The Detour

 

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{For Lori & Kristi, who know all my secrets}

 

{1}

HOW OFTEN DO
you see a girl standing barefoot on a log by the side of the road, playing a flipping flute?

Never, that's how often.

Which
is why my focus left the winding gravel for a split second too long,
which
turned out to be way more than enough time to catch the tires of my red Audi convertible on the raised edge of the road,
which
I happened to be driving along much too fast.

I never should have been on that godforsaken stretch of gravel road on that sunny June Friday in the first place. The smart thing would have been to listen to my mom and stay home to finish my novel for the upcoming deadline.

Instead, I had caved in to my pride.

“I'm a real writer, Mom. An
author,
for God's sake
.
This is what authors do. Authors go to writing retreats.” I left out the last part of that sentence, the part that continued on in my head long after my mouth had closed. Authors go to writing retreats …
so all the wannabes who pay dearly for the privilege can suck up to us, fantasizing they will be us one day.

Several of my weekends that summer had been spent communing with the unpublished—oh my bad,
sorry
!—the
pre
published, the majority of whom are earnest, eager housewives well over thirty who firmly believe that they are meant to be the next Stephenie Meyer.

I had smiled as I stood in my room packing for the weekend retreat, the weekend retreat that I was getting paid a ridiculous amount of money to attend. Because it was funny, really, that the joke was on all those middle-aged moms who didn't stand a chance. They were deluding themselves, thinking they were ever going to make money off their stupid stories and live the dream. The fame, the book tours, the fans. And I loved,
relished
even, that I was seventeen, less than half the age of most of them, and had already accomplished what none of them probably ever would: written a book, a
trilogy
in fact, for which a major publisher in New York City had paid me a whopping mid-six figures.

Those people were all fooling themselves.

I mean, seriously, what did they expect from me?

That I was going to recommend them to my agent?

Give them a story idea?

Tell them how to write
the
book that would change their lives?

There was no magic formula. And even if there was, I certainly wasn't going to give it up.

I was seventeen years old. At fifteen, I'd gotten a three-book deal, and at sixteen, I'd gone on a twelve-city tour, chaperoned by my mom and my own publisher-appointed handler. The first two books of my YA series had been on the
New York Times
bestseller list for thirty-six straight weeks and counting, and between them and my new movie deal—Steven Spielberg himself wanted to take me to dinner when I went to Hollywood in the fall—I was well on my way to having more than a million dollars in the bank. Well, most of it was in a trust for when I was older, but I did get my hands on enough to write a check for the upcoming fall quarter at the University of Oregon, my dad's alma mater, where I would have a single room in the Global Scholars Hall, the most expensive dorm on campus. Pity the poor freshmen on financial aid who would be stuck in rooms barely larger than closets, eating crusted-over macaroni and cheese in the dining hall or boiling Top Ramen in the basements of their dorms, while I would be eating made-to-order sushi.

My success only confirmed my feeling that if those so-called writers hadn't been able to do by thirty what I'd done by sixteen, then they didn't deserve to be published.

In my humble opinion.

My mom had also let me take out enough money to buy a few things, like my bright red Birkin bag, which happened to perfectly match my convertible with Oregon vanity plates that read
WRTRGRL
: the very same car that lost a bit of stability when I hit the edge of the gravel road while going over sixty when I should have been going closer to thirty.

But it wasn't my fault that I was driving so fast. My unsafe rate of speed was a result of the fact that I was frustrated and very pissed off.

The writing retreat was remote, back in the woods somewhere on the highway between my home in Bend and the city of Eugene, but near the end of the trip I hit a detour. And my car's state-of-the-art GPS kept telling me, in a lovely British accent that sounded almost like J. K. Rowling, to continue straight while my gut screamed that a quick and tidy U-turn was the better option.

So I'd been on the gravel road for about six miles, sun beaming down on my head, J. K.'s “Continue straight” serenading me every now and then, when I finally shouted into the open air, “This sucks! I am seriously turning around.”

But then, rounding the next turn, the log came into view.

The log with the girl standing on it.

