So why do my nerves feel like they're on fire, and why do I feel like I'm missing something?
The driver stays silent until we're back in the flow of traffic, moving through the sea of station wagons, pickup trucks, and sport cars. Then he glances over, light glinting off his lens, and asks, "So what's your name?"
His accent is familiar, all the flat plains and open spaces of Michigan tucked into his vowels and hidden in his consonants. He sounds like home. "Rose," I tell him--and since this is a day for honesty, I add, "Rose Marshall."
"Well, Rose, I'm Chris." His smile is as quick and bright as the light that glinted from his glasses. "I'm heading for Detroit. So I guess I can get you most of the way to Buckley. You have family there?"
"I used to." My own accent is tissue-thin and faded from the road; I could be from any part of the country or every part of the country at the same time. I offer a smile of my own, and add, "I grew up there."
"Heading home?"
"Something like that."
Chris nods. "Well, then, Rose, let's see if we can get you home."
***
It's a much nicer day when viewed through a car window, flashing by at a speed feet can never match--the speed my hitchhiker's heart tells me the world was meant to move, miles turning into dust and memory behind us. The heat of the day is no match for the air conditioning, which cools the sweat from my skin and leaves me grateful for the coat I'm wearing. I sort of wish I had some pants, instead of my coquettish party girl cut-offs, but my clothes turned solid when I donned the coat, and taking it off would give me a whole new set of troubles.
Chris turns out to be a pleasant sort of driver, the kind of man who picks up a hitchhiker not because he wants something, but because he doesn't want to see a girl walking alone along the highways of America. He makes polite conversation and halfway funny jokes, the kind that get funnier the longer you think about them. I realize after we've been driving for about half an hour that I like him. That's rare, these days, when hitchhikers are viewed as either predators or victims looking for a wolf to take them down.
"So what brings you this way?" asks Chris--a question with no good answer, since "I'm trying to reach a diner that's only accessible to the dead, so I can grill a bean sidhe named 'Emma' on what the hell is wrong with me" isn't likely to go over well.
"I was visiting friends," I say, as vaguely as I can. The idea of calling the Queen of the North American Routewitches a friend is ludicrous, but it's easier than telling the truth. "I'm just heading home."
"No car?"
"Not for a long, long time." Oh, I miss driving; miss the feeling of my own wheels burning down those miles, turning those roads into history and those horizons into possibilities...I shake myself out of it, saying, "Not this trip."
"Hitching's not exactly safe."
That's a line I've heard before. I flash him a smile that's more sincere than it might be, and ask, "What is, anymore?"
He laughs. He's still laughing when we go around a bend in the highway and I forget all humor; forget the sweet chill of the air conditioning, forget the itching in my back. All I can remember--all I can think about or know--is the taste of lilies and ashes, overwhelming the world of the living in a veil of mourning yet-to-be. It's too thick to be coming on this fast, like a hurricane blowing out of nowhere and turning a blue sky black with bruises. But here it is, heavy and hard and thick enough that for a moment, I can't breathe.
There's only one thing in my world that can bring the taste of inevitable tragedy on this fast, and it's the one thing I'm not prepared to deal with. Not now, with the ink still drying underneath my skin and a man I like enough to save in the driver's seat beside me.
"What's wrong?" asks Chris, seeing the sudden tension in my face, the sudden whiteness of my complexion.
"N-nothing," I say, taking shallow breaths to filter the cloying lily air. "Nothing at all."
The sky on the ghostroads is black with the shadow of an onrushing storm, and there's nothing I can do to get out of its path.
Bobby Cross is coming.
***
I've been on the ghostroads for three years. I know how to take substance from a borrowed coat, how to beg a ride from a stranger, how to fall from the daylight into the twilight. I can't control my movement from the twilight to the daylight--it happens or it doesn't, according to some pattern of forces I don't understand--but the older hitchers assure me I'll learn, if I can keep to the roads for long enough.
That's the big concern, the one that's shared by every hitcher I meet: the fear that I won't last enough to learn the things I need to know. I'm dead. I should be nineteen years old, I should be burning rubber out of Buckley, heading for a future too big and wide to even imagine. But I'm not. I'm sweet sixteen and cold in the ground, and the last thing I should be worried about is dying. And still...I am afraid.