird . . . tell me . . . it wanted to stay?” I clarify, watching him carefully.

He nods sheepishly. “It’s just that I saw you talking to it this morning, and . . .” He trails off.

“I don’t know what things are like in L.A.,” I say slowly, “but where I’m from, birds don’t talk.” I walk away from him, shaking my head. I can’t figure this boy out.

The uneven planks creak loudly as I step up onto the porch. I open a dirty screen with a big rip in the netting and give a little shove to the wooden door inside. It swings open, ringing a bell that hangs on a hook above the lintel.

The brightly lit space is spotlessly clean, with groceries stacked on shelves against one wall and one lone table with four chairs in the middle of the room. A woman wearing a red-checked apron matching the tablecloth and napkins bustles in through a door in the back.

“I’m Mama,” she announces, wiping her hands on a towel that she folds neatly and places on the counter beside an antique cash register. Beside the register sits a large handwritten sign, NO MORE CHARGING GROCERIES UNTIL YOUR TAB IS PAID.

Planting a fist on one hip, the woman cocks her head to one side and stares curiously at my eyes. Miles steps through the door behind me. She turns to him and says, “You kids are up bright and early this morning.”

Mama looks exactly like an illustration of Mrs. Santa in one of the books in our library: plump body, rosy cheeks, and snowy hair piled up on top of her head. From the outside of the shop and the pickup truck, I was expecting the owner to be a mountain man with no teeth, but seeing Mama, the cozy interior makes sense.

As if reading my mind, she chirps, “My mother always told me it’s the inside that counts. Plus, if we do up the front of the store, we’ll attract more undesirables.”

I lift an eyebrow.

“Tourists, I mean,” she says with a laugh. “Now, what can I get for you?”

“Breakfast to go. And a map,” I say.

“Are you sure you don’t want to stay and eat?” she asks, nodding toward the lone table.

“We’re in a hurry,” I explain.

“I have some fresh blueberry muffins. Picked the blueberries myself out back,” she says proudly.

“That sounds great,” Miles pipes in. “And some coffee?”

While the woman gets our breakfast together, I slide a United States atlas out of the magazine rack and flip to the page showing the Pacific Northwest. Studying it, I find a major road that heads southeast all the way to Utah, and wave Miles over. “We should get on that,” I say, tracing the red line with my finger.

“Or we could go due south,” he says, drawing a line down the coast to California, “and then head west to hook up with Route 66.”

“I don’t want to go to California,” I say, giving him a look that I hope will shut him up. “California isn’t southeast, and we’re going southeast.”