My Life Next Door(47)

“Okay. That’s crazy,” she allows. “But how are we gonna get out of this?”

Just then, Tim weaves back toward us. He slides into the front seat, then drops his forehead onto the steering wheel. “I don’t feel good.” He sucks in a deep breath, wrapping his arms around his ducked head, making the horn honk. “You’re nice girls. You really are. I don’t know what the hell’s the matter with me.”

Clearly, neither Nan nor I have an answer. We close the side door of the car, and lean against it. Traffic streaks past on our left. So many people. All oblivious. We might as well be stranded in the desert. “Now what?” Nan asks.

Mom’s given me a thousand lectures on what to do in a situation with an unreliable driver. So I call her. I call home. I call her cell. Ugh, Clay’s cell. Tracy’s—not that she could help me from the Vineyard, but…No answer anywhere. I try to remember where Mom said she was going tonight but come up blank. Lately, it’s all a big blur of “economic roundtable” and “town hall meeting” and “staffing support information event.”

So, I call Jase. He answers on the third ring. “Samantha! Hey, I—”

I interrupt to tell him what’s happening.

Nan, who’s checking on Tim, calls, “He’s passed out! I think. He’s all sweaty. Oh my God. Samantha!”

“Where exactly are you?” Jase asks. “Alice, I need help,” he shouts into the background. “Are there any highway signs? What’s the nearest exit?”

I peer around but can’t see anything. I call to Nan, asking what town we last passed, but she shakes her head and says, “I had my eyes closed.”

“Just hang on,” he tells me. “Get in, lock the doors, and hit the hazard lights. We’ll find you.”

They do. Forty-five minutes later, there’s a tap on the car window and I look up to see Jase, Alice behind him. I open the door. My muscles are cramping and my legs are about to give way. Jase wraps his arms around me, warm and solid and calm. I sink into him. Nan, scrambling out after me, raises her head, sees us, stops dead. Her mouth drops open.

After a minute, he lets go and helps Alice, surprisingly silent and forbearing, shove the unconscious Tim into the backseat of the Bug. Tim lets out a loud snore, clearly down for the count.

“What did he take?” Alice asks.

“I—I don’t know,” Nan stammers.

Alice bends, fingers on his wrist, smells his breath, shakes her head. “I think he’s fine. Just passed out. I’ll take these guys home, if she”—Alice gestures to Nan—“tells me where to go, then you swing by and pick me up, okay, J?” She flings herself into the driver’s seat, jerking it closer to the wheel to accommodate her small frame.

Nan, piling into the Bug next to Alice, frowns at me and mouths, “What’s going on?” then mimes putting a phone to her ear. I nod, then take a long, shaky breath. I wait for Jase to ask what the hell I was thinking, going anywhere with someone in that condition, but instead he says, “You did exactly the right thing.”

I scramble to be that girl Jase thinks I am. That calm unruffled girl who doesn’t let things faze her. She’s nowhere to be found. Instead, I burst into tears, those embarrassing noisy ones where you can’t catch your breath.

Of course, he rolls with that. We stand there until I get hold of myself. Then he reaches into the pocket of his jacket and hands me a Hershey’s bar. “Good for shock, Alice tells me. She is, after all, a medical professional in training.”

“I threw the car keys in the bushes.”

“Smart move.” He heads into the thicket, ducking to sweep his hands on the ground. I follow, doing the same.

“You must have some arm,” he says finally, when we’ve searched for about ten minutes.

“Hodges Heroines softball through eighth grade,” I offer. “Now what do we do?”

Instead of answering, Jase walks back to the Jetta and opens the passenger door, gesturing for me to climb in. I do, watching in fascination as he yanks off this plastic piece from the steering column, then pulls off some of the coating on two red pieces of wire and twists them together. Then he hauls out this brown wire and touches it to the red ones. Sparks fly. “You’re hot-wiring the car?” I’ve only seen that in the movies.

“Just to take it home.”

“How’d you learn this?”

Jase glances at me as the engine revs into high gear. “I love cars,” he says simply. “I’ve learned all about them.”

After we’ve driven for ten minutes in silence, Jase says musingly, “Timothy Mason. I might have known.”