The girl's long, dark pigtails contrasted with the white of her Hello Kitty T-shirt. There were holes in the knees of her faded jeans. As she balanced, her bare feet molded around the moss-covered log, her neatly bent arms held the flute at perfect attention for a conductor visible only to her.

What struck me most was her expression: Her eyes were dark and narrowed, as if she was angry.

I don't know if it was the sight of that furious flute-playing girl standing on a green log at the edge of the woods, or the fact that my writer's mind immediately began asking questions.

Why is a girl playing the flute on that log?

And why does she look mad?

Whatever the cause, that moment of lost concentration led to the tires catching the side of the road.

Without warning, the world churned.

I screamed.

The blue of the sky and the green of the treetops were juxtaposed in a rush of crunching metal.

The side air bags punched out and kept me from getting crushed. But even as they cushioned my left side, the front air bag didn't deploy. My head smashed against the steering wheel, and all went dark.

*   *   *

I came to with a start and a gasp. I wasn't sure how much time had gone by. The sun was still high in the sky. My teeth didn't feel fuzzy, so I hadn't been out that long. A few minutes maybe. But everything was different.

I hung upside down, hugged by the seat belt, my white camisole and gray cashmere sweater bunched down around my bust. My position, along with the pervasive smell of gasoline, made the contents of my stomach—a nasty tuna sandwich on sourdough—begin to creep their way up my throat. J. K. Rowling sounded haggard, yet also very determined, as she persistently announced, “Recalculating route. Recalculating route.”

It felt as if someone had taken a hammer to my head.

I started to raise my left hand but cried out at the pain in my shoulder and realized I had better move more slowly. Or maybe not move at all.

I blinked a few times. The light hurt my eyes, so I kept them shut.

“Recalculating route.”

“Shut up.” I wiggled my toes and kept going, twirling my ankles, bending knees. Everything seemed okay except for my left shoulder and my head. Once I got out of that car, I was going to be fine. A little banged up maybe, but I could probably use the experience as inspiration for another book eventually. Or maybe, if I milked the drama, it could get covered as a news story—KGW in Portland, then maybe even the
Today
show? How many books would sympathy sell?

As soon as I was upright, I would get my publicist on it.

And then I heard something besides J. K. and the ticking of the engine and the beating of my own heart.

The sound was not coming from my car.

The tone was too steady. High-pitched. Fluttering.

A soundtrack to a documentary about fairies and small woodland creatures.

Was that a—

Despite the pain in my head, I opened my eyes, wincing as I blinked.

The girl with the flute stood there in the grass at the side of the road, looking down at me as she played her instrument.

“Please,” I said. “Can you help me get out of here?” I tried to unbuckle my seat belt, but my entire weight pushed down against it. I couldn't brace myself with my bad shoulder. “I need a hand here.”

The girl kept playing her flute.

Are you kidding me?

Then, still playing, she stepped closer to me. As she trilled, her lips pursed, fingers flying, she reached out a foot and put it through the open window, poking my bare stomach with her dirty toes. None too gently, I might add.

What the hell?
Was she brain damaged?

Even though I was in pain and wanted to bawl, I realized Flute Girl might be the only thing that stood between my staying in that car forever or my getting help and making it home.

So I swallowed the swelling animosity at her utter ignorance or absolute lack of compassion or
whatever
her issue was, forced half a smile onto my face, and injected an entire dose of false cheer into my voice. “Yeah, I'm kind of stuck here. Driving too fast. Stupid, I know. But I'm pretty sure I'm hurt, so if you could…”

At last, Flute Girl stopped playing.

“… help me get…” My inane rambling tapered off.

She slowly lowered her flute and squatted next to the car. We were nearly eye to eye, although I was still upside down and beginning to see spots. She set the flute down on the grass beside her, so gently, laying it there as if it were made of eggshells.

The tenderness of her actions sent a wave of relief through me. I let out a breath.

She's going to help me.

Flute Girl's gaze rested on the flute, as if reluctant to leave the precious instrument for even a moment. She sighed before turning her full attention to me.

“That's it, I think if you help me unhook…” I trailed off. Because that was when I noticed something, a small detail that, despite my raging headache and the pain in my shoulder and the barely faded terror at
rolling my freaking car
, managed to cause a chill to run up my aching spine.