Don't Fail Me Now (16 page)

“Like Max?” Denny asks.

“Yup,” I say. “You're invisible from now on. No more malls. No public places. If you have to go anywhere, you can't be seen together.”

“This is so humiliating,” Leah moans.

“Well, the silver lining is, at least your parents give a shit,” I say.

“Hey,” Tim says, perking up slightly, “can't your mom call the cops? If they know who you are and that you're related to Leah—”

“She can't do that,” I say, avoiding
his
eyes this time. Tim's not the only one who's withheld important information. My face burns with shame.

“Why not?”

“She's in jail.”

There's a beat of not-quite-silence—
click, click, click
—as Tim and Leah ingest this revelation.

“So she doesn't know,” he says, his voice low and even.

I shake my head.

“Are you guys running away?” Leah asks.

“No,” I say firmly, mostly for Denny's benefit. “We just . . . didn't have anywhere to go. And when you came and told me about Buck . . .”

“I shouldn't have done that,” he says.

“Too late now,” I say softly.

“So what happens to you if they catch up with us?” he asks.

My head pounds. If the cops find us, then I violate the most important rule I grew up with, even worse than begging. The rule to end all Devereaux rules, and the one Mom has the most trouble following:
Don't get caught
. “I don't know,” I say shakily. “Nothing good.”

Tim looks straight at me, his eyes flashing with something that's not anger, exactly, but just as frightening.

“Then we have to make sure they don't,” he says.

Friday Night/Saturday Morning

Amarillo, TX
Tucumcari, NM

We drive west on back roads until we're out of Texas, and then I spend an hour on the New Mexico byways looking for a place to camp that's not populous enough to blow our cover but not remote enough to remind me too much of
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
. Finally I find a spot near Tucumcari Lake that shows signs of human life in the form of bonfire ruins but has no other campers. Leah doesn't fight me when I tell her I'm sleeping in the tent. No one really speaks, actually; we just shut down, one by one. And I can't sleep, but I could see that coming. In a way it's more comforting to be awake, lying between my siblings, hearing them breathe.

“Are you asleep?” I whisper into Cass's back once I'm sure Denny is out cold.

She doesn't answer, but I can feel her muscles tense through her shirt, the sharp triangles of her shoulder blades drawing together.

“I'm sorry about all this,” I say. “I should have listened to you.” I don't mean that, exactly. As much as it would make our lives slightly easier from a legal standpoint, I can't pretend that having Tim, and to a lesser extent, Leah, with us hasn't helped. Up to now, at least. But it doesn't matter; Cass doesn't take the bait.

“I probably overreacted in the car,” I say—another lie. “I'm sure the cops have better things to do than look for a couple of kids on a road trip. As long as we don't tip any cows, we should be okay.”

“Will you stop?” she finally hisses. “I'm trying to sleep.”

“Hey,” I say, resisting a sudden urge to grab on to her and hold tight, making spoons like we did when we were little, feeling the shift of her thin bones under my bigger ones as I curled around her like a human safety net. “I just need you to know that I'm here. And that I won't let anything happen to us.”

“You can't promise that,” she says, still with her back to me. And she's right; I can't.

“Okay then. I'm still here. I won't leave.” I reach out to lay a hand on her arm, but she shakes it off.

“Getting taken away is the same thing as leaving.”

A lump forms in my throat, and I try hard to keep the pattern of my breath from giving away the fact that I'm fighting back tears. After I compose myself, I try a different approach.

“When we get home, I'll help you transfer schools,” I whisper. “Maybe we can get you into one of those fancy ones with financial aid. You could even go to Hogwarts.” Cass lies stiff as
a corpse. If she hadn't just spoken, I'd check her breathing. “In a weird way, this could all be a blessing. I think things will start to get better,” I say.

In one swift and jarring motion, she flips over to face me, her head just six inches from mine but its contents still completely out of reach.

“No,” Cass says. “They won't.” Then she turns away again.

I lie awake for hours sending silent prayers out into the universe.
Just get us to California
, I think. If we can make it that far, I'll know there's hope for us, that things
can
get better, and I'll prove it to Cass, too. Now that Tim and Leah are national news, though, getting the rest of the way means throwing out our old rules for a new set. We can't just take whatever we can find to survive, by whatever means necessary. We have to move like ghosts, drawing as little attention to ourselves as possible. It means no more stopping strangers on the side of the road to siphon gas. It means we're down two bodies when it comes to scavenging for food. It means avoiding any and all rest stops, toll roads, and speed traps. It means we can't trust anyone but each other.
Just get us to California
, I beg the bowed ceiling of the cheap polyester tent.
I don't care about the journey, just get us to the destination.

• • •

In the morning—or what passes for morning, when the sun is just starting to pink up the sky—I crawl out of the tent and look across the lake at Tucumcari Mountain, which is swathed in mist like a Q-tip. A sign at the entrance to the campground last night said that
Tucumcari
comes from a Comanche word,
tukamkaru
, which means “to lie in wait for someone or something to approach.” It's a little creepy how much it applies to us at this point.

But I want to regain some control, take action instead of lying in wait, which I think I can do if I can just fix the goddamn car. Somehow this beige behemoth—which existed long before I did and was broken long before we were, and which has carried my family on every journey we've ever taken, however brief or ordinary, however fraught with tension or filled with wild, fleeting joy—seems like the key to turning things around. I know it makes no logical sense, but I wake up convinced that if I can fix Goldie, I can fix everything.

The only problem is I don't really know anything about cars except for where to put gas and how to do a jump start. Since Buck left I think Mom took her to a mechanic maybe once, when the muffler fell out (and only then because the neighbors complained after a few days). Otherwise when something goes wrong she just kisses her hand, smacks it on the dash, and holds it up to the sky, the way people do when they run a light just as it's turning from yellow to red. She stopped going to church a long time ago and barely talks religion, but I know Mom thinks God has kept Goldie running all these years, which gives a whole new meaning to the phrase “Jesus, take the wheel.”

I was going to hit up a library and find some DIY repair books or web pages, but since that's no longer an option, I'll have to wing it. Luckily I do remember some of the things Tim said it might be—wheel bearing, shock mount, heat riser, exhaust pipe—and if there was a siphon pump I bet there's also a tool or two banging around in Goldie's trunk with the rest of Mom's junk.

But when I get to the car and peer through the streaky back window, I notice two things immediately. One, Tim is splayed on his back in the driver's seat, lips slightly parted, his left arm wedged between the seat and the door, his right hand disappearing
into the cup holder. He's still wearing the Barack shirt (at least Mom's haphazard thrift shopping was good for something, and he'll no longer be recognizable by his school clothes) and a pair of comic book boxers. The second thing I notice—and the thing I should have seen first, really—is that Leah is gone. I walk around to the front of the car and scan the lake, holding my breath, until finally I see her about a hundred feet away, her long hair blending in with the tall yellow grass. Reluctantly, I put my mechanic ambitions on hold and walk over to where she's sitting.

“Hey,” I say, crouching down next to her.

“Hey.”

“You been up long?”

“I couldn't sleep.”

“Yeah, me either.”

“I've never slept well,” she says, pulling up blades of grass from the ground and letting them sift through her fingers. “My mom says when I was a baby people kept telling her I would start sleeping through the night, but I never did.” She rips out another handful of grass and examines it before letting it go. “I still don't.”

“Me either,” I say.

“Must run in the family,” she sighs.

“Listen,” I say. “I'm sorry this has all gotten so crazy. I should have known something like this would happen. I probably should have just left you alone.”

“It's okay,” she says. “I'm glad you found me.”

“You are?” It's hard to hide my surprise. So far everything about this girl's life has been downgraded since she left Maryland.

Leah nods. The sunrise lends her face a golden cast, turning
her eyes into twin pieces of sea glass. “I'm sorry I was so bitchy at first,” she says. “I was just . . . it just felt so unfair.”

“What did?”

“That that was how we had to meet, you know?” Her chin trembles a little bit. “I knew you guys existed when I was about five. I overheard them fighting, and my mom said something about me not even knowing my sisters. But when I asked her later, she told me to ask my dad, and when I asked him”—Leah stares down at the grass between her crossed legs—“he said you lived far away and that I could never meet you.” She breathes in deep in that way people do when they're trying not to cry.

I stare out at the mountain, a big, squat pile of rock rising out of the valley like a sloppy sandcastle. I bet I could break it with my rage right now, just bust through like a bullet and send it crumbling into pebbles.
Thanks, Buck
, I think.
Thanks for everything, you piece-of-shit excuse for a human being. Thanks for giving me your eyes so I can see so clearly the ruins you left for us. Thanks for robbing us of our childhoods. Thanks for robbing us of our sister. Thanks for setting Mom on a collision course and then leaving us to pick up the pieces.

“By the time I found out he was lying,” Leah continues, “I was too scared to look for you. Because I thought you didn't want to find
me
.” She swallows hard, blinking back tears. “Or else you would have.”

“We did want you,” I say, grabbing her hand. “We always wondered about you. We just didn't know your name. We used to make up stories, and we would just call you Sister.”

“Really?” A shadow of a smile. “What were they?”

“Usually we'd get reunited and then go kick some bad guys' asses,” I say.

“So, this trip, basically?” she says, and we both laugh. Leah's a lot sharper than I first gave her credit for. “I made my mom make up stories about you guys, too,” she says, shaking her head. “That must have been so weird for her.”

“What were we like?” I ask.

“Um . . . usually princesses,” she says with a smirk. “You would come in this big fancy coach and tell me I was your sister and I could come live in the palace with you. Like Cinderella, basically. I watched a lot of Disney.”

“Believe me,” I laugh, “you don't want to live in our palace. We'd rather move into yours.”

“I'm sorry about your mom,” she says. “I don't know what I'd do if my mom was in jail.”

“You'd survive,” I say.

“Maybe,” she says, looking unconvinced.

“Besides, you have Tim,” I say.

“He's pretty great,” she says. “I mean, he can be annoying, but I'm just glad I'm not an only child anymore.” I know she's talking about Tim, but she looks at me when she says it.

“Yeah.”

“He likes you, you know.”

I'm caught off guard by the change in subject. “What? No.” I reach down and rip up my own handful of grass, feeling the blush rise in my cheeks.

“He does,” she says. “He's got no poker face. And that song last night, I mean, come on.” She rolls her eyes. “He is so obvious about everything. It's embarrassing.”

“Well, he made some money, at least. Which reminds me”—I glance back at Goldie, slumping as unimpressively as ever in the early morning light—“I still have to show him up.”

“What are you planning?” she asks.

“I'll tell you if you help me,” I say with a grin.

• • •

We open the trunk as quietly as possible and grab indiscriminately at bags, pulling them out onto the grass. In addition to a few pairs of seemingly clean underpants, a roll of paper towels, a circa-1992 Aerosmith cassette tape, and a crumpled pack of cigarettes, we find a socket wrench, a small pair of pliers, a weird diamond-shaped hunk of metal that neither of us can identify, and—most amazingly—a beat-up copy of
Auto Repair for Dummies
, which at first makes us high-five but then brings a wave of guilt as I picture my mother doing the same thing I'm doing right now—paging through it while her children slept, searching desperately for some key word she understood, hoping she could pull it off. Maybe Mom's the only reason Goldie's made it this far, no matter how bad she looks. Maybe she's been doing a lot more good I can't see.

“I think checking the wheel bearings means we have to take the wheels
off
,” Leah says, pointing to a diagram of a confounding tower of tiny plates and screws.

“Okay, let's check the heat riser and exhaust pipe first.” I prop open the hood, and we stare for a while at the jumble of dull tubes and cylinders connected by crisscrossed wires. I can identify the engine and the battery and that's about it, but luckily the book really does seem to be written for stupid people, so finding the little metal plate in the diagram isn't too hard. While Leah reads aloud from the manual, I poke around and try to wiggle it with my fingers, but it's so rusty that it seems glued in place permanently; it doesn't budge. So much for that.

Checking the actual exhaust pipe requires more work, since
it's under the car. We can't jack it, but I can fit my head and shoulders underneath without feeling like I'm inviting death, and after some experimentation we discover that if Leah holds her compact mirror at the right angle, she can catch enough light so that I can see. I trace the loose pipe with my fingers, dirt clumps falling into my eyes and hair, until I come to a bigger piece of metal covering part of the pipe. It gives immediately when I touch it, and when I shake it I can hear rocks or something rattling around inside.